Blood Memory (28 page)

“Wake up! It’s Michael! You’re dreaming!”

Michael Wells is shaking my shoulders, his eyes frantic.

“Cat! It’s just a nightmare!”

I nod as though in understanding, but in my mind’s eye I see my father pushing his fingers into the bullet wound in his chest, then pulling the skin apart—

“
Cat!
”

I blink myself back to reality and grab Michael’s hands. He’s wearing a UNC T-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms. “I’m okay. You’re right…a nightmare.”

He nods in relief, then stands and looks down at me. The overhead light is bright behind his head, but the bedroom window is dark. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I close my eyes.

“Is it one you’ve had before?”

“Yes. The truck, the island…my grandfather. Only this time we made it over the hill.”

“What did you see?”

I shake my head. “It’s too crazy. Did I scream out loud?”

He smiles. “You screamed, but I wasn’t sleeping. I’ve been thinking about everything you told me.”

“Have you?”

“I’ve come up with a couple of ideas, if you’re interested.”

I sit up and prop myself against the headboard. “Is it about the New Orleans murders, or my situation?”

“Your situation. I don’t know anything about the murders.”

“Don’t feel left out. Neither does anyone else.”

“Something you said stuck in my head. That thing about your dad not being the breadwinner for your family. I’d thought his sculpting earned a lot of money. But if it didn’t, then your grandfather was that figure in your household.”

“Absolutely.”

“And from what you told me about your father, he wasn’t a dominating man, or even a strong personality. He didn’t try to control people. Is that right?”

“Yes. Daddy just wanted his own space. He hardly interacted with anyone except me. And of course Louise, the woman on the island.”

“I don’t know Dr. Kirkland well, but I would characterize him as a control freak.”

“Oh, yeah. He’s like a feudal lord.”

Michael nods slowly. “Well, what I’ve been thinking is this. You grew up with one version of your father’s death. You got that version from your grandfather. It’s the same version he gave the police in 1981. Now, twenty-three years later, you discover some old blood in your childhood bedroom. You decide to investigate it, and you make no secret of the fact. What happens? Your grandfather instantly begins revising the story you grew up with,
his
original story. By his own admission, he told you the new version—supposedly the real truth—to stop you from investigating the scene further. As a result, you stop investigating the bedroom. But you
don’t
stop probing the events of that night. And when you decide to bring in professionals to search the bedroom for more evidence, Dr. Kirkland changes his story yet
again,
this time to a ‘truth’ so horrifying that no one—not even you—would want to reveal it to anyone outside your family. In that version, he takes the blame for killing your father. But he also does something else, Cat. He lays the blame for your sexual abuse on your father.”

I feel a strange buzzing in my head. With it comes an almost frantic desire for alcohol. “Go on.”

“Are you sure you want me to? I think you know where I’m going.”

“Just talk, Michael. Quickly.”

“The only evidence you have that your father abused you is your grandfather’s word. If you discount that, what evidence is there? Hearsay about your father’s extramarital love life. Some possible brutality in Vietnam.”

I swallow hard and wait for Michael to continue.

“You
do
have a long history of psychological symptoms and behavior consistent with patients who’ve suffered past sexual abuse. You
don’t
have direct evidence as to who abused you. So…I’m just asking a question, Cat. Why should you believe that your grandfather’s latest version of the ‘truth’ is any more true than his first story?”

“Because it feels right,” I say softly. “I wish it didn’t. But it does. It’s like I can almost see it in my mind. The two men fighting over my bed in the dark. I’m afraid that I
did
see that.”

“Maybe your grandfather did kill your father, as he said. But maybe not for the reason he gave you. I mean, why take his word for it that he caught your father abusing you? It could easily have been the other way around. Maybe your grandfather was the abuser.”

There’s something in my throat, a hot tightness that won’t let any more words pass. “But…”

“I’m just using logic,” Michael says. “You’re so close to the situation, it’s hard to see past the emotion. I don’t think anyone could.”

“I concede that, okay? I don’t want to believe that my father abused me. I’m desperate to find hope that he didn’t. But the idea of Grandpapa doing it just seems outrageous to me. He’s like the model of propriety in this town. Famous for being faithful to his wife.”

“You could be making my point for me. Kirkland didn’t need affairs because he relieved his secret drives at home. And abusers often appear as paragons of virtue to the community. Especially in affluent families. I’ve seen that in practice.”

“What put this in your head, Michael? Was it just the things I told you tonight?”

“Honestly, no. I’ve heard about your grandfather all my life. And I can’t say I like what I’ve heard. All doctors want to make money, but they say Kirkland
lived
for the money. The general opinion around here is that he only married your grandmother for her money and social position.”

“Gossips always say that when a poor boy marries into a rich family. And Grandpapa doubled the family holdings through shrewd management. Particularly of the oil.”

Michael is filtering all this through some other knowledge, I can tell. In a neutral tone, he says, “The old docs around here say he did a lot of questionable procedures in his day.”

“Questionable in what sense?” I can’t keep the defensiveness out of my voice.

“As in
unnecessary.
You know, too many appendixes removed that turned out to be normal. Exploratory surgery for belly pain. They say he’d cut the gallbladder out of anybody who even looked like he had a stone. And a ton of hysterectomies for fibromyomas. He did one of those on my mother, in fact. Remember, this was the fifties and sixties. A surgeon could do just about anything he wanted to back then. But they still called your grandfather before a surgical review committee.”

“Who told you all this?”

“I spoke to Tom Cage last night. He stopped referring patients to Kirkland for exactly that reason.”

“Did Dr. Cage say anything about my father?”

“Yes. Apparently Luke told him a lot about his war experiences. Tom served in Korea, so your dad probably felt he was a more sympathetic listener than most.”

“What did he tell him?”

“Tom wouldn’t go into specifics with me. But he did say he thought your dad was a good soldier and a good man. That’s really what got me thinking. If Tom Cage thought your dad was a good guy, it’s hard for me to picture him as a child molester. I’m not saying he couldn’t have been. Dr. Cage may have looked at your dad, seen a troubled veteran, and blinded himself to other flaws. But Tom wants you to come talk to him. I think you should hear what he has to say.”

“I want to. God, I wish it were morning already. I’m not sleepy at all.”

“You won’t have to wait long.” Michael reaches out and flicks off the room light. After a couple of seconds, the window changes from black to blue. “You’ve been asleep for six hours.”

Dawn is breaking. I can’t believe it.

“Cat, there’s something else I think I should tell you.”

“What?”

“Your grandfather could be telling the truth about your father abusing you, but lying about killing him.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are other possibilities for the person who pulled the trigger.”

For some reason, it takes me a moment to grasp what Michael is saying. But then I have it. “My mother?” I whisper.

He nods. “Easy to imagine. She denies the abuse for several years, but then one night she unexpectedly walks in on it. Maybe she’s drunk or stoned on prescription meds. They argue, she grabs the gun from over the fireplace and kills him.”

“With me in the room?”

“We don’t know that you were in there. Afterward, your grandfather moves Luke’s body to the rose garden and invents the story of the intruder to protect his daughter. If you ask me, in that scenario, your grandfather’s a hero.”

“Who else could have done it? Pearlie?”

“Sure. Same psychological process as your mother’s, basically. Years of denial—or maybe even years of conscious knowledge—but then she finally snaps and kills him. Your grandfather might carry Luke’s body out to the rose garden to protect a maid who’d worked for his family for fifty years. She was also your primary caregiver.”

“You’re right. God, I understand why everybody freaked out when I started talking about doing a forensic investigation of that bedroom. Who knows what kind of evidence a team would find in there?”

Michael watches me as though he has something else to say, but he’s silent for some time. At length, he says, “I just think you should be aware of what you could find before you go tearing down this road after the truth. Like Pearlie told you…some things it’s better not to know.”

“No. I
have
to know.”

“The truth shall make you free?”

“That’s what Dr. Malik said last night.”

Michael shakes his head. “I wouldn’t use Malik as a guide for anything. And remember, those last possibilities only come into play if your father was your abuser. If your grandfather was molesting you, then your dad caught him in the act and Kirkland murdered him to keep him quiet. No other option.”

I suddenly feel like I need ten more hours of sleep. “I have no idea what to do now.”

“You need to find out who was actually molesting you. Forgive the crudeness, but my money is on your grandfather.”

Something in the tone of Michael’s voice pushes me to anger. “You’ve made your point, okay? But amateur detective work isn’t going to cut it. You say my grandfather loved money and did unnecessary surgery to get it. That’s unethical, but what does it have to do with child abuse? Louise Butler told me a story about Grandpapa beating a horse half to death. That makes me hate him, but does it make him a child molester? Hitler loved animals. My dad killed
people,
you know?”

“During wartime,” Michael says softly.

“Yes, but his unit committed atrocities, including rape. And he had sex with a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old girl on the island. The point is, none of this is conclusive. I need
hard evidence.
”

“What about your bedroom? That’s the source of all this.”

“It can’t tell me what I need to know. Say I find Grandpapa’s blood, and Daddy’s. It can’t confirm one story or the other.”

“What if there’s something besides blood in there?”

This gives me pause. “Like semen?”

Michael nods. “Wouldn’t semen be conclusive?”

“If we could get viable DNA after all this time, yes. But semen isn’t as resilient as blood over so many years.”

“But it’s possible. Is the bed the same one you slept in as a child?”

A strange coldness comes over me as I recall my conversation with my mother after I first arrived in Natchez. “No. Mom had to get rid of the mattress because of urine stains. She said I wet the bed a lot as a child. But I don’t remember that.”

“Enuresis,” Michael murmurs. “That’s long been linked to sexual abuse. Sometimes it’s a cry for help.” He sits on the end of the bed. “You have no concrete memories of abuse?”

A hysterical laugh bursts from my throat. “What does it matter? Dr. Malik suggested I have dissociative identity disorder. I think Kaiser believes that, too. We’re talking about multiple personalities, for God’s sake. So what I
think
I know, I may not. And the real truth may be locked inside rooms in my head that I can’t even get into—not as me.”

Michael shakes his head. There’s something like grief in his eyes. “Is that how you feel? That there are parts of your mind you can’t reach?”

“Sometimes. But it’s not really like other rooms, or a hidden personality. Yes, I have blackouts. Yes, there are blocks of time I can’t account for. But I’m certain that’s the drinking, not DID. It’s more like
depth,
you know? I feel that the truth is buried in my mind, but it’s too damned deep. It’s like free diving. Four hundred feet is the holy grail for a woman. I want it
so
bad. But it might as well be the Mariana Trench. I just can’t hold my breath that long, can’t swim that far down. My true memories live at four hundred feet, and I’m not strong enough to get there.”

“It’s not a question of strength,” Michael says. “When you first spoke to me about repressed memories, I didn’t give much credence to the idea. But the more I’ve read on the Internet, the more I believe it. I was on Medline earlier. There’s a lot of evidence that during severe trauma, information is encoded in an entirely different way than at other times. They’ve found physiological changes in the amygdalae of people with severe PTSD. Apparently, the neurotransmitters get all out of whack during that kind of trauma, and memories get pushed down into holes and blind alleys. They only make themselves known when that person finds himself—or herself—in a similar situation to the one in which the trauma occurred. Child abuse victims having sex as adults, say. Or combat veterans walking near a car that backfires, or under a news helicopter that flies too low. Those triggers bring back the emotions that were experienced during the trauma, but not necessarily the memories themselves. That’s called body memory. It’s fascinating, really.”

“I’ve definitely experienced that. Especially during sex.”

“What was tonight’s nightmare about?”

I close my eyes and the vision is there, as though engraved on the backs of my eyelids. I relate the dream of the truck, the pond, and Daddy walking on water.

Michael shakes his head. “I’m no expert on dream interpretation, but walking on water is definitely a Christ image. Does Dr. Goldman interpret that kind of thing?”