My job.

My girl and I went out to find a fax machine this morning, since I needed to send in my timesheet. We went to Staples in Southington and she stood by as I struggled to understand the machine. Two attempts later, it printed out a sheet announcing the number was busy, and we stopped by the cashier to ask for an employment application.

“They’re all online,” the cashier says. “We don’t have any paper copies in the store.”

“We’ll go to the library and fill it out,” I say to my girl, and we leave. I turn right out of the parking lot, thinking it will be faster, but am wrong. I turn on the radio to mask the mild panic coming over me as we get to the Bristol line.

“That’s an elevator tower,” I tell her, pointing to the Otis Elevator building. “They build elevators there.” But the knowledge doesn’t help me to know where we are. Eventually, I figure, we’ll have to get to Route 6 or 72, and I can get to where we’re going from there.

We do, and I do, and we stop at the library to check our email. She opens an email I sent her last week, and turns to me.

“How do I write back?” she asks, and I point out the “reply.”

When she’s finished writing, she tells me to check my email, but her reply hasn’t arrived yet. We leave for a different library, one with a pay-by-page fax machine.

“Let’s go for a walk first,” she says when we arrive, remembering that I had said we would start out by walking when she got into the car this morning. This is significant—it means that whichever personality had been listening to my morning itinerary had resurfaced, and was willing, even eager, to listen.

My girl has been diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) and Schitzoaffective Disorder, meaning that she cycles through personalities, and talks to people who aren’t there. It’s a difficult and, I think, atypical combination. The medications she takes slur her speech and cause her to drool, a fact which frustrates her, since she can still understand what it was like before. She remembers when people could understand her, read her writing, relate; I struggle to hear the first time but find myself asking “What was that?” more often that she’d like. Still, when her pleasant selves are out, she is patient and even affectionate. Today she has only ignored me once, and I can usually snap her out of this behavior by saying her given name.

Every moment is new for her. We walk for twenty minutes, and I can repeat myself four times without her noticing. I make sure to point out where we are and what we’re doing every five minutes or so, to keep her oriented; I can’t tell when she’s switched, and she most often replies with “Oh—I didn’t know that!” or “I forgot,” the hallmarks of what I think are two separate personalities.

I am talking to myself as we walk, whispering, as though having a conversation with someone who’s not there. I catch myself doing it and half-laugh. This is a good sign. It means I am comfortable. But it reminds me of what Josh, another job coach, said of a male client I used to work with: “He’s crazy, you know that, right? He’s absolutely nuts. He talks to himself, making those little noises? That’s not the Touretts.” I had let this slide by without comment, declining to admit to my own one-sided rambling.

My girl is walking beside me, her arm slipped through the crook of my elbow. We reach the corner and a dump truck rumbles by, a yard from where we stand. Her grip tightens like a blood pressure cuff around my arm; I feel both protective and protected.

“You’re my best friend,” she says. “I know sometimes we get on each other’s nerves, but you’re my best friend.”

“Everyone gets on each other’s nerves sometimes,” I say.

“I get on your nerves sometimes?”

“Only when you’re ignoring me. That’s frustrating.”

“Yeah, see. I get on your nerves. You look young.”

“I’m older than you,” I say.

“You’re in your twenties?”

“Yes.”

“See? You’re younger.”

“No, I’m at least three years older than you. You’re in your twenties, too.”

“Oh, yeah. I want your job,” she says.

“You want my job? Taking yourself around every day?”

“Yeah, it would be kind of fun. Going to the park, to the mall…No smoking, though. I saw a show on TV about smoking yesterday. Do you smoke?”

“No.”

“Good. Don’t start.”

“I won’t. You can get diseases from smoking.”

“I didn’t know it was that bad,” she says.

We return to the library, I fax my timesheet, and she eats her lunch. I check for the email.

“Nothing yet,” I say. “How was your lunch?”

She gives me the thumbs up, one purple-painted fingernail bending backward, farther than mine could go. I had asked her why she painted only one hand, and she had said she couldn’t do the other hand; I neglect to ask why one of her “friends” didn’t help. It’s best never to acknowledge their existence—or non-existence. Instead, when she speaks to them, I step into the space where they stand and ask her a question. More often than not, this works. Today, as most days when we are alone and job-hunting, her friends do not come out.

She gets up and chooses a magazine, then sits in the comfortable chairs that make up the reading area at this library. I can see that she’s falling asleep but will let her, for now.

We will look up the Staples online application later, and I am hoping that it does not include the personality test that CVS’s application did. It was twenty pages long, and impossible to decide what to put for each question: Should I answer for her? For which version of her? Could she understand the consequences of answering inconsistently, insufficiently, without an awareness of being judged? They’ll never call her back, if the test is worth anything as an indicator of mental disorder. Frustrating.

What we really need is a Flowers for Algernon-type situation — a mom-and-pop shop that will take her on out of loyalty and personal interest, where she can be herselves. What we’ll most likely get is a placement in a corporation required by law to hire a certain percentage of disabled employees. She’ll come up against the inflexible rules of these types of companies and be let go, in the end, though with the kind of corporate regret that always accompanies firing someone who might consider suing.

And we’ll be here, doing this, again.