What You Remember I Did

by Janet Berliner

  Preoccupied by the reverie and frustration, she didn't answer Ashley's question. Ashley sprayed a collar. "Are you looking for something in particular?"

  Suspecting that Becca or Pat had told Ashley about the sexual abuse, Nan was either touched or infuriated, depending on whether they'd said they believed her or not. She didn't want to ask. "I don't know," she answered truthfully. "I guess I'll know it if I find it."

  Evidently Ashley ironed one of those annoying sharp wrinkles into the point of the collar, for she sighed heavily and doused the offending spot with water. The iron hissed when she set it down and a cloud of steam rose. "Want some help?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Can I help, Grams?"

  "Jordan, what part of 'I don't think so' do you not understand?" Ashley snapped.

  "She was talking to you," Jordan pointed out sullenly.

  "Thanks, hon." Nan touched the little girl's sleek hair. "This is something I have to do myself."

  "How come?"

  Nan thought for a minute. "I guess I am looking for something. I'm looking for the truth about my childhood. Nobody can really help me with that."

  So she'd spent hours up here before Thanksgiving and would do as much as she could until she left on Sunday without being rude. Below her she could hear the everyday sounds of family life, but they had little to do with her.

  Old school records. She stared in amazement at the "F" in English on her eighth-grade report card. She'd always bragged to Ashley and anybody else who would listen that she'd never failed a subject in her life. How could she have forgotten?

  Newspaper clippings about big and little achievements of various children: Stuart's national spelling bee championship; Becca's Prom Queen triumph, particularly sweet, as Nan remembered it, because Becca's "enemy" had also been in contention. She could have sworn that girl had been a sulky member of the Queen's Court, but she wasn't in the picture.

  Clothes she couldn't believe anybody in this house had ever worn. A collection of her father's old baseball caps that she didn't recognize by sight but that smelled like him and made her cry.

  Albums with no room for more photos so fistfuls of them had been stuck loose inside the covers and tumbled out if she wasn't careful. Snapshots of the single family vacation they'd all gone on together the year before Dad died–to Yellowstone, she'd always believed, but the signs caught on film read Yosemite. The commercial shots her parents had paid good money for of herself and Becca double-dating to the Prom with those twin brothers, Larry and Barry or Randy and Andy or something like that.

  Forgetting the forgettable twins' names or not recognizing the clothes didn't bother her. She might indeed have repressed the F in English. But she was deeply discomfited by having vivid, definite memories of things that had, according to this incontrovertible evidence, happened quite differently.

  "Trust yourself," Tonya was always telling her. "Everything that has happened to us is stored in our memory, just waiting for us to look at it in the light." And, most emphatically, "If you remember it, it happened. Honor that. Don't second-guess yourself." But if she could be absolutely certain her entire life that it was Yellowstone, when in fact it had been Yosemite, was it not possible to be absolutely certain of other things that had not happened?

  Photos of herself and her mother of course caught her attention. Most of the time, the two of them were in larger groupings; you couldn't grow up in a family the size of hers and have much alone time with a parent, especially a single parent. She remembered resenting that, yearning for time with her mother without other people around needing something from her.

  "It's not uncommon," Tonya had told her, "for a parent, especially one without a partner, to become attached in an unhealthy way to one child, even if there are many children. And sexual abuse doesn't have to take a lot of time. A child brought into the parental bed on the pretext of sickness or nightmares. Bath time. Corporal punishment–were you spanked, Nan?" She didn't think so.

  But she'd come across three photos of herself with her mother. In the unlabeled one, she couldn't be a hundred per cent certain the baby was herself, but she thought so. Her mother–young, beautiful, dramatic–was holding her, and her mother's left hand was under the skirt of her frilly yellow dress. Was there anything wrong with that? How many times had she held Ashley and then Jordan just like that, hand supporting the round little bottom, fingertips stroking the soft thigh? Wasn't that how everyone held babies?

  Anger toward Tonya began to stir, and Nan didn't like how frightening it was. This was sick. The photo was happy. The baby was laughing. The mother was gazing at her daughter with a look of unadulterated adoration.

  Nonetheless, could that be a lascivious cast to the mother's–her mother's–expression? And could the baby–she herself–be laughing because whatever was being done to her under that innocent little skirt felt good and she couldn't possibly know it was wrong?

  The second photo was of herself and her mother in matching lilac-colored dresses with full skirts, puff sleeves, and a long double row of white pearl buttons from collar to hem. This was the dress under which she'd worn that scratchy petticoat she'd remembered and written down for Tonya. She was sure Becca had had a dress and petticoat like that, too, so why had someone taken her picture alone with her mother? Both mother and daughter, about eight years old in this picture, had their hands folded demurely at their waists. There was no indication whatsoever of anything untoward between them. But the memory of that petticoat made Nan squirm, and there was something about her mother.

  In the third photo, a young-adult Nan and a middle-aged Catherine were coming off the tennis courts, flushed, hair tousled, legs and arms bronzed against their white outfits. Catherine looked joyful. Her arm was around her daughter's waist. Nan looked grim. There was a space of several inches between them.

  Nan remembered nothing about the day this photo had been taken. For a while there, she and her mother had played tennis together almost every day, so that would have been nothing remarkable. But as she stared from the tight-lipped scowling face to the glowing one, a memory seemed just about to break over the horizon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Matt dialed the number Nan had given him for emergencies; this wasn't one–he just wanted to hear her voice and make certain she was okay. The phone rang several times before anyone picked it up. "Yes."

  Strange way to answer a phone, he thought. Not too friendly. "Ashley? Is your mother around?"

  "Oh hi, Matt." She sounded less curt. "Hold on a moment, she's up in the attic." From the sounds of it, Ashley opened a squeaky door at the bottom of the attic stairs. "Mom! Phone call!" He heard Nan's voice saying faintly, "Who is it, Ash? I'm busy. I'll call them back."

  "It's your man" Ashley said, using a stage whisper he could not fail to hear. He grinned.

  "What man?" Nan called back, now apparently part of the game. Matt felt his face stiffen, for he was not at all sure she was playing.

  "Hey, Mom. C'mon. You can fuss with your dusty old photographs later. It's Matt."

  Matt imagined the scene. Nan flushed, feeling–he hoped–an upsweep of desire. Ashley standing in front of her in the gray light filtering through an attic window near the roof peak. He stored the image away in his mind for later poetic use.

  "Oh, how adorable! Is that you? Is that Granny?" This was Jordan now, joining in. Matt wished he and Jordan got along better.

  "Matt! Sorry about the tumult. Jordan and Ashley got excited about a photo of me as an infant in my mother's arms. How is she? How are you? Is everything okay?"

  "Everything is fine. Sounds like a nice picture. Why don't you enlarge it and put it in a nice old-fashioned frame for them?" And one for me, he thought but did not say.

  "It's a little too sinister."

  "Sinister?"

  She didn't say anything, which pissed him off. In the background he heard Ashley and Jordan arguing loudly. Something about pizza topping, he thought. He had to stifle the urge to say to Nan,
get over it, why don't you, but instead he said, "We both miss you." Behind him, in the bathroom, Catherine was singing "Misty."

  "How was your Thanksgiving?" Nan wanted to know–or, at least, she asked.

  "Well, you know, Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant, no matter how good, isn't quite the same."

  "Where'd you go?"

  "The Italian place. You know the one. When I asked her where she wanted to eat, she said she wanted to hear the singing waiters. Food was apparently not her priority."

  Nan laughed. "Nice to hear you laugh," he said, which was true no matter how frustrating she was and how much like a minefield their relationship had become.

  "I bet Mother loved that. Singing waiters and a handsome escort."

  He thought it best to ignore the compliment. Though he was unsure if it would set her off, he said, "She got herself all dolled up. She really did look fabulous. She's a beautiful woman. You come by it naturally."

  "Thank you, kind sir."

  "When will you be home? We both miss you. Did I mention that?"

  "Sunday. I'll be home Sunday. Like I said. Is Liz still coming tomorrow so you can go to your symposium?"

  "Bright and early."

  "I appreciate your staying with my mother," Nan said, formal again. Matt rubbed his forehead, which wasn't aching yet but soon would be. "You were right. The trip would have been too much for her, and with Liz out of town for the holiday–"

  "It's been my pleasure," he said, pleased that it had been so. No matter what happened between Nan and himself, he really liked the old lady.

  "Can I talk to her?"

  "She's in the bath." He said "bath" with a British "ah" and chuckled.

  "By herself?"

  "Nan, I will do many things for your mother, but I will not give her a bath or join her in one. She's fine. She's singing." Catherine had switched to a raucous rendition of "Show Me." He held the receiver out for Nan to hear.

  "She won't get herself clean," Nan was fretting when he put the receiver back to his ear.

  "Clean enough."

  "She won't get all the soap off, and then she'll get a rash."

  "I'll remind her to rinse well. Through the door, of course." He grew serious. "You really love her, don't you, Nan? Despite what that therapist, Tonya Bishop–" he spat out her name–"is trying to make you believe. You really love her, and you know she loves you. It's nice."

  Nan said in a low, menacing voice "Fuck you, Matt. Fuck you both." Matt chilled and almost responded in kind. The headache swelled. He heard fast footsteps down an uncarpeted corridor, then a door slamming before she pressed the button to break the connection.

  Matt stood there for a long moment with the dead phone in his hand, nausea rising in his throat. He'd take a shower when Catherine was through, and maybe wash away the sensation of slime that Nan's last words had activated.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  "Nanny," Catherine called out. "I'm getting to be a wrinkled prune in here." Nobody answered. She felt a flip of fear in her stomach. "Nan!"

  Suddenly chilled, she looked around for a towel. There was a small one within reach. She pulled it toward her and managed to wrap it around her shoulders without trailing too much of it in the water.

  "Nan!"

  "I'll be right there, Catherine."

  That wasn't Nan. That was a man. Who was that?

  There was a light knock on the door and he entered, his eyes politely closed.

  "You're not my daughter. You're a man." The wheezing was starting.

  "Nan isn't here right now, Catherine. Will you allow me to help you out of your bath? I'll give you a large Egyptian cotton bath sheet and lovely powder and I'll keep my eyes shut."

  Catherine had a sudden idea, an inspiration. "Sunglasses," she said. "Bring me dark glasses."

  "Your word is my command," Matt said. Matt. It's Matt.

  A moment later he handed them to her. She had wrapped the small towel around her head like a turban and had let the water out of the tub. The large ice-blue towel was wrapped around her. She slipped on the dark glasses and posed. "Now," she said, "you can no longer see me. I'm Norma Desmond." She extended a damp hand.

  "Joe Gillis." He shook her hand.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Rage sweeping over her, Nan stormed back up to the attic. It suddenly seemed claustrophobic and the skittering of the mice far too close for comfort. She picked up the other two photographs and wound her way among the junk and mementoes and extra suitcases and sheets of wallboard to the narrow stairs, barely managing to stop herself from crumpling every photo she saw and wanting Matt desperately while wanting to kill him.

  She had, at first, been pleased he had called, until talk of her mother in the bathtub had sent her into a tailspin. Suddenly she was imagining the two of them, her mother and her lover, in bed together. It was disgusting, and it was disgustingly titillating.

  An hour later, packing for the drive home, she regretted her outburst. Sitting in the car, she contemplated a less than serious question that had absolutely nothing to do with FMS or RMS. Trivial as it was, it was something that had plagued her for years and had come up again on her return trip from Philadelphia: why did the journey home always seem faster than the journey there?

  Once, driving back from Manhattan where they'd gone to see "'Night Mother," she'd told Gary that somewhere in the answer to that question lay the secret of life. Instead of the laughter she'd expected, he had responded seriously that she could very likely be right about that one.

  Some questions, she thought now, had no answers. But to others there were surely better answers than those she had found to date. She had trekked to the Foundation to ask, not once but several times: "How do you know what is or what isn't the truth?" Finally, as she was leaving after hours of talk about Matt and her mother and the Foundation and the topics in general, her designated–what? Tour guide? Informer?–had said, "When you got here you asked the single most difficult question there is in this whole issue."

  "Yes. But you haven't answered it."

  "That's because there aren't any pat answers. We're still at the trial and error phase with all of this. I can tell you what we do know, but it is outweighed by what remains a mystery."

  "Please."

  "To begin with, you have to find out as much as you can about the therapist. Then there are steps you can take to verify the information that comes from the so-called victim. You can speak to their friends and family. Also, some doctors say abuse victims always have unexplainable chronic pain and often develop protective mechanisms that make them appear peculiar."

  "Like what?"

  "Like constantly folding their hands across their breasts or covering their genitals."

  Nan's hands had been in her lap. She pulled them quickly to her sides. "I can't interview his friends and family," she said. "Or mine. Not really. Besides, where is it written that they know anything or that they would tell you the truth if they did? People have their own agendas. I'm looking for something definitive."

  "There are only two ways to be certain. The first is to have a rape report and confirming DNA. The second is an eyewitness. Outside of that–"

  "Outside of that, it's anybody's guess," Nan said, standing up.

  The kind woman had put out her hand. "Feel free to call me, Nan."

  Irreverently, Nan had wondered if she'd been trained to mention the person's name as often as possible, a well-known device to ensure remembering it. Notwithstanding Dale Carnegie's claim that people's favorite word was their own name, she found it damned annoying.

  "Come. Nan, I'll see you out."

  Liking this woman almost despite herself, Nan had eschewed her usual reluctance and signed the guest book. She'd left her name and address, but stopped short of her phone or email numbers.

  She got home pretty late. Her mother, still up and sitting on the sofa, complained a little about Liz refusing to watch a movie with her, and Nan talked about her visit with Karen. "I always did like
that girl," Catherine said.

  "You did?" Catherine had once been of the vociferous opinion that Karen was plain and uninteresting.

  "Didn't I?" Her mother frowned. "I thought I did." She shook her head as she settled herself in her favorite corner of the sofa. "It's a puzzlement." Humming a few bars from "The King and I," she retired to her inner world, leaving Nan to take a long, hot bath in sea salts and get ready for bed.

  The next day, in search of something to calm her nerves and determined not to go the route of anti-depressants, she went to see a Balinese healer she'd heard about. She was not, she reflected wryly, any more skeptical of this than of anything else in her life right now, and the fact that the healer worked in a cottage near the home of Mikhail Baryshnikov, supposedly to tap into his energy, made it worth a shot.

  On her way there, she cautiously approached the memory of going with her mother once to see him dance, at a matinee in New York. They'd cried together at his extraordinary beauty and symmetry. That was the first good memory of her mother since the advent of Tonya into her life. She waited for the frisson of revulsion she'd learned to expect, but none came.

  "Welcome." The masseuse was young and slender, a delicate beauty. "This way, if you please."

  She led Nan into a bright and airy room. The crystal table in the center might have taken its grace from Baryshnikov himself. Just to see it had a calming effect. She had read about the table. It sat not much more than a foot from the ground, as close as possible to the earth's center of gravity to facilitate receptivity and provide a sense of security and peace. The table itself was constructed in two layers, the lower one mirrored to reflect the energy of the crystals that lay on the surface. When she bent and ran her fingers across the mirrors, they felt warm.

  "They have been selected by color and healing quality and arranged to stimulate and balance the seven chakras, in patterns that followed the forms of Sacred Geometry."

  "Triangles, cubes and pyramids?"