The Survivors (19 page)

“I don't remember much about those days,” I said. “Only a few things here and there. You seem to remember everything.”

“I guess so.”

“Have you been back here recently?”

“Not in a long time.”

“I didn't remember climbing through Alan's window until you started up that tree. And that tractor path—you knew right where it was.”

He shrugged irritably. “I just know things, that's all.”

“OK,” I said. I took a drink of iced tea. “If you want to leave it that way, I understand. But you knew what game we were playing that night, before hide-and-seek.
Life
, you said, right?”

He stared at his hamburger. He wanted to eat, but in his world that meant no talking.

“You even remembered Alan slamming the board closed. That's amazing. You've always known all that?”

He pushed his plate away, giving in. “I told you I hadn't seen a therapist . . . you know, somebody like you. That wasn't completely true.” The salt and pepper shakers weren't quite perfect so he nudged one a millimeter. “I went to somebody for help with my memory.”

“Who was it?” I said.

“Evelyn Rubin. She—”

“From Baltimore?”

“Right. You know her?”

“Only by reputation.” I was trying to keep my face neutral. “She uses hypnosis, doesn't she?”

“She doesn't do that stuff anymore.” He kept his eyes on his food; his hands flittered over the table.

“Let's eat,” I said. “You can tell me about her when we're through.”

He pulled his plate back to the perfect spot. By the time he reached for his fork, he'd relaxed again.

I picked slowly at my food. Evelyn Rubin—that wasn't the answer I'd expected, but it explained a lot. She had been one of the first psychologists to believe in repressed memory, that recollections of childhood abuse are often blocked and can be brought back through hypnosis. I only knew about her because one of my professors had used her as a case study in how
not
to treat patients. About twenty years ago, she was a big deal. She testified in criminal abuse trials, made a splash on the psychology lecture circuit. Then some of her patients turned on her, saying she'd planted memories that didn't exist. One of them made a secret videotape of a session with her. Rubin was sly about it, but she was clearly manipulating him, building a story in his mind of childhood rape, layer after layer. The tape was a minor sensation when it got out in public, and she almost lost her license. Rubin wormed her way out of it by admitting her methods may have been heavy-handed, but she was only after the truth.

Among psychologists, repressed memory has pretty much passed on as a misguided fad. That doesn't mean people like Rubin have disappeared. They still need to make a living, and somebody like Scottie—a trauma victim with lots of lingering issues—was a perfect target.

Scottie had eaten steadily and was nearly finished. I took a few bites from my plate. “So how did you find Rubin?” I said.

“My mother always figured if I remembered more about what happened to me, it would make it easier for me to cope. She got to be a fanatic about it. I refused to see anyone until after she died. Then, I don't know, it seemed like something I should do. I ran an Internet search on blocked memory, and Rubin's name came up at the top of the list.”

“Sure it did.”

Scottie didn't like the way I said that, and he shot me a look. I held up my hand to placate him. “She doesn't use hypnosis anymore?”

“No, it's this new thing—EMDR. It's really amazing. Two sessions was all I had. I could remember things perfectly, like I was living it all over again.”

Eye movement therapy. More hocus-pocus. Or maybe not. It wasn't my field, so I wasn't up on the newest literature. I did know that the American Psychological Association had rated EMDR “probably effective.” Then again, doctors in the Middle Ages thought leeches were probably effective, too.

“Memory is tricky,” I said. “We forget all kinds of things, lose the threads. Our minds want a picture that makes sense in spite of the missing pieces, so we stick in extra details.” I looked at my plate so he wouldn't take what I said as a challenge. “Like the color of Ron's shirt or him sneezing in the closet.”

“Dr. Rubin said a lot of people don't trust what she does. That's why I didn't tell you about it.”

“It's not a matter of trusting, Scottie. It's . . . some things are too far in the past to be seen clearly again.”

“It's not my imagination. Dr. Rubin told me I was the best she'd ever seen.”

“Maybe you're the best at having your mind fill in the blanks. A little of that is fine. Too much of it and anybody can get confused, start believing things that aren't real.”

“No!” He thumped the table so hard the silverware bounced. The other diners looked over at us. “It's not that way at all. I know—”

His expression suddenly settled. “You want to see how much I remember? You had a bandage on your hand that night. Here.” He pointed at the first knuckle on my ring finger. “It looked like it hurt, red and sore. I was going to ask you what happened, but I never got a chance.”

He saw the change in my face and sat back. I had my hands on the table, but in my mind I could see them pressed against the window in my parents' room. My mother had just looked at me for the last time. On my finger was a big Band-Aid she'd put on that afternoon after washing the cut I'd gotten from the barbed wire fence at the back of our property. It had bled and bled, and she told me if it didn't stop, we'd have to go to the hospital. If only we'd done that . . .

Scottie was staring at me. “I'm right, aren't I?”

When I didn't say anything, he folded his arms, and his expression turned smug. “You barely touched your dinner.”

“I'm not very hungry.” I stood up, much too quickly because I felt lightheaded. I could still see that image: the window, my mother outside. I needed to get that out of my head. “I'll pay the bill, and we can get the hell out of here.”

EIGHTEEN

W
e headed back to the District, past the turnoff to the old house and then Lois McGuin's place. When we reached the interstate, Scottie clicked on the radio. He scanned the dial and finally tuned to gospel music. “Thinking about the day it happened bothers you a lot, doesn't it?” he said.

“Mostly I'm OK with it, but there are times when I remember some detail and it knocks me sideways.”

“For a couple of seconds there, you looked sick enough to fall over.”

“Not sick, but lost. It's like I've got this map in my head, with all my reference points on it. Sometimes I lose track of where I am and how I got there. It's worst when I think about her last few seconds, when she had the gun and I was watching.”

We were passing another car, and he turned to stare at the driver. “Do you think your mother knew it was me in the closet with your brothers?”

“I don't know. She recognized me when she was outside and looked up at the bedroom window. She patted the air—like this.” I showed him. “When we played hide-and-seek together, she did that to tell me to hide and be quiet.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Strange thing. Did you see any blood on her?”

“No.” This conversation was getting too morbid. “That music is awful. Can you find something else?”

“Hallelujah!” He waved his hands. “You don't like ‘Build My Mansion Next Door to Jesus'?” He ran the dial up and down and settled on reggae. The beat was heavy, and he rocked along.

I said, “I've looked through most of the papers in your backpack. Half of it is too recent to have come from that writer who died. You've been doing a lot of research on your own.”

“I guess so.”

“Lois McGuin said my parents were having financial troubles. That's why she thought my mother was stealing from Braeder. Did you find anything like that?”

“Financial stuff?” he said. “Only your parents' bank account and credit card records. They didn't have much money, that's for sure.”

“You've never seen anything from my father's business?”

“The consulting he did? I never looked into that.” He tapped the backpack. “You're starting to wonder too, aren't you? It's contagious—looking back, trying to fit it together.”

“I've got a few questions, that's all.”

He gave me a grin. “Right, just a few.” He turned up the radio. “I love this song!” He did a seated dance to Ziggy Marley.

We rolled onto the beltway, where the traffic was still heavy. I said, “You get to sleep in your own bed tonight. Do you want me to take you straight home or back to my place first to pick up your bicycle?”

He stopped shimmying. “Do you think I could stay with you tonight?”

“Sure, if you want.”

“Mrs. Rogansky gets angry with me if I come in after ten o'clock.”

“OK, my couch it is—or a chair on the balcony.”

“The couch will be fine. I'm used to the place now. Then tomorrow I've got to go home early, get into some fresh clothes, and go to work.”

“Sounds like you'll be getting back to normal,” I said.

He shrugged thoughtfully. “Whatever normal is.”

We left the beltway at Connecticut Avenue. The streets were almost empty, and the lights were timed so we didn't stop until Nebraska Avenue.

He turned to look at me. “You said when you were at the window in the bedroom, your mother saw you.” He patted the air the way I'd shown him. “If she motioned for you to hide—who from?”

The light changed. I kept my eyes ahead as I hit the gas. “There's only one answer to that, Scottie.”

“From her, you mean?” He thought about that. “That's too weird,” he said.

Somewhere in the last couple of miles, Scottie fell asleep. “Hey,” I said after I parked behind my building. “Sleepyhead—wake up.”

He jolted upright and scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Whoa, what a dream. Your secretary had me tied up, and there was a tiger looking in the window at us.”

“You know, you could have made Sigmund Freud cry with joy.”

“Freud was full of bull.”

“So they say.”

Inside, he went straight to the sofa and stretched out. I thought he might doze off, so I took the first shift in the bathroom. When I came out, he was sitting on the floor. He'd pulled some of my college books off the shelves and had them open around him.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Checking out Freud. Did you know he was terrified of ferns? Anyway, I don't think he was so stupid after all.”

I got him a blanket and pillow. When I came back to the living room, he was busy with his tablet computer. Without looking up, he said, “You're some kind of neat freak like me.”

“How's that?”

He was so absorbed he just grunted softly.

“Have a good night.” I went into my bedroom and shut the door.

I woke with the first chirps of the birds. Scottie was gone, along with his bicycle. I found a note from him on the kitchen table.

I had to get going to be at work on time. The drain stopper in your bathroom sink doesn't work. You're out of toothpaste, too. I sent you an e-mail—check it out.

Scottie

There was a P.S. with a phone number. Under that he'd written:
It's not a direct line so you'll have to leave a message. Remember, we're supposed to talk every day!

I went to my computer in the bedroom to look at the e-mail. There was no subject line and all Scottie's message said was, “I'll look for more on this when I get a chance.” More on what? I wondered. Then I saw there was an attachment. I opened it, and pages and pages of text appeared under the heading, “The Business of Politics.” It looked like a political news roundup. I couldn't tell where it was from, a trade journal maybe. There was also no date. I kept skimming until, almost at the end, I spotted my father's name. It was only a brief mention: