Sybil (16 page)

"Try," said the doctor as she stopped the car. Seated in the parked car, Sybil made some sketches of sail boats anchored at the marina.

"I like the sketches," the doctor said. Sybil seemed pleased.

Leaving the Sound, Dr. Wilbur drove in a leisurely way back and forth on various highways and on old country roads with little traffic. To Sybil, who had never been in this part of the country before, she pointed out that some of the houses they passed were prerevolutionary, while some of the others, although modern, had either original prerevolutionary windows or replicas of such windows. Sybil remarked:

"My father's a builder-contractor. He's very much interested in architecture, and he developed my interest." The father had scarcely been mentioned in the analysis, and Dr. Wilbur was glad to hear about him.

The conversation turned to the beautiful plantings of dogwood, lilac, and flowering crab. Sybil asked to stop so that she could do a pencil sketch of a hill studded with flowering crab and dogwood.

Sybil had insisted upon providing lunch, which the doctor and she ate at a small camping ground near Kent, Connecticut. At the time Dr. Wilbur thought that Sybil had hoped to make the lunch her contribution to the outing, but she later learned that the picnic lunch was a precaution against having to go into a restaurant. In fact, Sybil's fear of restaurants was so intense that being in one had often led to "lost time."

Nor was it until later that the doctor learned why, when agreeing to the trip, Sybil had insisted upon returning to New York by four o'clock at the latest, preferably by three. "I have some work to do," Sybil had explained. The real reason, as the doctor later learned, was that Sybil had been afraid that, by staying out beyond three or four o'clock, she would show the signs of emotional disturbance, fatigue, and fright that often manifested themselves at the end of the day. She had been afraid that she would dissociate. And she hadn't wanted to risk having the doctor meet the other personalities outside the office.

And so, promptly at 3:00 P.m. Dr. Wilbur's convertible was once again at Whittier Hall.

At the time neither Dr. Wilbur nor Sybil knew that they had not been alone on that trip to Connecticut. Peggy Lou, who was also present, was delighted that Sybil had taken her somewhere at last. Vicky, another unseen passenger in the doctor's car, couldn't wait to tell Marian Ludlow about the old prerevolutionary houses.

In that car, too, were passengers whom neither the doctor nor Sybil had ever met. Marcia Lynn Dorsett, pert and assertive, with a shield-shaped face, gray eyes, and brown hair, had watched every step of the trip.

As the car swung in front of Whittier Hall and Dr. Wilbur said goodbye to Sybil, Marcia Lynn turned to Vanessa Gail, her close friend, and said in an English accent: "She cares about us." Vanessa, who was a tall, slender girl with a willowy figure, dark chestnut-red hair, light brown eyes, and an expressive oval face, communicated to Mary that single, simple sentence: "She cares about us." Mary, a maternal little-old-lady type, plump, thoughtful, and contemplative, repeated with a slight smile, as if it were a question: "She cares about us?" Then Marcia Lynn, Vanessa Gail, and Mary put into execution an internal grapevine through which the message rang loud and clear: This Dr. Wilbur cares about us. After that Marcia Lynn, Vanessa Gail, Mary, and everybody else held a conclave and decided that "We'll go and see her."

The trip to Connecticut produced a change, not only in the other personalities but also in Sybil herself. Less guarded, less constrained during the summer of 1955 than during the first seven months of the analysis, Sybil began to talk of her early environment. There were no sudden revelations about the root causes of the multiplicity, but out of the portrait of the town and the milieu in which Sybil--presumably born one --had become many, Dr. Wilbur was able to acquire insights that continued to a later understanding of causes. Thus it was that, increasingly, Dr. Wilbur led Sybil--and Vicky as well-- into a minute exploration of Willow Corners, Wisconsin, where Sybil, who was born on January 20, 1923, had spent the first eighteen years of her life.

Willow Corners stood in the flat terrain of southwestern Wisconsin, close to the Minnesota line. The surrounding countryside was flat, and the hard blue sky seemed so low as to be within hand's grasp. The local accent was barbed with a nasal twang, and the men and women, riding on their open wagons to town from the outlying farms during Sybil's early years, were a constant testament to the town's reliance on the land.

The town itself was dotted with tall maple and elm trees, but despite its name it was without willows. The houses, most of which had been built by the men who worked for Willard Dorsett, were chiefly white frame dwellings. The unpaved streets, dusty on dry days, were mud-filled bogs on rainy days.

Outwardly, there was nothing remarkable about Willow Corners. Founded in 1869, it was not a small town; it was a tiny town, in which the monotonous news of its one thousand persons, living in an area of two square miles, was recorded in the Corners Courier, the town's weekly newspaper, whose typical headlines were: SMALL TWISTER DEMOLISHES JONES OUTHOUSE; MOTHERS CLUB PICNIC AT HIGH SCHOOL WEDNESDAY. Originally a frontier town, Willow Corners had been developed at the coming of the railroad. During Sybil's time the town was chiefly a wheat-producing farming community. Main Street, the hub of the town, had its general store, hardware store, small hotel, barbershop, drugstore, bank, and post office. Particular to Willow Corners were a gun shop dating back to the town's frontier days and two grain elevators, which were central to its economic life. The stores were open on Wednesday and Saturday nights, at which times parents and their children made a festive ritual of shopping together. It was the occasion, too, for the exchange of news and gossip.

The town had two policemen: one worked days, and one worked nights. There were one lawyer, one dentist, and one doctor. An ambulance always stood ready to take the sick to the already world-famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, eighty miles away.

A slice of mid-America, the town was Republican in domestic politics, isolationist in international sympathies, and stratified in class structure, which included at one end of the spectrum a moneyed elite and at the other a working class. Mistaking money for virtue, the townsfolk tended to venerate the rich however their wealth was acquired and however they behaved --despite the best efforts of the good ladies of the Willow Corners Reading Club, the Willow Music Club, and the Choral Society of Willow County to bring culture to the town.

Before Sybil's birth and until she was six years old, the town's wealthiest man was her father. That stature was lost in the Depression, in which he met with serious reverses. From 1929, when Sybil was six, until 1941, when, at eighteen, she left town to go to college, the wealthiest persons were German and Scandinavian farmers, the Stickneys, who owned the local bank, and a Mrs. Vale, an uncouth and vulgar woman who, through marriages to five successive husbands, had acquired property in town and a silver mine in Colorado.

Willow Corners, as any sociologist could predict, had churches of many faiths.

The fundamentalist groups ranged from the Seventh-Day Baptists, who had founded the town's first church, to the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Church of Saint John Baptist de La Salle, and the Church of the Assembly of God. The Methodists, Congregationalists, and Lutherans all looked askance at one another and at the Roman Catholics, whom they regarded as the incarnation of evil.

Bigotry was rampant, and the town, although self-righteous in its utterances, was often cruel in its behavior. There were jeers for the mentally retarded ice man and snickers for the telephone operator who had a nervous tic. Prejudice against Jews, of whom there were a few in Willow Corners, and Negroes, of whom there were none, was intense.

In the course of events, bigotry and cruelty were overlooked, and the town, proceeding unthinkingly, abounded in an easy, unreasoned optimism. That optimism was expressed in such shibboleths as "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" and in copy-book maxims such as "Today's leaves of hope are tomorrow's blossoms," which was embossed in an inscription in the combined auditorium-gymnasium used by both elementary and high schools. That tomorrow's blossoms were withering on today's leaves of narrowness simply did not occur to the virtuous citizens of Willow Corners.

On Vine Street, kitty-corner to the schools, stood the Dorsett home, which had already appeared in the analysis: the white house with black shutters. One could regard black and white as the extremes of life, or as life and death, but no such symbolism was intended by Willard Dorsett, the builder of the house. Dorsett had had only utility in mind in providing for spacious lawns, a basement above ground, a garage, and a small adjoining building that served as his carpentry shop and office. Large maple trees shaded the front of the house. In the rear was a cement walk leading to an alley, which in turn led to the backs of the stores on Main Street. The Dorsetts' kitchen steps led to the cement walk.

Nor could one make too much of the fact that the Dorsetts' next-door neighbor was a recluse, the woman across the street a dwarf, and the man down the street his thirteen-year-old daughter's rapist who, after the event, went right on living in the same house with her as though nothing had happened. It was all part of the curious deformity and lewdness, resulting in assorted illegitimate children, that ran like a subterranean current through this town, outwardly so average, so normal, so puritanical.

The Dorsett household had its own unmistakable peculiarities--perhaps invisible at first glimpse, often minimized, but pervasive. When questioned about the Dorsett family, Mrs. Moore, Sybil's piano teacher, reported that Sybil was moody and that both mother and daughter had emotional problems. A distant cousin of Willard Dorsett characterized the father and daughter as "quiet" and the mother as "lively, witty, with a lot of get-up-and-go," but also as "nervous." This same observer talked of the excessive closeness between mother and daughter, who were always seen together. A favorite teacher recalled that "Sybil's mother always had Sybil by the arm."

Jessie Flood, who had been a live-in maid in the Dorsett home for six years, said only, "They're the most wonderful people in the world. Mrs. Dorsett was very good to me and my family. She gave us everything--all kinds of things. There never were kinder people than the Dorsetts."

James Flood, Jessie's father, who worked for Willard Dorsett in the carpentry business, remarked that "Dorsett was the best boss in the world."

Willard Dorsett, born in Willow Corners in 1883 and descended from the original settlers, as were most of the townsfolk, brought the former Henrietta Anderson home as his wife in 1910.

The Dorsetts and Andersons were alike in lineage and tradition. On her paternal side Hattie was the great granddaughter of Charles, an English clergyman, who with his brother Carl, a schoolmaster, emigrated to Virginia from Devon, England, under a grant from Lord Baltimore. On the maternal side Hattie was even closer to England. Aileen, her mother, was the daughter of English-born parents who had left their native Southampton to move to Pennsylvania. Aubrey Dorsett, Willard's father, was the grandson of an Englishman who came to Pennsylvania from Cornwall, and Mary Dorsett, Willard's mother, who was born in Canada, was descended from an English family that, before settling in Canada, had fled to Holland to escape religious persecution.

Willard and Hattie met on a blind date while he was visiting in Elderville, Illinois, the town of which Winston Anderson, Hattie's father, was a founding father and first mayor. Winston Anderson came to Elderville after fighting in the cavalry of the Union forces in the Civil War. He had joined up at the age of seventeen by pretending to be eighteen. In Elderville in later years he ran a music store, headed the choir of the Methodist church, and again became mayor.

The flamboyant and volatile Hattie embarrassed Willard Dorsett on their very first date. They were strolling along Elderville's Main Street when Hattie suddenly came to a dead halt and made an impromptu speech on behalf of her father, who was running for reelection as mayor. Willard, dismayed, stood passively on the sidelines.

But while other men whom Hattie's good looks, wit, and vivacity had won had broken off with her because of her sharp tongue and her patent eccentricities, Willard did not. He was willing to "put up with her," as he phrased it, because he thought her intellectual, "refined," and a talented pianist. Since he himself sang tenor in the church choir, he pictured Hattie Anderson as his future accompanist. In the spirit of the easy nostrums and homespun panaceas of Willow Corners, he believed that, although Hattie's behavior was often eccentric, she would change as she got older. When they married, she was twenty-seven, and what he meant by "getting older" was somewhat obscure. At any rate, he was in love with Hattie Anderson, and after a number of weekend dates in Elderville he asked her to marry him.

Hattie wasn't in love with Willard and said so. Her blind date with him had been a calculated act of defiance against the jeweler to whom she had been engaged, but who had reneged on his promise to give up alcohol. Moreover, Hattie claimed that all men were alike, not to be trusted (a sentiment Peggy Lou had echoed in Dr. Wilbur's consulting room), with "only one thing on their minds."

Still, the thought of living in Wisconsin appealed to Hattie, who had never been out of her native Illinois. Going to live in another state was the reason she gave for going, in 1910, to live in Willow Corners as Mrs. Willard Dorsett.