The Memory Thief

by Rachel Keener

  “No,” Bethie whispered out loud again. She would not mention Corbin to Hannah. She glanced wistfully at the empty car seat and wondered at her little one’s amazing ability to distract her from this. If Corbin had been there, he’d have been yelling for her to roll down the window. Then roll it back up. Then he’d howl in protest. “Up means ‘down,’ Mommy!” She’d have popped in a CD. They’d sing a silly song together about the letter D. And just as her mind would be tempted to think about Hannah, Corbin would yell for Goldfish. Not the orange kind. The rainbow kind. But wait, she’d have to wonder as she reached for his snack, does rainbow really mean “orange”?

  Bethie smiled. There were bad days with Corbin. Ones when his daddy worked late or when Corbin didn’t nap. There were even some bad months. Like last winter, when Bethie felt like she measured life not by days but by ear infections. One after the other, an entire feverish winter of antibiotics and no sleep. And Bethie loved it. She remembered attending a playgroup. All the whining that the other mothers seemed to do. Bethie smiled at them, offered short words of sympathy she didn’t feel. She had Mother to thank for it. Because of her, Bethie knew what a bad day really was.

  Bethie slowed the car, and looked to the left where a stone fence appeared and stretched up the road ahead. She turned into a gated drive, where she had to show her license to the gatekeeper. He told her to wait a moment while he called in her information. After he hung up the phone, he returned her license, raised the gate, and motioned her forward.

  She drove down a wooded driveway, trees and laurel shrubs planted on either side. It seemed peaceful enough, she thought. So much better than that dirty jell cell. She drove further and saw the green field that stretched to meet the stone wall. And for a moment, looking at all those trees and all that green, she had hope. Maybe Hannah was better. Maybe she spent her days walking in the woods. Maybe she read light poetry, sitting in a lawn chair on that great green field.

  The driveway emptied into a parking lot, where the spaces were clearly marked for doctors or visitors. It wasn’t until Bethie parked that she paid any attention to the building.

  She’d imagined it many times. Usually like a prison. With bars and wires, protected by armed guards. Sometimes, she imagined it like a hospital. With red brick and straight sides. What she didn’t expect, though, what she never imagined, was that the building would look like a monument, like a stone memorial, rising out of a groomed green lawn. With its marble carvings over the doors. And its slate stone sides. With its ornamental angles, its L-shaped design. It was just another death trophy, like any other you’d find at a nice cemetery. Only bigger. And with people wandering the halls inside.

  She came to another gate and another guard. This time Bethie walked through. She handed her license and waited through another phone call. Then a door was buzzed open, and Bethie walked inside to a small lobby.

  “Bethlehem Parker?” a lady called out from behind a desk.

  “Yes.”

  “This way, please.”

  Bethie followed her to a conference room.

  “Wait here, and a doctor will be with you shortly.”

  Bethie sat at a round cherry conference table. It was polished so well that she could see her own reflection in it when she bent forward. She saw the number eleven. Two vertical lines that creased in perfect unison between her brows. Wrinkles, still mild enough to appear only if she laughed too hard or worried too much.

  There was a knock as the door opened. Bethie sat up straight, smoothed her shirt with her hands. Tried to relax her brow as she faced the white coats entering the room.

  There were three doctors, two men and one woman.

  “I’m Dr. Vaughn,” the woman said. “I hope you had a nice trip here.”

  Bethie nodded and looked at her. She had short gray hair that nearly matched the styles of the men next to her, except that her bangs were swept messily across her brow, down into her eyes. She had glasses, too, that kept sliding down every time she looked at the papers in her hands. She always pushed them back into place, sometimes when they didn’t even need it.

  “I did,” Bethie said.

  “We’re so glad you came. Your sister has been working hard lately. There is still so much progress to be made, but she is doing just that. Finally making progress. That’s why we called you.”

  “What do I do?” Bethie asked. “To help her?”

  It was the question that had been on Bethie’s mind for years. How could she help her sister? Long ago, she tried by hiding all the clay babies that filled Hannah’s cradle. She tried by encouraging her sister to think of Daniel, to welcome him. But none of it had worked. She thought of how she’d found help herself. Of how she had once been a bitter, silent, and scared girl. But she’d never told Hannah the truth she’d finally learned. Never mentioned all the conversations she’d had with their ill father about bridge building. And whose job it really is. She doubted whether Hannah would have listened to her, anyway. It was strange, the difference in them as they grew. Hannah had been Father’s star. Yet as Hannah entered womanhood, she became more like Mother with every passing day.

  Dr. Vaughn took her seat, leaned forward and put her elbows on the table. She looked at Bethie kindly. “I’m glad you want to help. How about we start at the beginning. On the day that it happened, your sister was very ill. We believe, as the court obviously believed, she had a psychotic episode. That was the only reason the court allowed her to come here instead of prison. The hallmarks of psychosis are hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking… and, of course, bizarre behavior.”

  Bethie nodded anxiously.

  “What I’m trying to tell you, Bethie, is she wasn’t herself that day. Sure, it was her body, her hands that did what she did, but not her mind. She was sick. She was psychotic. Hollywood would have you believe that the word only describes ax murderers and serial killers. Not true. It means, simply, Hannah broke from reality that day. Lost touch with consequences. Lost touch with truth. And there’s a reason that people become ill like that. Just like the cold germ gives people runny noses, something caused Hannah’s break from reality. Our job here is to untangle all the reasons for it. To help find all those somethings that are making her sick and teach her to cope with them so that her mind won’t need to break from reality ever again.”

  Dr. Vaughn leaned back in her chair and thumbed through a stack of papers inside a manila folder. “Hours of watching her,” she said, “here inside this folder. But no big answer yet. Not what you’re hoping, not what you came here wanting me to hand you, anyway. You see, our treatment of your sister has been complicated by the fact that she suffers, has suffered perhaps for many years, from some type of dissociative disorder.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, the most famous type, the one Hollywood loves, is dissociative identity disorder, which used to be called multiple personality disorder.”

  Bethie’s face showed her alarm. Dr. Vaughn shook her head. “Don’t worry, that’s not what Hannah has. Dissociation, in general terms, deals with a disruption of memory, of awareness and identity. There are four main types of dissociative diagnoses, but there is so much yet unknown about the human mind. And so, as with many psychological illnesses, there is a fifth diagnosis, a catch-all of sorts for when doctors recognize dissociative symptoms but can’t fit them neatly into one of the four specific diagnoses.”

  Dr. Vaughn flipped through the manila folder again. She pulled out a stack of papers two inches deep and held it up. “All this,” she said. “Nothing. During the early days Hannah wouldn’t admit who she was, where she was, what she did, what was done to her. These notes are full of Hannah dissociating herself from her past, from her present, in spite of our efforts to help her mind refocus itself.”

  The doctor raised her hand in a sweeping motion from side to side. “Her room… We’ve stripped away certain things, distractions, if you will, like color, like visitors—I’m the only doctor that makes in-room visits—so tha
t other, more important things might surface. But then we added something. Something that led us to call you.”

  “What was it?”

  “A chair.” Dr. Vaughn pulled a few pages out of the folder and waved them proudly for a moment. “That chair is why we have these.”

  “What do those say?”

  “Progress,” she answered, as she leaned forward and looked Bethie in the eyes. “Your sister is making real progress, Bethie. Talking to that chair in a way she hasn’t before. She’s told us all about having the baby, and then how she had to pretend like it never happened. How she was basically forced, by your family, to dissociate herself from the memory of it.”

  “I can’t believe she told you,” Bethie said. “She’s spent so many years pretending, hiding. You know she never even told her husband. I never thought she’d tell anyone. Especially not an empty chair.”

  “To her, it’s not empty.”

  Bethie nodded, new worries evident across her face.

  “Oh, it’s not an unusual treatment at all. It’s a simple technique, really. Something used to help people release unspoken burdens. Like after a divorce, for example. A person can sit in front of an empty chair, imagine their spouse across from them and say anything that still haunts them. Void themselves of curses they long to utter. Rid themselves of leftover love.”

  “But you said Hannah doesn’t know the chair is empty.”

  “She may know, somewhere within her mind. But for now it helps her to believe otherwise. She is giving voice, finally, to her regrets and desires. She is being heard, and that can be a very healing thing.”

  “What can I do to help her?” Bethie asked again.

  “We want your sister to remember more. We think she’s ready to face what she’s done, to talk about it, and finally begin real healing. If she can own her past, all of it, then we can begin the work of teaching her to cope with reality. You’ve been witness to so much of her life, your presence might trigger new memories. You see, unlike others we might have called, Hannah owes you nothing. No obligation as a daughter or wife. There’ll be no guilt in this visit, no judgment. Just sisters enjoying one another’s company again.”

  “Okay,” Bethie said. “I can do that.”

  “There are some rules, of course, that we’ll need your strict adherence to. Don’t talk about faith, or hope, or future, all of those unseen things that Hannah’s mind loves to torture itself with. Talk about yourself, your life, your memories together. Concrete things that Hannah doesn’t have to question or ponder or pray for.”

  Bethie nodded.

  “We’ll be there, in the presence of the intercom on the wall, if guidance is needed. If you have a question, call out to us. She calls us Legion.”

  Bethie looked at them strangely.

  “I know it sounds odd,” Dr. Vaughn said. “We’ve all grown so familiar with the name now. We even call ourselves that sometimes.” She laughed. “It’s from the Bible. It means many.”

  “I know,” Bethie said.

  “Now, if you’ll just sign the releases here on the clipboard, we can get started with your visit. Remember, if you become frightened or need a break, just call out to us. We’re always listening.”

  Bethie signed the papers, promising her cooperation, and her confidentiality. But her mind began to pulse that name: Legion, Legion, Legion. It meant much more than many,and she wondered if they knew that.

  It meant a story about a man so wild no one could subdue him. So lost he spent night and day in the tombs crying out and cutting himself with stones. Until the day Legion was sent away from him. On that day, the man stopped being crazy. On that day the man was healed.

  “Are you okay?” Dr. Vaughn asked her. “Would you like a glass of water?”

  Bethie looked up quickly from the stack of papers. She could feel hives blooming over her skin. Stinging welts that sometimes spread over her neck and chest when she was emotional. “Oh,” she said, nervously touching her neck, “I’m fine.”

  “Are you… are you pregnant?” one of the men asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Whew,” he said, smiling. “That’s a hard question to ask because the only other possible answer is, No, I’m just fat.” He laughed, and Bethie forced herself to chuckle softly. “Listen, Bethlehem, we don’t want to put any extra stress on you or your new baby. This is a difficult situation for you; all of us understand that. What you’re experiencing, there on your skin, is just a symptom of the emotional stress you must be feeling inside. If you want to cancel, or take some time to relax and think things over, we’ll understand. You don’t have to do this. We’ll still find a way to help Hannah.”

  “No. She’s come all this way,” Dr. Vaughn said quickly. “And we need her!” Her face flushed pink as she turned to Bethie. “I’m sorry. But if I may… do you mind if I speak a bit more personally?”

  “Please,” Bethie said.

  “Your sister’s case means a lot to me. To all of us, I’m sure, but I’m the one who’s been going to her room for so long now, sitting on her bed while she ignores me and sees whatever she wants. I know her. And I can feel a change happening, a stirring within that room. And even outside that room, I’ve spent so many days and nights drinking coffee and watching her on the monitor. Recording the moans of her dreams, her silent daytime agony. I’ve never really had much hope for her. This place,” she said, and she waved her hand around the room again, “it’s a last stop for so many here. And if you’d asked me not so long ago, I’d have agreed that it was Hannah’s last stop, too. But something is happening. We are at the edge; I feel it. There’s a chance for her. I believe it with all my heart.”

  The men looked away, embarrassed. But one of them spoke as he stared out the window. “I respect your comments, Susan, but these are your personal feelings and not at all a professional diagnosis. It’s your choice, Bethlehem. We’re doctors; we don’t rely on visitors to heal our patients.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Bethie said, her eyes holding Dr. Vaughn’s. “I’m not going home. I’m supposed to see my sister.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “ ‘Supposed to’?”

  “Just that I’ve spent my whole life behind her. I used to think it was because she was better than me. Prettier. Smarter. More lovable. I used to think her greatness pressed down on me like a boot on my forehead.” She stood up and handed the clipboard back to Dr. Vaughn. She pulled at her shirt, till the collar rose and covered most of her hives. “But I was behind my sister because I needed to back her up. A part of me always knew she’d fall.” She smiled softly and forced her eyes to hold back tears. She walked to the door and opened it. “Let’s go see Hannah.”

  They led her to an elevator and told her to proceed to floor six and register at the front counter. Bethie stood inside the elevator, waiting to rise to Hannah’s floor. She whispered, “Legion, Legion, Legion.” Only this time it was more than just a story. It was a prayer. She felt the floor rise beneath her, knew she came closer to her sister with every second. Legion, she prayed. So that the story could be Hannah’s. So the many would be sent away. So that Hannah, finally, would be healed.

  II

  The hallway glowed with the sick blue of too many fluorescent lights. Bethie sat with another clipboard and more paperwork to complete. She didn’t see any patients. She didn’t hear them. She saw only door after door down a long hallway. All of them shut. All of them without windows.

  A janitor’s cart wheeled by. With her pregnant nose she could smell the mingling of old Clorox with the mildew of the mop. She could smell the dirty water that was sloshing around in the bucket. When her stomach lurched, she looked up and searched for a distraction. Her eyes found a picture on the wall across from her. It was a cheap hotel painting. Every corner filled with some element of a glossy paradise. A sailboat. An ocean. An innocent child with a sand bucket in her hand.

  A woman walked toward her. “Bethlehem?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m rea
dy to let you in.”

  Bethie rose, felt her legs tease her with the thought of buckling. Or running. But she pushed them in front of her. Step after step down the long hallway, all the way to the very last door. The woman used a key to open the door. Bethie stood behind her.

  The woman motioned her forward. “Just you.”

  Bethie sucked in her breath and held it. She let the hives sting every inch of her skin and didn’t fight it. She felt her old stutter, long since beaten back, swim forward and threaten to freeze the tip of her tongue. Then she stepped—slowly, slowly—into the great white room.

  At the time, there was too much adrenaline pumping through her. Too much sting racing across the skin on her neck. Too much banging inside the walls of her heart. Too much prayer inside her mind. She didn’t care about the details or worry over them. Like the white cinder block of a room. That perfect square that was around her sister. Without one picture. Without even one glossy idea of paradise. Or like the open bathroom corner. With its metal toilet and open stall shower. Such an insult to the modesty Hannah was raised to revere.

  No, the adrenaline rushing through Bethie’s veins, the boom throbbing inside her heart, focused on one thing. Hannah. With her shoulder-length hair. With her too-thin shoulders rising beneath a white tunic. With her milky skin, paler than Bethie remembered.

  “Hannah,” Bethie whispered. “Hannah? It’s me. Bethie.”

  Hannah looked at Bethie, coolly, vacantly. Bethie stepped toward her. She reached out slowly, touched the cuff of her sleeve, and choked back a sob. “Sister?”