Memory Lapse

by Kathleen O’Brien

  He heard her dress rustle as she stood. “I hope so,” she said slowly. “I know it sounds naive, but I really think maybe I can. It’s strange—ever since my mother died it’s been as if something inside me is trying to get free, as if maybe the things I've repressed all these years are struggling toward the surface. I especially sense it here. It doesn’t exactly feel good—in fact, it’s downright scary. But for the first time in a long time, I feel something like hope.” She hesitated. “Can you understand that?”

  He nodded slowly, his heart sinking like a hot anchor in his chest. He understood, and because he did, he suddenly saw how impossible it would be to tell her the truth about last night, even if he wanted to. If his shame wasn’t enough to keep him silent, his concern for her certainly would be. He realized that knowing what she was capable of doing in her dreamlike states would only create new fears for her, new demons to people her nightmares. She would be terrified of him, and even more destructively, of herself. Her newfound hope, this fragile self-confidence she had attained, could be blown to bits.

  So it was going to have to remain his guilty, corrosive secret. The bittersweet relief of confession, with its hope of forgiveness, was not possible for him now. He would simply have to forget it had happened. And it hadn’t, really, not the way he’d believed. It might just as well have been some other woman, some stranger....

  His eyes burned suddenly, and he narrowed them against the pain, focusing hard on the scene below him. It must have snowed again just before dawn. The boughs of the pines drooped under their heavy burden, and the patio was carpeted in unbroken white, all traces of yesterday’s footprints erased.

  Even the weather had conspired to wipe the slate clean, he thought with a sudden surge of anger. He felt strangely betrayed, though he knew any objective judge would count him the betrayer. But, damn it, something important had happened last night, something miraculous, something he had thought they could build a future on. And now it was as if it never existed. It had no power to change his life, or hers. It had become, in essence, just another dream. A particularly vivid, painful dream that would haunt him forever.

  * * *

  LAURA spent the morning in the attic, praying for a miracle. But all she found was opulent debris collected by four generations of a family that had always been wealthy enough to indulge every acquisitive whim: simpering portraits framed in rococo gold; crate upon crate of ringing crystal goblets; ancient Chinese lacquered screens; huge mahogany tables that stood on legs of fantastically carved fruits and animals; countless porcelain shepherdesses and lacy ladies who, though priceless, had fallen out of favor.

  Stuff. So much stuff. Squatting in front of an old steamer trunk, Laura leaned back on her heels and sighed, her breath condensing in the cold attic air, disappointment made visible. She felt no sense of life up here, no connection with the people who had bought these treasures. Was her family story really written in money, a saga of the wallet instead of the heart? Was it only on television the heroine finds a secret drawer in the trunk that, when sprung, reveals a musty diary filled with exclamation points and faded roses?

  Not in these trunks. Half a dozen of them sat, hunched and dusty, around the attic, and most of them were filled with beautiful old clothes, ivory satins and moonbeam beads, ostrich feathers and soft ecru lace. They still held the scent of expensive French perfumes, which rose from the rainbowed fabrics like silent music. But she’d already known that her family was rich. And this was the last trunk, her last chance.

  Refusing to give up, she buried her hands deeper into the cool, slithering silks, all the way up to the elbows, feeling for something else. Something...different. Something ugly that didn’t belong with all this beauty. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew without question that such an ugliness had existed, that a poisonous weed had once lurked somewhere in these flowers.

  Suddenly something sharp stabbed her finger. With a low, shocked cry, she withdrew her hand quickly. At first she thought it must have been an insect, a spider perhaps, cross at being disturbed, but she saw immediately that she’d been cut. A teardrop of bright red blood had already formed on the pad of her index finger and, before she could catch it, spilled onto the pristine white satin negligee that lay on top of the stack of clothes. For a minute she just stared in stunned indignation at the fabrics, overflowing the trunk as soft and frothy as pastel foam. What on earth?

  Sucking on her throbbing finger, ignoring the slightly metallic taste of her blood, she sifted gingerly through the clothes with her other hand. She peeled back layer after layer of fabric, and then she found it. A long, pointed sliver of broken glass that curved like a scythe around the small plastic figure of a ballerina.

  Laura recognized it immediately. Long ago, it had been her favorite possession—long, long ago, in a time that had been so innocent it almost seemed like a book she’d once read. All the glass was gone now—all but this last, lethal shard—but once it had been a magical snow globe. This little ballerina, arms gracefully arched above her head, had twirled amid a soft rain of floating, twinkling glitter. Laura turned the key now, winding the music box until it would turn no more, and then, holding her breath, she flipped the lever.

  Miraculously, though her protective globe was shattered, the ballerina danced. A Tchaikovsky waltz filled the attic, the tinny plink of the steel teeth against the rotating cylinder imparting a particularly plaintive quality to the sweet, sad melody.

  Listening, Laura was suddenly washed by a warm gush of memory. She had adored dancing once, hadn’t she? At seven, eight or so, she had lived for her weekly ballet lesson, disobediently sneaking into her precious silver tutu whenever she could. She had loved to show off for her father, delighted when he had laughingly agreed to partner her, spinning her until she was dizzy or lifting her above his head like a soaring swan.

  How could she have forgotten? She stumbled to her feet, rewinding the stem, lost in the memories. She had forgotten how graceful she’d felt, how comfortable and free in her body, and remembering was somehow like receiving a gift. She began to sway, letting the music soak into her. Official ballet steps were long lost, but she didn’t care. She shut her eyes and let the dips and swells of the song tell her how to move. Her skirt swirled around her thighs, and her hair stung her neck as she danced, sublimely ignoring the awkward clutter, elevated above such mundane considerations by a feeling of complete sensual abandon.

  When the box wound down, she opened her eyes slowly, reluctant to return to reality. She had waltzed into the corner of the attic, where an abandoned cheval mirror was tucked under one heavy beam. The woman she saw there shocked her—she was flushed, soft, pliant, lit with an inner joy.

  And then, with a gasp, she saw his reflection. Tall and shadowed, little more than a dark ghost, standing in the attic doorway, watching...

  She spun around, frightened, her hand at her throat, where a pulse beat frantically. How long had he been there? How much had he seen?

  “Don’t stop,” Drew said, his voice deep in the silence. “It’s beautiful.”

  She shook her head, feeling her flush intensify. She waved her hand vaguely toward the silent ballerina. “Oh, no, really. It’s just—” she had to take a deep breath “—just something silly....”

  “It’s not silly.” Drew crossed the attic with purposeful strides and picked up the music box. With two deft fingers he twisted the stem, fast and hard, releasing stray, tinkling notes like champagne bubbles into the air. “It’s beautiful,” he said again. His eyes were very dark. “Dance for me, Laura.”

  And then he set it down. Laura watched, hypnotized, as the ballerina began her twirling and the melody floated out into the room. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even look at him.

  “Laura.” Drew came closer and, slowly wrapping his arms around her waist, he subtly began to sway, moving so gently that she couldn’t really be sure he was moving. It might have been her blood, which throbbed so hard in her veins that it seemed to rock her whole
body. “Dance with me,” he whispered, his breath warm against her ear, his palms nudging the curves of her hips.

  How could she resist? He hadn’t held her like this in so long, and yet his touch was so familiar. It was like coming home, but to a better, safer home than she had ever known. Her hands drifted to his shoulders, her head to his chest, as her body picked up the almost imperceptible rhythms, and then, once again, she gave herself over to the sensuality of the music.

  They didn’t speak. It was as unreal, as wonderful, as being locked in their own magical snow globe. Currents of cold, damp air eddied around their swaying bodies, and dust motes swirled like glitter in the pale shaft of winter sunlight that angled in through the window. In the mirror their reflections danced, too, dim and gray, as if the ghosts of their younger selves had joined them here.

  They danced long after the music stopped, after the ballerina had once again stilled. But finally the spell that held them ended, and they slowed and pulled apart, suddenly self-conscious. Drew cleared his throat, and Laura ran her fingers through her mussed hair awkwardly, neither looking quite directly at the other.

  Drew spoke first. “We've never danced before, have we?” He sounded surprised.

  Laura shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.” She wasn’t surprised, though. Dancing was just one of many lovely, intimate things they had never done together. Suddenly she saw how much youth and pleasure they had wasted with their desperate wrangling over sex.

  He was looking at her, his eyes dark. “You dance very well.”

  She flushed again, knowing that he must be referring to her solo exhibition earlier. What they had just done together was too subtle to give him any hint of her talent. “Thanks,” she said uncomfortably. “I used to love it—my dream was to become a prima ballerina, I think.”

  Drew ran his finger carefully along the long arc of broken glass, and Laura saw for the first time how it seemed to be pointing at the ballerina’s heart. She shivered, and glancing at the window, realized it had begun to snow again.

  “What happened to it?” he asked, resting the tip of his finger on the sharp point, testing it.

  She frowned. “My dream? Or the music box?”

  “Either.” He looked up, his face in shadows. “Both.”

  The shiver ran through her again, stronger this time, and she folded her arms across her chest. Staring at the ballerina, she felt a strange sensation, a tugging, tightening feeling under her ribs. And then, as if it had been pulled from the depths of her unconscious, a half-formed memory appeared.

  “My mother happened to it,” she said, disconcerted, watching the memory take shape even as she spoke. “I think she didn’t like my dancing.” A disagreeable heat suffused her as the memory became clearer, took on color and sound. “She particularly didn’t like me dancing with Damian. She had told me not to do it.” She gazed at the sliver of glass. “When she caught me, she threw my music box down in a fury.”

  And now, with a painful clarity, Laura remembered, too, how she’d felt when her mother had dashed the beautiful globe to the ground. Angry. Bereft. Brokenhearted. And yet, beneath all those normal emotions, there had burned a shame, a humiliation that she had been caught doing something so wicked it needed to be punished so cruelly.

  “How did Damian feel about that?”

  She shook her head, squinting as if peering into a foggy distance. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I can’t remember that part. I didn’t remember any of it, actually, until I found the music box today.”

  She turned toward him, suddenly almost eager as she began to piece together the implications of her revelations. If she had forgotten that she had ever taken ballet lessons, wasn’t it possible she had forgotten other things, as well? Surely Drew would be less skeptical about repressed memories now.

  “You know, this may be important somehow, Drew,” she said, seeing in her mind’s eye her mother’s anguished face as she picked up the shards of glass while Laura wept in the corner. Looking back, Laura could feel that the whole situation had been fraught with a level of emotional tension that was way out of proportion.

  “It’s a memory I've repressed for years. That alone may be significant. I honestly had forgotten that I ever took ballet lessons. Don’t you think that for me to remember it now must mean—” She paused, trying to express herself accurately. “I don’t know, really—it just feels like it means something.”

  Drew didn’t look convinced. “What, though? Ballet lessons? A broken toy? It’s not much to go on.”

  “Well,” she said defensively, though she hadn’t sorted it through completely yet, “don’t you think it might mean that my mother already suspected there was something wrong with Damian, that she was afraid for me? Maybe that was why she didn’t want him to dance with me.”

  Drew’s brow knitted. “Don’t you think you may be jumping to conclusions, Laura? Forcing every tiny fact you come across into proof of this preconceived theory of yours? Frankly, I think it’s a hell of a leap from a broken music box to child abuse.”

  “The connection seems pretty clear to me.” Laura was obscurely resentful, as if Drew was deliberately trying to sabotage her efforts to remember. “I know you were fond of Damian, Drew, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I'm wrong. He could have—” she stumbled, looking for the right word, one that wouldn’t sound hysterical “—hurt me.”

  To her surprise, Drew looked almost angry. “What exactly are you getting at, Laura? Look, we’d better be straightforward here if we ever expect to make any progress. Just say it. Do you think he raped you? Is that what you think?”

  She raised her chin, stung by the harshness in his tone. “It’s possible, Drew. Something has made me this way about sex, you know. It’s possible.“

  “No, it isn’t.” Drew’s brows were a straight dark line, hooding his eyes, and his hands were balled into fists at his side. “It isn’t possible that he raped you, Laura.”

  Foolish tears stung at her eyes. “You don’t know that.”

  He made an odd sound, a half laugh that turned strangely to a hiss at the end, as if he exhaled through clamped teeth. “Yes, I do,” he said roughly.

  “How?” Now she was angry, too. What arrogance! “Because he was such a nice guy? I hate to disillusion you, Drew, but every time they catch a mass murderer there’s a neighbor who just can’t believe it, because he seemed like such a nice guy.” She hated the strident sarcasm in her voice but she couldn’t stop herself. She knew if she could see her reflection in the cheval mirror now, it would look very different from that softly smiling girl she’d seen just minutes ago.

  Drew’s mouth tightened, and some extreme emotion seemed to possess his face, hardening the edges, deepening the shadows. Laura’s anger abated briefly while she wondered what the emotion was.

  She wished she could believe he hated the thought of anyone abusing a child, but he seemed too certain, too adamant that nothing of the sort had ever happened. Such a certainty was mystifying, to say the least. Drew couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen at the time, hardly in a position to be completely sure that the man next door wasn’t a monster in disguise.

  No, more likely Drew merely found it objectionable for her to make accusations she couldn’t prove. Or perhaps, since he had obviously grown so used to the fawning adoration of Ginger, he disliked Laura’s implication that he was not an infallible judge of character.

  “What about Stephanie?” he asked suddenly, his face relaxing slightly, as if he had finally found the compelling argument that would end the debate once and for all.

  “Stephanie?” Laura was too emotionally exhausted to follow his logic. This was the way it had always been when they talked about this—at least this was how it had become by the end of their relationship, right before Laura and her mother had run away. She and Drew had tried to discuss their problems rationally, but they had both been too raw, too wretched and desperate after so many years of dashed hopes. The discussion had always dege
nerated into a quarrel, each of them feeling that the other simply didn’t understand, wouldn’t even try to understand. “What about Stephanie?”

  “She posed for Damian, too,” he said, with the triumphant air of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. “And you have to admit you’d go a long way to find a healthier emotional specimen than Stephanie. She and Mark have been married eight years now, and they still hang all over each other like teenagers. They've got four kids running around Springfields. The fifth is due in a couple of months.”

  For a minute Laura didn’t answer, feeling strangely deflated. Though it was hardly conclusive, Drew did have a point. Stephanie, Drew’s older sister had been a stunningly beautiful teenager, and Damian had loved to work with her. He had carved several enchanting pieces for which Stephanie had been the model, but his finest creation had been the mermaid. Stephanie had happily posed day after day for weeks for that statue, never complaining about having to wear a clinging wet bathing suit, never fussing that the water was too cold.

  Laura saw immediately what Drew meant. Surely if Damian Nolan had been driven by this terrible compulsion, a perverted need so irresistible that he would violate his adopted daughter, he wouldn’t have been able to resist Stephanie. And yet obviously Stephanie didn’t have an ounce of ambivalence about her own sexuality—no ghosts of childhood horrors haunted her marriage bed. Laura thought of the four beautiful children who now ran up and down the graceful halls of Springfields, children who might well resemble their uncle Drew, fair-haired and hazel-eyed.

  What if they came to Winterwalk while she was here? Stephanie and Drew were very close. Surely the children would want to visit their uncle Drew. Could she stand seeing them, knowing they represented all that she had missed in life? Squeezing her eyes shut, Laura pressed her hands to either side of her head, as if the mental pictures were a physical pain. Why? Why was everything so easy for some people—so impossibly twisted for her? It wasn’t fair, she cried inside, like a child. It simply wasn’t fair. She, too, would have liked to have children, beautiful, laughing, healthy children with the Townsend smile.