Death Gets a Time-Out

by Ayelet Waldman

  When I input the term “False Memory Syndrome” into my search engine, I found a similar range of sites. Some described the work of memory theorists engaged in clinical studies in which they successfully implanted false memories using techniques such as hypnosis, drug therapy, guided imagery, journaling, and even mere repetition—the precise methods used by therapists to uncover repressed memories. The authors of the studies concluded that the very attempt to recover repressed memory itself caused the implantation of false memories. Once false memories are “recalled,” they are indistinguishable from memories of actual events. The False Memory Syndrome camp listed its own support groups, offering succor to parents and families who felt they had been wrongly accused of sexual abuse as a result of a family member’s false memories.

  The whole area of sexual abuse is fraught with the potential for confusion and debate. On one hand, it necessarily involves a perpetrator, someone subject to criminal liability, with a tremendous interest in calling the memories into question. On the other, it’s an accusation that is difficult if not impossible to disprove, especially if the abuse was supposed to have occurred in the distant past. But Lilly hadn’t suffered sexual abuse. Her trauma was a different kind altogether. I wondered if repressed memory really existed in other kinds of situations, for other kinds of ongoing trauma. I input the words “holocaust survivor” and “repressed memory” into my search engine. I found hit after hit. There was an entire body of research into the phenomenon of repressed memory, particularly among children who had survived concentration camps. For many children, their horrific experiences were remembered not at all, or in fragments. Once they began to recall incidents they, like those who claim to have suffered sexual abuse, often suffered hyperrealistic memories complete with intensified emotional and even physical effects.

  Next, I input some key terms used by False Memory theorists, along with Blackmore’s name. He had become a major player, it turned out, in the debate over recovered and false memories, vigorously defending his theories in print. Nonetheless, once the concept of False Memory Syndrome was popularized, and victim recantation cases hit the media, people seemed to have lost interest in exploring repressed memories as a part of drug treatment. Allegations of implanted memories by his own patients also seemed to have done some damage to his business. I found articles describing the clinic’s descent from one of the most popular in California to one with empty beds.

  Finally I found a reference to a short article from the Pasadena Union Tribune reporting a press release by the CCU, announcing that it was terminating its relationship with the Ojai center and opening its own Cosmological Unity Rehabilitation Centers. But try as I might, I couldn’t find any further references to any CCU rehab centers.

  Suddenly, a voice woke me from my Internet trance. “Your time’s up.”

  “Excuse me?” I said, startled. I looked up into the face of the young woman to whom I’d paid my ten dollars. She still looked bored, but now she’d complicated that expression with a frown of irritation.

  “Your time’s up. And we’ve got, like, a line.”

  “Oh, sorry,” I said. I got to my feet and then a sickening realization hit me. “What time is it?” I asked her.

  “Like, twenty after one,” she said.

  I was going to get fined. Again. I was a full half-hour and thirty dollars late by the time I screeched into the parking lot at Isaac’s school. And you know what? It turns out that Ms. Morgenstern doesn’t always smile, after all.

  Thankfully, Isaac fell asleep in the car, giving me time to think about all that I’d discovered. The recovered memory proponents, especially those discussing the particular biology of memory, succeeded in convincing me that it was possible for a highly charged emotional memory to be stored in a different place in the brain than more neutral memories, and thus to be forgotten and recalled in a different manner. The Holocaust studies were absolutely convincing, as were those cases of adults recovering memories of sexual abuse where there was corroboration. At the same time, however, the False Memory Syndrome folks had also found in me a supporter—other cases of recovered memory seemed to me to be more false than real. In particular, I simply wasn’t able to swallow the notion that the countryside of Middle America was littered with the corpses of small children fallen prey to Satanic ritual, no matter how many individuals “remembered” this kind of abuse.

  And what about Lilly’s recovered memories of the killing that was now splashed all over the tabloids and would be in the international press as early as tomorrow? Lilly hadn’t remembered shooting her mother until after she’d been in therapy for years, reenacting the gruesome killing with Barbie dolls. Everyone involved had attributed her failure to remember to the trauma of the event. But maybe there was something else going on. Maybe little Lilly couldn’t remember killing her mother because she hadn’t done it. Maybe someone else had murdered her mother and then had convinced them all that Lilly was responsible, leaving her to spend her entire life tormented by guilt for something she hadn’t done.

  As soon as I got home, I tossed Isaac in front of a video and called Lilly again. I wanted to talk to her about her memories, to explore the possibility that she was suffering from False Memory Syndrome. Her assistant told me that Lilly was “unavailable” even to me. Despite my repeated messages, she didn’t call me back at all that day.

  I was close to pounding the phone with frustration when I felt Peter’s hands kneading the back of my neck.

  “Relax, sweetie,” he said.

  “As if,” I snarled, and was immediately sorry.

  “Whoa!” He raised his hands over his head. “What’s up with you?”

  “Sorry. Sorry. I’m just incredibly tense about all this.” I waved at the newspapers.

  “Will dinner help?” He slipped his hands around my waist and rested them lightly on my belly. “Gotta feed the succubus.”

  Peter always had such lovely nicknames for our kids. I leaned my cheek against his arm. “Yeah. Dinner would help.”

  “Anything special? Any cravings?”

  What I was really craving was an uninterrupted hour of bouncing ideas off my husband’s warped but brilliant brain, but I wasn’t opposed to the idea of a Double Double, animal style, and an order of fries, well done.

  We took our In ‘n’ Out burgers to go, and went to sit in the park across the street. The kids gobbled their food and went to play on the slide. Peter and I sat on the grass where we could see them, and talked.

  “So, basically, what you’re saying is that maybe Lilly’s recovered memories are accurate, and maybe they’re not.”

  I batted his hand away from my pile of French fries. “Hands off. I’m eating for two, remember?” I took a bite of burger and, with my mouth full, continued. “I guess so. I mean, it seems physically possible for a memory as traumatic as the death of your mother to be repressed. On the other hand, even if repressed memory exists, there seems to be something unique about memories of sexual abuse. I don’t know why. Maybe because the abuse is ongoing and the child cannot escape from it.”

  I swallowed the last of my burger and looked over at his.

  “Still hungry?” Peter asked. I thought I caught him glancing at my stomach.

  “I’m pregnant,” I said defensively.

  He pushed the remains of the kids’ burgers toward me. “And you should eat,” he said. “So what kinds of memories can be repressed?”

  “A memory that was subject to repression would have to be an emotionally traumatic memory whose recollection somehow endangered the child, so that repression would be a survival mechanism. It seems like there has to be some kind of ongoing abuse, from which physical escape is impossible. That’s why the child escapes psychologically.”

  “Do you think Lilly’s recovered memory of killing her mother qualifies as that kind of memory?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. The death of her mother was certainly emotionally traumatic, but there wasn’t any ongoing abuse. Unless, of course,
being deprived of your mother counts as an ongoing trauma. It could, I guess.”

  “Is there some test she can take to figure out if it’s an implanted false memory or if it really happened?”

  “No. That’s the thing about false memories. Once they’re implanted, they function like real memories. They become indistinguishable.”

  “So how do you plan to figure out if she really did kill her mother or if she remembered something that didn’t happen?”

  “I guess it comes down to corroboration. Can someone somewhere independently corroborate the version of events that Lilly recalls? She was supposed to have been alone in the room with her mother, so it might not be possible to find the kind of confirmation I’d need to convince me that she really did it. But it’s certainly worth a try.”

  At that moment we heard a shriek of purest horror. We ran into the playground and found Ruby, one hand over her mouth, pointing a trembling finger at her brother, who was squatting in a corner, a look of intense concentration on his face.

  “He’s pooping!” she whispered. “He’s pooping in his pants!”

  Isaac looked vaguely embarrassed.

  “Oh God, Isaac. Are you really pooping?” I said.

  He shook his head. “No,” he said calmly.

  “Thank God,” I said.

  “Not anymore. I’m all done.”

  “Oh honey! Why? You’re a big boy! Why didn’t you ask me or daddy to take you to the bathroom?” I picked him up and was hit with a truly noxious odor.

  “I was too busy,” he said.

  “Too busy doing what?”

  “Pooping.”

  “Yuck!” Ruby wailed. “Yuck yuck yuck!”

  Maybe my indignant daughter would repress the horrifying memory of her brother’s pooping in his pants in a public playground. I know that I’d love to forget what it was like to clean up the mess.

  Twenty-four

  AS expected, the story broke in all the major newspapers the next day. Lilly still wouldn’t take my calls, and frustrated, I decided to go to Ojai. My obligation to tell Jupiter that we were officially off the case would provide convenient cover for a much-needed conversation with Dr. Blackmore.

  For once traffic cooperated with me, and I soon found myself driving up the Pacific Coast Highway with the window rolled down and the salt air tickling my nose. I was making such good time that I gave in to a craving and stopped at a date shake shack. This Southern California delicacy is just what it sounds like—a smoothie made out of sweet, ripe dates. I lingered for a few moments sipping my sweet frozen drink and watching the surfers lying on their boards, bobbing in the waves like seals sunning themselves on shiny white slabs of rock. Out in the distance, a swell threatened to turn into an actual wave. The surfers began paddling furiously, and as the wave caught them, they jumped to their feet, skidding and sliding along the white frosted edge. One by one they crashed into the foam until finally only one was left. The lone surfer twisted and glided, riding the wave onto the shore with a casual grace. The dark wetsuit couldn’t disguise the swell of the surfer’s hips and breasts as she danced into the shallow water and scooped up the board with a practiced flip of her foot and a toss of her long blond hair. Every once in a while it becomes absolutely clear to me why I live in California.

  I tossed my cup into a trashcan and got behind the wheel of my car. Just then, my cell phone rang. It was Peter.

  “Juliet! There was a message from the doctor’s office on the machine when I woke up,” he said.

  It had been two weeks since my CVS. I had been so busy with the case, I hadn’t even noticed the time passing. “Oh my God. What did they say?”

  “Wait. I’ll play it for you.” The phone buzzed hollowly in my ear for a moment, and then I heard the shrill beep of the answering machine. A nasal and rather formal voice said, “This is Santa Monica Obstetrics and Gynecology. The result of your genetic test came back normal.” There was a pause. Then the voice became suddenly human and warm. “Congratulations!”

  Peter got back on the phone. “She’s fine!” he said.

  “How do you know she’s a she?”

  “I just know.”

  “I want to know for sure. Call right now.”

  “Will they tell me? Or do you have to call yourself?”

  After much incompetent fumbling, we managed to figure out how to use our three-way calling function. The receptionist at the doctor’s office switched us over to a nurse, who cheerfully agreed to dig out our file. While we waited, Peter repeated over and over again that it was a girl, and I reminded him that we didn’t care what sex it was, so long as it was healthy. Finally the nurse came back on the line. “Are you sure you want to know?” she asked.

  “Yes!” we shouted in unison.

  “It’s a little girl!” she said.

  Honestly, I hadn’t cared whether it was a boy or a girl. Either would have been wonderful. But to be able, suddenly, to imagine the little daughter growing in my body filled me with an unexpected bliss. I suppose I can understand the desire not to find out your child’s sex; the thrill of surprise, the romance of the unknown. But I’ve always loved knowing beforehand. It says something about the importance of gender, I suppose, that it is only once I have this information that I can really begin to imagine the baby as something other than a vague, fantasy infant. Now I saw a red-headed creature, pink and white and delicious, with my green eyes, and her father’s bee-stung lips. And please God, without her big sister’s temper.

  The nurse congratulated us again and hung up the phone, disconnecting us. I immediately called Peter back.

  “See, I told you,” he said.

  “I love you,” I replied.

  “Me too. Come home soon, okay?”

  That brought home to me again what I was doing, and while my joy didn’t evaporate, it did move to some other corner of my mind, one that wasn’t occupied with death and tragedy. I suppose that’s what life is like for most people—the constant give and take of birth and death, bliss and despair. My two occupations, mother and investigator, certainly made that dichotomy stark.

  I almost didn’t make it onto the grounds of the center. The entrance was blocked by trucks with satellite antennae on the roofs, and reporters milled around, drinking coffee and making periodic attempts to breach the gate. They were kept at bay by a sheriff’s cruiser and two irritated Ventura County cops. It took a good twenty minutes of convincing to get the cops to call the center with my name, and another five for them to agree to admit me. Dr. Blackmore was not there, however. He had, according to Molly, sought refuge at a friend’s house in Malibu and left her to mind the store. I’d probably passed him on the Pacific Coast Highway.

  I was determined to make the best of it. I probably couldn’t have gotten him to talk, but I was pretty confident that I could worm something out of his assistant.

  Molly served me tea on the terrace.

  “What a nightmare,” she said as she passed me a cup. “Poor Jupiter. He’s doing his best to continue his recovery work, but you can imagine—this is an awful distraction.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said. “Was it a terrible shock for you all? I mean, did you know Lilly?”

  Molly shook her head. “I didn’t really know her. I mean, of course I knew about her case. Because of my work with Reese. We work so closely together.”

  I nodded.

  “It’s terrible for her that all this has come out.”

  “And bad for the center, too, I imagine,” I said.

  She frowned. “Why would you say that? I mean if anything it’s more evidence of the fundamental truth of our theories. Repressed memory causes terrible emotional and psychological stress. Lilly’s case highlights the importance of recovering memory.”

  I wrinkled my brow. “Perhaps.” Except for the fact that her memories provided an all-too-compelling motive for murdering Chloe Jones.

  “I’m leaving,” she said. “In a few months. Before the fall semester begins.”

  �
�Really?” I said, surprised. “Was that sudden? I remember you told me that you’d been here a long time.”

  She nodded. “Seven years. I’ve never been sober anywhere else.”

  I smiled encouragingly at her. “Well, I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

  She nodded again. “I’m feeling pretty confident.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  She shrugged. “Reese has arranged for me to teach at Santa Anita Community College. In the Psychology Department. Introduction to Psychology, and a seminar on recovered memory and addiction. They wanted him, but he convinced them that I’m the best person for the job.”

  “Wow, that sounds great,” I said. “Dr. Blackmore must have a lot of confidence in you.”

  “He’s a wonderful man. He really is. You know he gave me joint author credit on thirteen of his articles? Do you know how rare that is? He could have just thanked me in the acknowledgments or something. It’s going to be very difficult for both of us with me gone. I’m just grateful we’ll be able to continue to work on scholarship together.” She seemed suddenly to remember the reason for my visit. “Jupiter will be out of group in about half an hour,” she said.

  “Great. I’m looking forward to seeing him.”

  “I suppose these revelations about Lilly have complicated the case against him.”

  I nodded. “Things have certainly taken some interesting turns. Molly, I wonder if you’d be willing to tell me a little bit about Dr. Blackmore and Chloe.”

  She bit her lip nervously. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you know what their relationship was? Do you know, for example, if he was the person who made it possible for Chloe to enroll at the center?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Chloe’s mother told me that Chloe didn’t have to pay for her treatment here. I was wondering if you knew anything about why that was.” I wasn’t ready to tell Molly any more than that. Yet.

  “Her mother told you that?”

  I nodded.

  “How is she?”