by Wendy Walker
Sean was light. I was the darkness. He was good. I was evil. He was clean. And I was filthy.
I swallowed down my bitter pill and carried on. The child with the box of matches. A match now lit.
Alan—you there? Who’s the person you want me to look into?
Then I said it. I just said it. And I said it loud enough for Sean to hear me.
“Bob Sullivan.”
Chapter Twenty-four
The next day was Tuesday, and I went up to Somers as I always do. I felt relief to be with the criminals, to be yelled at, disrespected, and deceived. My relief concerned me. Were my own crimes so despicable, I now felt deserving of this mistreatment? Was I now destined for a life of martyrdom to pay the debts of my transgressions? I would sooner join poor Glenn Shelby in the grave than live that way.
It was an easy day for Somers. Or maybe it was just easy in comparison to the week I’d had back in Fairview. My usual drug seekers came to abuse my patience. The truly deserving inmates were neither healed nor appreciative of the small comfort my prescriptions afforded them. The staff reminded me how miserable life can be when you aren’t careful to pave the right path for your life—to build yourself a good house. Still, there was nothing about the day that upset me.
I have said very little about my own family, my parents and my sister. It does not seem relevant to the story, and yet much of what I have explained to you involves childhood mishaps and dysfunction. Perhaps to understand why I did the things I did, you should have some more pieces to my own puzzle.
You already know that my parents were lovely, generous people. I see them once a year in the summer. Julie is very good about this. They are a plane ride away, so it requires planning and effort. They are older now and do not like to travel, so the onus is on us to make the journey. My sister is ten years younger, and we have little in common. She is a history professor in London. She never married but seems quite happy with her life. She sends us a card every Christmas with a picture of her and her two Labs.
That seems enough for now. I hope I have satisfied you that my motivations to help my son were driven by the selfish but normal instincts of a parent to protect a child and not anything more devious or corrupt than that. I feel the need to justify myself, and my actions. That is a manifestation of my guilt. I tell my patients that nothing good can come from guilt. It leads us down paths where we do not belong if we are to move forward. It is, by its very nature, a backward-looking emotion. See how it has already taken me from the task at hand?
These were challenging days, and I knew enough to recognize the help I needed to give myself. They say doctors make the worst patients. That is because we exercise such incredible power. The power to heal if we are competent. And the power to hurt if we are not. To throw ourselves in with the lot over whom we exercise that power is a humbling endeavor. Too humbling for some. It requires a very robust ego to maintain the degree of confidence we must have to wield our power. There cannot be hesitation or doubt, or we would never be able to function, to do our jobs. Imagine a knife in your hand, a scalpel; soft flesh beneath the blade. The movement of your hand will determine the very life of the patient on your table. Or, in my case, a pen in hand, words to be written that will send chemicals into the patient’s body, altering the mind. The mind, that controls the body. Admitting weakness. Accepting help. It feels like a slippery slope to a doctor’s demise.
I have not taken much medication in my life, and I did not intend to start. I limited myself to the small doses of lorazepam. I sat with my anxiety the way Jenny had to sit with hers, and Sean with his. I told myself I was building my empathy, that this would make me a better therapist. But I was not so foolish that I failed to recognize the difference. Jenny could afford to cry all day, or put her feelings in the garbage bag and give them to Sean. And Sean had the luxury of walls to pound and miles of road to run. He had Jenny to feed his sense of purpose. I had no such luxuries. I had to show up for work. I had to see my patients. I had to smile at my wife and watch my son’s swim meets. I had to be supportive but strict with his behavior. And I had to implement my plan with moderation. Precision.
The rest of the week passed. I saw Tom on Friday. He was growing more angry at Detective Parsons for not finding the boy with the blue hoodie. I saw Charlotte on Thursday. She had another unsatisfying encounter with Bob, another fight with Tom, but her focus was on her new bond with her daughter. She told me that Jenny had been upset about something after the group session Wednesday night. She asked me if anything had happened, and I lied to her. I worked with Jenny on voices, on the words Dear Lord, oh dear Lord. And I worked with Sean on the red door. Both of them had been distracted. Both of them had concealed something from me. After the group met Wednesday night, they talked for a long time in the hallway. Charlotte was waiting outside in the car. The other patients walked past them. It ended with a long hug, which I observed undetected.
I would not learn about the things that happened away from my office until the following week. But, of course, everything that happened had been my doing.
It was Charlotte who first gave me the information. She called me the following Monday and asked to come in. She rushed past me as I closed the door to my office. She did not wait for me to sit down before she started to cry and talk all at once.
It’s bad! It’s so bad!
“Take a breath, Charlotte. Close your eyes. We have time for you to say everything, to tell me everything, so just … take one moment to gather yourself.”
Okay, okay …
She did as I asked. And I waited, giddy with anticipation. Jason was scheduled to have his interview the following week. Parsons was now aware that my son was on the swim team. That he had been at the party. But I will get to that. I had begun to think, to worry, that nothing I did had taken hold. That the match I’d lit and thrown to the ground simply went out without catching fire to anything. I had little time. Was I wrong? Was there fire? Charlotte opened her eyes, the tears under control. And she answered my question.
This is all going wrong. Your work with Jenny, these memories she’s recovering, they’re all muddled together now, mixed up, and she thinks … Oh God … has she told you? She said she hasn’t told anyone, but it must have happened in here … it must have!
“Charlotte,” I said, “slow down. Tell me what Jenny said, and then I can tell you what I know about it.”
Her mind was running wild. I could see it in her eyes. I imagined she had been up most of the night with her spinning thoughts, and now they were just a tangled web of loose wires.
She thinks it’s Bob. Jenny thinks Bob raped her! Can you imagine?
“I see.” I had practiced the tone of my reaction for days. I know I got it just right, because Charlotte remained focused on the crisis. “How did that happen?”
You tell me! She said you were working on voices, words. She said she remembers Bob’s voice. She played some of his car ads on YouTube for me. And she’s met him dozens of times at the dealerships and in town. He’s Tom’s boss, for God’s sake!
“Did she say when this happened? It’s true we’ve been working on words and voices, but she hasn’t had any recalls in our sessions. I thought it was going to be a dead end.”
Charlotte was holding herself with both arms, rocking back and forth on the sofa. She shook her head from side to side. All very common mannerisms for acute anxiety.
She said it had just come to her. She was really quiet at dinner last night. Then she went to her room and I could hear Bob’s voice in those ads. I went in and asked her what she was doing, and when she turned from the computer, her face was soaked with tears. She looked like she did that day she remembered the moment of the rape.
“So she has remembered something and it feels real to her?”
Of course she remembers something! But she’s remembering all wrong! She’s remembering his voice from that afternoon in the pool house … when Bob helped save her life! But she’s placed it with the night of the rap
e! She thinks she heard his voice while she was being raped, not while she was being saved! Don’t you see! It’s all mixed up!
I rubbed my chin with my hand. I squinted my eyes and looked away. I was surprised and concerned, and in the appropriate doses.
“That is very possible. I had not considered that she would have a memory of that afternoon after she lost consciousness. But it is actually quite possible. People hear things while in comas. They form memories. It all depends on what the brain is doing while it’s unconscious. There are many factors involved.”
I paused and pretended to consider a course of action. Charlotte watched me carefully, as though I were a life raft floating nearby. Would the current bring it to her? Or would it carry it away and leave her to drown?
“Well,” I said, “I have to ask you the one thing you don’t want me to ask. Because while it is possible that her memory of his voice is misplaced, we have to at least rule out—”
Absolutely not! She interrupted me quickly and decisively. There is no chance Bob Sullivan raped my daughter.
“All right,” I said. “Then we will sort this out. She should not have been listening to his voice on those ads with this idea in her head. She knows better than to work on her memory recall outside this office.”
Oh, you have no idea! I went on the browser history. She’s been doing this for days—searching for his ads, listening to them over and over. She even asked Lucas some questions about Bob, whether he ever felt uncomfortable around him. As if he would do something to a ten-year-old boy! She Googled Bob and his family, has them on her alerts.… It’s in her head and now she’s convinced herself it’s a memory.
“When did it start?”
Wednesday. After the group session. That’s the first time she looked it up on the computer. I don’t know … maybe there’s more on her phone, but I don’t want to punish her for this or make her think she did something wrong.
Yes. Wednesday after group. Sean had told her about what he overheard in my office. That was the long conversation. That was the hug. I asked Charlotte about the rest of the week, about her behavior. Jenny had been to town twice since the group session. She had a lot of garbage to give to Sean. And a lot of secrets she’d been keeping from me.
Can you fix this before it goes any further? Before she tells Tom? My God—can you imagine?
“What do you think will happen?”
Are you kidding me? Tom will confront Bob. And then Bob will have no choice but to tell him.
“About the affair? About why his voice is in Jenny’s head?”
Yes! Yes!
I nodded with empathy and conviction. “I can understand why this is so upsetting. Have you told Bob?”
Absolutely not. He would tell Tom. He’d get so far out in front of this … you have no idea. He’s running for office, for Christ’s sake!
“Well, then he wouldn’t want the affair to be public, would he?”
It’s better than a rape accusation.
“Yes, but there is no accusation yet. I’m seeing Jenny later today. I’ll speak to her about this, about how she has likely corrupted her memory recall by listening to those ads. I can’t make her promise not to tell her father. But I can ask her to use discretion and to give us more time to try to find the real memories from that night.”
Charlotte sighed heavily. Thank you! Oh … thank you thank you.
“But, Charlotte, you have to know one thing. I’m not going to tell Jenny that she’s wrong. I don’t know that for sure. I mean, I certainly respect your opinion. But it would be unethical for me to discount her memory entirely without absolutely knowing. What I will try to do, is see if I can help her find the misconnection—in other words, track this voice memory back to a place that isn’t the rape. I doubt she’ll place it anywhere, because of the circumstances. This is very problematic, indeed. And I’m walking a fine line. I have to maintain the integrity of the treatment.”
As long as you get her to realize this voice memory she has is not from the rape. Remind her how many times she’s met Bob and heard his commercials. Maybe she heard it in the car driving to the party? Who knows? Something. Anything! I can’t have Bob accused of rape! And I can’t tell my husband what I’ve been doing. I just can’t. Not with everything going on. He’ll break. Or he’ll leave me. And I’ll be the one who did it.
What a horrible dilemma for Charlotte. She had been making such progress on this front. We had started discussing her dissatisfaction with Bob, and she had been toying with the idea of ending things with him. I had not yet introduced the rest of my plan for her—to tell Tom about her childhood, to integrate the two Charlottes. To eradicate bad Charlotte once and for all. I knew Tom could handle the truth. In fact, knocking Charlotte off her pedestal, seeing her as the beautiful but flawed woman she really was, would give him back a piece of his manhood. There was so much work to be done. And now this terrible interruption.
Charlotte left. I considered the fire that had indeed started to burn from my little match. Sean had told Jenny about Bob being a suspect. Jenny had obsessed about Bob and immersed herself in his image and his voice until she created a false memory. Just like those subjects in the shopping mall experiment who had never really been lost. I felt like a character in a novel, the brilliant but evil professor. Dr. Frankenstein. I felt slightly pleased with myself. I had succeeded in creating a straw man to deflect the attention from my son. I could imagine it all playing out, and I drifted away in a fantasy: Bob would never be charged, but his notoriety, the race for the state legislature—all of it would lead to a media feeding frenzy. And when he was vindicated, there would be hell to pay. Lawsuits would be filed. Parsons would be reprimanded. The investigation would come to a screeching halt. No more questioning of innocent boys. No more “witch” hunts for blue sweatshirts.
When I was done with this disgusting self-indulgence, I lied to myself about what this would mean for Jenny and for Sean and for my work with them. I told myself that they would continue on with the treatment. I turned my fantasy to miraculous moments in my office. Sean jumping up from the sofa, screaming out into the universe, I remember! I know what happened at the red door! Then going home to his wife and his son and living in peace. And for Jenny, I could barely let myself think it. It was like dreaming that I’d cured cancer or brokered world peace. It was too much to allow into my fantasy. I let it come as a flash, and nothing more. I did not dwell in the elation of giving her back that night, that worst nightmare.
I keep returning to the same thought as I reflected on that week. The child with the matches, thinking he was old enough to handle it. I lit the match and let it fly. My fire had started. I could not possibly have predicted the strong wind that would blow in, giving it life, and a power I would not be able to contain.
Chapter Twenty-five
When I saw Jenny later that day, I kept my promise to Charlotte. I did not need to be the advocate anymore. I needed to do what I would have done had I been a disinterested party.
Jenny knew her mother had told me about her memory. About Bob Sullivan. I asked her point-blank how this idea got into her head in the first place.
I don’t want to tell you.
I respected her honesty. And I was grateful for it. What would I have said if she had told me the truth? That Sean had told her what he’d heard in my office? I had only two options to explain why I was discussing Bob Sullivan with Detective Parsons. One was to let Sullivan off the hook. Sean misunderstood.… Sean heard incorrectly.… The second was to offer an explanation as to why I suspected him, which did not exist. Jenny spared me with her refusal to come clean.
“Okay. I won’t make you tell me.”
I couldn’t anyway. I made a promise.
“Your mother feels, and I can’t disagree with her, that it is somewhat unlikely that this memory is accurate. First—because you came across it on your own with your own kind of immersion therapy. And second because Bob Sullivan is an unlikely suspect. He’s running for offi
ce. He has a lot to lose. He’s been married for over thirty years with no scandals, nothing in his closet of this nature. And he’s your father’s boss, so there would be a high probability of you recognizing him.”
So what? Most women are raped by someone they know. Half the women in group were raped by someone they know.
Jenny’s voice was different on that Monday. She was speaking to me not like I was the one person who could save her, but rather like I was an outsider who didn’t understand. I didn’t like it. I wanted to change it. I could not lose what we had worked so hard to create.
“You know what? You’re right. I’m going to be totally honest with you. The work we’re doing here is very controversial. Remember how I told you about the false memory people? How they think recalling memories can be corrupted by suggestion? And how false memories can then be formed? Like the people who were told they were lost in the mall.”
Yeah.
“So, now we have a situation where suggestions have been brought into this process. You don’t have to tell me now, but at least concede that a suggestion entered and that you have bolstered that by immersing yourself in that suggestion.”
Jenny slumped down in the cushions. I could see she was conflicted.
“My fear is that if we move too quickly with this new theory, and it turns out to be a false memory, then nothing you ever remember again will be given any credibility. And even you will have trouble believing. So let’s try to weed out the suggestions, do our work quietly, and make absolutely sure about this before telling anyone else.”
Like the police?
“Yes.”
And even my dad?
“I can’t tell you what to do with any of this. What do you think your father will do if you tell him?”
I think he’ll call the police. Or worse.
“Worse?”