What You Remember I Did (27 page)

Heart pounding, she took out her cell phone and called 911. "I'll be in the parking lot at the back of the building," she said, after telling them of her suspicions.

They responded quickly.

"She's deluded," she told the detective who questioned her. "Dangerously so. But truly caring about those she considers to have been victims, in an admittedly crazy way. I think she saw herself as an avenger, freeing her clients from the memories she created for them out of her own past."

She was asked to wait while they went upstairs to find Tonya.

"I don't want to see her," Nan said.

"You'll have to eventually, Miss. Down the road we'll need you to give a
depo
and to testify," the man said.

"Even if she pleads guilty?" Nan asked, though she was sure Tonya would face a death sentence in exchange for the forum her case would provide.

The man nodded and followed his two fellow officers into the building.
 
Only then did she begin to cry, a stream of tears that did not end until one of the other responders showed her the note that Tonya had asked him to give her:

How could I help them if I could not help myself?

"Night and Day, you are the one..."

Catherine swayed dreamily in Patrick's arms. Her strapless red taffeta gown rustled against his jeans. Never much of a dancer, Patrick looked decidedly uncomfortable and more than ever like their father, who had been as introverted as Catherine was not. Nan watched how their mother gazed up at her dance partner in frank flirtation, leaned her head on his shoulder, rubbed his back and neck with her open left hand.

"Bathroom," Patrick mumbled as he pulled gently away and slipped out of the room. Catherine didn't skip a beat and held out her arms as if he were still there.

He's your son
. She would never know if her mother had abused Patrick or if she knew now who he was, but that was not what this was about for Catherine. It was about the song and the music and her long-ago days of youth and beauty.

No one can ever know for sure
, Tonya had said. Not
Your mother never abused you
, not
All of this came out of my life and not yours
, but
No one can know.

No one can know
. Could she accept that, never knowing for sure?

"Night and Day, you are the one..."

This was Sunday, family day. For the first time since Catherine had been–Nan thought of it as "enrolled"–here, her whole family had come to visit. Well, almost her whole family. Stuart was away on some kind of political business and Daddy had been gone for a very long time.

The chair Nan was sitting in faced French doors, which overlooked a pretty back yard. She could see a round redwood table with a center umbrella. There were four chairs around it and several others away to the side. Gary had been sitting outside for over an hour with Ashley and Jordan, who seemed to have forgiven her for her protracted foul mood.

Patrick joined them, and she watched them chatting and laughing and talking intimately as they always did. Ashley, especially, looked happy and comfortable. She hadn't seemed fazed by her father's departure and the reasons for it, an equanimity Nan found offensive. Jordan knew only that she loved her Grandpa and he loved her, which was as it should be. Nan thought she might go out and join them, then thought maybe she shouldn't.

"Night and Day, you are the one...."

Beside her on the sofa,
Becca
nudged her and said in a stage whisper quite loud enough for anyone in the room to hear, "She's stuck."

Catherine's roommate sang again, "Night and Day, you are the one..."

"Mom!"
Becca
looked hugely amused. "Quick, what's the next line?" But Catherine was batting her lashes at her imaginary dance partner.

The pianist finished the song with a flourish. "Night and Day," trilled the singer, "you are the one..."

Trying to enter into the spirit of things, whatever that was, Nan laughed aloud. If you called it "zany" instead of "senile," and thought of Lucille Ball, this could be great fun. Maybe. Her mother looked at her as if she were some rude stranger she never wished to see again.

Becca
laughed, too. "Boy," she said, squinting the way she used to when they were children and something happened that she thought was nuts, "this would drive me crazy in five minutes."

"Meals are interesting," Nan told her. "Everyone's ultra polite, nodding and smiling and waiting for the other one to finish before they start talking. But it's six totally unrelated conversations. It's surreal."

"Speaking of surreal."
Becca
leaned in close for a sisterly chat. "How are things between you and Matt?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You love him, you hate him. He's the man you want to spend the rest of your life with, you never want to see him again." Her sister was making pulling-petals-off-a-daisy motions with her fingers. Nan had the old urge to run to their mother and complain that
Becca
was being mean to her.

"He's moving," she confided, though she really didn't want to. "To Pennsylvania."

Becca's
eyes widened. "Oh, Nanny! When?"

"At the end of the semester."

"Are you going with him? You're going with him, right? Now that Mom is here?"

"No."

"Oh, honey, I'm sorry."
Becca
patted Nan's knee. "You have such bad luck in love, don't you?"

"He asked me," Nan defended herself. "I said 'no.'"

"Why in the world would you do that? He's such a catch! Are you crazy, too?"

Maybe I am
, Nan thought bitterly.
Maybe I'll never be sane again, thanks to Dr. Tonya Bishop
. Aloud, she said airily, "I've got my reasons," and went to sit beside the singer to help her finish at least the stanza if not the entire song.

The singer, however, had no interest in anything but "Night and Day, you are the one... Night and Day, you are the one... Night and Day..." and paid absolutely no attention to Nan's enthusiastic invitations to keep going.

And why should she?
Nan met the cloudy gray eyes and joined in: "Night and Day, you are the one..."

Becca
gave a little shriek and fled out the back door as Patrick returned. Catherine took the vacated place on the couch and patted the cushion beside her. Pat shook his head. He had apparently had enough. "I gotta go, Ma." He gave her a peck on the cheek so swift she couldn't quite get her hands up in time to hold him for a real kiss. Waving to Nan, he made his escape.

"Oh, dear," Catherine lamented. "I had children, but they've run off. Do you know where my children are?" She wasn't looking at Nan, who took the opportunity to join the others in the yard. Behind her the happy singing kept on: "Night and Day, you are the one..." and Cole Porter rolled over in his grave.

Feeling sneaky for having left the room, Nan inspected the six-foot wooden fence that enclosed the outdoor area. It wouldn't have been out of place in any back yard, and she had to look closely to notice the padlock on the gate. Spring flowers were blooming along the edge of the lawn, and a garden had been tilled in one corner. It was well-tended and inviting, yet none of the six residents of the house was out here, only Nan and the various members of her family. She wondered whose benefit the appearance of normalcy was for.

The appearance of normalcy. Now there's a catchy phrase.

Becca
came toward her, laughing at something Jordan had said. "Where's Mom?"

Nan jerked her head back toward the house. "In there. Singing."

Her sister groaned. "
Kids'll
be home from school. I have to get going."

"
Becca
." Nan caught her sister's arm.

"Nan? You okay?"

"I've been wanting to say–" Nan swallowed. What was it she wanted to say? "I'm sorry I've been so difficult lately. It's been a tough time, but I didn't mean to take it out on you."

"Oh, sweetheart, you didn't!" They clung to each other for a moment. "I remembered something else,"
Becca
whispered in her ear, as if handing Nan a candy for being a good girl. "I'll tell you later." She kissed her and hurried inside the house.

Nan did not want another questionable memory, her own or anybody else's. She did not want to have to do anything hard ever again, she thought, joining the family grouping of Jordan, Ashley, and Gary who were watching a squirrel race back and forth across the top of the fence.
They made room for her, but warily–and with good reason. She hadn't exactly been Little Miss Sunshine lately.

Displaying a lot more patience than she felt, she planted her feet and waited in silence until the squirrel leaped onto a branch,
chittering
scornfully at them.
 
She took a deep breath. "Listen, you guys, I have something to say."

Gary smiled at her, and she knew that she loved him and that her bitterness had started to ebb. The knowledge came at her with such suddenness and intensity that she almost decided to say no more.

"What, Grandma?" Jordan asked. "What did you want to say?"

Nan
chittered
back at the squirrel, and it shut up and bounded across the fence onto a higher branch of a tree in the neighbors' yard. Jordan giggled. Ashley and Gary were grinning; it had been a long time, Nan knew, since they had seen her play.

She spread her arms wide. "I want to say thank you for being my family!" she all but shouted. "I want to say I love you!" Ashley, Gary, and Jordan clustered around her, all of them saying they loved her, too. From inside the house, the piano started again, and she heard Catherine leading them all in song: "Night and Day, you are the one..."

"Lovely as this has been," Nan said, "it's probably time to leave."

"Do we have to say goodbye?" Ashley asked. "They won't know the difference anyway."

So much for bonding.
"Do whatever pleases you," she said, and went inside. A few minutes later, she had said her farewells and was in her car headed–where? She had no idea. All the years of having to, wanting to go home to take care of her kids and Gary, then of Catherine, had come to an end. The house would be quiet and peaceful, but it would also be empty.

Aimlessly, she headed toward the college and the mounds of paperwork she had allowed to accumulate. As she waited for a break in traffic, her glance strayed idly to the electronic bulletin board near the edge of the campus.

"Farewell Matt Mullen, Poet Emeritus. Reading Sunday, 7:30 pm, main auditorium."

She experienced major déjà vu mixed with a deep sense of regret. There had been no real contact between them since his final decision to leave the area and her mother's entry into the group home. He'd called once, asking to see Catherine and inviting the two of them to dinner. She'd said yes to his seeing Catherine and, regretfully, no to dinner. Why cause herself unnecessary pain? She missed him, but the sooner the healing began, the better.

On the seat beside her lay a letter to Matt–a small note, wishing him well. She had intended to mail it en route to school on Friday, but something had held her back.

She slipped it into her bag as the traffic broke and glanced up again at the board. Going to the reading would be nothing but masochism. There was no way that she could or would move away from her mother, even
were
it what she wanted. There was more than enough in her life to cause her guilt without that, like having doubted Matt.

She parked and stared out the window. After a moment, she took the note she had written to him out of her bag, tore it up, and headed for the auditorium. Only a coward would say goodbye in a few hastily penned lines. What she needed was to close the circle in person.

Opening the door to go inside, she asked herself why beginnings were so simple and endings so complex. Which reminded her of what she had asked herself on the ride home from Ashley's at Thanksgiving: Why did the drive to anywhere always seem twice as long as the trip back?

The door didn't squeak this time, so she slipped into the auditorium without making a disturbance. Nevertheless, Matt looked up and saw her. He nodded almost imperceptibly as she took the same seat she'd occupied the first time she had heard him read.

"For a special friend," he said, and began to read:

In all its forms, in all its

Fashions, no matter

How we remember it,

Love is decidedly

Perverse.

When the reading was over, Nan waited until the room had emptied. Matt was waiting for her in the lobby.

"Could I buy you a cup of coffee–Nan, isn't it?" He smiled. His eyes crinkled at the edges. Nan still liked that.

"You know," she said, suddenly remembering. "The last time we were there I didn't put anything in the tip jar. I was going to get change and I forgot all about it until this very minute."