What You Remember I Did

by Janet Berliner

  "We know."

  "We know that."

  Tonya took a deep breath and picked up her briefcase from beside her chair, "I'm sorry, I can't stay–"

  This was greeted by a group wail. "Oh, Tonya, stay! I wanted to ask you–I wanted to tell you–You've supported us, now let us support you."

  "My mother died. I need to talk to you about it."

  "–I'm already late for an appointment with my lawyer. He's waiting in my office. I wish you–" she seemed to be searching for the right words–"I wish you all the best." She hurried out. In the stunned silence, they could hear her sobbing.

  After a moment, a usually quiet young man almost shouted, "She wouldn't do that! Tonya wouldn't do that!"

  "How do you know? People do lots of things." This was the round-faced, gray-haired woman Nan remembered from her first group session.

  Animated debate followed. Nan found herself agreeing with whoever happened to be speaking at the moment: Tonya was an innocent victim of a client who hadn't wanted to look at her own issues and of sensationalist media. Tonya had gotten carried away in her desire to help. Tonya was a fraud, power hungry, narcissistic. Each position and each variation on each position seemed as reasonable as any other.

  When she finally couldn't stand it any longer, she tried to slip unnoticed out of the room–something else a circle made impossible–and drove around town for a long time before she went home. Something new was bothering her, something she couldn't quite get at, like an itch in her ear so deep that she could not scratch it without doing herself harm.

  Later, as she sank into sleep, she thought it had something to do with how uncomfortable she'd felt when Tonya had wanted to share her own journals and had broken down during group. In a brief flash, which quickly vanished under a blanket of sleep, she remembered having read something about transference and thought dreamily that she ought to look that up.

  The next morning was busy, but when Becca came to take Catherine to get her hair done and Nan was able to get on the web, it didn't take her long to find what she was looking for. Transference was, she learned, a two-way street; therapists and other health care professionals also had transference reactions to their patients. The technical term was "counter-transference." One site called it "a therapist's 'emotional time warp.'"

  Several writers pointed out that counter-transference was why some therapists came to think they were falling in love with their patients.

  There was some discussion of the therapeutic uses to which both transference and counter-transference could be put. But that all seemed arcane and blurry compared to the angry and tragic personal accounts from people who said their therapists had in one way or another crossed the line.

  Nan sat back in her chair. She couldn't quite put all this together with her own situation yet, but there were clues.

  When Becca brought Catherine home from the beauty parlor, she told Nan breathlessly that she had remembered something and couldn't wait to talk about it. Nan said "Later," and Becca looked hurt.

  Nan returned to her computer. Karen had sent a breezy email, mostly about the doings of her husband and kids. Usually Nan would have enjoyed hearing about them, but now she didn't even finish reading the news and found the multiple exclamation points seriously annoying. The "Miss you" sign-off could be read as affection or accusation or meaningless platitude. Nan neither deleted nor answered the message.

  Hearing from Karen reminded her that Matt still didn't know she'd driven past Eliot's house and seen his grandchildren. Well, now he would have met them for himself.

  The following day, Dan and Ida invited her for coffee. She refused them both. Ida stalked off, but Dan wouldn't take "no" for an answer, citing their long acquaintance and his need for a bad cup of coffee.

  "Wouldn't hurt you to talk to someone," he said.

  "I don't want to talk." She made no effort to sound pleasant.

  He shrugged and left her office with a "you know where I am" over his shoulder. She had a moment of panic that she'd torpedoed their friendship, followed by cold relief that now maybe he'd leave her alone. As far as she was concerned, everyone could leave her alone.

  But they didn't. Patrick called to see how the nanny-cam was working and wanted to chat. She answered curtly and cut him off. Ashley called and put Jordan on the phone; the sound of the little girl's voice brought tears to Nan's eyes, but not being able to think of anything to say to either one of them made her mad.

  The times when Catherine didn't seem to know her became longer and more frequent. The vacant look in her mother's eyes, sometimes with a tinge of fear, infuriated Nan. How dare you forget me, when all I can think about is what you might have done to me? It also gave her a nasty satisfaction: I could do anything I wanted to you, and you wouldn't know whether it was real or not. Seems only fair, don't you think, Mom?

  There was nothing more in the news about the class-action suit or Tonya Bishop, which did not stop the attorney from calling her again and again. Nan did nothing about it.

  She quit going to the crystal-table healer and the support group. When the nice woman from the FMS Foundation sent her an email about an upcoming seminar, she deleted it without opening it.

  She had many dreams, some with well-organized plot lines, others collages of bright and dark images. She made it a point not to record any of them.

  When she didn't hear from Matt on the day he'd planned to get back from Pennsylvania, or for the next several days, she thought maybe she'd never see him again. Naturally, she was of several minds about this. Her longing for him was so intense that it caught her off-guard. Her rage toward him was intense, too, but by now not in the least surprising.

  On Valentine's Day, her mother had one of an increasing number of episodes of incontinence. As Nan was cleaning her up, the doorbell rang, a delivery of spring flowers. Nan took them into Catherine's room. "From Matt," she said, doing her best to sound patient and gentle and matter-of-fact, but without any expectation of a coherent response from her mother. To her surprise, Catherine smiled beatifically and launched into Lara's Theme.

  "Somewhere, my love,

  There will be songs to sing."

  Again and again and again, she warbled the same two lines, seemingly unaware of her surroundings even when the doorbell rang for a second time. Nan couldn't leave her mother half-naked and mooning over Omar Sharif, and she didn't trust herself to deal with end-of-the-worlders or kids wanting to shovel her sidewalk for an exorbitant price. So she ignored the doorbell's "You Are My Sunshine" several more times, then stopped as whoever it was gave up and moved on.

  Deciding which obnoxiously jaunty tune to program into the doorbell chime had taken days and much debate. Her mother's condition had deteriorated rapidly. She didn't want to be as sad as she was about that.

  Minutes later, as she was trying to get Catherine to powder herself so she wouldn't have to do it, the phone rang. Right beside the bed, it was hard to ignore. Guiding her mother's fingers to the right place for the powder, she grabbed the receiver with the other hand. "Yes?"

  "Hi."

  Not wanting to distract her mother, she stopped herself from saying his name. "Hi."

  "I'm back. How are you? How's your mom? I hear her."

  "Okay, as I told you. About the same. How was your trip?"

  "Wonderful. Unsettling, as I told you."

  She chuckled. "Sounds as if you're of several minds about it."

  "Um," he said, "yeah. When can I see you?"

  "I don't know. Ralph quit."

  "Who?"

  "The latest aide. I'm interviewing again. In the meantime, I can't get out."

  "What about school?"

  "Cancelled office hours and coaching."

  "Can you do that?"

  "I don't have a lot of choice, you know?"

  Catherine was still rubbing herself. Her expression had turned blissful. Revulsion made Nan abrupt when she pulled the old woman's hand away, and Catherine protested.

  "Do you
have to tend to her?"

  "Let me call you back."

  "Please do," he said.

  She didn't, though. Instead, she watched the tapes of Ralph's last day with her mother, finding nothing objectionable except his general cluelessness. Yet one more time, she began the tedious–and probably pointless–process of interviewing for a new caregiver. Catherine had another accident and had to be cleaned up again; this time, she was embarrassed and cried, so she had to be comforted, too. They watched Doctor Zhivago again, Catherine cuddling against her like a child. The old woman fell asleep well before the credits and, rather than rousing her and risking another hassle, Nan carried her to bed, touched and appalled by how frail and light her mother was in her arms.

  Exhausted, she went to bed not long after that herself, vowing like Scarlett that she'd think about calling Matt back tomorrow. If she dreamed, she didn't remember it, but over her first cup of coffee in the morning, with an edge of anxiety as she steeled herself for Catherine to call her at any moment, a waking childhood memory came to her, frozen in time like a film on "pause":

  She was sitting on her mother's lap, nestling against her mother's shoulder, her mother singing to her, her mother's long red hair drifting over both their faces, and her mother's fingers inside her clothes between her legs.

  Nan stumbled to the sink to spit up the coffee and the rest of her stomach contents. Long after she was emptied of everything but hot bile, she kept retching, until her throat was raw and she was drenched in hot sweat.

  Finally she was able to wash herself and the sink, brush her teeth, and answer her mother's cries that she had to go to the bathroom, which turned out to be old news and, in its own way, helpful. She hired the first aide who came for an interview, a woman who looked like pictures of Rosie the Riveter only her name was Arlene. Interviewing more candidates was ridiculous since there was no way of knowing which choice was likely to be best. Besides, Arlene could start this afternoon.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Waiting for Nan to get off the other line with the home health agency, Matt thought about the new poem he'd started on his way back from Pennsylvania. Its central image would be his granddaughter jumping rope, with those peculiar rhymes that seemed to mean something other than they were supposed to mean. It seemed to be taking the form of a sestina, but he reserved the right to change his mind about that.

  His daughter-in-law was a delight and his grandchildren were certainly the brightest and most beautiful of all children. But Eliot was something else again. "I love you, Dad. It's so great to see you, Dad. Are you hungry? Thirsty. Tired? Thanks for coming, Dad. Don't be a stranger." No mention at all of the last seven years and what had happened between them, and no opening for Matt to bring it up, either, even if he'd known how.

  "Matt? You still there?"

  "I'm here," he said, then without prelude, "Tell me why you're avoiding me."

  "I'm not–" she started to say. "Yes, Matt, I am. I don't know what to do about you. I don't know what to do about anything."

  "May I come over?"

  "No. Tell me more about your trip."

  "I've been wondering what I'd say when you asked." He paused. "It was–amazing. A weedy adjective if ever there was one, but it's the best I can do."

  "Weedy?"

  "Oh, sorry. Jargon. Means a word that serves no particular purpose, doesn't tell you anything, should be pulled out like a weed."

  "Oh."

  "Taught to me by my grandson, Brandon, who is a great little kid. His sister, too. Julia. She likes to jump rope." His voice broke. "We got along famously. Brandon looks just like me, Nan."

  She was silent for a moment. "Eliot and his wife let you be alone with them? Like nothing had ever happened?"

  He clenched his fists around the sudden sensation of grime and went to the sink to wash. "Nothing did ever happen." She didn't say anything. He scrubbed, rinsed, dried, and said to her miserably, "Now that you mention it, there was always somebody around. I hadn't thought of that."

  "You weren't there very long," Nan conceded, "Maybe there was no opportunity for you to be alone with them anyway."

  "I had Brandon's room. He slept in his parents' room while I was there," Matt said, not entirely sure how that connected with the rest of the conversation but trusting his instincts.

  "Hmm." Were images of nighttime predation flying through Nan's mind, he wondered? Was she battling a memory of her own that was trying to break through?

  Clearing his throat, he said lamely, "So what's new with you since I've been gone? I missed you."

  "I missed you, too," she said. He imagined her casting about for something to tell him. "I'm trying to decide whether to join a class-action lawsuit against Tonya Bishop," she said at last.

  "I wasn't going to mention that. Eliot and I were contacted, too."

  "The attorney's been calling me. I haven't called back. Did you know she's a former client of Tonya's?"

  "No. I didn't know that." Through the looming headache and his scramble for the migraine medication that might have a chance of stopping it, Matt tried to judge what this information might signify.

  "Are you going to participate?"

  "I'm going to talk to her."

  "Is Eliot?"

  "Yes. He'd already decided. We didn't talk at all about–about what happened between us. I tried to bring it up once, but he just said he wishes he could stop it happening to anybody else. That was all he would say."

  "I'm of several minds about it."

  "Me, too," Matt said. How bizarre, he thought. An alleged victim and an alleged perp, brought closer by the possibility of vindication and revenge. He was pleased when she said, "Can you come over?"

  "When?"

  To his surprise, she said, "Now, Matt. Come now." There was urgency in her voice. He threw his razor and toothbrush into his briefcase, along with change of shirt and underwear. The eternal optimist, he thought, a little giddily.

  At the last minute he added an early copy of his new book, some of whose poems had to do with Eliot, though obliquely. Maybe he could read to her or to Catherine and get some sense of what was going on.

  "Cinder-ella, dressed in yella, went upstairs to kiss a fella," ran through his mind as he headed for his car, the jump rope rhyme his granddaughter and her friends had sung most often while he'd been there. Not very familiar with jump rope rhymes, he'd been startled by the sexual undertone. "Made a mistake, kissed a snake...."

  That is decidedly creepy, he thought, and certainly has layers of meaning and resonance. From long practice he recognized this as a found phrase that would show up in a poem someday, and stored it away in his memory.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Knowing Matt was on his way provided Nan with the burst of adrenaline she needed. She put on a pot of coffee, took out a Junior's cheesecake to defrost, and wondered if he would bring his razor and a clean shirt in anticipation of staying over. They had laughed at each other about their reluctance to leave anything personal at the other's home and, when one or the other accidentally left something behind, there'd ensued all manner of teasing about what Freud might have said.

  "Na-an," Catherine called out as the doorbell rang.

  "Coming." It wasn't hard to decide which to answer first. Her mother was the helpless one. "Door's open, Matt. Come on in."

  Her heart fluttered as she heard him enter. "Hello?" The sound of his voice made her long to rush into his arms.

  "Just a minute." She willed herself not to resent her mother. "There's coffee and cake in the kitchen, Matt."

  Catherine's "Nanny, Nanny, Nanny" didn't stop when Nan leaned over her. The word seemed to have lost all meaning for both of them. "I'm here, Mom. What do you want?" She didn't mean to sound impatient.

  The old woman's gaze brushed over her without recognition or focus. "I want Nan. I want my daughter. What have you done with my daughter?" Her thin voice rose toward hysteria and she fought Nan off with what little strength she had.

  "Mom, l
ook at me, listen to me, I am Nan, I am your daughter." Nan had to make an effort to keep from sliding into near-hysteria of her own. She knew an attempt at being rational wouldn't work; her mother would know who she was again as mysteriously and randomly as she didn't know her.

  Until the moment recognition vanished forever. Maybe that would turn out to be now. There was something particularly appalling about doing all these personal things for a mother who didn't know who she was.

  "Come on, Mom. Whoever you think I am, I'll help you get cleaned up."

  Catherine could still walk with support, though she sometimes seemed to lose track of how to put one foot in front of the other. With one arm around the frail waist and her mother leaning lightly but desperately on her other forearm, Nan slowly maneuvered the few steps into the bathroom. She sat her mother on the toilet and propped her against the sink to prevent her falling, then waited while she finished relieving herself. She was far more self-conscious than Catherine was. The sight of her mother's scrawny thighs and pale genitalia never failed to shock her, but she didn't dare look away.

  "All done?" But Catherine couldn't tell her. Crouching before her, Nan cleaned and dried her, stood her up, and leaned her against her own shoulder to powder her. So far, there was only a slight reddening of the skin, no bedsores, thank God.

  Matt was waiting. Desire to be with him, to touch him, to bury herself in his arms was muted now by tenderness and horror at her mother's unawareness of her own needs. "I know, Mom, I know," she crooned as she got the soiled gown off and pulled over her mother's head a clean one from the stack in the closet–a stack which, she saw wearily, was dwindling. Catherine was unresisting but unhelpful. "It's okay. Sometimes I don't know what I need, either, or what to do to help myself." Catherine's confused expression so mirrored the way she herself felt that Nan almost laughed.

  As she was settling her mother back into bed, the old woman suddenly announced, "God died."

  "Mom–"

  "It's true. I heard the man say that God died. It's okay, though, because the man said he's gone to Grace. He said his name was George."