The Memory Box (18 page)

He folds his hands together before continuing. “I’d like to leave some time at the end of our session today to talk about what you’re thinking—your reaction to what you’ve heard. We really didn’t get a chance to do that last time.”

I sit not so patiently and nod; I don’t interject or distract him. I just want to get to the tape.

“Caroline, before we get started, I’d like to ask you if what you heard from the tape the other day, from your mother, was news to you? Or do you have memory of those events?”

I exhale deeply and collect my thoughts. “Uh …” I breathe heavily again. I don’t know where to start. “Well, I—I, it’s—impossible to me. It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, am I living in a make-believe world?” I check myself, my tone. I don’t want to get emotional. “I keep thinking, ‘What’s happened to me?’” I shift in my seat. “There are gigantic holes in my memory. Whole parts of my life. How can that be? I don’t remember being overweight. I don’t.” I close my eyes for a second and inhale. “I remember being teased by kids when I was young. Why they teased me, I couldn’t tell you. But I know I used to always try to be ready with a comeback, you know what I mean,” I look over at Dr. Sullivan. “So I wouldn’t get embarrassed when they said something that hurt my feelings. It made me feel a little tougher, even though I was on the verge of tears. I remember, sometimes if I didn’t have anyone to play with after school, I’d stay in my room and write down ‘comeback’ ideas until I came up with something really good. Something clever that would make them leave me alone. It became sort of a game. Something I could control. It protected me.

“As for my mom, I guess I always had a sense that she didn’t like me very much. So that’s been confirmed. But why? Is it because I was overweight and she was ashamed of me? I don’t know—maybe that was part of it.

“But hearing her say that JD and I—” My thighs begin to tremble, and my teeth. I squeeze my leg muscles to force them to be still. “To hear her say we weren’t twins—well, that—that can’t be true. It just can’t. There’s no way I could have made that up. I have a memory so clear I could reach out and touch it. It’s of two little girls in my kindergarten class. They were identical twins. They never left each other’s side. And they wouldn’t speak to anyone but each other. I thought they were the luckiest girls in the world. There were times when I was older that I thought of those girls, but I couldn’t conjure an image of their faces in my mind—I didn’t know if I was really remembering JD and me. I mean, of course it had to be us, right? But now, I wonder if it was two other girls. And not us at all. Or if it was really my dollhouse dolls all along.”

Dr. Sullivan makes a note in my file.

“The story my mother told about my teeth, it—” A cough gets stuck in my throat. It’s sharp and feels like half a toothpick is lodged in there sideways. Tears fill my eyes without warning. I didn’t even feel them coming.

“It’s okay, Caroline,” Dr. Sullivan says, passing me the tissue box. “These emotions are not on the surface. They’re coming from another place.”

“It broke my heart—” The next exhale actually feels good, like everything ugly is riding on its tail. “I don’t know what else to say.”

Dr. Sullivan looks down to read the top of the tape he’s about to place in the recorder. He jots something down.

“The strangest thing happened in the car after I left here,” I say before he presses play. “I tasted blood in my mouth. The entire way home, I tasted blood.”

“I know we still have some physical things to rule out regarding your memory loss, but I want to mention another explanation. It’s quite possible that these are repressed memories, or memories that you have unconsciously blocked due to trauma contained in them. However, even in their absence, these memories can be affecting you on a conscious level. It’s very possible to retrieve repressed memories in therapy, if that’s desired. From what you’ve told me thus far, it seems to me repressed memory may very well be at work here. Another possibility is dissociation, which we’ll talk more about at another time. If either of these two explains your loss of memory, you should be aware there’s a reason you’ve suppressed them to begin with.”

“Are you suggesting I let them be? I can’t go through life like this. Wondering what’s under wraps, about to be revealed. What if someone knows something about me that I don’t? No, I need to know. Everything. I’ll deal with the consequences.”

Dr. Sullivan doesn’t comment. Something shifts in his eyes. Not even his expression changes. Though he’s communicated something. Only I have no idea what it is.

He pops in the tape.

Dr. Sullivan:
You don’t think someone tried to hurt her, do you? It was an accident, right?

Caroline:
Listen
—that’s not the point—I don’t want to talk about that. I want to tell you about the
tape.
And what difference does it make if it was an accident or not—what are you, Columbo all of a sudden?

My legs are crossed, and my foot is bobbing like the plastic ball at the end of a fishing line that jerks up and down when something’s been caught. The tone of voice coming from the tape—coming from me—is disarming.

I put my hand up in the air to get his attention. “Dr. Sullivan, I don’t understand what’s going on here. What are we talking about? Are you sure that’s the beginning of the tape? It sounds like I missed something. Like you started in the middle.”

He looks down at the clear plastic window of the tape recorder and presses what I imagine is the rewind button. The tape whirs to a halt; he presses play. It begins at exactly the same point as before. He stops the tape.

“Caroline, I believe, if I remember correctly, you will tell me the complete story later in the session. Why don’t we just listen some more and see where this goes. Okay?”

I exhale “All right.”

Caroline:
JD wanted me to go to our parents’ house, she was living there with Lilly at the time, in the basement, in sort of an apartment they had. She wanted me to get her mail and some of her clothes to bring to the hospital where she’d been sleeping on a cot next to Lilly.

She ended up living at the hospital for two weeks. It probably would’ve been longer if things didn’t end up the way they did. That last day she left for an hour to have coffee with someone. Everything changed that day. She asked me to stay with Lilly at the hospital while she went for coffee. Just in case anything happened.

Something did happen. But not to Lilly. JD never came back. That’s the day she died.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Friday, September 29, 2006, 12:17 p.m.

I
break my stare from the tape recorder to look over at Dr. Sullivan. I can’t help but think that if I hadn’t showed up at the hospital that day and JD had never gone out for coffee, she’d still be alive today.

Dr. Sullivan:
How long did you sit at the hospital before you knew something was wrong?

Caroline:
I sat there for hours. I tried calling her cell phone several times, but there was no answer. I finally called my mother at about six, I guess. I didn’t call earlier because I thought JD was just having a good time. It was her first time out of that hospital room in weeks. I wasn’t going to track her
down.
It was the least I could do.

Listen, you’re not going to understand any of this unless I start from the day of Lilly’s accident. And the day I went to JD’s apartment a few days later. JD blamed herself for the accident, but of course it wasn’t her fault. She knew who was driving the car, you know. She told me herself. She saw the car, and she saw the driver. But she wouldn’t say who it was. Don’t ask me why she’d want to protect the person who nearly killed her own kid. We all begged her. Even the cops. It didn’t matter. Her lips were sealed. That was JD, when she got something in her head, when she made up her mind, nothing could change it.

Dr. Sullivan:
Were there bystanders?

Caroline:
No. Because it didn’t happen out in the street. It happened in the parking area behind the shoe store where JD was buying shoes for Lilly. You had to walk through an alleyway between stores to get to it. JD said there were very few cars back there, and no one was milling around except for a worker from the diner throwing garbage in a dumpster. But he went back in the restaurant before anything happened. They wanted to put the shoes in the car and grab a sweater for Lilly before they got ice cream. You know something, if JD and Lilly had gone straight home instead of going for ice cream, the accident would’ve never happened.

Anyway, JD threw the shopping bag into the back seat. Lilly had her teddy bear tucked under her arm, and she was singing to a balloon she had in her hand. JD let go of Lilly’s hand to get the sweater out of the car. In that split second, the balloon must have slipped from Lilly’s hand, and she leapt out into the parking lot to grab it. JD didn’t see what happened next—but she heard it. When she sprang from the car, she saw Lilly’s body thrown in the air. JD said Lilly looked like a rag doll, her teddy bear flying in the air, too, and even though it felt like slow motion, it happened too fast for JD to do anything. Lilly fell on the roof of a parked car and then bounced on its trunk before hitting the ground. That poor little girl broke so many bones. You wouldn’t believe how many surgeries she needed. Hanging by a thread. The next day the police returned her teddy bear, Cheeky, to the hospital. Both plastic eyeballs were crushed.

JD thought she was going to lose her. Lilly had barely moved on from the heart problems she had at birth, and now this. She pulled through, though, that spunky kid. Who would’ve predicted how this turned out? Instead, we lost JD.

Dr. Sullivan:
That’s awful, Caroline. How painful that must have been for all of you. You said you wanted to tell me about a tape?

Caroline
:
I’m getting to it. Once Lilly was admitted, JD didn’t leave her side. She basically moved in with her. After a few days she asked me to get her mail and some clothes from her apartment. The apartment smelled bad. There were dirty dishes still in the sink from the day of the accident, and the garbage needed to be taken out. It would’ve been nice if my mother went down there to straighten up a little. Don’t you think? I tidied up and packed a little bag for JD, some clothes and shampoo and stuff. A couple of Lilly’s favorite toys. I grabbed the mail, and I was about to leave and head back to the hospital when I saw the red light flashing on her answering machine.

JD had about nine or ten messages, mostly from friends, one was from her boss, and then there was the last one. At first I was confused because the voice sounded familiar to me. But out of context. I had an immediate reaction to it—a flush of excitement. I hadn’t heard that voice in so long, but in an instant it all came back to me, as if I was waiting for it. But the tone was different than I remembered. Angry and accusatory. He was yelling at JD. “Don’t you
ever
threaten me, JD. I don’t want to hear from you again. Don’t be an idiot!
”

It was Timothy Hayes. He and I were engaged to be married a long time ago. I couldn’t believe it was him. I hadn’t heard his voice in years. I hadn’t thought about him, either. Why would he be calling JD? They hardly knew each other. I mean, of course she knew him, from when we were together, but they didn’t have any kind of relationship. In fact, she didn’t even like him. I’m not sure Timothy liked JD either. That should’ve been a red flag for me—JD liked practically everyone, and vice versa. When Timothy and I got serious and I moved in with him—well, I thought, ‘Could she be jealous?’ She didn’t have a boyfriend at the time. She said she didn’t want one. I mean, she had boy crushes over the years, but nothing serious. She wanted to focus on school. But let’s face it, that’s just not normal.

Timothy and I were together for three and a half years. We got engaged the summer of our junior year. Timothy’s dad loved the idea of him being with one girl. He thought dating a bunch of girls in law school would be distracting. Mr. Hayes was so happy about it that he bought Timothy an apartment in Hammond. We planned on staying there through law school, since Timothy was staying in town for his law degree. After he graduated, we’d get married.

In all that time we were together, JD hardly had any contact with him. That day in JD’s apartment, when I realized the call from Timothy wasn’t for me, that it was for JD, I was—I felt … deceived. We weren’t even together anymore, but my first thought was that I caught him. Or her. Doing something. I didn’t know what. I paused the tape to get my wits about me. I tried to remember the last time we were all together. As if it would provide a clue. JD told me a few times when she was in law school, after Timothy and I broke up, that she saw him at parties, even though he went to a different school.

I started the message from the beginning. When it was finished, I played it again. And again. I can practically still hear it in my head.

His voice was shaky calm. Like he was scraping together composure. Mock tough guy.

He said, “Okay, JD, you got the money—five hundred fucking thousand is more than you’ll ever need.” He told her not to call again. He said, “You better be the only one that knows about this—don’t even think about telling your sister.” Then he threatened her, like “You tell anyone, and you won’t know what hit you.” He said that his father would “handle her” if she told anyone, he’d “destroy her.” The last thing he said was, “Keep your fucking mouth
shut.
I don’t want to hear from you again. We have a deal. I kept up my side, now it’s your turn.”

The phone on Dr. Sullivan’s desk begins to ring, and both of us jump up from our seats. He stops the tape and smooths back his bangs. “Excuse me, Caroline, I’m sorry, I have to take this … it may be important.” He looks down at the phone and clears his throat, then answers it. “Hello, Dr. Sullivan. I see. What’s her condition? Yes. Of course. You’ll have to give me twenty minutes. I’ll be there as soon as I can. All right then.”

“Caroline—I’m so sorry to do this. Now especially. Unfortunately, I need to leave. It’s an emergency, otherwise, of course, I’d never leave like this—in the middle.” He fills his cheeks up with air—two taut balloons that burst in one audible surge. His pained expression is no consolation.

I drop my head and catch it with my hands. As I teeter on a tight wire, Dr. Sullivan packs up his net.

He’s already out of his chair, pushing papers around in circles. “Caroline, I’ll call you later. I’ll get you back in right away—at your convenience, all right? I’m sorry. I must go. I’ll walk you to your car.” He paces behind his desk looking for something. From the floor he pulls a brown leather backpack and stuffs a folder into it; he turns to the tape recorder and pops the tape out, and puts it in his front trouser pocket. “And if you’d like to talk on the phone a bit—please—whatever works for you, we need to discuss this, what you just heard.” He stops shuffling, and I sense his eyes on me. “Caroline?”

I stare at the floor, seemingly hypnotized by the shag rug. He’s moving so quickly, and I can’t seem to move at all.

It’s time to go. He needs to leave. “Caroline?”

I sit in my car for I don’t know how long. I don’t understand any of this. It’s too much already, and I feel so slow, like my mind is on a delay so that the truth doesn’t hit me all at once.

To hear that story about Lilly. My sweet Lilly. My whole body twitches.

The part about Timothy is astounding. If he was the one to blame for the accident, the one driving the car, JD saw the car and said she knew the driver. She must’ve threatened to tell the police. He bribed JD to keep her mouth shut. A scandal like this would’ve busted a few rungs on his ladder.

But why would JD cover for him? And how could she not tell me any of this?

Maybe she did tell me. Maybe I did know.

I should be climbing out of my skin with rage. But I can’t get myself there.

I have pieces of memories. I recall chunks of time. They are clear, hulking mountains in my mind. They’re heavy and well grounded. But a thick, wet fog rolls in and obscures half of the hills and all of the peaks.

Driving around Dr. Sullivan’s town, while struggling to knit together gossamers of memory, I unintentionally circle the same neighborhood three times. I’m perspiring through my shirt, under my arms and on my back, though there’s a chill in the air. I pull over into the parking lot of a fabric store that’s gone out of business and shut off the car. Timothy and I had already split up by April 2000 when the accident happened. What was he doing in Lanstonville that day? Lanstonville is not the kind of place people come to or drive through. It’s at the cross section of never-been-there and never-want-to.

The newly familiar sense of dread slides down my throat and fills my gut. I pray I had nothing to do with this.

It’s almost 5:30 when I arrive at Meg’s to pick up the girls. She’s on the phone with her mother, and I insist she not hang up on my account. I’m so happy to see the girls. Though I know I’m not acting like myself. I try to be normal, but I know I look at them differently. At times my attention is almost suffocating; other times my mind’s adrift.

Who’s noticed this shift in me? I’m sure not Lilly, but I’m surprised Tessa hasn’t called me out on it. Regardless, it feels good to be home.

After we eat turkey meatballs that I pull from the freezer, the three of us sit at the table, slouched, silent, still, stuffed. It’s been a long week. The kitchen faucet has a leak, creating a slow, steady ping as it hits a stainless steel lid at the bottom of the sink. I look down at my daily schedule, which I left on the table this morning but failed to read or act on. Call plumber about kitchen sink; call electrician about sparking socket; call mason to cement brick back to stairs; and 1:30 haircut.

Lilly wants to get the sleeping bags from the attic so we can all camp out together in her room. I agree to this providing she clears some space on her floor.

Andy’s still at work when we wiggle our weary bodies into sleeping bags, so I leave him a note in the kitchen next to his dinner. Smarty finds a crevice between Lilly and me and squeezes in. We look like caterpillars with dangling arms, holding hands. The girls fall asleep before me. Every time I lift my head to look at the clock, Smarty’s head pops up too—crooked and wondering.

The house feels fragile. It’s a windy night, and drafts leak through the house’s pores, whistling eerily. The walls moan and push back against the wind.

Lilly’s stomach rises and falls with her subtle breathing. I smooth her hair onto her pillow. Pink and yellow gingham. Her small fingers, with the softest of skin, are in my hand. No one’s gonna let go this time. I promise you that, Lilly.

It’s morning, and sunlight gushes through the open blinds on the little window in the corner of the room, allowing slices of light to stream through and stripe my face, jolting me out of an unsettled sleep. Everything in the room is soaked and bleached from the sun. What normally is bold is sucked pale.

The old screens in Lilly’s windows billow in short snaps with the wind, which sounds different this morning. Last night it was aggressive, brusquely changing direction, wildly indecisive. This morning it just hisses. Like a snake. One long, languid sound, and then a snap of the screen.
Secrets, secrets, secrets
.

I spring off the floor. It sounds like the wind is speaking to me, and it creeps me out. I snap my fingers next to my ear to drown out the wind. Smarty scoots off the end of the sleeping bag and trots out of the room. I start the shower in the hall bathroom, jump in, and clench the loofah to scrub my skin until it’s pink, gouging the underneath of my nails and the insides of my ears with a soapy washcloth in an attempt to purge the secrets in my head. I don’t want to know any of these things. I thought I did. But I don’t. I can’t shake this perpetual feeling that my body is hosting phantom parasites. They syphon my spirit and steal my strength and breathe my oxygen and poison my soul.

If I have to, I’ll dig into my skin and strip back the layers, or cut my hair until I’m bald, or brush my teeth till my gums bleed. I’ll get rid of them. The razor shaves every follicle from armpit to ankle. I wash my hair three times. The first time the shampoo doesn’t even lather. My hair’s too long. I wish I hadn’t missed that appointment. I can’t think clearly with all this hair. My thoughts are getting snared and twisted in the length of it. I try to comb my fingers through. They get stuck in the knots and caught in the tangles.

At the bathroom mirror, scissors in hand, I cut my hair. I don’t think about. The manicure scissors are slow, but the sound of the snip is satisfying. My heart beats hard against my chest. The long, thin mouse tails drop and lie limp at the bottom of the sink. My fingers move freely through my shortened hair; the ends just tickle the tops of my shoulders. I slip into the laundry room quietly and grab some clothes from stacks I never put away.