All Is Not Forgotten (19 page)

But it is the scream that I remember most.

She stood in the middle of my office, holding her stomach, buckled over in half. Her back rose and fell with the overpowering heaves of her breath as the cries of agony poured from her body.

I have treated hundreds of patients and I have seen breakdowns of all kinds. Men have punched holes in my walls. Women have sobbed. Men have sobbed. Teenagers have yelled at me with obscenities that rival my patients in Somers. This was something beyond anything I had ever witnessed. And I knew Jenny was back in those woods.

I did not hold her. That would not have been appropriate. But I did grab hold of her arms to steady her. She pushed me away; her arms were still swinging wildly.

Stop it!

She screamed at me over and over. She was looking at me but not at me. I kept trying to grab hold of her until she finally let me. I walked her to the sofa and helped her lie down in fetal position. I texted her mother that we were ending early and to please come back from her errands.

“Jenny,” I said cautiously. “Where did you go? Can you tell me?”

She held herself, still crying, but calmer. Her hand was on her back, rubbing the scar.

“Close your eyes again. Take a deep breath. Let's not lose this moment. What are you feeling? Can you tell me? Do you want to stop or keep going?”

She took a breath. She closed her eyes. Tears were streaming, pooling on the leather beneath her skin. She was so strong. So incredibly determined. And when she spoke, the way she said the words, and the raw emotions that were escaping the confines of her body and filling the room—I felt not only that I understood her. I felt like I
was
her that night.

I feel him. I feel his hand on my shoulder, pushing me to the ground. I feel another hand on my neck, like I'm an animal and he's riding me. Oh God!

“Okay, Jenny.” I could barely get the words out. “What else do you feel? What else do you see? Do you smell the bleach?”

She shook her head.
There's nothing else! Where did it go! I want to see him. Who did this? Who did this to me?

Rage seemed to have taken over her body. She got up from the sofa and looked around the room, frantically.

“What do you need, Jenny? What is it?”

Then she found it. The bleach disk. She picked it up and pressed it to her face. It made her gag—it's too strong to be that close.

“Jenny, stop! It can burn you, your nostrils and throat…”

She breathed it in again and then dropped to her knees. I could see it on her face then. It was beautiful but also profoundly devastating. We had found it. She had found it. One small memory of that night.

“What is it, Jenny? What are you remembering?”

It hurts so much. I can feel him, he's tearing me, pushing harder and harder. I can smell him. I smell it on him. He's on me like I'm an animal. Oh God! I feel him! I can't stop him! I can't stop it from happening! I feel him inside me. I can't hear him, but the way he is, I don't know! The way he's moving. I'm an animal and he's just riding me and it's making him … I don't know!

“You do know. What is it you know about him right now, at the moment he's inside you?”

Oh God! Oh God! I can't say it!

“Just say it. I already know, Jenny. So just say it.”

I know he feels satisfied.

I had no more words that day.

 

Chapter Seventeen

By the time
Charlotte came for Jenny, we were both emotionally exhausted. I told Charlotte that it had been a productive but difficult session and that we would talk about it later. I suggested Jenny take a pill and get some sleep.

Tom and Charlotte met with me the next day. In the eleven weeks I'd been treating the Kramer family, I had conducted just one session with both parents, and that had been to discuss Jenny's treatment. Seeing them separately had proved immensely useful to their family, and to each of them individually, and I fully intended to stay this course. I have already told you how I feel about couples therapy. However, I made an exception, given the extraordinary progress Jenny and I had made in recovering this memory of the rape.

Tom's primary concern was with the search for the rapist and how we could use this new information in the investigation. He also wanted to know why I had not asked Jenny about the blue sweatshirt with the red bird. Charlotte was more concerned with what this memory was doing to Jenny. After her breakthrough about her meeting with Bob and her acceptance of the guilt she was carrying for not seeing Jenny's death march during the months after the rape, she was keeping her eye on that ball.

I explained to Tom, to both of them, that I was not about to introduce the blue sweatshirt into the memory-recovery process with Jenny after what had happened. I had come to believe three things after her sudden recall of the moment the rapist penetrated her. First, was that the memories had not all been erased. Of the different scenarios for “forgetting” that I have explained, it was clear that Jenny's “forgetting” had to do with the inability to
recall
the memories from that night. The treatment she was given, the combination of drugs, had caused the memories to be filed in a place that was disconnected from any emotion, and from the other memories of the party. Without having these trails of crumbs to lead her back, the memories of the rape were lost inside her brain. The missing car keys.

The second thing I believed was the deduction that if the memory of this one moment had not been erased, none of them had. The events from that one hour were so close in terms of spatial proximity and emotional significance that there was no reason to believe that only some would have been spared the treatment. My own thoughts were spinning that day, thinking about what this meant for Jenny, but also for Sean. I wanted to tell them both to clear their schedules, to work with me day and night, until we found every last detail of what had happened to them. But I am a patient man, and I respect the process of therapy. Too much too soon could cause more harm than good. It's like inputting data into a computer. I didn't want the hard drive to crash.

The third thing, and the most important to convey to Tom, was that Jenny was like a patient having surgery. She was, metaphorically, on the table, cut open, exposed. Given the reconsolidation research and the uncertainty about memory recovery, we had to keep the operating room perfectly sterile so our patient did not become infected with harmful germs. Her brain was starting to find the missing files and put them back into the right place—the place with the story about that night, the songs and the clothes and drinks and Doug with that other girl. How easy it would be to allow a false fact to be added to that story while it was being reconsolidated. Like the subjects who were made to “remember” being lost in the mall.

“Do you understand, Tom? If I ask her or even suggest that a man in a blue sweatshirt might be a suspect, she could put that with other memories of that night and believe it to be true even if it's not—and then we'll never know. If we can just be patient—”

Charlotte understood.
She might remember it on her own, and then we'd know for sure. My God. It's been almost a year. Unless she remembers his face, I don't see how any of this is going to help.

“Well, even then, please don't lose sight of the fact that the treatment has compromised her ability to serve as a witness. And all the work I'm doing here, well … it's very unconventional.”

Tom rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand.
I don't care about all of that. I just want to know who it is.

“Even if the way you find him means he can't be punished?”

Oh, he'll be punished. Don't doubt that. Don't ever doubt that.

Charlotte looked at him, and then at me. We both had the same thought, I imagine. Tom seemed to be indicating that he would take matters into his own hands if a conviction were not possible. But we were so far away from that point, I didn't give it much pause. Nor did Charlotte. That did not prevent her from using Tom's false bravado to lash out.

Seriously, Tom. Can we just stop this charade? You have put all our lives on hold while you—do what? Look for pictures of boys in sweatshirts? Why can't you get past this? Why, for God's sake, can't you be man enough to let it go!

“Charlotte…” I said, trying to stop this runaway train.

On hold? What the hell has been on hold? Huh? I coached Lucas's lacrosse team. I had record-breaking commissions. I'm home every goddamned night and every weekend playing with our son and studying with our daughter so she can get back on track. What should I be doing? Playing golf? Would that make me more of a man, if I played more golf and spent less time searching for this monster?

This is why I don't believe in couples therapy.

“Charlotte, Tom … let's stop right there. Everyone is emotional today. Saying things that cannot be unsaid is not going help anyone. Least of all Jenny.”

Fine,
Charlotte said. She could no longer look at her husband.
Can we please discuss what this means for Jenny? You said she has found one memory from the woods. The man smelled of bleach.…

“Or she could smell bleach in the woods somehow.”

Okay. She smelled the bleach. She would have smelled it for the entire time. For the whole hour it was happening. And yet the one memory is the moment he …

“Penetrated her. Yes, that's right.”

But he did that for the whole hour. And in different ways …

“I believe the memory was from the beginning. I imagine it was that moment that was most shocking to her. When she realized what he wanted to do. What he was going to do.”

Charlotte exhaled loudly and slumped back against the sofa cushions. Her eyes were on the sticker on that tulip plant.
So now she knows what it feels like to be raped. So now what? Is this going to make her feel better?

I proceeded with caution. Knowing about Charlotte's first sexual experience, I felt I needed to be respectful of her secret. I had been suggesting to her that she tell her husband. It was the only way to finish breaking the bond she had with Bob Sullivan, and unless that bond was broken, her marriage was going to fail. Charlotte did not want her marriage to fail. She just did not see that she was on that road.

“I know it sounds strange. But yes, this is going to make her feel better. She is going to be able to attach her emotions to this memory. Even if this is the only one we get back, it may be enough.”

Tom was not paying attention. I could see him obsessing on that sweatshirt. And I knew he was going to go home and ask his daughter about it.

“Tom?” I said, getting his attention. “We need to be on the same page. All of us.”

I don't know. This all sounds like a bunch of voodoo nonsense to me. You let her smell bleach and she remembered being raped. What if we show her a sweatshirt and she remembers something else about that night? How can you say the bleach wasn't suggestive? Huh? You didn't know if there was bleach. You thought she was remembering a smell from the bathroom. How do we even know where she smelled the bleach?

“I don't know for sure. But she had an organic memory of a strong odor. She's smelled over sixty odors during our work together, and this was the only one that triggered that response. She doesn't have any memory of colors or clothing or the red bird. If I introduce something like that, she'll know there must be a reason, that we have some suspicions, and that knowledge could trigger a false memory. Her brain will send it to the place where it holds the story of that night, and it will arrive in that place with a seal of approval. I don't know how else to explain it to you.”

Then show her sixty shirts and coats and sweatshirts. It's safe to say the guy was wearing something on his body. She can't assume anything from that. Right?

Tom was relentless. And he had Parsons breathing down my neck about this sweatshirt. If they could all just give me more time to work with the bleach and this one little memory. It was like a little newborn chick. I just wanted to keep it safe and warm and see how it progressed. I agreed in the end to have her look through catalogs of men's clothing, from suits to T-shirts, while we were doing our work. I promised to do it later that week.

I would not keep that promise.

 

Chapter Eighteen

The Kramers went home
to Jenny. I went home to my wife, who was crying in our bed, holding a blue hoodie with a red bird.

The Kramers did not speak in the car or in the house, partly because they were angry at one another, and partly because they were each lost in the new reality Jenny's recalled memory had created. They were two trains leaving the same station but heading in opposite directions.

Tom went to his computer and pulled up photos from the high school Web site. He was looking for pictures of students. He was looking for blue sweatshirts. Charlotte went to Jenny's room. She found her daughter reading a history textbook. The tutor had just left, and Jenny seemed calmly engrossed in an assignment.

It was the kind of moment that would have gone right by me before the rape. My eye was trained for abnormal behavior, misbehavior. If I saw her on her laptop but couldn't see the screen, for example. I'd go in and pretend to be opening a shade or putting away some laundry so I could get a peek at what she was looking at. Or if she was speaking too quietly on the phone, I'd check our account to see what number she'd called. Things like that. I guess you could call it spying, but it's just what we do. We all do it, the mothers. We talk about it at lunch sometimes, share our notes. But now, it's the normal behavior that stops me in the hallway.