What You Remember I Did

by Janet Berliner

  "Pity they separate the sexes." The words were out before she realized how they might sound.

  Dan grinned. "Yeah. Pity. We could soak together."

  Now there was a splendid idea, Nan thought, taking in Dan's trim form. Funny how she'd never noticed what good shape he was in. His wife was a lucky lady. "Does Rhoda come down here, too?"

  "Rhoda?" He laughed. "She'd like to outlaw gyms. Thinks they're nothing but a brothel substitute for health freaks. What about Matt?" He looked around, as if expecting to see him.

  "We're–let's say we're cooling things a little at the moment." "Cooling" might not be the right word, she thought wryly.

  "Big fight?"

  Nan couldn't bring herself to think about the terrible altercation, let alone tell Dan about it. "Not really. More like too much, too soon."

  He nodded sagely. "Look. I can skip this. Why don't we get a drink or a cup of good coffee somewhere and talk."

  "I'm kind of tired of talking," Nan said, flirting openly. "But a room at the Inn might be fun." She liked Rhoda, a lot, but what the hell. Dan was her friend. And damn good-looking.

  "You're kidding, right?" Dan's laugh was forced. "That was a joke?"

  "Not entirely."

  "Nan, what are you doing?"

  "What?" She put her hand on his arm. In the course of their friendship she must have done that a hundred times. But now something was different between them. "You're an attractive man. I'm–deprived of something I've come to enjoy rather a lot. Rhoda doesn't need to know."

  He removed her hand, squeezed it lightly, and moved away from her. "You know better than that."

  Face hot, Nan went after him. "Sorry, Dan, I'm so sorry. I don't know why I said that. I'm–I'm having a really terrible time these days."

  For a moment she thought he would just keep going, and she'd have lost a dear friend on top of everything else. But he turned and flashed her his trademark boyish grin. "That coffee offer's open."

  "I can't. I don't think I should. I'd better go home."

  Dan came back and gingerly put his arm around her. "Friends?" He shook her gently.

  She made herself smile up at him. "Friends," she said, and gave him a quick one-arm hug and left before she burst into tears or stuck her tongue in his mouth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Though she was embarrassed about coming on to Dan, Nan was also amused and gratified. There was something grown up about taking a moment in time–with no pretense at a past or a future–and making it hers.

  Maybe this meant she was getting better, ‘getting’ being the operative word. She had a long way to go. She'd seen Matt since the incident with Dan, even slept with him, but it wasn't the same. He was distant, wary, and she couldn't blame him.

  Lying in bed, he had asked her again about Tonya, with patent irritation, and was clearly not satisfied by her response. She had fallen silent and they didn't talk much about that or anything else until later, when she was getting ready to go home.

  "I'm going to try to contact them, Nan."

  There was no question that he meant Eliot and his family. She stopped, dangling her pantyhose midway between the rug next to the bed and the toe she had positioned to slip into its foot. This was something important, but all she could do was stare at the stockings and think how much she liked the sand color and that she definitely preferred reinforced toes.

  "Nan?" He waited. So did she.

  Finally she said, "It's the holidays."

  "Do you miss Gary?"

  "Of course I do. We had good times. We loved each other."

  She took a breath, opened her mouth as if to continue and, realizing she had nothing to say, exhaled and resumed getting dressed. What kind of person had she become, that she could resent Matt's wanting to meet his daughter-in-law and his grandchildren? She should be encouraging him.

  Unless, of course, he really was a child molester.

  Even if he was innocent, which mostly she believed he was, from what she'd learned about FMS and RMS nothing could happen until Eliot realized that his memories were false and admitted it, or his father admitted that he was guilty of molestation. Thus far, she had found little in the literature to indicate a consistent trigger for either happening. She made a mental note to make a physical note to ask Tonya about that when she went back to see her.

  If she went back to see her. She had missed her last appointment and not made another.

  Nor did she and Matt have any new plans. He had mumbled something about Saturday. She had said something about the holidays. They'd left it at that.

  For Nan, the approach of the holiday season had always been a relief. It signaled the end of her teaching year until the Spring. Although she coached her competitive students at the indoor courts, as much to keep herself in shape as for their sakes, the problems and complications of everyday life tended to be put on hold. This year, however, nothing could soften her issues with her mother and with Matt.

  She bought early gifts and wrapped and labeled them joylessly, without the usual satisfaction of getting ahead of the holiday mania. She had lowlights put in her hair and bought a new coat to match, thinking a purely frivolous act might make her smile. All any of it did was increase her childish wish to run away from home.

  A call from Ashley about arrangements for Thanksgiving put the cherry on her sullen cake. "I called Matt to ask him to join us for dinner," Ashley told her breezily. "He point blank refused. Politely, but adamantly."

  "You asked him without checking with me first?"

  Ashley was adamant. "No one should be alone on Thanksgiving, Mom. Besides, Grams and Jordan both asked me to invite him."

  "Matt and I are..." Nan tried to find the right word. "We're chilling."

  Ashley laughed. "Chilling?"

  "Well. Yes. Chilling. Letting things cool off." Why she persisted in using phrases like that was beyond her, when every emotion she had about Matt was fiery.

  "Why would you want to do that? No. Don't answer. It's none of my beeswax, as you used to say."

  "It was all happening too fast, Ash. But I guess Thanksgiving would have been...okay. Listen, I'm not sure about Gram."

  "Is she ill?"

  "She's...trick-or-treat," Nan said. "Up one moment, down the next. I think the drive would tire her more than it's worth." In fact, her mother was doing better than she was these days.

  She sat there for a moment after saying good-bye to her daughter, and then called Matt, not sure what she wanted from him.

  "It was nice of Ashley to think of me." His voice was tentative. "Honestly, I don't think Catherine will be up to going. What if I stay with her so you can go. We'll have a lovely time, the two of us."

  "You're still angry with me, aren't you?"

  "I don't know that angry is the right word. I'm upset, and protective of your mother. What are you going to do? Ask Tonya-the-therapist if that's abnormal?"

  Instead of slamming down the receiver, Nan lit up. Her mother coughed and sighed loudly. Nan crushed the cigarette in the ashtray. "I'm going to go now. If you change your mind–"

  "I won't."

  She said a quiet goodbye and replaced the receiver in its cradle. "Was that Matt?" Catherine demanded. "Change his mind about what?"

  This, Nan thought, was going to be one of those nights. She turned on a home shopping channel, hoping to divert herself, and turned it off again. Jewelry had never been her thing. Gary had bought her some lovely stuff, most of which lay gathering dust and tarnish in the jewelry chest they'd found one year on a daytrip to the King of Prussia Mall.

  Maybe that was what she needed. A day of mindless wandering around what had, until recently, been the largest mall in America. Or maybe she'd call her friend Karen in New Hope and have lunch with her. Talk out the whole thing about Matt. That was what she really needed more than anything else–a non-judgmental friend she could use as a sounding board. There was certainly no one she could talk to around here. Not Dan, after her little performance in the gym; not her
daughter or her siblings who had their own attitudes about her. What she wanted was a friend who had no connection with the players or the game.

  Karen replied right away to her email. Love to see you but can't this week. Going out of town. She suggested a date after she got back, which Nan quickly confirmed, then shot an email to Becca asking her to stay with their mother after Liz left that day.

  Feeling better already, Nan made herself a cup of coffee and checked the address of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. She had remembered correctly; it was on Market Street in Philadelphia, a short drive from New Hope. She could go and see them after visiting Karen. Ask them questions for which she could find no answers elsewhere.

  Things were falling into place. Tonight she would read Professor Elizabeth Loftus's "The Myth of Repressed Memory." For the rest of the time between now and New Hope, she'd switch sides. Find out why a group, speaking of Loftus, had told the Press, "We're going to kill that bitch." Why a vocal group argued that the FMSF was bogus. Why the Seventh Day Adventists and Scientologists were so vehemently opposed to them. There were even massage therapists who claimed to release buried memories, and evidence that repressed memories inevitably resulted in chronic pain of unknown origin.

  What there wasn't, she thought ten days later on her approach to New Hope, was a sure way to prove innocence or guilt.

  The day was beautiful, in a way that only a Fall day could be. Crisp air, warm sun, gold and orange and red foliage, and the promise of girl-talk conspired to make her feel what she barely recognized as a whisper of something positive.

  She raised the sound on her car radio and sang along with an old Dean Martin easy-listening version of "Under the Bridges of Paris," remembering Paris in autumn with Gary, walking from Ile de la Cité, past the Louvre, through Tuillerie Gardens toward the Champs Elysée. Such unexpected drifts of memory were why she often chose the radio, where she didn't know what would come next, over a more predictable CD. The Paris-in-autumn-with-Gary memory was lovely, with only a slight frisson of pain. She really was getting better.

  Pulling into Karen's driveway, she listened to the last notes fade away and turned off the engine. "Hey, you," Karen called out through the open window.

  "Hey, you." Nan grinned. They'd greeted each other that way since their college days.

  Karen opened the front door and charged toward the car. "I'm starving. Lunch is ready. Let's talk while we eat?"

  "Eat while we talk." Karen was always hungry, and thin. Grateful that some things didn't change, Nan got out of the car, hugged her friend, and followed her inside.

  She took out her cigarettes and offered one to Karen, who shook her head. "I've quit."

  "Since when?"

  Karen smiled a little sheepishly. "Since my grandson made me promise."

  "I quit, too." Nan paused. "Often." It was an old joke but it worked for them. They laughed lightly.

  "So what's this all about, Nan? Sounded urgent. Is it Catherine, Ashley, Gary? A new man?"

  Nan stared at her friend, then looked away.

  "Talk to me, Nan. You can tell me, no matter what it is. We've never judged each other."

  Nan shook her head. "I thought I could talk about it, but I can't." Karen and her well-adjusted upper-middle class family, who owned a cat, a dog, and a bird, had two-and-a-half children and barbequed every Sunday. "I can't."

  Karen reached across the table and placed her hand over Nan's. "I can't imagine anything short of murder or incest–" She stopped. "I'll shut up. I'm happy to see you. Glad to listen, or not."

  Lightening her tone, she chatted about her children, her vacation, her grandchildren's exploits. Nan reciprocated with cute anecdotes about Jordan and Catherine. By mid-afternoon, they were talked out. Karen suggested a shopping spree.

  "Another time," Nan said. "There are some things I have to do before I go home."

  Karen asked no questions. Before Nan took her leave, she asked to see a phone book and did what she had told herself she wouldn't do, though she'd known she would. Torn between not wanting to find it and wanting to, she looked up Eliot's name. There it was.

  She turned the phone book toward Karen and pointed. "Is that far from here?"

  "Do you want it to be?"

  "Smartass."

  "It's five minutes from here, in a fairly recent subdivision. Why?"

  "Eliot's father teaches at RCC. We were having coffee and I mentioned I was coming to New Hope today. He hasn't seen their house, so he asked me to drive past it and report back to him."

  "They couldn't send photos?" Karen looked at her. "Forget I asked. You know where to find me if you need me. For anything. Promise."

  Nan nodded, knowing it was a promise she'd never keep.

  As soon as she was out of sight of the house, she pulled to the side of the road and took out the paper on which she'd written directions to the Foundation. She added Eliot's address and the simple instructions Karen had given her to his house.

  Just in case she happened to find herself there en route to the City.

  "Yeah. Right," she said aloud. She drove to the small development, circling around until she found the house, then slowing down but moving past. A young boy who looked like a miniature of Matt sat on the grass reading. Trying not to think about the theory that abuse was passed from generation to generation, she focused on three girls playing jump rope on the driveway. Two held the ends. The one in the center jumped steadily, singing out numbers. "Forty one, forty two." Her hair shone in the sunlight. Her voice was young and clear. She looked up, caught Nan's eye, waved slightly and smiled.

  Nan smiled back and drove on toward the highway and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. She knew little about Philadelphia, but as chance had it, the building was near Rittenhouse Square, across the street from an excellent sushi restaurant she had gone to with Karen a year or so before. There was no parking in the immediate area, but there was plenty within walking distance and taxis from the parking lots that serviced the Square. She decided to walk there and take a cab back.

  The area reminded her a lot of certain parts of New York, mostly because of the multi-story Brownstones and because people strolled around with a sense of belonging–not just because they lived there or were passing by, but because, or so it appeared to her, they chose to be there. The Foundation itself took up the first two floors of a four-story building next door to the restaurant. The charming woman on the phone had told her the building was circa the 1800s.

  A sign on the outer door read, "Ring bell to enter." Nan hesitated briefly then pressed the button. An inner door opened into a library and a series of conference rooms. Upstairs were offices with floor-to-ceiling shelves.

  A woman stepped toward her. "How may I help you?"

  Nan recognized the voice. All the way, she'd been going over the questions she wanted answered. Now that she was here, only one of them came to mind. "In the end," she managed to ask through rising tears, "how do you know for sure?"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The attic of the house on Long Island where Nan had grown up was cold on this Friday after Thanksgiving, and rodent feet skittered up and down inside the steeply pitched roof inches from her head. She decided to think of them as squirrels instead of mice. Squirrels were cuter, even if they were no less destructive.

  She looked up from the box on her lap and smiled, remembering the squirrel who'd lived one winter between her bedroom window and the evergreen hedge, using the bits of fabric and paper she'd left out on the sill to construct a nest into which that spring four tiny babies had been born. Nan had been thrilled. Becca, with whom she'd been sharing a room then, had not. Muttering about chewed wires and ruined insulation, their dad had set a trap, which had been successful all five times. "You think you're so smart." Whispered in the semi-darkness after lights-out, her sister's taunts had been daggers as only siblings' can be. "Look where your 'help' got them. Smooshed." And she'd make a sound like a small neck breaking.

  Feeling tricked by
her own memory (Well, that started out as a nice thing to remember), and freshly mad at her sister not only for the childhood meanness but also because she now claimed not to remember squirrels or traps at all, Nan went back to digging through the box. She'd been at this all week. The boxes and plastic bags and pillow cases and suitcases she'd already searched through were stacked against the far wall in a space Jordan had helped her clear the first morning of her vacation. The stuff waiting to be gone through still filled much of the floor space and many of the dusty shelves

  "I've never been up there," Ashley had confessed when Nan had spoken–lightly, casually–of her project.

  "You own the place. You've lived here since before Jordan was born. It's your history, too. You've never been in your own attic?"

  "Nope."

  "Have you, Jordan?"

  Jordan said, "Nope. Mom won't let me." But the way she hesitated and cut her eyes toward her mother were not lost on Nan. Jordan had been in the attic. Ashley might or might not know that.

  "What are you looking for?" Ashley wanted to know. She was ironing, sweat streaming out from under the athletic band around her damp hair, crisp shirts and skirts and pants accumulating on hangers hooked over door jambs around the room. The air smelled moist and hot.

  Catherine used to iron. Nan's father's job had required him to wear a starched white shirt every day, and he'd worked six days a week; each shirt had taken Catherine half an hour to iron, so the shirts alone accounted for three hours every week, not to mention all of her own dresses and Nan's school clothes and the sheets, for God's sake. This had become for Nan the symbol of female servitude. She'd vowed never to iron a thing in her life, and she never had. Ashley didn't iron sheets, as far as Nan knew, though those on her bed in the guest room were suspiciously crisp. But she did iron jeans. Go figure.

  Recently Nan had mentioned ironing at a family gathering. Some of her siblings had said they remembered the white shirts, but most had claimed not to. Catherine had sworn it had been only five shirts a week, and they hadn't taken that long to iron. Nan, however, clung stubbornly to her version.