Dr. Matthew Collins was a fat, middle-aged northerner with watching eyes as black and buried as coals in snow. I didn’t like his watching. I didn’t like him. I didn’t like my sister having confided all the wounding things of her life to this fat Ulsterman. I didn’t like that some of those wounds were done by me, as brothers must, and that he knew much more of me than I of him. I didn’t like that his watching eyes saw another damaged O’Neill.
“So, you’re looking for your sister.” He leaned forward in his non-confrontationally arranged chair.
“Yes.”
“How do you know she was coming here?” He took a cigarette from a pack of Silk Cut. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Well, actually…”
He lit up. “So?”
“I work in a bank. I did financial checks.”
“Impressive. For someone from your family background, it would have taken some doing. Why do you need to find her so urgently?”
“To tell her Ma’s dead.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“In the words of the immortal Louis B. Mayer, ‘If you want to send a message, use Western Union.’ There’s more to it than a death notice. What do you really want to tell her?”
There was a single cheer from the tennis match in the square: a key point taken.
“That she can come home. That it’s all right, Ma’s gone; now we can be the family we should have been.”
“What makes you think you can start now? Have you the emotional resources to be a family? The only thing that held you together was your common fear and hatred of your mother. Now she’s gone, what have you got?”
I said nothing for a long time. Collins watched me with his anthracite eyes. The sun came around, shining through the latticed window, illuminating the rows of battered paperback psychology texts on their dusty shelves. Cigarette smoke coiled upward like a spirit.
“You know, I’ve been working with Kerry for almost nine months.” Collins said.
“I just thought you might have an idea where she went.”
“You’ve been to Belgrave Road?”
“I have.”
“Ah. I should tell you that Kerry didn’t complete the therapy.”
Another long silence listening to the cries of the tennis players. Collins lit another cigarette. I said, “Dr. Collins, what were you treating Kerry for?”
He took a long drag on his smoke.
“You’ve been to the house. You’d find out eventually. Your sister came to me in 2003, presenting early symptoms of type-four dissociative reaction.”
“What is that, Dr. Collins?”
“A person divides his or her personality into sections, and begins to use different sections in different social contexts. In the advanced condition, alternative personalities can form.”
“Are you telling me that Kerry was suffering from multiple personalities?”
“Could have suffered. It’s a latent trait in about 7 percent of the population, usually the most creative and self-fulfilled.” “You’re telling me you were treating Kerry for multiple personalities.” “Not initially, no. She presented with symptoms of depressive illness. It wasn’t until therapy was well advanced that I began to notice discrepancies in her reactions in sessions.”
“Discrepancies? ”
“Body language, non-verbal cues, emotional reactions, the way she’d dress, do her hair, her makeup, her mode of talking, the type of answer she’d give, shifting emphases on childhood experiences.”
“These would change from session to session?”
“Yes. The discrepancies widened as therapy progressed.”
“I thought you were supposed to be making her better.”
“Therapy digs deep. Old wounds bleed. It can be a threatening experience. I’m not one of these happy-clappy Dr. Loves handing out Prozac like candy. I’m just an old-fashioned talk-it-out, one-day-at-a-time-Sweet-Jesus cognitive grunt. It works. It changes things. It iasts.”
“But not for Kerry.”
“No.”
“Would you tell me if you knew where she had gone?”
“I would tell you. You could try the flat again. They won’t talk to me, they don’t trust my profession. Emphatic onlys are the enemy. They might talk to you, especially as you share your sister’s genes.”
“I tried the flat. I told you.”
“Try the flat again, I said. Things change. And if you do find her, let me know. I’d like to know how she’s doing. If she’s whole. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a paying customer in five minutes, and I need to get ready.”
The sun shone through the fanlight above the front door, casting a half wheel of light onto the stairs. I passed the tennis players in the street, two women in sweats and ponytails, their game finished. I beeped my car alarm, and starlings rose in a clatter of wings from the branches of the trees in locked Fitzwilliam Park; a sudden autumn, a denuding of leaves.
Lights were lit in the top flat of 20 Belgrave Road. I could hear the music from the street. Duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duhduh duh. A girl with shoulder-length bobbed blonde hair, wearing a shift dress over tartan tights, finally heard my ring over the bass.
“Hello. Could I speak to…” I hesitated. “Tarroweep?”
“Who?”
“Tarroweep.”
“No one here by that name.”
“I talked to her three days ago, here, on this doorstep.”
The girl studied my face, frowned, and the creases in her features revealed her.
“You,” I breathed. “It was you! Tarroweep. I suppose the walk-in walked out again?”
The girl looked blankly at me.
“I’m Clionadh. Tarroweep is… it’s kind of hard to explain. Just that, if she met you, only she is going to remember you. Things she remembers, I don’t. Things I remember, she don’t.”
Another self. A partitioned personality. Alternative lives. Type-four dissociative reaction, Dr. Collins had called it.
“I’m trying to find my sister. She lived here.”
Clionadh/Tarroweep examined my face again. The Clionadh self spoke differently, carried herself differently, used different body language. Different person. Her eyes widened.
“Kerry.”
“You remember her?”
“You’re so like her. You could be twins. Sundered selves, twins. Oh God, yes! You’re Stephen. She talked about you.”
“Do you know where I can find her?”
“Find Kerry? No one can find Kerry. Kerry’s gone.”
I felt my heart kick, like a worm of ice and iron heaving inside its ventricles. Seeing my look of dread, Clionadh hurried to add, “Jeez, everything’s so linear with onlys! It’s complicated. I really don’t know where she is now, your sister, but there’s a guy who might. Fear-gal. Kerry knew him; he’s sort of on the edge of multi society. There’s a pub down in Temple Bar; Daley’s?” I didn’t know it. Clionadh gave me directions. “I’ll get in touch with Feargal. I’ll meet you there about nine.” “Will I know you?”
“You mean, will I know you? Will I be Clionadh, who remembers you and Kerry? I’ll know you. The cycles last about four, five days. I’m at the mid-point now, so you don’t have to worry, I’ll be Clionadh for a while yet.”
“Clionadh.” The girl had been closing the door. “Kerry. Is she; was she, like you? A…”
“Multi. It’s just a word, like gay, or lesbian. Hey, don’t you know, everyone’s a tribe these days? Everyone’s a minority. Kerry: was she? I suppose. Is she? Not anymore. I’m sure of that.”
I tried to wear Clionadh’s worldview like a pair of tinted glasses as I went down into Temple Bar. Not what she had told me about Kerry: I couldn’t let that close to me yet, it was too sharp, too sudden, too penetrating. It would have killed me with its icy implications. I tried to see the nation behind her throwaway line that everyone was a tribe now. No mainstream. No society. No city, no state, no holy Mother Ireland for which the patriots died. No ultimate truth, no unifying vision. No racial destiny. But a thousand doors to God, a thousand paths to community, to expression, to family and belonging. A thousand ways of being human. Bankers. Scared poets. All types. All tribes.