All Is Not Forgotten (20 page)

Charlotte went into Jenny's room. Jenny looked up and smiled at her. It was not a happy smile, but it wasn't fake either. Jenny asked if I had told them. Charlotte nodded. She did not press Jenny for details or offer any opinions or advice.

I walked to her bed and climbed in beside her. She looked at me strangely at first, but then it was as if she remembered how I used to do this with her, how I would climb into her bed and she would lay her head on my chest and I would rub her back. When she was a little girl, I would read to her. Sometimes we would just talk. That probably surprises you.

“Why do you think it surprises me?” I asked her.

Because of how our relationship changed. How she grew closer to Tom and more distant from me. But it seemed normal. I think it was normal. She needed to distance herself from me to grow up. Isn't that what girls do?

“Yes, it can be very normal. You didn't get to experience that, did you?”

How do you mean? I couldn't have been more distant from my mother.

“But you didn't get to separate in a safe environment. Where you knew you could go back to being a little girl if you needed to.”

Charlotte thought about that and nodded with ambivalence.
Well, in any case, I climbed into her bed and she put her head on my chest. I kissed her hair and I ran my hand up and down her back. I kept thinking about her scar and how I wanted to reach under her shirt and touch it.

“Why?” I asked her, though I knew the answer.

I guess I wanted her to know that I knew it was there. Well, of course she knew that. But that I really knew it was there. That I knew … or that I felt it.

Charlotte couldn't find the words to explain herself.

“What did you feel?”

It took her a long moment to answer.

When you told us what she said, how she felt like … like she was an animal being ridden and how she could tell it satisfied him when he'd finally, you know … it's not easy the first time. He had to work for it, didn't he? He had to put in some effort and listen to her screams, didn't he?

“Yes, I imagine that's true.”

And maybe she thought he wouldn't be able to, that maybe it wasn't possible for it to happen like this. That maybe the fight she was putting up … every muscle working to keep him out, to keep him from succeeding … There's this moment when he breaks through and finds his way in, all the way inside you and then his body just shakes with ecstasy and yours with pain and this feeling of, God what is it? What is it that's more than the pain?

“It's your will, Charlotte. Your will is broken.”

Charlotte looked at me with wide eyes, her face replete with relief. I shouldn't have made it that easy for her. I should have led her to it but let her find it on her own. She would have. And then it would have been more hers than mine. And, the truth is, it was mine. My childhood assault had felt that same way. I believe this is true for anyone who is attacked physically. I was not at my best that day she told me about her talk with Jenny. I was impatient, even at this most profound moment for Charlotte Kramer. My mind was not on Charlotte and Jenny but rather on my wife and my son.

Yes!
She said,
Yes. Your will is broken.

I sighed with frustration at my incompetence. I know better than this. Still, there was value in her having the answer, no matter how sloppily we had managed to come across it.

That's why you feel like an animal. You have no power, your voice is not heard, your body is not your own. Yes, that's what it is! Like you can't believe you have lost your power over your own body, over your movements and your … your integrity … your physical integrity. We do this to animals, don't we? We take wild horses and we ride them into submission. But they, they get over it, don't they? They sit in their stalls and eat their dried hay and shit at their own feet and savor the stroke of a brush held by the very creature who broke their spirit.

“Yes,” I said. “Some animals can thrive in a submissive environment. Others do not. Humans do not. History shows this, doesn't it? War? Rebellion? What did you do then? Did you touch her scar?”

Charlotte shook her head.
No. I hugged her and I told her that it wasn't going to be like that ever again. That she had to think of it like a wave in the ocean that takes you by surprise and tumbles you to shore. Have you ever felt that? My kids love to ride the waves at the beach. And even after they get tumbled and their bathing suits get filled with sand and they even get scraped up sometimes, they still go back because it's fun to catch one and feel that you're on top of that power and not beneath it. And then you and the wave just ride safely to shore. I couldn't think of a better analogy. I don't think she understood completely. But it was a start.

“I think that's an excellent start. I imagine the difference between a wave and a rapist is that the wave has power whether it tumbles you or carries you to shore. You've simply gotten in its way. The rapist has power only when he's hurting his victim. Rape is not sex. But that was still a good start.”

I know they are different, obviously. But the mechanical part of it is the same. Everyone uses that expression to describe what you just did—about the power and all that. I don't know. Call it what you want—rape, sex, whatever—there is penetration by one person of another.

“Yes. That is true. Maybe we are just saying the same thing with different words. The important part is that you spoke to your daughter about this.”

It was the first time I've felt reconnected to her since the rape. Maybe even long before it. I did, I felt this connection, this bond which I couldn't share with her, but it was there for me. I know it's different, what happened with me the first time. But some of it, that moment that she described to you, of being an animal and having someone, like you said, take your will from you in that way. That part, that one part felt very similar.

“So you realize what that means, don't you?”

I'm not sure.

“Well, you've told me that you remember
wanting
to have sex with your mother's husband. That can't be true if you had that feeling, that same feeling Jenny had. Maybe you didn't physically resist him. And maybe he would have stopped if you'd asked him. But you did not want it to happen. Your will was broken by a need for love that should have been filled by your mother.”

She was silent then. She was not ready to accept this. To let herself off the hook. She had become so accustomed to living her double life. Bad Charlotte was a part of her and bad Charlotte wanted to stay.

“And how was Tom with everything?”

My question was devious, unethical. It may seem benign to you, but I was now also living a double life. The doctor trying to help this family. And the father trying to protect his own.

I don't really know. I don't know what he's feeling anymore. He fell asleep in bed with his computer on his lap. I don't know why I did this, but I removed the computer, and I took off my clothes and then I pulled down the comforter. Tom woke up. He looked at me almost with shock. We haven't had sex for almost a year. The one time we tried after the rape, I could tell it felt wrong to him. Like he couldn't enjoy himself until Jenny was okay and her attacker was behind bars. I didn't really want to either. I just thought it was time. But last night I didn't care. I climbed on top of him and we had sex. I don't know if he enjoyed it. I don't care about that either. He didn't seem to like it, but he did nothing to stop me. It's like everything else in our marriage. He just crumbled. I feel like shit. I don't know why I did it. Do you think I was trying to do that same thing to him? To take his will?

“No, I don't.”

Then what?

“I think you wanted to feel the wave take you safely to shore.”

This session came the day after I promised Tom I would try to find a memory of a blue sweatshirt. And the day after my wife found the blue sweatshirt on the floor of my son's closet.

But I have gotten ahead again. Let's go back to the afternoon following my meeting with the Kramers, the meeting when I told them about Jenny's recalled memory.

I was deeply satisfied as I drove home. Jenny and I had recovered the memory, and now I had shared the news with her parents. I was hopeful that more memories would come. More and more until she remembered every detail of that night—the moment when she first felt his hand on her body; the moment when she realized he was going to hurt her; the instinct to fight; screaming for help, still hopeful, still not believing this was happening; then the cool air on her skin as her clothing was ripped off; the memory she recalled—the penetration, the stealing of her innocence and her will and her humanity. What else was in there waiting to be found? Pain; acceptance; the stick scratching her skin, reaching the nerves under the first layer and the nerves of each layer after that which sent more pain signals to her brain. Agony. Despair. Ruin. I have been doing this long enough to know.

It was early afternoon. The Kramers had been my last appointment. I try not to schedule patients after Jenny or her parents in case we need to go longer. I do the same with Sean. Their sessions are unpredictable, as you have seen. On this day, I was looking forward to sharing with my wife the tremendous news about the bleach and the memory recall it had provoked. I had not told her yet, because I had not decided whether it was appropriate. I decided I would do so as I drove home. I simply could not keep this to myself for one more day.

“Julie?” I called out from the kitchen. The lights were on. Her car was in the garage. There was no answer.

“Honey?” I called out again. This time I heard her. She yelled to me from upstairs.

Alan! Alan!
her voice sounded surprised and relieved and panicked all at once. She had not been expecting me, but was now in immediate need of my assistance.

Of course, I set down my briefcase and keys and hurried up the stairs.

“Julie? Where are you?”

Here! I'm here!

I followed her voice to our bedroom.

It would be too easy to say, simply, that I saw her sitting on our bed with the blue sweatshirt, her face contorted by fear, and that I knew our son was in trouble. I do not know if you have experienced something like this. Most of us have, to varying degrees. It is not at all dissimilar from what Jenny described, the slow putting together of facts and then the horrific realization of what is happening. You have a moment of mental rebellion, where your brain rejects the information that is coming in. It is too toxic, a virus, and it is going to require the massive realignment of emotions and attachments that give you pleasure or maybe just peace of mind. It is going to wreak havoc.

The information entered my brain. The sweatshirt. My wife's fear about our son being at that party. Her fear infecting me, making me call that lawyer. Then it was real, this risk to our own family from that night. The new facts entered my brain, and within seconds the rebellion was lost and the realignment was in place. They were painful seconds. Like a tooth being pulled.

I found this in his closet.

She got up and walked to where I was standing. She got close to me and pressed the sweatshirt into my chest.

The lawyer called this morning. He told me one of the other boys had his interview today and they asked him about a blue sweatshirt with a red bird. He told me that Jason would be asked this same question and did I know how he would answer. I bought him a hoodie for his birthday that year, remember?

I did not remember. It had not been important to me then.

We got it on our trip to Atlanta. That conference you had, remember? We had to go to that Hawks game and we got him this. The red bird—it's a hawk! Look.

She held up the sweatshirt. There was a red hawk on the front and the back. The name of the team was in white, but the letters were small. On the back was just a hawk. I took hold of her arms and looked at her sternly.

“What did you tell him?”

I told him the truth. That Jason had a blue hoodie with a red hawk on it.

“Oh, Jesus!” I let go of her arms and turned away, thinking, thinking.

Did you know about this? Did you know they were looking for a boy in a blue sweatshirt? Did she remember? You would tell me, wouldn't you?

“I didn't know about the sweatshirt.”

Yes, I know. The lies continued.

She blabbered on and on.
What was I supposed to do? He's our lawyer! We can't have Jason lie. What if someone remembers? He wore that thing all spring. If he lies and they find out he lied, he'll look guilty.

“Of what?” I asked. “No one would believe Jason raped Jenny Kramer.”

Think about it, Alan! He's a swimmer. He shaves his legs and arms.… Maybe he shaves everything.… What if he does? What if they ask him and he has to admit he shaves everywhere?

I waved her off. “The whole goddamned team shaves! Half of them were at that party. That doesn't mean anything!”

But now this!
She held out the blue sweatshirt.
When I got off the phone, I ran upstairs and started going through his things. I couldn't remember him wearing that sweatshirt since that spring. It wasn't there anywhere. Not in the laundry, or his drawers. Then I just started tearing apart his room. I started to think, maybe it's gone. Maybe he'd lost it, and maybe he'd lost it before the party! Then he couldn't have been wearing it that night. And then … God! I started digging through all the crap on the floor of his closet. And there was this plastic bag and it had the sweatshirt!

“Why was it in the bag? Was that all there was?” I was shifting then to damage control.