Amnesia

by G. H. Ephron

  “He was around a lot? Alone with Maria?” I asked.

  Mrs. Whitson’s eyes widened as she grasped the implication. “We didn’t know, Dr. Zak. She was an only child and he was like a brother to her. And having him there seemed to help. She adored him. She’d do whatever” — Mrs. Whitson stared into her tap — “she’d do what he told her to.”

  Mr. Whitson placed his arm around his wife’s shoulder. He glared at me. “You’ve no right It wasn’t until years later that Maria told us what Nino did to her. She said I abused her, too.” He looked me in the eye. “Now you listen to me.” He was stony with anger. “Let’s get this straight right here and now. I have never, ever touched my daughter in any” — his mouth hung open as he searched for the word — “inappropriate way.”

  “I hear you, Mr. Whitson, I know it’s painful for you both, going over these old accusations. Let me just assure you, what I’m interested in is how we’re going to move forward. Maria needs a support system in place when she gets out of here, and right now, I’m just trying to understand what’s possible.”

  Mr. Whitson was still glaring at me but his expression had softened. “Believe me, Doctor, that’s why we’re here. We want our daughter back. But if we thought that never seeing her again was best for Maria, then that’s what we’d do.”

  “Excellent. Then as far as that goes, we’re on the same page. But we’re not quite there yet. There’s just a couple more questions I need to ask. I was wondering when you became aware of Maria’s issues around food?”

  Mrs. Whitson shifted uncomfortably. “In junior high. She had trouble keeping her weight down. We tried all kinds of diets.” We? I wondered if Mrs. Whitson had always been as stick thin as she was now. “And exercise.”

  “She ran,” Mr. Whitson said tersely.

  “Yes,” his wife agreed. “In high school, she ran every day.”

  I noted this down. Typical pattern. Girl who already has an assortment of family issues hits adolescence, becomes acutely aware of her body. Her desire to be perfect translates into a compulsion to be thin. She exercises. And exercises some more. Until she’s addicted to exercises. And then, when that doesn’t do enough, the dieting and hyper-interest in food begins.

  “That’s the trouble with her,” Mr. Whitson commented. “Never goes at anything half-assed. Couldn’t run one mile. It had to be ten. And when she started to sell houses, she had to be the best. Had to sell more, bigger, faster. Ambition and nerve,” Mr. Whitson said, brushing away a tear that had leaked from one eye, “that’s my little girl.”

  Ambition and nerve. I wouldn’t have associated those words with Maria Whitson. I wondered if the car accident had changed her personality that profoundly. Or was the Maria Whitson I’d gotten to know a temporary aberration?

  “Were there any other significant traumas?” I asked.

  “You mean other than — ?” Mrs. Whitson asked. I nodded. Mrs. Whitson pondered. “Not really,” she said slowly. “Though there was the time her friend Marjorie got hurt.”

  “I’d forgotten about that,” Mr. Whitson said.

  “Marjorie was Maria’s best friend,” Mrs. Whitson explained.

  “Attached at the hip all through junior high,” Mr. Whitson remarked.

  “Marjorie had an accident. She slipped and fell down her cellar stairs. She was pretty badly hurt.”

  “So why was that so traumatic for Maria?” I asked.

  “Maria found her lying unconscious,” Mrs. Whitson explained. “I’d dropped her off at Marjorie’s house on our way back from a dentist appointment. Maria came running out of the house before I even had a chance to pull away.”

  “Maria was completely thrown by it,” Mr. Whitson said. “Wouldn’t eat a thing for days after. Kept insisting that it was her fault. If only she’d gotten there earlier, that sort of thing.”

  “I kept telling her, we couldn’t have gotten there any earlier,” Mrs. Whitson said.

  “And were there any lasting effects?”

  “After Marjorie recovered, the girls were never close,” Mrs. Whitson recalled. “In fact, months later I asked her about Marjorie and she practically snapped my head off.”

  “Wasn’t that around the time she started refusing to go down into our basement?” Mr. Whitson asked.

  “I think you’re right. We had a big rumpus room where the kids used to hang out. Then, Maria refuses to go down there. I never connected it, but maybe it was because of the way she found Marjorie at the bottom of her basement stairs.”

  “I understand Maria confronted you with her accusations. That must have been difficult.”

  Mr. Whitson stiffened and looked away. Mrs. Whitson shook her head. “We were stunned,” she said simply. “As far as I was concerned, it came out of nowhere. Nino and Maria were so close.” She stared down into her lap. “If I loved her, she asked me, then how could I love him, too?” Mrs. Whitson choked. “How could I answer such a question?”

  Mr. Whitson reached for his wife’s hand. “My wife’s younger brother was killed earlier this year,” he explained.

  Killed? If he died suddenly or violently, that certainly could have put an additional strain on Maria’s already fragile state. I put a box of tissues on the table between us. Mrs. Whitson took one and blew her nose. “How did —” I started to ask, but Mrs. Whitson had already started down another path. “Everything changed after Maria was hit by the car,” she said.

  “And that’s when she found that manipulative sonofabitch doctor,” Mr. Whitson added.

  Mrs. Whitson nodded miserably. “I blame myself. For not seeing how desperately she needed help.”

  “She got help all right,” Mr. Whitson muttered.

  “Please, tell me about the accident,” I said.

  Mrs. Whitson frowned. “Of course, we weren’t there. It happened in front of her house. Her husband struck her with his car. She went up right over the top. Her head hit the windshield. Knocked her unconscious. Broke her arm. It’s a miracle she wasn’t killed.”

  “How did it happen?” I asked.

  Mr. Whitson answered carefully, “Doctor, the truth is, we don’t really know. At first, even Maria couldn’t remember.” There was a pause. I waited. Mr. and Mrs. Whitson exchanged looks.

  “There was a time when Maria said it was deliberate,” Mrs. Whitson said. Meaning what? That her husband deliberately hit her or that she deliberately threw herself in front of the car? “I think it was an accident. Even today, that poor boy is still crazy about her. He was so upset afterwards he refused to get back into that car. Remember, Rob? Nino took care of getting the car fixed. Then he got rid of it for them.”

  “And after the accident?”

  “She was hospitalized,” Mrs. Whitson explained. “She seemed to heal quickly and at first we were so relieved. But afterwards, she was different. She had trouble remembering things. She’d miss appointments with clients. Show houses and then leave them unlocked. And she was flighty — you know, couldn’t sit still. She told us she wasn’t sleeping well. And she complained of dizziness.”

  “She couldn’t run. I think that bothered her a lot,” Mr. Whitson put in.

  “She started to gain weight.” Mrs. Whitson crossed her arms and hugged herself. “And she turned cold. She didn’t like to be … touched.” Mrs. Whitson bit her lip. “I’d try to hug her and she’d push me away.”

  Mr. Whitson added, “That’s when she pulled away from us. She stopped dropping by. Stopped calling. And she told us to stop calling her.”

  “We didn’t hear anything for months,” Mrs. Whitson said. She was crying, the unchecked tears making dark tracks down her face. “We didn’t know what to do. I called her friends, hoping to find out how she was. But they didn’t know either. She’d cut herself off from everyone.”

  “After she threw him out,” Mr. Whitson said, “her husband used to hang around our house for hours at a time. Then he got angry. Blamed us. One time, we had to call the police. He’d been drinking.

  “Th
en, out of the blue, she calls and wants us to come to this doctor’s office and meet with her. We were thrilled. Hoping for a breakthrough. But that wasn’t it at all.”

  Flushed and trembling with outrage, Mrs. Whitson sobbed, “It was so humiliating. She accused Nino and Rob of …” She stopped, her shoulders shuddering. “She blamed me. Said I’d been a—what was the word she used?”

  “An enabler,” her husband said softly.

  “She didn’t call again for months.” Mrs. Whitson seemed to grow smaller in her seat. “And when she did, it was to say she’d slit her wrists.”

  “And that was six months ago?”

  “That’s right. Just after Nino’s funeral, wasn’t it, Rob?”

  “Just after.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything more to say. Mr. and Mrs. Whitson each sat there staring ahead, immobile. Battle fatigue. Clearly, they cared about their daughter. Why else would they be back, talking with yet another doctor, knowing they risked more abuse, more accusations themselves.

  “By any measure, you’ve been through a very difficult period,” I said.

  “You have no idea,” Mr. Whitson said.

  “You’re right. No one can know that but you.”

  “Dr. Zak, we came, hoping that we’d be able to see our daughter. Can we?” Mrs. Whitson asked, her voice prickling with hope. “Please, even for just a few moments. I’ve missed her so much.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think it’s time.”

  I called for a nurse to get Maria and then we waited. As the minutes ticked by, I could feel the tension build in the room. Mr. Whitson got up and paced. Mrs. Whitson fastened two buttons at the top of her dress. She removed one of the combs from her hair and then reinserted it. She was rummaging in her handbag when Maria appeared in the doorway.

  “Maria, dear,” Mrs. Whitson said, half rising from her chair.

  Mr. Whitson stopped his pacing and held his arms open to her.

  Maria’s face was a kaleidoscope of emotions. From pleasure to fear to anger and back again, her expression changed by the moment as she shifted forward and back, finally launching herself into her father’s arms before she backed away. Her parents watched as she hovered warily and worked the hem of her sweatshirt with her hands.

  “Maria?” her mother said meekly. “Maria, you know how much we both love you, don’t you? Whatever it is we’ve done, we’re sorry. We just want what’s best.”

  The submissiveness in her tone seemed to fuel Maria’s anger. She folded her arms across her chest and planted her heels. She addressed her words to me. “They say they want what’s best for me? That’s a switch. Usually, they want what’s best for them. I wonder why they ever had me. They were so old by the time they got around to it.”

  Maria’s mother, her face twisted in agony, said, “Doctor, we tried for years to have a child. Maria was a gift. A miracle.”

  “Some miracle. Fat, ugly, and useless. They don’t want me now. They’ve never wanted me.”

  Maria’s father hung his head. “Doctor,” he said helplessly. Unresolved pain and anguish hung like a pall in the room.

  “Your daughter agreed to this meeting so that she could start thinking about what comes next after her hospitalization.” I knew my official-sounding tone might appear insensitive, but I wanted to move us forward, to provide some neutral content that would allow Maria and her parents to coexist in the same space. “It took a lot of courage. It would be better, all around, if we sat down and talked.”

  Maria eyed me suspiciously. She looked back at her parents. The Whitsons sat in chairs on one side of the table. Then Maria sidled over to the chair I offered her and sank down. I could feel the tension ratchet down a notch. Sitting at the same table with her parents was a first step.

  I continued, outlining what I saw as the task ahead for us. I spoke at some length, hoping that Maria would use the time to become accustomed to being with her parents. By the end, Maria and her parents were talking to each other instead of sending all of their thoughts through me as an intermediary. It was a milestone.

  “Maria,” Mrs. Whitson said cautiously at the end of our meeting, “your father has to go to work, but I was wondering if I could stay awhile.” She brought out a book and lay it on the table. “Remember that shoe box full of old photographs we had in the hall closet? Well, I finally got around to sorting through them. I guess you’ve made me think a lot about the past and what it was really like. I thought maybe we could just look at some of the old pictures … and talk.”

  Maria stared at the photograph album. She picked it up and opened it to a baby picture. Then she looked at me. “Is it all right?”

  Were we moving into dangerous territory? Would Gloria have kicked me under the table to keep me from encouraging an unsupervised visit? The Whitsons were pleading silently, asking me to help their daughter take this step toward reconciliation. But the decision wasn’t mine to make.

  “Maria,” I said, “this is up to you. If you’d like for your mother to stay, fine. If you don’t, that’s fine, too. Think about it. What do you want?”

  Maria slowly turned the pages of the photograph album. She looked up at her mother. “Okay” was all she said.

  26

  I LEFT Maria and her mother in the common area sitting side by side on the couch, the photograph album open between them. I stepped into the nurses’ station to call Chip. We’d agreed to talk during the court’s lunch break.

  “It’s going fine,” Chip said. “So far, according to script.”

  “From what I read in the paper, Sylvia Jackson’s testimony was a disaster. She contradicted herself all over the place.”

  “Yes, she contradicted herself. And yes, she couldn’t remember squat. But I’m not sure it mattered. She’s a terrific asset to the prosecution. A very sympathetic victim. They want to believe her.”

  This was what I’d expected. “How about MacRae?”

  “Very professional. Didn’t get ruffled when I asked him about her boyfriends on the force. Said they were just several of many suspects eliminated early on.”

  “Did you ask him how they happened to miss the camouflage hat during the initial search?”

  “Said they didn’t know they were looking for one. Made perfect sense, unfortunately.”

  How conveniently MacRae had disposed of that untidiness. But if the hat didn’t belong to Stuart Jackson, then someone had to have put it there for the police to find. Who else but the police had access to that closet, if that was in fact where they found it?

  “When do you think you’ll be ready for my testimony?” I asked.

  “Maybe Thursday. More likely, Friday.”

  That was three days away. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” I said. It was a lie. As each day passed, I was becoming increasingly anxious. I wasn’t sleeping well. Anything but the blandest food disagreed with me. If I’d been my own therapist, I’d have recommended relaxation tapes, meditation, a long vacation. Instead, I pretended nothing was wrong. I was so preoccupied at work that I’d gone looking for Gloria, completely forgetting that she was still home recuperating. Kwan patted me on the back and muttered something about how we all have our senior moments.

  Chip put Annie on the phone. “A few things. You asked me to check up on that nurse? Carolyn Lovely does have an ex. He lives Florida. And she does have a restraining order out against him. According to her complaint, he likes to beat her up. He was at work, tending bar, the day your car got hit.”

  That tied up one loose end. “And the blood work on Sylvia Jackson?”

  Some paper rustled. “There’s a lot of words here, but what it boils down to is an overdose of lithium carbonate, barbituric acid, and benzodiazepenes. Mean anything to you?”

  “Sounds like a mental health cocktail. Anyone who’s in and out of depression could have any of all of those on hand. Sylvia Jackson had access to barbiturates and benzos. But not lithium.”

  “Interesting. And I’ve got some information about Sylvi
a’s angel. His name — Angelo di Benedetti. Thirty-five years old. Divorced. Brought in a year ago but no charges were filed. Probably a domestic dispute.”

  “Did the police consider him a suspect?”

  “They’d never heard of him until he showed up at Sylvia Jackson’s bedside after she regained consciousness. They checked up on him, of course. Has an alibi. His ex-wife swears he was with her all night. And they were seen together in a restaurant early in the evening.”

  “All night? Amazing.” Like Syl and Stuart, here was another divorced couple who stayed in touch, so to speak. In my experience, a friendly divorce is a rare bird. “Doesn’t sound too convincing.”

  “I agree. Nevertheless, Stuart’s the more obvious suspect. And they did find that hat in his closet.”

  “What does Angelo do when he’s not protecting Sylvia Jackson?”

  “He’s a personal trainer for one of the big health clubs. Works mostly early mornings and evenings.”

  “Which explains why he’s able to hang out all day at the hospital. So what’s his relationship to Tony?”

  “None, really. He’s a nephew by ex-marriage. His ex-wife is Tony’s niece.”

  “Any business connection?”

  “None that I’m aware of.”

  “Angelo di Benedetti,” I murmured. “Now I wonder why …”

  Annie picked up the thought. “So do I. I wonder why Sylvia Jackson still thinks his name is Angelo Ruggiero.”

  “Actually, it’s just her kind of mix-up — grafting Tony’s last name onto Angelo’s first.”

  “But why doesn’t he bother to correct her?” Annie asked.

  “Good question. Maybe he has a reason for not telling her his last name, which she should know anyway. Question is, why would he do that?”

  Neither of us could come up with a good answer.

  When I got off the phone, I walked past the common area. Maria and her mother were still sitting, heads close together, looking at the open photo album. I came in and stood alongside them. Maria was giggling.

  Mrs. Whitson looked up. “Wasn’t she adorable?” She pointed to the bald, wide-eyed infant dressed up in a bumblebee costume.