The Elizas_A Novel

by Sara Shepard

  I feel like my whole body is tumbling down a deep, deep well, its sides slick and full of spiders, its bottom miles away. “None of this is possible. I can’t have forgotten a whole fucking aunt.”

  “But you did. It’s understandable, Eliza. Explainable. Horrible things happened a year and a half ago. Horrible things we should have stopped, had we known. All we could do was try to cover it up after the fact and protect you from further damage—hide what you did from the police, try to find you a treatment. We all understood why you did it, honey—we knew what she was doing to you unfortunately when it was too late. So we sought out a doctor to remove those memories. He had this method that he used on PTSD patients, a mix of drugs and a whole lot of psychotherapy—it was supposed to work. What it did instead was shove the memories into a bottom drawer. They were always there, though. And the emotion was always there, the fear. It broke through in your book. And now it’s breaking through for real in other ways, too.”

  There’s suddenly a tinny taste in my mouth. “What happened a year and a half ago?”

  “Everything in your book. Aunt Eleanor hurting you in the hospital. Aunt Eleanor coming back into town. That dinner out. Her . . . death.”

  I stare at him. “Are you suggesting what I wrote is true?”

  He looks pained. “Yes.”

  “Even the part where Dot . . . where I . . . ?” I can’t even say it out loud.

  Bill’s hands grip mine hard. “It’s why you kept diving into those pools. You felt guilty. Responsible. And unsettled—there was no body for the service. You kept thinking she was still alive, and that terrified you. So like I said, we got you help. You couldn’t go on like that. We had to do something.”

  I widen my eyes. More pieces snap together. “I didn’t have a brain tumor, did I? That’s why there’s no record of me at UCLA. I checked, you know. I made a fool out of myself, claiming I was sick when I wasn’t. I even got an MRI because I thought the tumor came back!”

  He licks his lip. “You had a mass as a child, but it was benign, and everything was removed. But not last year. That’s just what we told you. It was a more rational story. And no, you weren’t at UCLA. You were somewhere else.”

  I’m horrified. “Doing that other thing? That PTSD bullshit?”

  He looks wrecked. “It’s very cutting-edge. Scientists have targeted genes that make proteins that either enhance memory or interfere with it. There’s a new drug that acts on those genes, turns them off so certain memories are suppressed. You talked to a therapist a lot, too. He had you do hypnosis a lot, and for a while, you seemed cured. You forgot . . . and that seemed like the best thing for you. We thought we were protecting you. From the police—and from yourself.”

  Bile rises in my throat. “I wouldn’t agree to that. It sounds like bullshit.”

  “Well, we forced you to. We got a court document and everything, but you probably don’t remember. And . . . well, it was bullshit, kind of, because instead of you forgetting, you created Dot.” He presses his hands to his eyes. “We thought the process had worked. You seemed so well. So happy. And we thought that when you were writing a novel, it was about something else. We should have asked to see it far sooner than we did. We shouldn’t have believed you when you said it wasn’t going to be published for a long time. We just didn’t want to push—we were afraid you were fragile. So we let it go. But we’re afraid people will read it and realize that it’s true. We don’t want anything to happen to you, Eliza. You shouldn’t be punished for what you did.”

  “I didn’t do it,” I insist. “I mean, Dorothy—Eleanor—isn’t even dead! She was with me at the Shipstead at the Tranquility the night Gabby pushed me into the pool. A bartender saw her! And she’s here, now. I’ve seen her everywhere.” Something else strikes me. “For all I know, she’s impersonating me, all over town. People have seen me out and about—at yoga studios, at the shop I work at, at clubs—but I distinctly remember not being in those places. It’s like she’s trying to take over my life!” Just saying it chills me. Could it be true?

  Bill shakes his head. “Eleanor is dead. I promise you.”

  I look at him through tears. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because the police told us so. It was her ID. But she was taken away. I guess she didn’t want any of us to see her. But it was her, Eliza. I promise you.”

  I blink hard, trying to let this sink in. It just doesn’t seem possible. “And you’re sure I did it?” He nods sadly. “How are you sure?”

  “Because you kept saying so. You said it over and over. You were like Lady Macbeth. Possessed.”

  I shut my eyes. All of a sudden, an image swims against my closed eyelids. I see two women standing near a highway overpass. One of them is an older, pretty woman wrapped in a fur. Her shoulders are hunched, and her mouth is open in a scream. Behind her is the guardrail; to the left glows the sign for St. Mother Maria’s. Orbs of neon headlights gleam below.

  Then I look at the person next to her. She’s yelling, too. And though I can’t see what she’s wearing—something in the foreground cuts out the lower half of her, only showing her face—she looks awfully familiar. She is standing in the same way I pictured Dot in those final moments. It’s possible she’s thinking what Dot was thinking in those final moments.

  I look at Bill in horror. “It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.” But even as the words spill from my mouth, I’m not sure I believe them anymore. Because it was me. It couldn’t be anyone else.

  This seems to unlock a door, because memories smash through a wall. The feeling is almost palpable; I want to cover my head to protect myself from the deluge. All Dot’s memories can’t be mine. They can’t.

  But then I try it out. Eleanor Reitman. My aunt. And there it comes, spilling over the dam. Little me, prancing through a beautiful room at the Magnolia Hotel, trying on gowns in Eleanor Reitman’s closet.

  Little me, playing Oscar Night, coming out in a gown way too long for me, answering Eleanor’s questions about who I was wearing (“Wednesday Addams Couture,” I always said) and what my beauty tips were (“No sleep, lots of cookies”).

  Little me, playing Funeral, lying in that silk coffin, the two of us giggling, my arms reaching out for my mother to come play, too. Sometimes she’d join in, but others she’d rush off, late for work.

  Little me in the hospital, miserable, terrified. Aunt Eleanor bursting through in that silk wrap dress, carrying that Chanel bag, making everything perfect.

  Stella the look-alike taking my blood pressure. Los Angeles magazine. The ICU. Me hearing my doctor’s voice yelling at someone outside the hall. Eleanor’s frostiness. Her paranoia. Don’t tell them anything. I hear her voice through the phone.

  Bill and Gabby coming to the door of our house, me pouring that glass of vodka, Gabby looking on with wide, spooked eyes. Maybe you shouldn’t be doing that, she’d said—but not because it was taboo. Because I’d been sick. Because she felt sorry for what I’d been through. They’d told her everything—including the part about Eleanor. That’s why Gabby took the blame. That’s also why Gabby didn’t want to rehash it, days ago.

  Memories come back of my mother changing on me, growing silent, angry. Telling me Eleanor was in France, then taking it back. And then I see myself meeting Eleanor in the parking lot near school. My ass in that booth at M&F, taking that sip of champagne. Leonidas—there he is!—and I going out with Eleanor to that club. My mother hunting me down the morning I awoke woozy and sick in Eleanor’s suite. Telling me the truth. Me not believing it. Doubt creeping in. Leonidas making me promise not to see her that last night. But I went anyway.

  I can hear myself screaming, but I can’t stop. I cover my ears to block out the sound, but it just echoes inside my head. I can feel my knees buckling again, and from the end of a long, long tunnel I have the vague sense that Bill is trying to lift me to stand. My legs are limp and boneless. I can’t move.

  The memories bulldoze on, crashing, crashing. Details I’d packed int
o the novel: Aunt Eleanor handing keys over to my mother so she could take possession of her chopped-up, meringue-like house in the Hollywood Hills.

  “It’s the least I can do, Francesca,” she said. “At least accept this.” And my mother looked so angry, so doomed, but we’d moved in, hadn’t we?

  Waking up in Eleanor’s bed at the Magnolia and seeing her slow-dancing with Dr. Singh in the front room. And afterward, after she was dead, Leonidas looming over me at that pizza parlor, which I’d stumbled to, fled to a back hallway, and stayed there. I remember smelling Eleanor’s bile on my hands and nearly puking. Leonidas was furious at me because I’d gone against his wishes, but he said that at least we could go to the police now.

  “No, we can’t,” I said. “She’s dead! She’s dead!”

  “Quiet!” he hissed, glancing in horror over his shoulder. We were only steps away from the pizza ovens, but the music was cranked so loud, it didn’t seem like the guys working behind the counter heard us. Still, Leonidas dead-lifted me and dragged me out an emergency exit at the back. “You can’t go around saying that,” he moaned. “Eliza, we have to get you out of here.”

  But instead of going back to the dorms, I found myself at my parents’ front door. My mother opened it and went pale. Bill pushed through and grabbed me by the arms before I fainted.

  “What did you do?” he whispered. “Eliza, what did you do?”

  I blurted it all out. Everything, in lurid detail, starting with Eleanor showing up at my dorm that morning. Then I got to my revelation about what she’d done to Thomas, and then how Dorothy—Eleanor—had confirmed it. My mother went white.

  “No,” she said. “Thomas shot himself. With that gun.”

  “You really believe that?” My laugh was cruel. “Dorothy did something to him to poison his mind—and then took him to doctor after doctor, trying to get pity, trying to get attention, exactly in the way someone with Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy works. You’re the one who schooled me on this disease—you should have made the connection. Maybe he pulled the trigger of that gun, we’ll never know—but she was the one who basically put it in his hands.” I shake my head. “How can you not see? How can you look at my situation and not understand what she did to him?”

  My mother pressed her hand to her mouth, but there was a light in her eyes. All sorts of emotions crossed her face. Horror. Guilt, maybe. Regret.

  And then she shot into action.

  “Get inside,” she told me, pressing her hands on my shoulders. “You’re not talking to anyone else about this. No one. We’ll do the talking for you. What you did, you did out of self-defense, but it’s better if people don’t even know about it. Okay, Eliza? Okay?”

  Then the memories come to a screeching halt. My brain goes still and silent. I open my eyes and look around. Bill has sat me down on a chaise inside the pool area. The water is flat, untouched glass. I can hear a Taylor Swift song lilting from the Dr. Roxanne set.

  I have to stand. I have to move. I jiggle my legs and arms wildly, hoping to shake the memories free. I need to get rid of this brain, rid of myself. That I have forgotten something so huge, so devastating, seems like a crime in itself. I rise and stagger away from Bill, half-blind.

  “Eliza?” I hear Bill calling out. “Eliza, what are you—”

  And then I see it: a rippling, blue, welcome respite. I tumble toward it, arms wheeling around, and then I leap. The space between ground and water is lovely. I wish I could open my arms and fly.

  As soon as I hit the water, the pain inside me begins to dull. The voices stop, the memories subside. I open my eyes and enjoy the blue bubbles. I give in to sinking. My lungs start to give out, but something inside me tells me that I just need to wait. It will feel bad, but then it will get better.

  And then the pain will be gone.

  From The Dots

  That same evening, Dot felt drunk as soon as she opened her eyes. The room wobbled vertiginously, and her stomach burned with acid. She was in her old bedroom at her parents’ house. She couldn’t quite remember how she’d gotten here.

  Something was happening outside the house. She pushed back the curtain on her window. A police car rolled into the driveway.

  She cracked open the bedroom door and listened as an officer stepped into the foyer and talked to her mother. The cop said Dorothy’s name. Dot’s throat tightened, everything she’d done tumbling back to her. This was it. She had to confess.

  She opened the door wider and readied herself, but then her stepfather appeared from out of nowhere and clapped his hand over her mouth. “Shhh,” he whispered, widening his eyes in warning. Dot stared at him, puzzled. He pushed her back into her room.

  Downstairs, soft murmuring: “Can you describe your relationship with your sister?”

  Dot’s mother answered, but Dot couldn’t make out what she said. The conversation lasted another minute or so, and then the door shut.

  Her mother appeared up the stairs, her head bowed. Dot’s stepfather moved aside to let her into Dot’s room. Dot scrambled back to her bed, afraid of what was to come. But Dot’s mother’s face was kind when she entered the room. She walked up to Dot and took her hands.

  “That was the police,” she said evenly. “About Dorothy. They have her body at the morgue.”

  Dot breathed in. She searched her mother’s face, but her mother wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Oh,” was all she could think to say.

  “The police wanted to talk to you, but I said you hadn’t seen her in ten years.” She finally looked up at Dot. “Do you understand?”

  Dot licked her lips. “But that’s not true.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “But I—”

  “No buts,” her mother said steadily. “We talked about this.”

  Dot swallowed. She watched as her mother and her stepfather exchanged a glance over her head.

  “But people saw us,” she said softly. “People at the restaurant. That steak house.”

  “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

  Again, Dot tried to catch her mother’s gaze, but she wouldn’t look in her direction.

  “Can I see her body?” she asked. She needed to prove to herself it had really happened, that Dorothy was really gone. It was still unthinkable that any of it had happened. The poisoning, the manipulation—to her, Dorothy’s alleged favorite. How could she have done such a thing? How could Dot have let it go on for so long? Would a smarter girl have caught on sooner?

  Her parents exchanged a shocked glance. “Absolutely not,” her mother said.

  And then her parents stood up and left the room. Stay here, they told her. Don’t you dare leave.

  To Dot’s horror, there was a memorial held for Dorothy, and Dot’s family insisted she go. Not going would arouse suspicion. Just act normal, they told her. Don’t talk to anyone.

  It was held at M&F Chop House. There were steaks for all, and unlimited drinks. The mood was buoyant and Hollyweird. Bartenders in white jackets and turbans mixed martinis. Someone circulated with a platter full of Cuban cigars. There was a woman walking around with a monkey on her shoulder; both were wearing tiaras. A couple of Vegas showgirls performed, and then a burlesque dancer, and then a Frank Sinatra impersonator. The place was crawling with writers, but some of them Dot had been sure were already dead—James Joyce with his little glasses, Oscar Wilde in a topcoat, a ghostly Virginia Woolf. There were people there who looked as though they might be dressed up for Halloween: a leathery-skinned man in a cowboy hat and with a handlebar mustache, a large-eyed woman in a peacock-colored caftan with a crystal ball under her arm, a huge black man with a tattoo on his face and a bone through his nose.

  Dot wandered through the crowds of revelers double-fisting drinks. Just being confined between these walls made her skin crawl with guilt. The only respite was that Bernie the bartender and all the other normal staff members were nowhere to be seen. Oddly, when she dared to ask the bartender on duty where Bernie was that day, he looked at her blankly
as if he’d never heard of him.

  Eerily, there was no body in a casket. Dot asked and asked, and finally her mother admitted that Dorothy’s will stated that a friend pick up her body from the morgue and dispose of it as she wished, and apparently those instructions didn’t include putting her body in a casket for a funeral. Dot wondered if Dr. Singh was the one who’d retrieved Dorothy from the morgue. She peered through the crowd for him, hoping to get some answers. But he hadn’t come.

  At one point, a woman in a fortune-teller’s turban holding a half-drunk martini teetered toward Dot.

  “Oh, Dorothy, this is so like you to stage a funeral when you’re not actually dead.”

  Dot had stared at her, sickened. “I’m not Dorothy.”

  The woman blinked woozily. “Oh,” she said. “Of course not. You’re a few years too young. Still, what a wonderful party trick!”

  Dot felt so disgusted. She broke away from her and ran, finding herself opening double doors into another dining area. Though the whole restaurant had been rented out for the funeral, this room was empty. The tables were set neatly with linens and napkins, but no one sat at them. Her footsteps echoed noisily as she crossed the wood floor to the bar.

  She peered into the antique mirror behind the bottles. She had never looked more like her aunt in her life, maybe because she was guilty of something now, too. What would it be like if she went back to the memorial and pretended to be her, for real? How many people would buy it? She wondered what she might do in Dorothy’s name. Hideous things she’d never dared, or nice, sweet things to make up for her aunt’s transgressions?

  Staring at herself, something new pressed down on Dot, a bone-shaking frisson she couldn’t help but peek at sideways. Even if Dorothy deserved it, someone was going to figure out what she’d done. If not the police, then Dorothy’s ghost.