All Is Not Forgotten

by Wendy Walker

  The information entered my brain. The sweatshirt. My wife’s fear about our son being at that party. Her fear infecting me, making me call that lawyer. Then it was real, this risk to our own family from that night. The new facts entered my brain, and within seconds the rebellion was lost and the realignment was in place. They were painful seconds. Like a tooth being pulled.

  I found this in his closet.

  She got up and walked to where I was standing. She got close to me and pressed the sweatshirt into my chest.

  The lawyer called this morning. He told me one of the other boys had his interview today and they asked him about a blue sweatshirt with a red bird. He told me that Jason would be asked this same question and did I know how he would answer. I bought him a hoodie for his birthday that year, remember?

  I did not remember. It had not been important to me then.

  We got it on our trip to Atlanta. That conference you had, remember? We had to go to that Hawks game and we got him this. The red bird—it’s a hawk! Look.

  She held up the sweatshirt. There was a red hawk on the front and the back. The name of the team was in white, but the letters were small. On the back was just a hawk. I took hold of her arms and looked at her sternly.

  “What did you tell him?”

  I told him the truth. That Jason had a blue hoodie with a red hawk on it.

  “Oh, Jesus!” I let go of her arms and turned away, thinking, thinking.

  Did you know about this? Did you know they were looking for a boy in a blue sweatshirt? Did she remember? You would tell me, wouldn’t you?

  “I didn’t know about the sweatshirt.”

  Yes, I know. The lies continued.

  She blabbered on and on. What was I supposed to do? He’s our lawyer! We can’t have Jason lie. What if someone remembers? He wore that thing all spring. If he lies and they find out he lied, he’ll look guilty.

  “Of what?” I asked. “No one would believe Jason raped Jenny Kramer.”

  Think about it, Alan! He’s a swimmer. He shaves his legs and arms.… Maybe he shaves everything.… What if he does? What if they ask him and he has to admit he shaves everywhere?

  I waved her off. “The whole goddamned team shaves! Half of them were at that party. That doesn’t mean anything!”

  But now this! She held out the blue sweatshirt. When I got off the phone, I ran upstairs and started going through his things. I couldn’t remember him wearing that sweatshirt since that spring. It wasn’t there anywhere. Not in the laundry, or his drawers. Then I just started tearing apart his room. I started to think, maybe it’s gone. Maybe he’d lost it, and maybe he’d lost it before the party! Then he couldn’t have been wearing it that night. And then … God! I started digging through all the crap on the floor of his closet. And there was this plastic bag and it had the sweatshirt!

  “Why was it in the bag? Was that all there was?” I was shifting then to damage control.

  There were some sweatpants and socks and a pair of boxers. Sometimes he does that when he changes at the pool. He puts his school clothes in a bag, and then he changes into whatever he’s wearing to go out after.

  “Where are they? Where’s the rest of it?”

  I followed her into the laundry room, where she’d placed the rest of the clothing into the machine. She hadn’t started it yet.

  I didn’t know what to do. If I should wash everything or throw it out. It all smells like the pool.

  She handed me the sweatshirt then, and I pressed it to my nose without thinking. It smelled of the pool where Jason spends most of his free time. It smelled of chlorine. You can already see where this is going.

  I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. I reasoned with myself why I should tell her, though the real reason had nothing to do with reason. It was my purely selfish desire not to be alone with my agony.

  “Jenny Kramer had a recall yesterday. A memory from the night of the rape.”

  Julie looked at me warily.

  “It was the bleach, Julie. He smelled of bleach.”

  Her eyes grew wide then as her hand drew slowly through the air to cover her mouth. That’s three things. Three things they could use against him!

  “There were a lot of swimmers at that party. Half the team, you said.”

  We both looked at the sweatshirt.

  “He didn’t do it,” I said.

  I know that.

  “Do you? Do you know that the way I do? I know it! In my bones and in my heart. This man was a sociopath. Do you understand?”

  Of course I do!

  “He held her face into the ground. He gripped her neck and defiled her over and over for an hour!”

  I know … I know.

  “And then he took a stick, a sharp stick, and whittled away at her, at her flesh until he was all the way through her skin, every layer of skin!”

  Okay! Just stop! Stop it. I know what he did to that poor girl!

  “Then you can’t possibly be worried that our son did this.”

  She took a long breath then and waited for me to calm down. I was indignant, and it was wrong of me to direct it at her. It didn’t matter what we thought, what we knew about our son. The world would accuse him, would doubt him. The world would want to believe. Tom Kramer would want to believe. Charlotte would want to believe. Jenny would want to believe. A thought rushed in, and I was too overwhelmed to stop it from coming back out.

  “They won’t let me treat her anymore. If this goes any further. I’ll be out of the case. I won’t be able to help her get her memory back.”

  Julie looked at me with contempt. That’s what you’re thinking? Our son could be accused of a brutal rape. His life could be ruined, and that’s what you’re thinking?

  “He didn’t do it.”

  It doesn’t matter, Alan. You know what will happen. The case will never get solved, and the suspicion will hang over him for the rest of his life!

  She was right on all fronts. I don’t know why my mind went to the case and to treating Jenny. My selfishness was more powerful than I had imagined.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  What do we do?

  I didn’t have all the answers.

  “Call the lawyer back. Tell him you were wrong. The sweatshirt was white with the red hawk. Anything. Just tell him you were wrong and that you’re so relieved. I don’t trust him. He could help his other clients by throwing Jason under the bus. It’s too great a conflict now. We’ll talk to Jason ourselves. We’ll come up with an answer that will work. Not a lie, but some kind of answer.”

  Julie agreed. She asked me what then? Surely someone would remember the sweatshirt. And now with the chlorine and the shaving—those would go together, wouldn’t they? Parsons and Tom Kramer would be on that trail, on the trail of a swimmer. It made perfect sense. Every kid on the team who’d been at the party would be scrambling to get out of the way of that train.

  As I’ve said, I didn’t have all the answers.

  But I would.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Remembering these days and recounting them is extremely difficult. They were fraught with emotion. Fear, mostly. They are not well organized in my mind.

  I saw Jenny on a Wednesday. She recalled that one memory. She remembered the bleach. The next day I saw the Kramers together to discuss this finding. Cruz Demarco had already admitted being at the party and said he’d seen a boy with a blue hoodie with a red bird on it walking into the woods. I have discussed this as well. Tom made me promise I would work on recovering a memory about the blue hoodie now that we’d found one memory of that night. The Kramers went home that afternoon. Thursday afternoon. Tom spent the rest of the day on the computer, searching for blue hoodies with red birds. Charlotte began to see the connection between her experience with her stepfather and what happened to her daughter. She reexperienced that night on the sofa through Jenny’s one recalled memory, and she held her daughter in her arms and tried to give her comfort and hope. Then she gave some to he
rself by making love to her husband. I went home to my wife and the blue hoodie with the red hawk.

  The next day, Friday, Charlotte came for her session. Tom would come in later that day. I have already told you some of it, how she spoke about her talk with Jenny and how I did her the disservice of feeding her conclusions. Now you understand why I was so incompetent.

  After seeing Charlotte at eight thirty that Friday, I had been a bundle of nerves. Two patients came and went, and I faked interest in their problems. It was a morning of frivolity. Mrs. C was having a dispute with her neighbor over a fence. She was chronically depressed, but this was what she wanted to discuss. The neighbor. The fence. Mr. P had insomnia again. He didn’t want to take Ambien. I spent the hour addressing his moronic concerns. Do you or don’t you want to sleep? That’s what I wanted to say to him. But I did not. I exercised miraculous self-control, waiting for my wife to call.

  She called at eleven fifteen. I took the call even though Mr. P was in my office. I told him it was a patient emergency. Lies, lies, lies.

  I told the lawyer the sweatshirt was dark purple and that it had red letters, not a red bird. I did what you said. I told him I was so relieved.

  “Did he believe you?”

  I think so. He seemed to. He said they were interviewing three more kids today and that Jason wasn’t on the list yet. He spoke directly to Detective Parsons.

  “Did he say how much time we have?”

  He said it would be at least a week. But I think if we tell them he has a swim meet next Saturday and final exams that maybe we can push it back even more.

  “Okay, sweetheart. That’s good.”

  She paused. I could hear her sighing. She was tired from worrying all night. You’ll talk to him tonight?

  “Yes. As soon as I get home. Make sure he doesn’t go out, okay?”

  I will. And the clothes?

  “What clothes?”

  The clothes … the … oh. Okay.

  “You see?”

  Yes. I’ll go through the photos on the computer. You’ll get his phone?

  “Yes. Tonight when we speak. And the social media. I’ll have him check everything.”

  Okay. I love you.

  “And I love you. Good-bye.”

  This was all I had at the moment. Get rid of the clothes, that damn blue sweatshirt. Get rid of all pictures of Jason in the sweatshirt. He would have to be informed and then, based on what had happened that night, he would have to have a story. The world is not a just place. I have already said this many times. I am reminded of it every week when I go to Somers. I am reminded of it when I think about my patient, Glenn Shelby. I believe I’ve also mentioned that Shelby would eventually commit suicide.

  That is not to say there is never justice, or fairness, or righteousness. It is to say, rather, that you cannot count on such things and so you must protect yourself any way you can. I knew I would have to sit with my son and open his eyes. I would have to explain to him that he does not remember what he wore to that party and that he was not near the woods and that he did not see the blue car or Cruz Demarco. I would have to explain to him that he doesn’t remember what happened to his blue sweatshirt, or if he ever had one. He has dozens of sweatshirts. I would have to explain that these small transgressions against the law and his own integrity were necessary for his survival in this unjust world. I told myself this was a good thing. It was giving me a chance to educate my son before something bad happened. I had started to calm down. Jason did not commit this crime, and now he would not be falsely accused by some low-life drug dealer.

  My next call was to Detective Parsons. It was not prudent. I was not in the best state of mind. But I had access to the detective, to information, with an ongoing cover story, and I could not stop myself. Knowing about the inner workings of the mind, even one’s own, does not imbue the power to control it.

  This call is what sent me over the edge.

  Hey, Alan. Good to hear from you. Anything else on your end? Does she remember the blue hoodie?

  “I haven’t seen her since the last session. That was Wednesday. She’s coming in this afternoon. I imagine Tom has told you about the last session?”

  She had some kind of a flashback. She smelled bleach.

  “It wasn’t a flashback. It was a memory. An actual memory of the actual event.”

  Okay. Whatever you want to call it. It’s helpful. Too bad she didn’t see a face. She didn’t, right? So I was thinking we should be looking at the swim team again. A lot of swimmers were at the party that night. I got one of my men reading through the interviews from last year. I’m still waiting on a roster from the school—

  “Good, very good. But we need to be very careful here. I would really like to do some more work with her before jumping to conclusions. Memories tend to be clustered together, each piece from one event. Like the chapters of a book. It is possible the bleach smell was from chapter four—in the bathroom, perhaps—and the rape in chapter ten. If I can just get the other chapters, we might be able to put them in the right order and—”

  Do whatever you need to do, Alan. There’s no harm in circling back with the swim team and anyone who interacted with them that night. Go at this from two sides, right? I don’t like it. Believe me. I’m not winning any popularity contests in Fairview by looking at our own kids. But I have to do my job.

  “Yes. Of course.” My heart was in my throat. I almost started to tell him about Jason—not the sweatshirt, but that Jason was on the swim team and had been to the party. I did not know Parsons last year. When Jason was interviewed, I had been with him but it was a young female officer who spoke to us. It had been in our home. It had been very informal. She didn’t take more than one line of notes, because Jason had not seen anything helpful. I fully expected Parsons to be surprised by this disclosure. The longer I withheld it, the more surprising it would be. And at some point, surprise becomes suspicion.

  But then Parsons spoke. Listen. Tom said he’s coming to see you today. Maybe you can be the one to break the news to him. It’s about Demarco.

  “What is it?”

  He made bail. But that’s not it. We pressed hard on that kid. John Vincent—you know, the kid who bought the drugs from him outside the school. Threatened to put some charges together. His lawyer brought us a statement. Clears Demarco of the rape. Puts him somewhere else with John Vincent.

  “Somewhere else? How is that possible? He told you he saw the man with the blue hoodie go into the woods around nine. And the neighbor’s kid saw his car, his empty car around eight forty-five. And what about that boy? Did you ask him about the man with the hoodie? Demarco is making all this up. Don’t you see?” I have to admit that at this point, I had foolishly thought I saw a way out. I was quickly corrected.

  Yeah, yeah … course we did. He didn’t see any kid walking into the woods. But listen. Demarco was at the back door of the house around eight thirty, talking to some kids. I’ve got two who admit they were offered weed. I’m sure the little pricks bought the weed, but whatever. We have independent corroborating stories putting Demarco at the house at eight thirty. John Vincent claims he met Demarco back at his car at nine fifteen and drove with him to Cranston to buy coke. I think Vincent might be dealing for Demarco. We should have picked him up that day outside the school. Bet he had more in that bag than a couple of joints.

  “Wait. So what are you saying?”

  I’m saying Demarco must have made it back to his car around nine—after Teddy Duncan passed by and right when he saw the kid with the blue hoodie go into the woods. Then, a few minutes later, as they had planned, John Vincent comes down from the house and gets in the car. They go to buy the coke in Cranston. They’re gone for an hour.

  “That … that’s just a story. Sounds very convenient to me. They fit everything into the facts they were given. Think about it! You can’t believe anything either of them is saying.”

  Nah—listen. The Vincent kid said they stopped for gas and cigarettes. He used
his debit card. We have the bank record—the ten bucks charged at 9:37 the night of the rape. And we got the security tape. Shows the Civic, Demarco, and Vincent at the gas station. They were six miles from those woods. Demarco didn’t want to tell us about driving some teenager to buy coke. That’s another felony charge. Child endangerment. We got him on it now, though. The DA might give Vincent a walk for testifying. Demarco’s gonna do some time.

  “Just not for the rape.”

  No—not for the rape. But we’ve got the hoodie, right? And now we’ve got the bleach and the memories that are coming back. I’m disappointed, too. Believe me. I thought finding that Civic was the end of this.

  “Yes. Tom did as well.”

  Looks like it’s just the beginning all over again. Gonna take a hard look at the swim team. Jesus Christ. I never thought one of our kids could have done this. The brutality. The carving. Shit. I want to find this guy, I do. I just don’t want to find him here. And it’s not looking like she’ll remember a face, right? It’s all gonna be circumstantial.

  I was on the verge of having an anxiety attack. It was not the right state of mind in which to make any decisions about anything. I talked myself down from telling Parsons about Jason. Thankfully, I had the self-discipline to say nothing else except an appropriate good-bye. I hung up the phone and pulled open my desk drawer. I took out one half milligram of lorazepam, very mild, and swallowed it. I needed to be calm so I could think.

  I had two chances walking through my door later that day—Tom and then Jenny. I let the pill kick in; then I calmed myself with slow, steady breathing. I stared at an object, the sticker on the tulip plant. It was the first thing that came to mind. Then I made a mental assessment of everything I had to work with.

  First was Tom. We had made significant progress in the three months we’d had together. You already know about the issue he had with his ego and how that affected his marriage and his job, and how it stemmed from his childhood. I have described as well my plan for his treatment. Surprisingly, he had already begun to channel some of his anger toward his parents. He had been remembering some of the things they said to him when he was just a boy. How his father would always say, “How do you feel about how you did?” and how his mother would say, “Not everyone is good at everything,” and, “We have to accept who we are and learn to love ourselves, even with our limitations.” And yet neither of them had ever accepted their own shortcomings. When his father was passed over not once, but three times, for Department Chair, they would speak harshly about the committee members, even mocking them personally—a bad hairpiece, or foul breath, or crooked teeth, or an ugly wife. And his mother had harsh words for her tennis partners—they were lazy, fat, and always stupid. Everyone was stupid compared to them. Tom had been recalling all sorts of bad behavior by his parents that contradicted their words and the highbrow philosophy they touted.