What You Remember I Did

by Janet Berliner

  After dinner, while Jordan was watching television, Nan told Catherine about the incident. She wanted to hear it described out loud and to get her mother's reaction, which was strangely guarded. When Matt showed up on the porch, a bookstore bag in his hand and a hopeful but worried expression on his face, she was still deciding what to do. "I didn't expect you," she said coldly, standing in the doorway.

  "I was afraid if I called, you'd say I couldn't come over."

  "I probably would have."

  "Come on, Nan. I'm sorry I blew up."

  "She didn't mean to hurt you."

  "Even if she did, she's just a kid who wants all her grandma's attention. I can understand that." Matt smiled ruefully. "I brought peace offerings."

  Nan stood aside and let him come in. Jordan was beside her, scowling.

  Matt said, "Hello, Jordan."

  The child didn't answer. Nan touched her shoulder. "He wants to say sorry."

  "What's his name?" Jordan demanded.

  "I'm Matt." He extended his free hand. Hesitantly, she took it. "I'm very pleased to meet you."

  "I'm sorry I hit you with the tennis ball."

  "I'm sorry I yelled at you."

  "Aren't you mad at me anymore?"

  "How could I stay mad at someone so beautiful? You look just like your grandmother, red hair and all."

  "My mom says it's Irish mahogany."

  Matt cocked his head to one side. "Mmm. Okay. I guess that's women's stuff."

  Jordan smiled. Matt smiled. Nan, watching, saw a look on their faces that was almost flirtatious. She did not smile. As for Catherine, emerging from the living room with, Nan saw in horror, Matt's poetry book open in her hands, she was positively glaring. "Dr. Mullen," she said haughtily. "What a surprise."

  Matt looked at Nan. "Oh, boy. I'm in serious trouble." Not about to be placated into an easy alliance with him, Nan just nodded.

  He'd brought a book of romantic poetry for Catherine, which he'd inscribed to her "with admiration," a beautifully illustrated book of children's poetry for Jordan "The lady with the best serve in town," and for Nan, a book of beautiful black-and-white photos of athletes in motion signed only "with love." For the next hour or so he read to Jordan and Catherine from their books, his voice by turns gentle and passionate, silly and dramatic. Before long they were both won over.

  Nan, though, was not. He was genuinely charming, and it wasn't hard to be attracted to him for his kindness and delight in the words, not to speak of his sex appeal, the way his hands turned the pages, the faint heady fragrance of his cologne, the undercurrent of sorrow that had its own magnetism. But she'd had it with the secretiveness, and his behavior toward Jordan at the tennis courts, understandable as it may have been under the circumstances, had been an unpleasant reminder of how much she didn't and likely wouldn't know about this man. She was tired. She was disappointed. She just wanted him to go.

  He didn't go. Catherine knowingly excused herself for the night and Nan tucked Jordan into bed. As far as she was concerned, all was forgiven. "He's nice, Grandma," she said. "Do you like him?"

  "Mmm." Nan sat on the bed and hugged her grandchild.

  "Yes, but do you?"

  Nan laughed. "None of your B-I-business." She turned out the light. "Now go to sleep."

  She left the door open a crack, the way Jordan liked it, and went back to the living room. Matt was sitting on the couch with the photography book open across his lap. She sat down on a chair instead of beside him.

  "I thought we might look through the photos together," he said, trying to meet her gaze. "Some of them are quite beautiful. I wish your picture were among them."

  "Spare me." Her curtness gratified her.

  He sighed and shut the book. "Did I do something so horrible that you can't get past it, Nan?"

  "Could be."

  There was an uncomfortable pause between them. He got to his feet. "Well, I guess it's your call now. The ball's in your court, so to speak." He chuckled. She didn't. He sighed. "Nan, I really don't know what to do. Tell me, and I'll do it."

  To her surprise she heard herself say, "You can stop hiding things from me. I've had enough men with secrets to last a lifetime."

  She saw him stiffen. "Secrets?"

  She stood up, too, and faced him across the room. "You can tell me what the hell is going on between you and your son."

  For just an instant she thought he was going to tell her, but his face closed again. He headed for the door. "Eliot and I have had our differences" was all he would say and, "I have an early morning tomorrow. Let's call it a night."

  Nan slept restlessly and was at the courts early. Waiting for her first student of the day, she half-expected Matt to show up at the courts offering Monday morning coffee and conversation. Equally relieved and disappointed when he didn't, she plunged into the day. On her break, she went inside to check the email that inevitably accumulated on her office computer over the weekend.

  Subject: Please read. Muttering about several flamboyant tortures that ought to be designated for spammers, Nan started to delete the message. Then the name of the sender registered: Eliot Mullen. Matt's son.

  Like a kid at a scary movie, she half-closed her eyes as she highlighted the message and clicked on the open-mail icon.

  "My father said he was seeing a tennis pro from RCC. I found your faculty email address in the Staff Directory. I'm contacting you because I feel obligated to tell you that my father is a child molester."

  His name and email address followed, an automatic information line he'd not disguised or deleted. That was it.

  Shit! This was not happening.

  She clicked on "Reply" and typed one terse message after another: "What?" "Explain?" "This is not funny." Hands shaking so badly that she kept typing the wrong letters; each message sent to the Drafts folder as soon as it was written. Crazy notions flew through her mind: This was a new and particularly dastardly virus. Or: Matt was testing her. Or: This was someone's idea of a sick joke.

  Or: This was true.

  Finally, hitting each key heavily and deliberately, like the staccato way she used to speak to Ashley when she was beyond anger, she composed a reply: "I appreciate your honesty–"

  Would commend be better? And was it honesty?

  She hurried on before she could delete again–"but this doesn't mean anything to me without specifics."

  Before she could change her mind, she hit send, logged off and shut down the computer. Her head was spinning, her only clear thought that she had to get to the bottom of this before things went too far, before she found herself really in love–

  Without bothering to call him first, she slammed out of her office and headed for Matt's. By the time she was inside the English Department building, her desire to kill had been tempered with a modicum of calm. Enough to concede that Matt was entitled to a hearing. This is America, she reminded herself. The secretive son-of-a-bitch is innocent until proven guilty.

  "Is he there?"

  The departmental secretary smiled at Nan and nodded. "There's someone–"

  Nan waved her away. She knocked at Matt's door and opened it without waiting for a response.

  Sitting in the only visitor's chair in the office was what might be the most attractive young man she'd ever seen. His long legs were stretched out halfway across the small office. He had shoulder-length, glossy black hair. His profile was like the Indian head on the penny she kept in her wallet for good luck: startlingly high cheekbones, prominent nose, eyes so fiercely impassioned she swore she could feel their heat. She was caught off guard by the force of her desire to think about nothing but how beautiful he was, how sexy, how much fun it would be to have one of Erica Jong's "zipless fucks" with him and forget about working on a real relationship with Matthew Mullen.

  For several reasons, including her developing need to overcompensate for Gary, she had to exercise the little self-control she had left. "I'll come back." She sounded tight-lipped, even to herself.

 
The beautiful young man unfurled his body and stood up to his full height. He was taller than she'd thought, waist smaller, shoulders broader. He wore a leather belt with an old turquoise buckle–probably Zuni, judging by the shapes. Jagged, like lightning, she thought, to suit her mood. For their tenth anniversary Gary had given her a bracelet like that, the thought of which now incensed her.

  "I'm leaving," he told her.

  She matched his tone, knowing full well the sources of her intensity and not much caring about his. "No, you're not. Not on account of me."

  "On account of a rehearsal."

  "Nan is our tennis pro," Matt said. "Nan Jenssen, meet Peter Sanchez, my most promising student. He's producing a dramatization of one of his epic poems. I think you'd like it. It's wonderful stuff."

  Nan extended her hand and Peter Sanchez bowed over it. She glared at Matt, as if daring him to make some kind of ownership claim. Then she sat down in the chair Peter had vacated and waited for him to leave, aroused by his beauty and his youth. She could thank Matt for re-igniting her appreciation of the male body. As it was turning out, that was definitely a mixed blessing.

  "See you tomorrow, Matt. You, too, I imagine, Ms. Jenssen." She had no idea what to make of his kindling glance as he shut the door behind him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  "What is it, Nan? What's wrong?"

  "We–" Thinking she was about to say we have to talk, the standard soap opera "Dear John" opening, Matt braced himself. Instead, she spat out, "What's wrong is that Eliot sent me an email."

  Pain sparked like distant lightning behind his right eye, and he gripped the edge of his desk where she couldn't see. "Eliot?" he repeated.

  "Eliot. Your son."

  "Eliot emailed you?" Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and he reached into his pocket for a Tegretol in an attempt to ward off a migraine. "I'll be right back."

  In the restroom he downed the pill, scrubbed his hands hard, and leaned against the cool wall for a long moment. When he went back into his office, she was waiting for him, looking beautiful and dangerous.

  "Okay. Do you want the long version or the short version?"

  Nan stared at him, and then shrugged.

  "Do you remember what I said about Eliot the night you had tickets for the concert at West Point?"

  "That he had trouble with authority figures."

  Matt passed a hand over his eyes. "Well, at first he refused to acknowledge a problem, but things got out of hand. Conflicts with officers, conflicts with teachers, disciplinary actions every time I turned around, and I'm sure I knew about only a fraction of what was going on. He finally quit West Point and came home for a while. Someone suggested he see a therapist. For reasons unclear to me, he ended up seeing a psychiatric social worker here, in Rockland County, though we were living across the Tappan Zee Bridge, in White Plains. After a month or so, she told him that his problems were caused by–" His voice broke and he looked away. His tongue felt caked with grime.

  "–By you," Nan said flatly.

  "It was the 'in' thing, you know. Her specialty is repressed memory syndrome. 'You don't remember this, but your mother abused you, your father abused you.' Since Marcia died when Eliot was a baby, that pretty much left me."

  Nearly gagging on the dirt he knew perfectly well was not in his mouth, in his throat, on his teeth, he waited for a response. She said nothing.

  "Look at me, Nan." She met his gaze. "The therapist played games with his head. Said she was uncovering repressed memories. Convinced him that I had–I had–" He thought he was going to be sick. She did not look away.

  He took a deep breath and said in a measured voice, "She said I had sexually molested him. And after a while he believed her. It was a way out for him. Gave him someone to blame for his unhappiness. Not a word of it is true, Nan, I swear to you. She created those memories."

  "Why would she do that?"

  "I've asked myself that question a thousand times, along with 'How could my son believe such a terrible thing about me?' and 'Could I have done something he misinterpreted?' and 'How can I prove my innocence?'" The pressure in his head was building. He tried to do the deep breathing exercises that sometimes helped while at the same time staying attentive to their discussion.

  "Did you go to see this social worker yourself? Let her get to know you? Tell your side of things?"

  "Eliot wouldn't even tell me her name."

  "Why?"

  "I got the sense he was afraid I might upset her, which would get her upset at him, as if she counted for everything and I was–I don't know what. Chopped liver." He laughed bitterly, and felt tears in his eyes. "God only knows. That's yet another in the endless list of unanswerable questions."

  Nan stood up, and, seeing she was shaking, he'd have gone to her if he'd trusted himself not to stumble. "You should have told me."

  "Told you? You mean something like, 'Hi, I'm Matt Mullen, and by the way, my son thinks I molested him.' Why? It wasn't your concern. Not yet."

  "What the hell does that mean? Not yet?" Hand on the doorknob, she told him, "Even if I believed you, Matt, that doesn't explain why he would send me an email out of the blue like that. Has he done it before, to other women you've dated?"

  "I told you I haven't dated anyone seriously–"

  "You told me a lot of things and left out more."

  "Nan. Please. When I met you, I hadn't spoken to Eliot in almost seven years. He told me in no uncertain terms, many times over, not to try to contact him." Now he did pull himself to his feet but he didn't dare let go of the desk. "After I met you, I was so taken by you and your family that I sent him a few notes. He never replied so I wasn't sure he was receiving them, or reading them if he did."

  "Well, now you know." The silence between them grew thick.

  "Could I see you tonight?" He wasn't at all sure he'd be able to do that, but he was desperate.

  "You're not serious."

  "Will we see each other again?" He raised his hand as if to touch her, but she was well out of his reach. "I know what I want, Nan. What about you?"

  "I want this not to have happened," Nan said quietly. "Seeing you again will just complicate my life further. I was doing fine without a man before you and I'll do fine without you now."

  This seemed unfair and out of all proportion to Matt, but he wasn't thinking clearly. The migraine was in full force now, and he'd have to go home. As Nan opened the door, Professor Dawson shuffled past the office. No one spoke. For only the most fleeting of moments, Matt wondered what was wrong with Dawson today, other than the given that he was, as he took such perverse pleasure in pointing out, dying.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Once outside the building, Nan stopped to light a cigarette. She had to find a way to think clearly, to set aside her emotions in favor of rational thought on a subject so disturbing that she didn't want to think about it at all.

  Teaching was second nature to her so she got through the rest of the day on auto-drive, smiling, responding to her students, giving them just enough attention. Every now and then, when a thought about Matt threatened to sneak its way into her awareness, she managed to squelch it. When the day was over, she picked up a cooked chicken and some salads and drove home.

  Maybe she could speak to her mother over dinner. It had been difficult to talk to her about personal things since the advent of Matt Mullen. Either he was there, or she was getting ready to go out. The good part was that Catherine had been chirpy of late, almost her old self. Even her appetite had returned, so that by the time Nan got home she was generally more than ready for dinner.

  "We'll eat shortly," Nan said, after greeting her mother. She dropped the food on the table and went into her room where she logged onto the email program that let her pick up messages from her work account. Amid several from students with questions about lessons and assignments and match schedules, and several from the department chair about new college petty cash policies and a get together at the campus pub tomorrow night that Nan w
ould be sure to miss, there was one from Eliot Mullen.

  "My father sodomized me and performed various other sexual acts on me from just after my mother died when I was eight months old until I was about six. He denies it, of course. It has taken me a long time and a great deal of psychological work with a gifted therapist to recover and honor my memories. I didn't want to believe it. I'm sure you won't want to, either. But it's true."

  "Nan! Come and eat!"

  Stomach churning, Nan closed the email window and hurried out of the room, stopping in the bathroom on the way to wash and re-wash her hands. She sat down at the table and dished herself up some chicken, but barely touched it.

  "You going to eat that?" Catherine pointed at the chicken on Nan's plate.

  "Not hungry. Go ahead. You eat it."

  Her mother stripped a wing bone clean, daintily but efficiently. "Your poet coming over?"

  Nan shook her head. "Not tonight."

  "You didn't fight with him, did you?" Nan was silent. "Nan? This is your mother talking."

  "I'm not sure if I'll be seeing him again, Mom."

  Catherine sighed dramatically. "What is the matter with you, Nan?"

  "With me? Nothing. The question is, what's the matter with Matt?"

  Catherine struck a pose. "To be or not to be, that is the question." And that, apparently, was to be the end of her relative lucidity for the evening, for she was off on a rapid-fire series of movie scene re-enactments that required no real acknowledgment from anyone else. Which left Nan free to brood about how she was going to decide what to do.

  The following morning, having apparently mulled things over, Catherine took hold of her shoulders. Shaking her a little, she instructed, "Don't judge him too hastily."

  "Have to go, Mom." Nan kissed the top of her mother's head. "I might be home a little late today."

  "Oh?" Catherine's face brightened and took on a coy expression.