What You Remember I Did (20 page)

The time between then and now had seemed interminable. Nan had felt disoriented, unable to pick up social cues, misreading what people said and unsure of what anything meant. She became aware of a pattern of behavior that was straying further and further away from her own comfort zone, not to mention from healthy and normal.

"Your holidays?" Tonya asked the group at the first session of the new year. "Were they...pleasant? Have you done anything for yourself since I've seen you?"

With some trepidation, Nan told her that she had been to see the Balinese therapist.

"Ah, yes, the crystal table."

Tonya's obvious disapproval made Nan ashamed of herself–for having thought the table could do anything to help, for having accepted several sessions without first checking it out with Tonya, for bringing it up here in the support group. She started to say she wouldn't do it again, but Tonya went on.

"I think there's probably something to it." Relief brought tears to Nan's eyes and for the first time in weeks, she felt herself relax a little. "I think it probably does work to call up unpleasant memories and dispel them. You felt better after your sessions, right, Nan?"

"A little, I guess."

"And the memories of what your mother did to you receded a bit?"

Nan hung her head and nodded as if confessing to something dirty. The woman next to her patted her knee.

"That's my concern," Tonya declared. "We don't want the memories to recede. We don't want to banish them. We want to reclaim them."

An assenting murmur traveled around the circle, and Nan joined in. Of course, this made perfect sense. Everything Tonya Bishop said made perfect sense when Nan was with her, and the world was not quite so bewildering. It was when she tried to find her way through this morass on her own that she lost her way.

"It's so hard, though," a husky-voiced woman was saying. Another support group member was blocking her from Nan's view, which was more disconcerting than it probably should have been. "People don't understand what you're going through, and you can't really tell them."

When Tonya asked for examples, the woman told of an experience at a New Year's Eve party when she'd walked in on a slightly drunken conversation about a movie where the murderer had insisted he couldn't remember doing any of it, and the party-goers were greatly amused by the patent absurdity of such a claim. "I wanted to tell them I blacked out when my grandfather was molesting me." The woman's deep voice quavered, "And that I think he did, too. But I couldn't. I'd have embarrassed my partner. I'd have embarrassed myself. It was New Year's Eve, for God's sake."

Tonya was nodding. "Dissociation is common for both the victim and the perpetrator. So when we say we 'don't remember,' we really don't."

Nan's head shot up. Was Tonya using the word "we" in the therapeutic way, to suggest an alliance with the patient? Or was she implying that she herself was a victim? Or–surely not–a perpetrator? For a fleeting moment the therapist seemed to meet her gaze across the circle, but she skillfully looked at the next person and then the next, inviting and encouraging each one to speak. Several did, but Nan was having trouble following. Her thoughts strayed to someplace murky and agitated.

"Has anyone else experienced that?" Tonya was regarding her again, pulling her back into the conversation. "The feeling of not being understood, and of not being able to make yourself understood? Nan?"

Nan's heart pounded. What if she said the wrong thing? For the first time, she didn't feel entirely safe in this group. She swallowed. "My granddaughter refuses to come and stay with me anymore."

There was a chorus of "Why?" and "Oh, dear!" Nan caught some of them looking at her as if she might be the embodiment of the principle that those who were abused become abusers. Someone said, "She's how old? Maybe she's just of an age where kids have their own lives and better things to do than stay with Grandma." Several people laughed appreciatively. Nan was not among them.

"She told her mother I'm mean."

"Are you?" That was the woman with the husky voice, who now leaned forward–belligerently, it seemed to Nan–and fixed her with a steely glare.

"Sometimes I get impatient," Nan admitted. "Sometimes I yell at her when I shouldn't. I'm on edge these days."

"That often happens at this stage in the therapy." Tonya passed a hand over her eyes, as if suddenly tired.

Another group member started to speak, but Nan wasn't finished. She went on in a rush. "She says I'm weird. My daughter didn't want to tell me, but I insisted, and she told me Jordan says I'm weird, I stare off into space, I talk to myself, I get up in the middle of the night and wander around the house and it scares her. She's right, I do all of those things. She says I'm mean to my mother. My daughter wants to put her in a home because it's getting too much for me to take care of her. What would I do with myself if I didn't have my mother to take care of?" Abruptly, she found herself staring straight at Tonya and demanding, "Tonya, is your mother still alive?"

People murmured and stirred and watched to see what would happen. There was a slight but undeniable pause while Tonya, presumably, considered her options. "Yes, she is."

Nan had no idea what she was doing, but she pressed on. "Where does she live?"

"She lives in California." Tonya was positively grim. "What about the rest of you? Does anyone else have ambivalent feelings toward his or her abuser? It's natural–"

"Do you see her?"

Tonya had had enough. "Excuse me? Nan? Why is my relationship with my mother of such interest to you?"

Nan knew only that it seemed vital to have an answer to her question. "Do you see her?"

Several people tried to call her off, but Tonya locked gazes with her and said, very evenly, "I do not."

This would have been the moment for a long, dramatic pause, but one of the other group members, the biker-type with tattoos of naked women on his biceps, launched into the same tales he told every time–or as often as Tonya would let him–about what his father used to do to him. It seemed to Nan that he got something other than therapeutic release out of his recitation, and this always irritated her; tonight, she hated him for it.

His monologue did, however, break the tension between her and Tonya, and the support group meeting began to wind down. The therapist had to be direct with the biker to get him to shut up. The husky-voiced woman paused on her way out to touch Nan's shoulder and quietly wish her good luck. The others were leaving with alarming rapidity. Tonya was in intimate conversation with a woman younger than Ashley who looked as if she hadn't smiled or cried in a hundred years.

Nan did not want to be alone with Tonya just now; the therapist was too skilled and too determined not to confront her about the little pissing contest they'd just had. At the same time, it seemed almost unthinkable, even frightening, to leave without saying good-bye. Not knowing what to do, she stood up and made her way slowly toward the door.

The young woman rushed past her, and Tonya hailed her. "Nan. Wait a minute, could you?"

"I've got to get home. My mother–"

Tonya stopped trying to catch up with her and called across the room, which, now that it was almost empty, echoed a little. Nan had the absurd desire to hear what the echo was saying, but it only made Tonya's voice sound hollow. "I can't make our appointment tomorrow. Something's come up. Call my office to re-schedule."

Blood rushed to Nan's head. Thinking she might faint, she clutched the doorframe for support as Tonya gathered up her things and left by another door, leaving Nan standing there alone.

"Any dreams to report since we last saw each other?" Tonya consulted her notes. "Three weeks ago, I guess."

I should be seeing her every week. She's disappointed in me. She thinks I don't really want to get to the bottom of this. I'm a bad client. She'll give up on me.
With effort, Nan stopped the rush of frightened and self-critical thoughts and confessed, "I haven't had a dream since you told me that my mother abused me." How odd to be able to say such a thing aloud and with only a slight visceral reaction.

"Probably abused you," Tonya said. "And you do dream. Everyone does. It sounds as if you're not remembering your dreams. Interesting."

No matter how much she'd have liked to please Tonya, she was not dreaming. No matter how many books she read about dreaming, no matter how many times she flipped through Freud's
Interpretation of Dreams
or picked up some New Age book about teaching yourself how to repeat your dreams or induce certain kinds of dreaming, there was nothing for her to remember. She had just plain stopped dreaming.

Tonya leaned forward. "You
are
dreaming, Nan. You simply don't want to remember. I went through something similar a few years ago."

She began to talk about some of her own dream experiences, a personal turn that made Nan uncomfortable–partly because it pleased her too much to be taken into the therapist's confidence. Later she realized, though it didn't seem to matter much, that the self-disclosure was probably a therapeutic technique.

That night, she had a dream. Nothing mysterious or frightening, except in the unfamiliarity of the experience itself. It was actually kind of fun, like going to the movies without any knowledge ahead of time about which film she would be seeing. When she tried to write it down, as Tonya instructed, all but a few sunny images had evaporated. She resisted the temptation to make something up.

Every night after that, she dreamed, and her recall got better and better. Recording in her dream journal, thinking how glad Tonya would be, she started to hope she would dream something that would open a door into her childhood. But invariably her dreams related to what was presently happening to her–to Catherine and Matt, to Tonya and the people in her support group meetings.

"This is wonderful," Tonya told her, eyes brimming. "This is a real breakthrough." Reverentially she handed back the dream journal. "Next time I'd like to show you some of mine. I think it will be helpful to us both."

In a peculiar way, the feeling of dreaming carried over into Nan's waking state. Nothing seemed the same. Tonya was acting increasingly strangely in sessions, more like a patient than a therapist. She read from her own dream journals. She cried. Worst of all, she was regularly canceling appointments, leaving Nan and the others feeling abandoned and panicky.

Once again, Nan had no one to confide in. More and more she thought about talking to Gary. He knew her better, longer, than anyone. He listened, really listened, and he was smarter than anyone else she'd ever known. Finally, she called him. Just to say hello, she said.

"Nan. How nice. What an unexpected pleasure. Or–" he hesitated–"is there something wrong? With you? Catherine?"

 
Nan laughed, more naturally than she had thought possible. "I'm all right," she said. "And you?"

"A little of the holiday blues."

"Me, too, actually," Nan admitted. "Want to have coffee?"

"The two of us?" His voice took on an edge of caution.

"Yes."

"Why, Nan?"

"I suppose there has to be a reason."

This time Gary laughed. "Not really, except that this is a workday for me."

"There is a reason, but you might not think it sounds credible. I'm embroiled in some very complicated events and relationships. I just need a friend."

"That would be me," he said. "But wouldn't a therapist be a more solid idea?"

"I have one. She's part of the problem."

"Should I come to the house? Can your mother handle it? I'd like to see her."

"Not this time. This concerns her, too."

"Would you like to meet now? We could go to the Red Lion."

"Okay." She glanced at her watch. "Mom's new aide should be here shortly for a trial run. I was going to get out of their way for a few hours anyway to see how they do with each other."

They agreed on a time. She hung up a little shakily, picturing the Red Lion's lounge where they had gone so often, mostly when they had issues to discuss. They had chosen it because it was quiet and the
Muzak
inoffensive.

Matt had told her that, at Eliot's request, he was leaving shortly for Pennsylvania to make an attempt at reconciliation. Her feelings on that score remained decidedly mixed. For one thing, she was relieved that he would be out of town for a few days, giving her one fewer ingredient in her emotional stir pot.

"I'm going out for a little while, Mom," she said as a blue car pulled into the driveway.

Catherine hurried to the front door, softly saying, "Liz, Liz." When she saw it wasn't Liz, she started to weep. She seemed not to comprehend that Liz had permanently left the area. The turnover in caregivers since then had been remorseless.

"This is Consuelo, Mom. She comes highly recommended." She'd said that about all of them. Maybe Catherine wouldn't remember. Consuelo smiled. Catherine turned her back. Nan sighed.

An hour or so later, Nan spotted Gary in a booth at the far end of the Red Lion, in deep conversation with a handsome man his own age. Her stomach dropped. Since she had made it abundantly clear that what she wanted to talk about was private and personal, he surely wouldn't have picked up someone while waiting for her. Or would he? Worse yet, could he have chosen this moment to introduce her to her replacement?