What You Remember I Did (21 page)

She started to turn away, but Gary saw her. "Nan! Over here." Shaking her head at him, she pointed at the door. Gary scooted out of the booth and hurried over to her. He looked at her, and then followed the line of her gaze. She could see the dawning of understanding. He hugged her and laughed. "My car wouldn't start. That's my hetero neighbor. He was kind enough to give me a ride over here. I'm sure he'd be glad to leave if you'll drive me home. Or maybe you'd like to meet him. He's single. More or less."

"Not tonight. Not anytime soon." She leaned her head against Gary's shoulder for an instant, shook hands with the neighbor, and was glad to see him leave. She and Gary ordered Irish coffees, that week's winter special. After a few sips, she began to talk.

Gary listened in that quiet, focused way of his, asking almost no questions except about the attorney, whom she had still not called back. He had, he said, heard something on the radio, always his chief source of news, about several such class action suits that were gathering steam in California. When she asked whether or not he thought she should participate, he signaled for two more drinks and took her hand.

"I have no idea what to advise you," he said. "Maybe if you could explain this false memory syndrome thing to me a little more clearly, I could be more useful."

From her bag she pulled a copy of a paper she'd been reading earlier that day. Gary read the title out loud. "Creating Repressed Memories: A Case Example." He squinted a little in the light of the cheap candle in the center of the table.

"I thought it might help me understand the process involved with that class action lawsuit," she told him.

Gary read the abstract. "This is about the dysfunctional family and what I gather is being called toxic parents.
Toxic
. An interesting choice of adjective, don't you think?"

He kept on reading without requiring an answer.

"The author seems to be saying you should consider it suspect if the therapist draws conclusions without an attempt to interview the molester." He handed the paper back to her. "I'm not sure I understand all of the buzz words I heard on the radio, like ego analysis, narrative therapy, expressive bioenergetics, but I can guess at them. What I do understand is that the cases against therapists have a lot more to do with what isn't done than what is done."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that the author, this Dr.–" he glanced back over at the paper–"Dr. Caldwell, would prefer to have therapists do videotaping or recordings, make extensive notes, and have supervisory testing."

Nan didn't say anything. This was how Gary processed; he repeated what he knew, then questioned what he didn't. She'd missed him.

This time, however, he said, "What do you think I can do to help?"

She lit a cigarette and offered him one. He declined. "What can you do to help?" she repeated. She sighed deeply. "You could turn back the hands of time."

"You don't look any different than you did when we were young," he said, lifting her hand to kiss it because he knew that pleased her.

She smiled at him. "Thank you for coming, Gary. For listening."

"That part was easy. Saying something that makes it all make sense, that would be hard. What do you think you're going to do?"

"Truthfully? I don't have the faintest idea. I've lost perspective, lost the absolute faith in Tonya that was keeping me going. I miss my times with Jordan and I miss wanting to help my mother."

"And this Matt? Are you in love with him?"

"I think I could be."

"What does that mean?"

"It means...it means that if all of these other things hadn't happened I probably would have loved him." She looked at her watch. "I have to go. I don't know about this Consuelo person yet."

They were walking toward her car when Gary turned to her and said. "Thank you, Nan."

She knew he was thanking her for trusting him with her confidences. She reached up and stroked his cheek. "Thank
you
, Gary. I miss you, too."

"Look. Don't worry. You're a strong woman–"

As if to prove otherwise, something inside of Nan snapped. People were always telling her that. "You're strong, Nan. You'll manage." "You're a survivor." "You'll figure it out."

Well if she was so damned strong and wise, why did she feel helpless and needy? Needy was something she detested. The next thing she knew, she was punching Gary, pummeling him, yelling that he was a shit and Matt and her mother were perverts and life sucked and wasn't worth the effort. By the time she stopped to draw breath, a small circle of onlookers had gathered and parking lot security had been called. She had never felt more embarrassed in her life.

Breaking free of Gary, who had taken hold of her arm, she turned and ran for her car, leaving him to do what he could to disperse the people and reassure the guard. It occurred to her briefly that they might think he had in some way abused her, but what did she care?

She was almost home when she remembered she had promised him a ride. That was not nice, she told herself. But again, she did not care, and the not caring was empowering. Like eating chocolates in the dark, she thought, because in the dark the calories didn't count.

To put the final kibosh on what had been anything but a good day, Nan's mother greeted her with a litany of complaints about the new caregiver. Nan could hardly stand to look her, but Catherine was practically blocking her path.

Caring for her mother's intimate needs had stirred up all sorts of feelings in her. She wanted to be relieved of the pressure while, at the same time, she wanted the mother she had known. Or had thought she had known.

This time, at least, her mother was easily mollified. A quick kiss on the forehead, an "It's okay, Mom, it's okay. We'll find somebody else," and
All About Eve
in the VCR was all it took to make her happy.
We should all be so lucky
, Nan thought grimly.

Late that night she woke from a vivid, detailed dream about her mother being cut into little pieces. She turned on the bedside light and dutifully wrote it down before she got up to check on Catherine, who was sleeping soundly and all in one piece. The worry burst into Nan's mind that maybe the aides really were hitting her and calling her names and locking her in her room and starving her and having their boyfriends over and letting her stay wet and dirty, just as her mother reported. Maybe those weren't delusions or manipulations. Terrible guilt sickened her, and as she stumbled to the bathroom she vowed to install one of those video cameras she'd seen in a television special about nannies and au pairs and shaken baby syndrome.

Talk about being of several minds
, Nan thought wearily the following evening as she drove to the support group meeting she both dreaded and couldn't wait to get to. There seemed to be nothing in her life she wasn't of several minds about these days.

Like her behavior with Gary. While ashamed of herself, she also held onto the notion that somehow he'd deserved it. She ought to call or email him and apologize, try to explain herself; she longed for his forgiveness. But she was afraid of what he might say, afraid of what she herself might say. Afraid of losing that seed of empowerment that she wished would grow and flower.

Or like the moment this morning when her mother had seemed again not to recognize her. Though it had lasted for less than a minute, it had evoked in her intense feelings of tenderness and revulsion, guilt and disgust and fury. She was terrified that something bad would happen while she was gone, and sometimes there was the awful hope that it would.

Her childhood memories were becoming distorted–vividly sweet, horrific, sickening, happy. She felt all sorts of things about Matt, many of them simultaneously. Certainly she loved him, never mind her disclaimer to Gary. Certainly she hated him. And most certainly she wanted and did not want him in her life.

Ashley, Jordan, her sisters and brothers, her friends and colleagues–all of them confused her. Since Ida's revelation about what her students really thought of her, teaching made her tense while she still took comfort in its familiarity and satisfaction in her skill.

About Dr. Tonya Bishop she was of at least a million minds.

Is being of several minds like having multiple personalities? Wouldn't surprise me a bit.
She'd share that bitter little in-joke with Tonya if she could, but Tonya had not been available to anybody for weeks, having the secretary call to cancel all individual appointments and not showing up to group, which had stumbled along without her.

Nan's cell phone rang. The new caregiver Ralph wanted to know what her mother meant when she said she wanted "ratatouille and crabgrass" for dinner. Ralph, successor to Consuelo, seemed more than a little dense and didn't know much about people with dementia, which under the circumstances was a major limitation. And Nan didn't know how she felt about a male aide.

After Consuelo, she had spoken to a home security expert and with the help of a salesperson at a fancy camera shop, she had bought a surveillance camera and asked Patrick to install it. It was an amazing miniaturized device, only a half-inch square, which transmitted images wirelessly to the TV/VCR in her room. An attached motion detector saved on tape time by recording only when people were in the living room. When she got home at the end of the day, she rewound the tape in the VCR and watched the day's activities.

As yet, she had found no sign of any irregularities to substantiate her mother's complaints. More than likely Catherine was confused or melodramatic or both. In fact, the tapes were downright dull.

Getting out of her car in the parking lot, she heard her name.
Shit. I really don't want to talk to anybody. Except Tonya. Especially Tonya.
It was the biker dude, striding toward her with that slightly bowlegged gait common to big men who rode horses or machines, forearms slightly bowed, too, as if ready for a fight. "
Yo
, Nan," he said again as he caught up to her. "You get the letter?"

"What letter?" She guessed she knew what he meant but didn't want to give herself away if she was wrong.

"The letter from the lawyer? About the class action suit?" He pulled his out of his hip pocket and rattled it at her.

"Yes." She didn't like admitting it. She didn't like knowing that the letter was in her purse. At the same time, the camaraderie was appealing. And dangerous.

"You gonna do it?"

"I don't know." She didn't ask if he was, though she was curious.

They were at the door of the building now, and Nan quickened her stride, eager to get away from him. He must have stopped at the men's room or something because she lost him easily, and then she wished she were not entering the meeting room alone.

The first person she saw as she hesitantly walked in was Tonya, and her breath caught painfully. She was so glad to see her, so eager to make contact again, and so–what? Afraid of her? Afraid for her? Outraged on her own and the therapist's behalf?

She stood still and stared. The biker pushed past her and bellowed, "
Yo
! Tonya!" A small crowd had clustered around Tonya, and others were hanging back, like Nan; hazily she wondered what this behavioral choice might mean about psychological make-up or personality type.

She wanted to talk to Tonya. She wanted to flee the room. She wanted to sit down and wait for Tonya to approach her. She wanted Tonya to explain things to her and tell her what to do about everything. She wanted Tonya never to speak to her again.

Characteristically, the therapist took charge. "Everybody, could we join the circle now and get started?

People found chairs. The single-row circle made it impossible to avoid sitting in the front row or having someone close on either side, which doubtless was the point. Nan hesitated for a long time before she finally sat down. She saw some familiar faces and others she'd never seen before, strangers who were somehow part of this, too.

"I've missed you all," Tonya began. "I–"

"We've missed you, too," several people chorused, though Tonya hadn't paused for a response. Nan found herself whispering it: "I've missed you, too."

The therapist smiled wanly. Nan thought she looked positively haggard, and admired the kind professionalism she managed to maintain under what were obviously difficult circumstances. "Thank you. I've had to focus all my attention and energy on the lawsuit. Have any of you received letters or phone calls from the attorney yet?" Nan and most of the others said they had; a few had not. "You should know," Tonya told them, "the plaintiff is a former client of mine."

"Yeah," someone said. "I saw her on TV and she made a big point of that."

And how are we supposed to know
, Nan asked herself,
whether that makes her more or less credible?

"What's it about? What's she saying you did?" the woman with the raspy voice demanded. Nan couldn't tell whether her hostility was toward the attorney or toward Tonya.

"She's questioning the validity of my work–our work–with repressed memory syndrome."

"The letter calls it 'false memory syndrome,'" said a very young woman, barely out of her teens, who'd only recently started coming to the group and, given the timing, might actually never have met Tonya before.