More Than Human

I said angrily, ‘I didn’t like or not like. It didn’t mean nothing. It was just – just talk.’

‘So what was the difference between this last session and what happened before?’

‘My gosh, plenty! The first one, I felt everything. It was all really happening to me. But this time – nothing.’

‘Why do you suppose that was?’

‘I don’t know. You tell me.’

‘Suppose,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘that there was some episode so unpleasant to you that you wouldn’t dare relive it.’

‘Unpleasant? You think freezing to death isn’t unpleasant?’

‘There are all kinds of unpleasantness. Sometimes the very thing you’re looking for – the thing that’ll clear up your trouble – is so revolting to you that you won’t go near it. Or you try to hide it. Wait,’ he said suddenly, ‘maybe „revolting” and „unpleasant” are inaccurate words to use. It might be something very desirable to you. It’s just that you don’t want to get straightened out.’

‘I want to get straightened out.’

He waited as if he had to clear something up in his mind, and then said, ‘There’s something in that „Baby is three” phrase that bounces you away. Why is that?’

‘Damn if I know.’

‘Who said it?’

‘I du

He gri

I gri

‘Okay. When?’

I quit gri

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

He said, ‘I didn’t think anyone could be that mad.’ I didn’t say anything. He went over to his desk. ‘You don’t want to go on any more, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Suppose I told you you want to quit because you’re right on the very edge of finding out what you want to know?’

‘Why don’t you tell me and see what I do?’

He just shook his head. ‘I’m not telling you anything. Go on, leave if you want to. I’ll give you back your change.’

‘How many people quit just when they’re on top of the answer?’

‘Quite a few.’

‘Well, I ain’t going to.’ I lay down.

He didn’t laugh and he didn’t say, ‘Good,’ and he didn’t make any fuss about it. He just picked up his phone and said, ‘Cancel everything for this afternoon,’ and went back to his chair, up there out of my sight.

It was very quiet in there. He had the place soundproofed.

I said,’ Why do you suppose Lone let me live there so long when I couldn’t do any of the things that the other kids could?’

‘Maybe you could.’

‘Oh, no,’ I said positively. ‘I used to try. I was strong for a kid my age and I knew how to keep my mouth shut, but aside from those two things I don’t think I was any different from any kid. I don’t think I’m any different right now, except what difference there might be from living with Lone and his bunch.’

‘Has this anything to do with „Baby is three”?’

I looked up at the grey ceiling. ‘Baby is three. Baby is three. I went up to a big house with a winding drive that ran under a sort of theatre-marquee thing. Baby is three. Baby…’

‘How old are you?’

‘Thirty-three,’ I said, and the next thing you know I was up off that couch like it was hot and heading for the door.

Stern grabbed me. ‘Don’t be foolish. Want me to waste a whole afternoon?’

‘What’s that to me? I’m paying for it.’

‘All right, it’s up to you.’

I went back. ‘I don’t like any part of this,’ I said.

‘Good. We’re getting warm then.’

‘What made me say „Thirty-three”? I ain’t thirty-three. I’m fifteen. And another thing…’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s about that „Baby is three.” It’s me saying it, all right. But when I think about it – it’s not my voice.’

‘Like thirty-three’s not your age?’

‘Yeah,’ I whispered.

‘Gerry,’ he said warmly, ‘there’s nothing to be afraid of.’

I realized I was breathing too hard. I pulled myself together. I said, ‘I don’t like remembering saying things in somebody else’s voice.’

‘Look,’ he told me. ‘This head-shrinking business, as you called it a while back, isn’t what most people think. When I go with you into the world of your mind – or when you go yourself, for that matter – what we find isn’t so very different from the so-called real world. It seems so at first, because the patient comes out with all sorts of fantasies and irrationalities and weird experiences. But everyone lives in that kind of world. When one of the ancients coined the phrase „truth is stranger than fiction”, he was talking about that.

‘Everywhere we go, everything we do, we’re surrounded by symbols, by things so familiar we don’t ever look at them or don’t see them if we do look. If anyone ever could report to you exactly what he saw and thought while walking ten feet down the street, you’d get the most twisted, clouded, partial picture you ever ran across. And nobody ever looks at what’s around him with any kind of attention until he gets into a place like this. The fact that he’s looking at past events doesn’t matter; what counts is that he’s seeing clearer than he ever could before, just because, for once, he’s trying.

‘Now – about this „thirty-three” business. I don’t think a man could get a nastier shock than to find he has someone else’s memories. The ego is too important to let slide that way. But consider: all your thinking is done in code and you have the key to only about a tenth of it. So you run into a stretch of code which is abhorrent to you. Can’t you see that the only way you’ll find the key to it is to stop avoiding it?’

‘You mean I’d started to remember with… with somebody else’s mind?’

‘It looked like that to you for a while, which means something. Let’s try to find out what.’

‘All right.’ I felt sick. I felt tired. And I suddenly realized that being sick and being tired was a way of trying to get out of it.

‘Baby is three,’he said.

Baby is maybe. Me, three, thirty-three, me, you Kew you.

‘Kew!’ I yelled. Stern didn’t say anything. ‘Look, I don’t know why, but I think I know how to get to this, and this isn’t the way. Do you mind if I try something else?’

‘You’re the doctor,’ he said.

I had to laugh. Then I closed my eyes.

There, through the edges of the hedges, the ledges and wedges of windows were shouldering up to the sky. The lawns were sprayed-on green, neat, and clean, and all the flowers looked as if they were afraid to let their petals break and be untidy.

I walked up the drive in my shoes. I’d had to wear shoes and my feet couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to go to the house, but I had to.

I went up the steps between the big white columns and looked at the door. I wished I could see through it, but it was too white and thick. There was a window the shape of a fan over it, too high up though, and a window on each side of it, but they were all crudded up with coloured glass. I hit on the door with my hand and left dirt on it.

Nothing happened so I hit it again. It got snatched open and a tall, thin coloured woman stood there. ‘What you want?’

I said I had to see Miss Kew.

‘Well, Miss Kew don’t want to see the likes of you,’ she said. She talked too loud. ‘You got a dirty face.’

I started to get mad then. I was already pretty sore about having to come here, walking around near people in the daytime and all. I said, ‘My face ain’t got nothin’ to do with it. Where’s Miss Kew? Go on, find her for me.’

She gasped. ‘You can’t speak to me like that!’

I said, ‘I didn’t want to speak to you like any way. Let me in.’ I started wishing for Janie. Janie could of moved her. But I had to handle it by myself. I wasn’t doing so hot, either. She slammed the door before I could so much as curse at her.

So I started kicking on the door. For that, shoes are great. After a while, she snatched the door open again so sudden I almost went on my can. She had a broom with her. She screamed at me, ‘You get away from here, you trash, or I’ll call the police!’ She pushed me and I fell.