What You Remember I Did (15 page)

"I know what time it is," Nan snapped.

Jordan stared at her, unwrapped the pink boa from around her neck, and stepped out of the gown, the sweats underneath seeming drab and even forlorn by comparison. "You're no fun. I'm going home."

Much as she loved Jordan, the idea of sending her home didn't feel all bad. Her mother and Jordan were both seriously getting on her nerves. "I can't leave Grams."

"Mom can come and get me."

"Do what you want, Jordan," she said, more sharply than she intended. "I'm too tired to fight."

"Why are you so tired?"

Because I've been climbing an emotional Kilimanjaro, Nan thought, but did not say. Instead she offered to make tea. "It'll wash down the candy," she said.

Jordon made a face. Catherine clapped her hands. "Let's drink tea and watch
The King and I
." She burst into a raucous chorus of "Getting to Know You," mugging shamelessly as she warbled, "Getting to know you/Getting to know all about you." On the third reprise, Nan joined in, and then so did Jordan, and they were all laughing.

Evenings like this with her mother had become rare, mostly because of her own moods. Nan put on the movie and settled down to watch. Catherine didn't miss a second, even getting up to dance with Jordan when the King and Anna waltzed in the palace ballroom.

Most of the rest of the week was a mess. Three consecutive rain days were one too many for Nan. On the first, she completed her accumulated paperwork. On the second, she took Catherine and herself for haircuts. By the third, she was ready to go to a bar and pick up a man, any man, to satisfy her raging libido which tennis apparently had kept under some degree of control. But the courts remained soggy and she stayed frustrated.

Leaving Catherine with Liz, she went to the school gym and worked out on the machines, which only made things worse. She hadn't noticed the instructors before; today their musk cologne was a come-on.

Drained of enthusiasm and energy, she dismounted the machine she'd been fighting, picked up her towel, and headed in the direction of the Spa.

"Nan!"

"Dan!" They laughed. "Playing hooky?" Nan asked.

Dan shook his head. "No classes till late afternoon. I thought I'd boil myself for a while. You know...spa, sauna."

"Pity they separate the sexes." The words were out before she realized how they might sound.

Dan grinned. "Yeah. Pity. We could soak together."

Now there was a splendid idea, Nan thought, taking in Dan's trim form. Funny how she'd never noticed what good shape he was in. His wife was a lucky lady. "Does Rhoda come down here, too?"

"Rhoda?" He laughed. "She'd like to outlaw gyms. Thinks they're nothing but a brothel substitute for health freaks. What about Matt?" He looked around, as if expecting to see him.

"We're–let's say we're cooling things a little at the moment." "
Cooling
"
might not be the right word
, she thought wryly.

"Big fight?"

Nan couldn't bring herself to think about the terrible altercation, let alone tell Dan about it. "Not really. More like too much, too soon."

He nodded sagely. "Look. I can skip this. Why don't we get a drink or a cup of good coffee somewhere and talk."

"I'm kind of tired of talking," Nan said, flirting openly. "But a room at the Inn might be fun." She liked Rhoda, a lot, but what the hell. Dan was her friend. And damn good-looking.

"You're kidding, right?" Dan's laugh was forced. "That
was
a joke?"

"Not entirely."

"Nan, what are you doing?"

"What?" She put her hand on his arm. In the course of their friendship she must have done that a hundred times. But now something was different between them. "You're an attractive man. I'm–deprived of something I've come to enjoy rather a lot. Rhoda doesn't need to know."

He removed her hand, squeezed it lightly, and moved away from her. "You know better than that."

Face hot, Nan went after him. "Sorry, Dan, I'm so sorry. I don't know why I said that. I'm–I'm having a really terrible time these days."

For a moment she thought he would just keep going, and she'd have lost a dear friend on top of everything else. But he turned and flashed her his trademark boyish grin. "That coffee offer's open."

"I can't. I don't think I should. I'd better go home."

Dan came back and gingerly put his arm around her. "Friends?" He shook her gently.

She made herself smile up at him. "Friends," she said, and gave him a quick one-arm hug and left before she burst into tears or stuck her tongue in his mouth.

Though she was embarrassed about coming on to Dan, Nan was also amused and gratified. There was something grown up about taking a moment in time–with no pretense at a past or a future–and making it hers.

Maybe this meant she was getting better, ‘getting' being the operative word. She had a long way to go. She'd seen Matt since the incident with Dan, even slept with him, but it wasn't the same. He was distant, wary, and she couldn't blame him.

Lying in bed, he had asked her again about Tonya, with patent irritation, and was clearly not satisfied by her response. She had fallen silent and they didn't talk much about that or anything else until later, when she was getting ready to go home.

"I'm going to try to contact them, Nan."

There was no question that he meant Eliot and his family. She stopped, dangling her pantyhose midway between the rug next to the bed and the toe she had positioned to slip into its foot. This was something important, but all she could do was stare at the stockings and think how much she liked the sand color and that she definitely preferred reinforced toes.

"Nan?" He waited. So did she.

Finally she said, "It's the holidays."

"Do you miss Gary?"

"Of course I do. We had good times. We loved each other."

She took a breath, opened her mouth as if to continue and, realizing she had nothing to say, exhaled and resumed getting dressed. What kind of person had she become, that she could resent Matt's wanting to meet his daughter-in-law and his grandchildren? She should be encouraging him.

Unless, of course, he really was a child molester.

Even if he was innocent, which mostly she believed he was, from what she'd learned about FMS and RMS nothing could happen until Eliot realized that his memories were false and admitted it, or his father admitted that he was guilty of molestation. Thus far, she had found little in the literature to indicate a consistent trigger for either happening. She made a mental note to make a physical note to ask Tonya about that when she went back to see her.

If she went back to see her. She had missed her last appointment and not made another.

Nor did she and Matt have any new plans. He had mumbled something about Saturday. She had said something about the holidays. They'd left it at that.

For Nan, the approach of the holiday season had always been a relief. It signaled the end of her teaching year until the Spring. Although she coached her competitive students at the indoor courts, as much to keep herself in shape as for their sakes, the problems and complications of everyday life tended to be put on hold. This year, however, nothing could soften her issues with her mother and with Matt.

She bought early gifts and wrapped and labeled them joylessly, without the usual satisfaction of getting ahead of the holiday mania. She had lowlights put in her hair and bought a new coat to match, thinking a purely frivolous act might make her smile. All any of it did was increase her childish wish to run away from home.

A call from Ashley about arrangements for Thanksgiving put the cherry on her sullen cake. "I called Matt to ask him to join us for dinner," Ashley told her breezily. "He point blank refused. Politely, but adamantly."

"You asked him without checking with me first?"

Ashley was adamant. "No one should be alone on Thanksgiving, Mom. Besides, Grams and Jordan both asked me to invite him."

"Matt and I are..." Nan tried to find the right word. "We're chilling."

Ashley laughed. "Chilling?"

"Well. Yes. Chilling. Letting things cool off." Why she persisted in using phrases like that was beyond her, when every emotion she had about Matt was fiery.

"Why would you want to do that? No. Don't answer. It's none of my beeswax, as you used to say."

"It was all happening too fast, Ash. But I guess Thanksgiving would have been...okay. Listen, I'm not sure about Gram."

"Is she ill?"

"She's...trick-or-treat," Nan said. "Up one moment, down the next. I think the drive would tire her more than it's worth." In fact, her mother was doing better than she was these days.

She sat there for a moment after saying good-bye to her daughter, and then called Matt, not sure what she wanted from him.

"It was nice of Ashley to think of me." His voice was tentative. "Honestly, I don't think Catherine will be up to going. What if I stay with her so you can go. We'll have a lovely time, the two of us."

"You're still angry with me, aren't you?"

"I don't know that angry is the right word. I'm upset, and protective of your mother. What are you going to do? Ask Tonya-the-therapist if that's abnormal?"

Instead of slamming down the receiver, Nan lit up. Her mother coughed and sighed loudly. Nan crushed the cigarette in the ashtray. "I'm going to go now. If you change your mind–"

"I won't."

She said a quiet goodbye and replaced the receiver in its cradle. "Was that Matt?" Catherine demanded. "Change his mind about what?"

This, Nan thought, was going to be one of those nights. She turned on a home shopping channel, hoping to divert herself, and turned it off again. Jewelry had never been her thing. Gary had bought her some lovely stuff, most of which lay gathering dust and tarnish in the jewelry chest they'd found one year on a daytrip to the King of Prussia Mall.

Maybe that was what she needed. A day of mindless wandering around what had, until recently, been the largest mall in America. Or maybe she'd call her friend Karen in New Hope and have lunch with her. Talk out the whole thing about Matt. That was what she really needed more than anything else–a non-judgmental friend she could use as a sounding board. There was certainly no one she could talk to around here. Not Dan, after her little performance in the gym; not her daughter or her siblings who had their own attitudes about her. What she wanted was a friend who had no connection with the players or the game.

Karen replied right away to her email.
Love to see you but can't this week. Going out of town
. She suggested a date after she got back, which Nan quickly confirmed, then shot an email to
Becca
asking her to stay with their mother after Liz left that day.

Feeling better already, Nan made herself a cup of coffee and checked the address of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. She had remembered correctly; it was on Market Street in Philadelphia, a short drive from New Hope. She could go and see them after visiting Karen. Ask them questions for which she could find no answers elsewhere.

Things were falling into place. Tonight she would read Professor Elizabeth Loftus's "The Myth of Repressed Memory." For the rest of the time between now and New Hope, she'd switch sides. Find out why a group, speaking of Loftus, had told the Press, "We're going to kill that bitch." Why a vocal group argued that the FMSF was bogus. Why the Seventh Day Adventists and Scientologists were so vehemently opposed to them. There were even massage therapists who claimed to release buried memories, and evidence that repressed memories inevitably resulted in chronic pain of unknown origin.

What there wasn't, she thought ten days later on her approach to New Hope, was a sure way to prove innocence or guilt.

The day was beautiful, in a way that only a Fall day could be. Crisp air, warm sun, gold and orange and red foliage, and the promise of girl-talk conspired to make her feel what she barely recognized as a whisper of something positive.

She raised the sound on her car radio and sang along with an old Dean Martin easy-listening version of "Under the Bridges of Paris," remembering Paris in autumn with Gary, walking from Ile de la
Cité
, past the Louvre, through
Tuillerie
Gardens toward the Champs
Elysée
. Such unexpected drifts of memory were why she often chose the radio, where she didn't know what would come next, over a more predictable CD. The Paris-in-autumn-with-Gary memory was lovely, with only a slight frisson of pain. She really was getting better.

Pulling into Karen's driveway, she listened to the last notes fade away and turned off the engine. "Hey, you," Karen called out through the open window.

"Hey, you." Nan grinned. They'd greeted each other that way since their college days.

Karen opened the front door and charged toward the car. "I'm starving. Lunch is ready. Let's talk while we eat?"

"Eat while we talk." Karen was always hungry, and thin. Grateful that some things didn't change, Nan got out of the car, hugged her friend, and followed her inside.