Slowly and deliberately, she drank the last of her coffee, patted her mouth, folded her napkin, and lit a cigarette. Matt did not take the lighter from her and light it, the way he usually did.
"Tell me what's wrong, Matt." When he didn't answer, she picked up her handbag and slid her chair away from the table. "Your choice. Talk to me or I'm out of here."
He sighed and sat back in his chair. "Stay, Nan. Please. Look. I thought I saw Eliot. Remember I told you that he's moved out of the area and I don't know what his wife, my daughter-in-law, looks like. My first thought was that I should confront him. That maybe the passage of time and having his own family might have made a difference in his perceptions."
"Do it, Matt. Confront him." She looked around for someone who resembled the photos she'd seen of Eliot.
"I can't see him anymore. The person I saw."
"Maybe he's in the bar."
Matt shook his head. "I saw him head toward the elevators."
"Call up to his room."
"No, Nan." Matt looked infinitely sad. "He wouldn't see me. Even if he wanted to."
Nan leaned over and kissed him. "C'mon," she said. "I can stay another hour. One dance...and let's not waste that room altogether."
For a few minutes, she set aside the ugliness of the last weeks and surrendered herself to him and to the music. Dammit, she thought, in his arms on the dance floor. Dancing together for the first time shouldn't work that well.
When it was over, he went back to the table to pay for dinner while she called home. "I'll be home in an hour."
"Fine, Mother. Jordan and Gram are sleeping. I'm listening to music. Relax. Have fun."
She did, which made the rest of the weekend much more pleasant than it might otherwise have been.
On Monday, she felt ready to face a day of teaching, which went well, and her therapy session, which did not. Something was different about Tonya today, and Nan was instantly on the alert. Since the first afternoon in this office, when she'd found herself talking and listening in ways she'd never imagined possible, she'd noticed details about the therapist. Now, taking her usual place on the leather couch, she did a quick inventory.
Tonya's demeanor was outwardly the same: as always, she sat opposite Nan in the leather chair, hands in her lap except when she sipped from her ubiquitous bottle of Fiji, not taking notes but with the tape recorder running. Her face–not pretty, really, but attractive and memorable with a wide mouth and thick dark brows–was, as always, attentive and caring. She wore a variant of her professional uniform, beige linen pants, white silk shirt with a cameo at the throat, matching cameo earrings. But her energy was much more agitated than usual. She seemed excited, or upset. Or angry. The first explanation that crossed Nan's mind was that Tonya was angry with her. The guilt and fear she felt at this possibility made her even more wary. She wanted to ask, "What's wrong?" but for some reason didn't dare.
Her homework from the last session had been to journal about her earliest memories. She produced the notebook eagerly, like an offering. Tonya had instructed her to resist asking her mother for help with this assignment: "These need to be your memories, not hers." Nan was proud of herself that so many very early memories had come to her, in some cases almost as if they weren't really hers.
She read aloud: Sunshine and sand at a beach. Her brother–Patrick, Daddy's little mirror image–hitting her in the head on the backswing of a croquet mallet. Riding high on her father's shoulders–writing about this memory had brought tears, and she could hardly get through it now as she read it to Tonya. Being bathed in a washtub on the kitchen table; she remembered the red cloth, and someone's hands.
"Nan," the therapist interrupted, gently but firmly. "We need to talk about something."
The intrusion was so uncharacteristic that Nan knew for sure something was wrong. This was it, she thought. This was the moment she'd been expecting from the beginning: the moment when Tonya would inform her she'd been sexually abused by her father and had repressed the memories because they were too painful, and would say they needed to bring those memories into consciousness so Nan could work them through.
Having learned all this from her research, she had believed herself ready for it. But she hadn't counted on caring so much what Tonya Bishop thought, or being so scared. She closed the notebook and like a child held it against her chest, waiting for Tonya's words.
"I've been reviewing the tapes from our sessions together, Nan, and now with what you've brought here today I'm fairly certain there is sexual abuse in your background," Tonya said.
Nan couldn't speak. She closed her eyes and nodded, not so much in agreement as to keep Tonya talking to her, not to be alone as she went to this frightening place. It made some sort of terrible sense to her that this was why her feelings about her father had always been so tangled. Daddy, she kept thinking. Daddy.
"There are suggestions in the things you've remembered that you were sexually molested by your mother."
Nan's eyes flew open and her head suddenly cleared. "My mother?"
Tonya nodded, watching her closely. "I think so. We can't be sure until we work together more, but I think so, yes."
"My mother? You can't be serious."
"I know it's a shock. It always is."
Nan was on her feet. "I don't have to listen to this. We're done, Tonya. I'm done."
Tonya stood, too, and came to her. Nan stepped back when the therapist reached toward her. "This is a critical moment in your recovery, Nan. Don't lose your nerve now. You're not alone. I'll be with you every step of the way, and so will many other people. Sadly, there are many of us. A community of repressed memory survivors."
Through her agitation, Nan noted the therapist's use of the word "us." How was Tonya part of this "community"? "This is outrageous!" she all but shouted, but she did not leave the office. "This is absolutely crazy!"
"Maybe it is. Maybe I'm wrong. Why don't we take it slowly and find out?"
Tonya held out her hands again, and didn't lower them until Nan stepped forward and took them in her own.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Nan stepped out of the shower, pulled the curtain shut behind her, and leaned, dripping, against the wall. Probably she shouldn't leave her mother unattended in there, even for a minute, even when she was in the bathroom with her and could monitor her safety by the splashing and singing and dramatic declaiming from which there was no escape.
Probably she was being irresponsible, not to mention incredibly unfair and disloyal and unkind. She was also nauseated and trembling, the way claustrophobics must feel when they perceived themselves to be trapped. This might be the last time she'd be able to bring herself to give her mother a shower. They'd have to hire someone, or maybe she could manage baths, where they wouldn't be in such a small closed space together.
Baths, though, even sponge baths, still required that she not only see but also touch her mother's naked body, and that was what had her in this state.
The last asthma attack had somehow precipitated an abrupt decline in Catherine's self-care abilities, at the same time that Nan's therapy with Tonya had picked up steam. This meant that their relationship had moved into an extreme (though, thank God, one-way) physical intimacy precisely as Nan was exploring, with Tonya's help and guidance, the possibility–Tonya said the likelihood–that Catherine had sexually abused her. That they'd been physically intimate before, when Nan was very young, touching each other's genitals, buttocks, nipples as she now had to touch her mother's.
The grotesque symmetry was almost more than she could bear but she didn't see a way out. She had to take care of her mother. She'd promised. She could lean on her siblings to do more–Becca and Patrick, at least, would help. But she'd made a point of how she didn't mind being the primary caretaker, how it was as much an honor as a burden, how she of all of them was in the best position to do so.
How she and their mother had always been close. Convinced, as they were, that she was the strongest sibling, they ha
d no problem going along with her.
Her stomach churned and she leaned her head back against the damp tile wall.
When it had first become apparent that Catherine couldn't take a shower alone, Nan had decided she'd shower herself at the same time. That had been at the very beginning of her deep work with Tonya, when she'd regarded the therapist's suspicions about her mother as ludicrous at best, despicable at worst, worth investigating only so she could get a glimpse of how Bishop worked and, therefore, might have worked with Eliot Mullen.
Catherine suddenly belted out her favorite verse of her favorite song from Gypsy: Some people can be content/Playin' bingo and payin' rent/ That's peachy for some people,/For some humdrum people to be,/But some people ain't me!
The shower stall gave her voice a nice resonance. Every word was perfect–this from a woman who most of the time had no clue what day or even what year it was. Nan couldn't help smiling, and joining in on the final flourish.
Even in her dementia, spinning her farther and farther off center, Catherine had never once done anything even remotely inappropriate. She'd never tried to touch Nan anywhere private, never said anything suggestive, never even looked where she shouldn't look. Yet very soon, being naked in front of her mother had begun to cause Nan enormous discomfort, bordering on fear, and she took to wearing a bathing suit in the shower. Later, when even that seemed too revealing, she switched to loose long pants and shirts.
It seemed ridiculous, but Catherine evidently didn't notice and Tonya thought it a good idea. "If you must bathe her," she'd declared with obvious distaste, making it clear that she didn't approve of the whole business, "it's important that you set firm boundaries to protect yourself. You couldn't do that when you were a child, but you can do it now."
"She's old!" Nan had protested, through the tears that by this time were practically omnipresent during her sessions with Tonya. "She can't hurt me!"
The therapist had reached to take her hand, and Nan had held on tight. "Emotional self-protection is at least as important as physical, Nan." In the split-second before Nan had realized Tonya couldn't possibly have called her "Nanny," though somehow she'd heard it that way, she'd started sobbing in earnest. Tonya had sat quietly and stroked her hand until she was calm again, not hurrying, not talking, her mere presence intensely comforting to what she called a primal wound Nan wasn't sure existed.
"Nanny!" Catherine sang out now, and then yodeled the name, playing with the echoes set up by the shower stall and the gushing water. "Oooh, Nanny, Nanny, Nanny-o!"
Nan took a deep, shuddering breath. "Coming, Mother." She reached around the edge of the shower curtain and turned off the water. As briskly as possible, she dried, powdered, and gowned her mother's old but–she couldn't help noticing every time–still lovely body, and helped her with the rest of her bedtime ablutions.
This was not something she dared discuss with Matt. She knew what his position would be. She was not ready to talk with any of her friends. It crossed her mind to call Tonya, who'd taken pains to assure her that after-hours calls were perfectly acceptable "at this stage in your recovery"; that seemed too much, however, almost like saying the awful thing had in fact happened.
Pressed by an urgent need to talk to somebody, she carried the cordless phone into her bedroom and shut the door. She turned on background music as further insurance that her mother wouldn't overhear, and dialed Becca.
"Sure," Becca said, through the inescapable din of her household. "I can talk. For a minute or two. What's up? Is Mom okay?"
"She's fine. I'm not so fine."
Becca muffled the receiver to yell at one of the kids and came back. "What's the matter, Nan?"
Nan said in a rush, "Becca, did Mom ever do anything sexual to you? Or to any of us?"
Her sister was silent for what seemed like a long time, as if actually considering the possibility or, worse yet, preparing to make a sordid confession of her own. But she just said, "Sorry, Nan, the dog threw up on the floor. What were you saying?"
Nan posed the question again. It sounded silly now, outrageous, even to her own ears.
Becca responded accordingly. "What in the world are you talking about? Mom? Are you crazy? Where'd you get a crazy idea like that? What do you–?"
"Okay, okay, Becca, I got it. The answer is no. Which is what I think, too. But I've been having–memories. I guess they're memories."
"What kinds of memories?"
Saying such things to anyone other than her therapist would be awful, and in some strange way would feel like a betrayal of Tonya. But Becca was her sister, and maybe something had happened to her, too, and she'd repressed it, too, and talking about it could help. And it would be such a relief to tell her. Nan closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and began with one of the easier ones. "After Daddy died she used to come and get me in the night and take me into bed with her." Becca didn't say anything. Nan ventured, "Did she do that to you, too?" and realized she was hoping, with equal fervor, that her sister would say yes and that she would say no.
"God, Nan, she was lonely. Can you blame her? And it's not perverted to have your kids in your bed. Didn't Ashley ever come into your bed, when she'd had a nightmare or something? Our kids are in bed with us all the time, when they can't sleep or to watch cartoons on Saturday morning or just to snuggle. God, Nan."
"She touched me between my legs," Nan said softly, hugging herself. "She–"
"Hold on a minute." Becca put the receiver down with a clatter and went off to deal with some kid crisis. Nan sat curled up, eyes closed, trying–as Tonya had taught her–neither to lose herself in the visceral sensations nor to tamp them down. She heard children's voices rise and her sister's voice rise over them. The hubbub subsided and Becca came back to the phone, out of breath. "Sorry. Damn kids. What were you saying?"
"Never mind." Nan consciously uncurled and relaxed her body. "I don't think I'm quite ready to talk about it. I just called you for a reality check. You don't remember anything–inappropriate happening when we were little? Sexually inappropriate?"
The pause might have been meaningful, or Becca might have just gotten distracted again. "Maybe you ought to call Patrick," she said finally.
"Why?"
"Call him and ask him. He might know something."
"Dammit, Becca, don't play games with me. Tell me what you're talking about."
"I'm not playing games. I'm not talking 'about' anything in particular. I'm just saying call Patrick."
"He's coming over to stay with Mother tonight."
"Good. You can ask him in person."
"Not exactly. Not in front of Mother."
"Oh, she wouldn't know–Shit. Gotta go. Call you later." Becca hung up in the middle of an exhortation to "Knock it off!"
Nan managed to get both herself and her mother dried and dressed before Patrick showed up. Catherine could more or less eat on her own, so Patrick got himself a bowl of stew from the pot on the stove and sat with their mother while Nan did what she could to make herself presentable in the twenty minutes before she had to leave to meet Matt at Le Jazz Hot. It really didn't matter how her hair looked or what she wore; after a little wine and a little sultry alto sax she'd be naked and tousled in Matt's bed anyway.
The sly, secret pleasure of this thought was not dulled by the interactions with her mother and sister, as she'd have expected it to be. If anything, it was sweeter than ever. If she'd had time, she'd have journaled about this; it was probably a clue, and Tonya could probably help her figure out what it meant.
But there was barely time to give her brother last-minute instructions (he didn't even pretend to be listening), kiss her mother good-night (she pulled Nan close and whispered loudly, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"), reposition the list of emergency phone numbers that had fallen off the bulletin board and find her keys, which Catherine had helpfully put in the refrigerator vegetable crisper. She had dashed out of the door and was getting into her car when Patrick shouted for her to stop and brought
the cordless phone out to her.
"It's Becca. She says it's important." Ever the pesky little brother, he crossed his arms over his chest and set his jaw, completely within earshot.
"I can't talk now, Becca."
"I know, Pat's right there, and you've got a date. But I might have remembered something, and I thought you should know."
Nan glanced at Patrick and said carefully to her sister, "Like what?"
"I don't know exactly. Something–funny."
"Funny?"
Patrick raised his eyebrows and leaned forward, ready to be let it on the joke.
At the other end of the line, Becca said breathlessly, "I don't know, I don't know, I can't quite remember it, it's right on the tip of my tongue, you know? The tip of my memory." She gave a nervous laugh. "I'll keep thinking about it and maybe the whole thing will come to me, or enough to help you. I wanted to call you right away and tell you I think I remember something. Something–like you said."
Nan passed a hand over her eyes. "Right, sis. Thanks. I'll call you tomorrow."
She handed the phone back to her brother, waved off his questions, and actually squealed her tires speeding off. She was far more wound up than even an anticipated evening of great jazz, great wine, and great sex could account for. There was an edge to her excitement that scared and aroused her, a sense of danger and recklessness in the face of danger. She was eager to hear Laura Newman play. A friend in Denver, a fellow Jazz enthusiast, had told Nan that Newman, billed as "The only white woman sax player," was someone she shouldn't miss. She couldn't wait to hear her, to feel that exact moment when the Merlot's glow hit its peak. She couldn't wait to see Matt, to kiss him from head to toe, to take him deep inside her.
In a state of barely containable excitement, she ran a stop sign. The club's lot was full, so she found a spot on the street in the lot next door where a bookstore was holding a reading. On the way to the club's entrance, she found herself walking between an old couple who defined shabby chic. They both wore black, of course, but it was the way they walked that set them apart–as if they had been together for so long that they were hardly two separate people anymore. I want to be like that, she thought. I want to be like that with Matt.
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