What You Remember I Did (19 page)

"I don't think so."

"Yes, yes, his name is Matthew. Matt helped me pick him out for you, and I promised."

"Matt helped you?" There was something both touching and sinister about the thought of the two of them searching the aisles of Wal-Mart together for just the right toy for her.
It's just a stuffed animal
, she told herself sternly. And it was cute. She rubbed her cheek against its plush, and Catherine almost swooned with delight.

They were in the car and Nan was buckling Catherine in when her mother's eyes suddenly widened. "My pie!"

"Pardon?"

"My pumpkin pie! Can't forget my pie!"

"What are you talking about?"

"I made a pumpkin pie for Christmas dinner. I almost forgot. It's on top of my dresser, Nanny, go get it like a good girl."

"You made a pumpkin pie? By yourself?"

"Of course, by myself. I've been making pumpkin pies since before you were a glimmer in your daddy's eye."

After a moment Nan conceded defeat. Probably it wasn't safe to leave her mother alone in the car, but she couldn't face the prolonged physical intimacy of unbuckling her seatbelt and buckling it again. She hurried into the house and into Catherine's room. The pie was on the dresser, as Catherine had said, under a white lace chemise. Sometimes her mother seemed to know exactly what she was doing. Who knew, though, what was in it? She prayed that Liz had at least been in the kitchen while the thing was being made.

Catherine sang Christmas carols all the way to Matt's house. She got tangled up in "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and was singing "Five golden rings" over and over when Matt opened his door to them. He put his arms around her and they intoned it together, drawing out the four syllables until they were both out of breath. Nan thought she might jump out of her skin.

Dinner had been delivered from the natural foods market downtown and was quite good. She made it through the meal without having to say much. Matt gave her a small bottle of her favorite perfume–personal and impersonal at the same time. She gave him the book, and the magnifying glass from her mother. At Catherine's plate, Matt had placed a single chocolate rose. She raised it to her lips and gazed at him. He blew her a kiss.

Nan excused herself and hid in the bathroom as long as she dared. When she came out, Matt was cleaning up in the kitchen and Catherine was nowhere to be seen. She stayed in the doorway to ask, "Where's Mom?"

Matt didn't turn. "She was tired, so I made a place for her on the couch in my study." Which left the two of them alone.
Great
. Unwillingly, she asked what she could do to help. "Not a thing," he told her. "It's easier to do it myself. I won't be long."

How dare he be so light-hearted when she was so miserable? Though she'd been at his place many times, she felt suddenly awkward here, even unsafe. Not knowing where she should be, she went into his study on the pretext of checking on her mother and closed the door behind her. Catherine was asleep, breathing peacefully, the red dress shining where it spilled out from under the afghan. Nan looked down at her for a moment. Then, without having planned it and without knowing what she was looking for, she found herself going through Matt's things.

The items in the desk were what she'd have expected: lecture notes, a month-at-a-glance planner, poetry manuscripts. She didn't read the poems. She didn't want to know what was in his heart or on his mind.

She swiveled in the chair to gaze around the room. Catherine hummed in her sleep. Matt was banging on a pan to "Little Drummer Boy." Across the room was a sideboard with many drawers and doors. Nan went and crouched before it. Inside the creaky door on the left were two manuscript boxes which turned out to hold letters, from Eliot to Matt in one and from Matt to Eliot in the other, all of them at least six years old, some from more than a decade ago. Now and again glancing furtively at her mother and listening for Matt, Nan scanned a few.

Eliot's were furious and detailed accusations of what he insisted his father had done to him. Nan could hardly bear to read them and was hungry for more. Matt's were firm denials, heartbroken apologies for anything he'd done that might have been misconstrued, outraged self-defenses, terse explanations, pleas.

Nan put the letters back in the boxes, hoping there hadn't been a particular order to them, and pulled out a black folder. Its pockets were full of Matt's poems. He hadn't shown her any of these, nor had she heard him read any of them except one, that first night:

But I did not do what you remember I did.

I did not.

Resisting the urge to tear up the pages or scatter them across the floor, she replaced them in the pockets of the folder and the folder back into the sideboard. She shut the door and stood. It was time to rouse her mother and go home.

On the seat of the chair by the lamp with the brass shade were a letter and a torn envelope and Matt's reading glasses, as if he'd been reading the letter just recently and been interrupted. Nan picked up the letter and read the date. December 21. Four days ago.

"Dear Dad,

I'm so sorry. I realize now I was terribly wrong. All these 'memories' have been false. You never did anything to hurt me."

Afraid she wouldn't have time to read the entire missive, Nan flipped the single page over to check the signature. As if it could be from anyone else.

"I'm so sorry.

"I love you.

"Your son, Eliot."

Catherine struggled to sit up. "Nanny? Where are you? I had a bad dream."

She rubbed her eyes. She was lost. She was alone.

"Help!"

Nan was right there, a few feet away. But she didn't move or say a word. She stood like a statue, holding a piece of paper.

Catherine pushed herself up. Why was she wearing this red dress? She'd never seen it before. Somebody must have given it to her. How lovely. It made her want to dance.

To the statue woman, or to anybody who would listen, she bubbled an invitation. "Oh, dance with me!" and started singing a song she couldn't name, was maybe making up on the spot, without words, just "
ooooo
" and "la la
la
."

Nan–for it was Nan, her daughter–slid what looked like a letter into an envelope, put it on the floor under a chair, and stared down at it. Swaying a little, Catherine danced around her. You didn't have to have a partner to dance. You didn't have to have a partner to do much of anything.

Suddenly dread overcame her and she stopped. "Nanny. What's wrong?"

Nan looked at her, and Catherine was afraid. She tried to sing and dance again, but couldn't. "I've been double-crossed. By a man I've never met."

"Who? Who was mean to you? I'll talk to his mother–"

"Son-of-a-bitch," Nan said quietly, just as Matt came into the study.

Shocked, Catherine drew herself up. "Don't talk like that. Oh dear, what am I to do with you."

Nan stared at her, her expression deadly. Catherine felt her bottom lip quiver and was suddenly cold. Matt put something warm around her shoulders. He was such a nice man. Why didn't Nanny like him? "What's wrong, Catherine?" he asked gently.

She looked up at him and tried to take deep breaths, but she was sobbing like a child. "There you are!" She held out her arms. "
Matty
! There's my
Matty
!"

"We have to go home now," Nan declared. Catherine wanted to argue, but she was much too tired and sad. She barely managed to say Merry Christmas to the nice man (it was Christmas, wasn't it?) and thank him for helping her to the car.

The following day, Nan packed away all signs of Christmas. On television, romance and resolutions replaced tinsel and Old Saint Nick. Nan made it clear that she wanted to skip New Year's Eve entirely, or at worst drink a glass of something while watching the ball drop in Times Square on television, in front of a comforting fire.

"Alone," she said.

Catherine had another plan: "Just the three of us, welcoming in the New Year with a nice game of Scrabble. Wouldn't that be nice? You, me, and Matt."

Nan conceded. She played with a fierceness that scared Catherine, who won the first game, fair and square. Matt won the second by almost a hundred points. Nan started to pout like a little child. Matt made no effort to conceal his annoyance with her, put his palm over his eye, and said he felt one of his migraines coming on. Only Catherine was sorry when the ball fell in Times Square, ending the evening. In bed she cried because nobody had kissed her and wished her a happy New Year.

With the holidays over and only the occasional coaching at the club until the spring semester, Nan found it harder and harder to make it through the day. Even the most familiar routines became fraught with dangers: What if she fell on perfectly dry and flat pavement and hit her head just right and died? What if her mother choked on a bite of her beloved corned-beef-and-Swiss sandwich?

Whenever she anticipated a relatively stable day, something happened–a call from the attorney to set up an appointment, Liz canceling–some new problem to perturb her efforts at normalcy. She returned for several more treatments with the Balinese healer, went into the City a few times to see a foreign film or go to an exhibit. Nothing helped. She did not go back to see Tonya.

One afternoon in early February, Ida hung around after her coaching session. At one time Nan would have welcomed the young woman's company, but now she just wanted her to leave. "Can I buy you a cup of coffee?"

Nan was shaking her head before the end of the sentence. "Not today."

Ida stood her ground "There's something I have to talk to you about."

Nan was sure she would not be able to tolerate girl talk about Peter Sanchez or even shoptalk about tennis. "Sorry, but I can't."

"It's important," Ida insisted. "It's something you need to know."

Dread settled in the pit of Nan's stomach as she submitted to the girl's determination and walked with her to the Club's coffee shop. Usually a bit shy and diffident, this time Ida came straight to the point. "I came across your student evaluations."

"'Came across'?"

"I'm doing work study in the Dean's office. I file."

Already furious, Nan said, "I've always had excellent evaluations."

"Have you seen the ones from last semester?"

"No."

"They're not excellent."

"Well?"

"All kinds of complaints. I was shocked."

The girl was enjoying this, though she put up a front of concern and shock. Nan suddenly knew that Ida was not, after all, her friend. "Stop being coy."

Ida had actually made notes, which she consulted now. "A lot of comments about you being brusque, disinterested, even..." Ida raised her eyes, which glistened with tears Nan knew to be fake "...verbally abusive."

Nan started to get up. "I don't have to listen to this."

Ida put a hand over hers, and Nan would have had to use force in order to extract herself. She very nearly did so. "Wait, Nan, please, there's more. I'm your friend. I think you ought to know what students are saying about you." Nan sat down. "Too many cigarette breaks. You cut lessons short for no apparent reason. You take offense where none is meant. Good-natured banter like you used to encourage you now
call
people on as disrespectful." Ida put down her list. "And there's something else. Nan, what happened with Peter?"

"Is that what this is about? Your boyfriend?"

"No. That's not what this is about. But he was devastated and furious when you kicked him out of class."

"You know I can't talk to you about another student."

"He says you accused him of sexual harassment." Nan didn't answer. "He says you started it, and you went off on him."

"That's not exactly the way it happened," Nan said grimly, but in the back of her mind was the fear that maybe it was.

Ida looked at her for a moment, then went back to her notes. "You missed too many classes."

This allowed Nan to be righteously indignant. "I take care of my mother. You know that. Everybody knows that." In fact, on the days in question she'd simply been unable to face another human being, and had spent hours sitting on the boards at the far end of the jetty in Nyack. At least twice she'd been significantly late getting home. Liz had been miffed, her mother oblivious. Of course, she said none of that to this impudent little traitor, who closed her notebook and leaned across the table as if they were going to have an intimate chat. Nan cut that off. "Are you finished? Is there anything else you want to say to me?"

Ida had the nerve to look hurt. "I'm just trying to help. I care about you–"

Nan strode out of the shop and out of the building without looking back. She thought about going to see the Department Chair, but decided he'd just stare at her legs. She tried to make an appointment to see Tonya, but was told that the therapist was taking personal time and both group and individual sessions would begin again after the fifteenth of the month; would she care to make appointments?
No, I don't want to make an
appointment
, I want to see her now.
But there'd been no choice; Tonya wasn't available when she needed her.