What You Remember I Did

by Janet Berliner

  After a while, she got out of the car and walked toward whatever had been thrown onto the concrete. She didn't know what she'd expected, though after watching the tape she should have guessed. Hand shaking, she picked up the shattered picture frame and peered at the sepia mother-and-daughter image she'd seen so many times on Tonya's desk. The daughter sat in the mother's lap. The mother's hands were hidden. The pose echoed several pictures Nan had of herself and Catherine.

  Placing the photograph in her bag with the tape, she headed inside the building and upstairs to the fifth floor. The door to Tonya's suite was ajar. The receptionist was busy at her desk.

  "'Morning, Nan." She waved toward the inner office, which faced the parking lot. "Go on in."

  Tonya sat alone, staring straight ahead. Her hair was unkempt, her eyes red and bordered by dark circles. Her skin had an ashen cast.

  Nearly overwhelmed by fury mixed with pity, Nan took out the tape and put it on the desk. "Do you visit all of the mothers?"

  Tonya stared at the tape.

  "It's your visit with my mother." She waited, expecting Tonya to take it and, at the very least, protest extenuating circumstances.

  Tonya said nothing. She buzzed for her receptionist and waited, running her hand over the highly polished surface of the dark mahogany table she used as a desk.

  Concern was painted on the receptionist's face more heavily than her Mary Kay makeup. Tonya looked up at her. "I'm not feeling well. Cancel our individual appointments, would you?"

  "I'll do that. Then I'll drive you home. Your car's still in the shop."

  "No, really, I can manage." Tonya shook her head. "Take the day off–"

  "Too much to do, what with the conference and research for your article and...." She stared at the window, then at the desk where the photograph had stood. "I should get that fixed."

  "It'll wait. It'll all wait."

  "What about Group? I called everyone last night like you asked."

  "I'll handle that. Go home."

  The office door swung shut, leaving Nan alone with the therapist in the soundproofed room.

  "Do you, Tonya? Do you visit all of them?" She handed the photograph to the therapist.

  "I was eight years old," Tonya said, so quietly that Nan could barely hear her. With one fingertip she stroked the cheek of the little sepia girl. "I'm not eight any more, but my life isn't worth a damn."

  Rather than sitting in her usual spot on the big, comfortable, leather sofa, Nan chose a high-backed chair.

  "Have you read anything about mirror neurons?" Tonya asked, almost conversationally.

  Nan nodded. "I read Dr. Siegel's book."

  "Parenting from the Inside Out?"

  "Yes."

  The author was the director of the Center for Human Development in Los Angeles, so Nan had figured she could put some stock in what he'd written. If she remembered correctly, and provided she had properly understood what she was reading, therapists could use their own system of what was called mirror neurons to provide a potential bridge between minds. MN systems, as they were called, were used to perform cognitive functions and to mirror the actions of others. She had thought of it as a complicated extrapolation of "Do-As-You-Were-Done-By."

  "I gathered that early developmental failures of MN systems could be the reason behind all manner of developmental problems, even autism," Nan said, somewhat uncertainly.

  "Since you know that much," Tonya said, and Nan felt a dangerous thrill of pride, "you also know that there is purportedly a neurobiological basis for patient-therapist transference and, this is the interesting part, for counter-transference."

  Here it comes, Nan thought. The rationale.

  "Counter-transference," Tonya repeated. "The assumption is that if therapists can use their own mirror systems to understand problems and generate empathy–"

  "Are you talking about transferring emotions about things in their lives onto a client?"

  "Yes. The work on mirror neurons supports and provides scientific basis for Freud's theory that transference is a two-way street."

  "Meaning?" Nan's pulse quickened.

  "Meaning a therapist's reactions to a client could be shaped by the therapist's own earlier relationships. Try to understand, Nan. Please. All those things I thought your mother did to you? It was my mother who did them. To me." Her eyes filled with tears.

  "Are you sure?"

  "No one can be absolutely sure. There are such things as repressed memories. But there are also–"

  "–false memories."

  Tonya nodded. "Memories implanted by a trusted therapist who herself has been victimized. Or believes she remembers being victimized." She closed her eyes. "I don't expect you to absolve me of what I've done, but I want you to know I am terribly sorry."

  As Nan's fury began to dissipate again in the face of Tonya's remorse, she reminded herself how much she and her mother had been harmed by this woman. "I have to go to the licensing board" she said.

  "I'm not licensed. Under state law, therapists don't need to be."

  "Then I'll go to the police."

  Tonya shook her head. "You know, I actually wish it were that simple. This is a matter of personal conscience, not legality. What I've done may be unethical and immoral, but there's no law against it."

  "You can't keep practicing. You're hurting people."

  "I know. I promise I'll do the right thing."

  Nan was tempted to trust her. Tonya seemed instantly aware of her weakening resolve. She looked at her watch. "I called a group session. Would you join us before you hang me out for the vultures?"

  On autopilot, Nan followed Tonya toward the room where most of the support group had already gathered. En route, one of the newer women stopped them.

  "Lorna won't be making it," she said. "Some woman in a white car ran over her mother and never slowed down. She–"

  "Not now," Tonya said.

  They went into the room. Nan sat next to Biker Dude and waited for what she thought of as the opening ceremonies–a whine here, a complaint there, Tonya trying to settle everyone down with a smile and a few kind and skillful words.

  But there were none of the usual rituals–no chitchat, no going around the circle so each could tell what progress or lack thereof had happened during the week. In uneasy silence, the group members looked at Tonya or averted their eyes. Even Biker Dude said nothing.

  "I have an announcement to make." Tonya held up the tape Nan had given her and looked around the room. "This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do."

  She stopped. Say it, Nan silently urged. Say it or I'll say it for you. But she wasn't sure she could.

  "Without meaning to, I've hurt all of you."

  "Hurt us?" somebody exclaimed. "Tonya, you've helped me so much–"

  "No!" Tonya cried, and several people flinched. Nan guessed they'd never heard the therapist speak in anything other than calm and measured tones. "What we discovered together about the memories you had repressed may or may not be true."

  Biker Dude leaped to his feet and shook his fist. "Bullshit! That's bullshit!" Others murmured and gasped.

  "No one can ever know for sure," Tonya said, and Nan thought she would scream at the repetition of the infuriating phrase. "I do know for sure that my own baggage has contaminated my work with all of you."

  The gravelly-voiced woman spoke up. "You mean the memories you've helped us recover aren't true?"

  "I think they're not yours." Tonya took a deep, ragged breath. "I think the memories we've recovered are mine."

  "Oh my God! You were abused?"

  "Who did that to you? Tonya?"

  "Tell me who it was and I'll kill the bastard!" Biker Dude had assumed a fighting stance.

  "You were imposing your experiences on us? Tonya, how could you?"

  Tonya got unsteadily to her feet. "This is the last time you'll see me." For a moment her gaze rested on Nan. Then, weeping, she clutched the tape in both hands and stumbled out of the room.


  "Do you think we have to pay for today?" someone asked, as Nan stood and headed for the door. And life goes on, she thought, opting not to take the elevator. She took the stairs slowly, thinking about Tonya as she put one foot carefully in front of the other. She got into her car and, as if out of nowhere, the pieces fell into place: The old woman at West Nyack who burned to death; the sudden death of Joy's mother; the woman who pulled out her own life-support system; the attack on Catherine and the strange nurse at the hospital. Now Lorna's mother, killed by a woman driving a white car like the one Tonya had in the shop.

  Heart pounding, she took out her cell phone and called 911. "I'll be in the parking lot at the back of the building," she said, after telling them of her suspicions.

  They responded quickly.

  "She's deluded," she told the detective who questioned her. "Dangerously so. But truly caring about those she considers to have been victims, in an admittedly crazy way. I think she saw herself as an avenger, freeing her clients from the memories she created for them out of her own past."

  She was asked to wait while they went upstairs to find Tonya.

  "I don't want to see her," Nan said.

  "You'll have to eventually, Miss. Down the road we'll need you to give a depo and to testify," the man said.

  "Even if she pleads guilty?" Nan asked, though she was sure Tonya would face a death sentence in exchange for the forum her case would provide.

  The man nodded and followed his two fellow officers into the building. Only then did she begin to cry, a stream of tears that did not end until one of the other responders showed her the note that Tonya had asked him to give her:

  How could I help them if I could not help myself?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  "Night and Day, you are the one..."

  Catherine swayed dreamily in Patrick's arms. Her strapless red taffeta gown rustled against his jeans. Never much of a dancer, Patrick looked decidedly uncomfortable and more than ever like their father, who had been as introverted as Catherine was not. Nan watched how their mother gazed up at her dance partner in frank flirtation, leaned her head on his shoulder, rubbed his back and neck with her open left hand.

  "Bathroom," Patrick mumbled as he pulled gently away and slipped out of the room. Catherine didn't skip a beat and held out her arms as if he were still there.

  He's your son. She would never know if her mother had abused Patrick or if she knew now who he was, but that was not what this was about for Catherine. It was about the song and the music and her long-ago days of youth and beauty.

  No one can ever know for sure, Tonya had said. Not Your mother never abused you, not All of this came out of my life and not yours, but No one can know.

  No one can know. Could she accept that, never knowing for sure?

  "Night and Day, you are the one..."

  This was Sunday, family day. For the first time since Catherine had been–Nan thought of it as "enrolled"–here, her whole family had come to visit. Well, almost her whole family. Stuart was away on some kind of political business and Daddy had been gone for a very long time.

  The chair Nan was sitting in faced French doors, which overlooked a pretty back yard. She could see a round redwood table with a center umbrella. There were four chairs around it and several others away to the side. Gary had been sitting outside for over an hour with Ashley and Jordan, who seemed to have forgiven her for her protracted foul mood.

  Patrick joined them, and she watched them chatting and laughing and talking intimately as they always did. Ashley, especially, looked happy and comfortable. She hadn't seemed fazed by her father's departure and the reasons for it, an equanimity Nan found offensive. Jordan knew only that she loved her Grandpa and he loved her, which was as it should be. Nan thought she might go out and join them, then thought maybe she shouldn't.

  "Night and Day, you are the one...."

  Beside her on the sofa, Becca nudged her and said in a stage whisper quite loud enough for anyone in the room to hear, "She's stuck."

  Catherine's roommate sang again, "Night and Day, you are the one..."

  "Mom!" Becca looked hugely amused. "Quick, what's the next line?" But Catherine was batting her lashes at her imaginary dance partner.

  The pianist finished the song with a flourish. "Night and Day," trilled the singer, "you are the one..."

  Trying to enter into the spirit of things, whatever that was, Nan laughed aloud. If you called it "zany" instead of "senile," and thought of Lucille Ball, this could be great fun. Maybe. Her mother looked at her as if she were some rude stranger she never wished to see again.

  Becca laughed, too. "Boy," she said, squinting the way she used to when they were children and something happened that she thought was nuts, "this would drive me crazy in five minutes."

  "Meals are interesting," Nan told her. "Everyone's ultra polite, nodding and smiling and waiting for the other one to finish before they start talking. But it's six totally unrelated conversations. It's surreal."

  "Speaking of surreal." Becca leaned in close for a sisterly chat. "How are things between you and Matt?"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "You love him, you hate him. He's the man you want to spend the rest of your life with, you never want to see him again." Her sister was making pulling-petals-off-a-daisy motions with her fingers. Nan had the old urge to run to their mother and complain that Becca was being mean to her.

  "He's moving," she confided, though she really didn't want to. "To Pennsylvania."

  Becca's eyes widened. "Oh, Nanny! When?"

  "At the end of the semester."

  "Are you going with him? You're going with him, right? Now that Mom is here?"

  "No."

  "Oh, honey, I'm sorry." Becca patted Nan's knee. "You have such bad luck in love, don't you?"

  "He asked me," Nan defended herself. "I said 'no.'"

  "Why in the world would you do that? He's such a catch! Are you crazy, too?"

  Maybe I am, Nan thought bitterly. Maybe I'll never be sane again, thanks to Dr. Tonya Bishop. Aloud, she said airily, "I've got my reasons," and went to sit beside the singer to help her finish at least the stanza if not the entire song.

  The singer, however, had no interest in anything but "Night and Day, you are the one... Night and Day, you are the one... Night and Day..." and paid absolutely no attention to Nan's enthusiastic invitations to keep going.

  And why should she? Nan met the cloudy gray eyes and joined in: "Night and Day, you are the one..."

  Becca gave a little shriek and fled out the back door as Patrick returned. Catherine took the vacated place on the couch and patted the cushion beside her. Pat shook his head. He had apparently had enough. "I gotta go, Ma." He gave her a peck on the cheek so swift she couldn't quite get her hands up in time to hold him for a real kiss. Waving to Nan, he made his escape.

  "Oh, dear," Catherine lamented. "I had children, but they've run off. Do you know where my children are?" She wasn't looking at Nan, who took the opportunity to join the others in the yard. Behind her the happy singing kept on: "Night and Day, you are the one..." and Cole Porter rolled over in his grave.

  Feeling sneaky for having left the room, Nan inspected the six-foot wooden fence that enclosed the outdoor area. It wouldn't have been out of place in any back yard, and she had to look closely to notice the padlock on the gate. Spring flowers were blooming along the edge of the lawn, and a garden had been tilled in one corner. It was well-tended and inviting, yet none of the six residents of the house was out here, only Nan and the various members of her family. She wondered whose benefit the appearance of normalcy was for.

  The appearance of normalcy. Now there's a catchy phrase.

  Becca came toward her, laughing at something Jordan had said. "Where's Mom?"

  Nan jerked her head back toward the house. "In there. Singing."

  Her sister groaned. "Kids'll be home from school. I have to get going."

  "Becca." Nan caught her sister's arm.
>
  "Nan? You okay?"

  "I've been wanting to say–" Nan swallowed. What was it she wanted to say? "I'm sorry I've been so difficult lately. It's been a tough time, but I didn't mean to take it out on you."

  "Oh, sweetheart, you didn't!" They clung to each other for a moment. "I remembered something else," Becca whispered in her ear, as if handing Nan a candy for being a good girl. "I'll tell you later." She kissed her and hurried inside the house.

  Nan did not want another questionable memory, her own or anybody else's. She did not want to have to do anything hard ever again, she thought, joining the family grouping of Jordan, Ashley, and Gary who were watching a squirrel race back and forth across the top of the fence. They made room for her, but warily–and with good reason. She hadn't exactly been Little Miss Sunshine lately.

  Displaying a lot more patience than she felt, she planted her feet and waited in silence until the squirrel leaped onto a branch, chittering scornfully at them. She took a deep breath. "Listen, you guys, I have something to say."

  Gary smiled at her, and she knew that she loved him and that her bitterness had started to ebb. The knowledge came at her with such suddenness and intensity that she almost decided to say no more.

  "What, Grandma?" Jordan asked. "What did you want to say?"

  Nan chittered back at the squirrel, and it shut up and bounded across the fence onto a higher branch of a tree in the neighbors' yard. Jordan giggled. Ashley and Gary were grinning; it had been a long time, Nan knew, since they had seen her play.

  She spread her arms wide. "I want to say thank you for being my family!" she all but shouted. "I want to say I love you!" Ashley, Gary, and Jordan clustered around her, all of them saying they loved her, too. From inside the house, the piano started again, and she heard Catherine leading them all in song: "Night and Day, you are the one..."

  "Lovely as this has been," Nan said, "it's probably time to leave."

  "Do we have to say goodbye?" Ashley asked. "They won't know the difference anyway."

  So much for bonding. "Do whatever pleases you," she said, and went inside. A few minutes later, she had said her farewells and was in her car headed–where? She had no idea. All the years of having to, wanting to go home to take care of her kids and Gary, then of Catherine, had come to an end. The house would be quiet and peaceful, but it would also be empty.