Unbreathed Memories (11 page)

I nodded.

“But before that, there was
The Three Faces of Eve
.”

“Joanne Woodward,” I said.

“Exactly.” She took another bite of pie. “That theory’s been largely debunked, though.”

I was surprised to hear that. If you believe what you see on Lifetime TV, one woman out of three is harboring multiple personalities. “It’s not the multiple personalities I’m curious about, actually. It’s the idea that memories of things that never happened—like sexual abuse—can be recovered.”

I watched her face carefully when I said that. I didn’t want her to think that
I
had been sexually abused.

“The two are related,” Ms. Bromley said matter-of-factly. She dabbed her lips with her napkin, then rearranged it in her lap. “Some therapists theorize that abused children develop these alternate personalities as a coping mechanism to help them deal with the abuse.
The only way to integrate these individuals, they feel, is to help them remember the traumatic experiences that triggered the split.” She leaned back in her chair and studied me thoughtfully. “I suppose there may be genuine instances of memories being deeply buried, then remembered sometime later, but unless we are to believe that there’s been a recent epidemic of child sexual abuse, most experts now discredit this theory, too.”

I felt my spirits soar. “They do?”

She nodded. “Experiments have shown how easy it is to create false memories in even the most levelheaded of people. I think you’ll find a lot of background material on this in my files.”

She laid down her fork. “And there have been recent cases …” She looked thoughtful. “… a big article in
The New Yorker
, even. They’ve coined a term for it—false memory syndrome.”

What a relief! If Georgina’s symptoms had a name, maybe there was a cure.

Ms. Bromley folded her hands on the table in front of her. She spoke so softly that I had to lean forward to hear her. “Hannah?”

“Yes?”

“This isn’t one of those I-have-a-friend-who conversations, is it?”

When I didn’t answer right away, concern clouded her face. “Were you …?” She paused, as if unwilling to put words into my mouth.

I considered how much to tell this woman I’d just met. Maybe I had read so many of her books that I just felt that I knew her. Maybe she reminded me of my grandmother. For whatever reason, I instinctively knew she would be discreet, so I decided to trust her.

“No, not me. I was curious about your character
Amy, Ms. Bromley, because she reminded me of my sister Georgina.” I pushed my pie aside and leaned toward her over the table, my voice a whisper. “She has just accused our father of sexually abusing her while we were living in Sicily.”

Ms. Bromley reached out and laid her hand, warm and soft, on mine. “I’m so sorry, my dear.” I felt so relieved! She really understood.

“And it’s obvious to everyone in our family—except for Georgina and her husband—that these so-called memories are totally false!”

“Have you tried talking to your sister?”

“Several times. At first I didn’t know what she was getting at. She kept asking me all these weird questions. By the time I figured it out, her therapist had been murdered, and now we’re all in a fine pickle.”

“Murdered?” Her teacup grazed the edge of its saucer. “Is this the therapist up in Baltimore that I heard about on the news?”

I nodded.

“You poor thing!” She shook her head. “I’ve written about murder all my life. I’ve stabbed ’em, shot ’em, poisoned ’em … even threw a victim out of an airplane once, but it was all the fruits of an active imagination. Never hit me close to home, thank goodness.” She reached over and patted my hand, which was nervously converting what was left of my roll into tiny crumbs.

“The police suspect my sister, I’m afraid, although they also questioned my father.”

“How perfectly dreadful!”

“It’s actually my sister who pointed the finger at Dad. It’s tearing the family apart, Ms. Bromley! My brother-in-law won’t even allow his children to visit their grandparents anymore!”

“That’s a great pity. I can’t imagine …” She sat quietly for a moment, as if lost in thought. “There are good therapists and bad therapists out there, Hannah. But if you’re convinced your sister’s gotten herself into the hands of one of the bad or careless ones, it will take some kind of proof.” She stared out at the bare trees for a moment. “For instance, I read about an unmarried woman who claimed she had been systematically abused by her father, even aborted his child. It wasn’t until a medical exam showed she was still a virgin at twenty-eight that she recanted.”

“I’m afraid Georgina’s not a virgin.”

“But there may have been some exculpatory evidence earlier; do you have access to her medical files? Her school records? Abused children are often absent from school.”

“My older sister and I thought of that. I’m going to ask Mother about them this afternoon, although my parents have just moved, so God only knows where they’re packed or if they’re even still around. I hate to upset my mother.”

“Take some advice from an old woman. Your mother probably already knows. You’ll need to work on this as a family, my dear. And when you do, you’ll find support groups out there. One in particular. The FMS foundation.”

“FMS?” I thought of the financial management system I used in my former life at Whitworth & Sullivan.

Ms. Bromley paused while Trish cleared away the empty teapot and our dirty dessert plates. When the waitress was out of earshot, she continued. “The initials stand for false memory syndrome. You can link up with other people who have gone through the same experience.” She leaned comfortably back in her chair. “I have
to warn you, though. This FMS group is very controversial in psychiatric circles. Some see it as just another way of saying ‘I don’t believe you’ to rape victims.”

“But I know Georgina hasn’t been raped.” I watched a squirrel scamper up a tree outside the window and thought about my options. Up until now, there weren’t any. This was the first positive lead I’d had. “How do I contact them?”

“Your best bet would be through the Internet. Search Yahoo or Lycos.”

I was impressed that this woman, who had come of age during the Depression, would know so much about the Internet. Although I tried not to think in stereotypes, my astonishment must have shown on my face, because she added, “Another one of my hobbies.”

She laid her crumpled napkin on the table and sighed. “Everyone’s a victim these days. It’s the most popular sport in America. If I’m failing in school, it’s some teacher’s fault for not preparing me properly. If I wreck my car, it’s the manufacturer’s fault. If I’m depressed, it must be due to some dark secret in my past.” She scooted her chair backward and stood.

I reached for my purse. “Whether Georgina was abused by my father or not, we still have the problem of what to do about Diane Sturges’s murder.”

“Sherlock Holmes said it best: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ ”

“I see. Roughly translated, since my sister and my father are innocent, then someone else must have killed the therapist.”

“Exactly.”

I pulled out my wallet to pay for our lunch, but Ms. Bromley waved it away. “No, no, Hannah. Your money’s
no good here. Besides, you’re
my
guest. It’s the least I can do after all the work you’re doing on my moldy archives.”

“Well, if you’re sure, then thank you.” I stuffed my wallet back into my purse and began rummaging in the bottom for my car keys. One day I would simplify my life and learn to carry one of those itsy-bitsy wallet-size purses on a string, but for the time being, I’d have to sift through the old lipsticks, loose change, paper clips, and pencils jumbled about on the bottom of my tote. My fingers eventually closed around a key chain–shaped object underneath a plump packet of folded paper. “What on earth?” And then I remembered. I still had the pages from Diane Sturges’s appointment book, right where I had stashed them the night I drove Georgina home.

“Thank you!” I said again, fingering the crisp folds of paper and remembering the list of names they contained. “And now I think I have a very good idea about where to start looking.”

chapter
8

I was surprised when no one answered the
door at my parents’, because my father’s Lincoln was sitting, big as life, in the driveway. I jiggled the doorknob, but the front door was locked. Making a mental note to ask my mother for a key, I wandered around back, along an uneven path of slate paving stones that wobbled under my weight. The path led through a side gate into a pocket garden where brownish grasses and scraggly gray weeds flourished. I bent over to pull up a clump of crabgrass and smiled, thinking,
Watch out, weeds!
By spring this plot would respond to my mother’s green thumb, and bloom with color.

Although I was thinking about her, I was surprised when I turned the corner to discover my mother, bundled in her purple parka, sitting at the picnic table. Her elbows rested on the sun-bleached redwood boards next to a can of Diet Coke, and she was smoking a cigarette.

“Jeez, Mom, I thought you gave that up.”

Mother exhaled a steady stream of smoke, which was snatched away by the wind. “I did.”

“Then why …?”

“Ask your father.”

I sat down on the opposite bench, facing her. In spite of the cold, Mom wore no gloves or hat, and the wind lifted her peach-pale hair and tossed it about carelessly. “Where is he?” I asked. “Nobody answered the door.”

“Gone for a walk along the beach, I suppose. It’s been a rough morning.” A column of smoke drifted into her eyes, and she kneaded them with her fingers.

“So Daddy told you about Georgina?”

She nodded and took a drag on her cigarette. “If that therapist weren’t already dead, I’d kill her myself.”

“You’d be at the head of a very long line.”

“When did you find out about it, Hannah?” She fixed her eyes on mine with such intensity that I looked away to hide my embarrassment.

I didn’t want to tell Mother exactly when I knew; I didn’t want her to discover that I’d heard about Georgina’s accusations against my father long before she did. “Scott told me,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”

Mother flipped the filter of her cigarette with her thumbnail and watched the ash particles spiral to the ground. “You’re not the first. The police were here most of the morning.”

I gasped. “Again? What did they want this time?”

“They had a search warrant.” She pointed the end of her cigarette, glowing hotly in the wind, toward the house. “Made a mess.”

“What were they looking for?”

She shrugged and dropped the remains of her cigarette through the slot in the top of the Diet Coke, where it sizzled out.

“Did they find anything?”

“As far as I know, they went away empty-handed.”

That was something, anyway. I squirmed uncomfortably on the bench. The wind was leaking between the seams of my tweed jacket, and I shivered. “Hey, Mom, it’s cold out here. Let’s go inside.”

“In a minute.” She reached for a pack of Salems that lay on the table in front of her. I wanted to snatch it out of her hand and send it flying over the neighbor’s fence. Mother had given up smoking three years ago. It broke my heart to see her resuming what had once been a two-pack-a-day habit.

She tapped another cigarette out of the pack and, by cupping her hands around it, got it lit on the third match. “I wish you wouldn’t smoke,” I told her.

She studied me with tired eyes. “I wish I wouldn’t, either, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time.” She took another drag, held it in her lungs for a long time, then exhaled slowly. “I suppose you want to know what I think.”

I laid a hand on her arm. “Mom, I don’t believe a word of what Georgina says.”

She slipped the cellophane from the pack of cigarettes, toyed with it briefly, then crumpled it into a ball. “That’s a relief. Because it isn’t true, you know.” She tucked the Salems into a pocket of her parka and zipped it shut. With the cigarettes out of sight, she seemed to notice me for the first time. “My God, you’re not dressed for this kind of weather, Hannah. Go on inside. I’ll just be a minute.”

“No, I’ll wait.” I sat and watched in silence as my mother smoked her cigarette down to the filter, then ground it into the grass with the toe of her tennis shoe. I noticed that her ankles were badly swollen and worried that she had been spending far too much time on her feet lately. I stood when she did, and when she came
around to my side of the table, we linked arms and walked through the back door together.

I didn’t know what I would see when I entered the house—drawers and closets yawning open, clothes and papers strewn about willy-nilly—but it wasn’t what I expected. The kitchen seemed untouched, but in the rest of the house, boxes which had been neatly stacked in corners or against the walls had had their packing tape ripped off and had been moved and carelessly stacked in the opposite side of the room. Thankfully my parents had just moved in, so there hadn’t been much in the closets and drawers for the cops to paw through. Mother followed me to the office off the front hall, still wearing her parka.

“It’s not as bad as I thought,” I commented. I took in the open boxes around me and the piles of papers on my father’s desk. “Was Daddy here when they came?”

Mother nodded. She backed into an overstuffed chair next to the window and sat down, her hands pressed between her knees. “One officer sat with us in the kitchen while two others rummaged through our things.” She rested her head on the back of the chair and closed her eyes. “I can’t believe this is happening to us.”

I lowered myself into my father’s desk chair and stared at the computer monitor, busily crawling with a hungry caterpillar screensaver. “They looked there, too.”

I turned to face my mother. “Where?”

“Your father’s computer. One of the officer’s diddled around with it for an hour or so, then copied some files onto a Zip disk and took it away with him.”