All Is Not Forgotten(56)

I tried to smile politely as I studied her face. I could see it then. For the first time. I could see the rape in her eyes, running alongside the life.

“How have things been since Wednesday?” I managed to say.

Oh, what a horrible person I am! I could not believe what I had done. I could not believe that I had set in motion the most devious betrayal. I had opened up this path back to that night. The patient was on the table and I was about to infect her with the germs of a lie. I had the chance to give it all back to her, the truth in all its purity. But instead, I was going to go in with my evil plan and corrupt it to my own end. To save my son. To save my family. I told myself I could do just this little bit but keep the rest, find the rest, intact. But how could that be? This one corruption would be the end of the truth. The germs would cause an infection that would feed on the healthy flesh until it was all dead. The truth, dead. My despair was profound. The irony staring me in the face. If I pulled back now, my son would be questioned and I would be taken from my work. To save my son, I would have to defile my work. Do you see? Do you?

Jenny started to talk then, about the memory and how it had become clearer and clearer. The hand on her back. The hand on the back of her neck. The smell of the bleach. His penis entering her and the shock that followed as he pushed harder and harder, tearing her inside. The violation. The pain. The animal broken. Its body and its spirit. Broken. It was perfect, the way this memory was coming into focus. I am not sick to think this. But it was perfect because it was real. It had been there all this time, carefully preserved, and now it had found its way back. Not only as a series of facts, but in the past two days it had connected to the feelings it created. They were no longer floating inside her, the ghosts that Sean Logan had described. They had found their home, and now they could be recognized and, finally, processed. It was working! Jenny cried. She sobbed. I hate him! She screamed in my office. I hate him!

“Yes!” I said. I wanted to cry myself. I was overwhelmed by the power of what we had unleashed inside her.

Why did he do this to me?

“Because he is nothing without the power he took from you. He is nothing, and you are everything. Can you feel that? How desperate he is to take your power? How hungry? He is the animal, Jenny. Not you. He has no soul.”

So he took mine. He stole mine.

“He tried to. But he took only a small piece.”

I want it back! Do you hear me? I want it back!

Oh, how her strength moved me that day! I nodded my head and said the only words that came to my mind.

“I know.”

I let her sit with this for a moment. And I allowed myself to enjoy that moment. To savor it. And then I swallowed every ounce of integrity I had left and pressed ahead with my plan.

“I want to focus on sound today. Maybe on a voice.”

She agreed. She trusted me completely. I had in my mind the events of that afternoon in the pool house. I did not have the investigator’s tape by then, but I had Charlotte’s recollection. She had told me what was said. How Bob had repeated over and over the same exclamatory expression. Oh dear Lord!

“There are some things that might have been said. Things people say when they are highly emotional. I imagine this creature, this animal, was in a heightened emotional state. I’m going to say some of them to you. You need to close your eyes and just let the words float in like we did with the smells. Don’t force them. Just see if any of them resonate.”

Jenny opened her bag and took out the props. She sat with them as she always did and then nodded and closed her eyes. I did not put on the music. I did not let her smell the bleach. I did not want her to go back to the night in the woods, but instead to that afternoon in the pool house.

Now we would see. We would put to the test the theories and studies about memory. Jenny had been unconscious as Bob Sullivan stood over her, wrapping her wrists, trying to save her life. Would his voice be in there somewhere? Would his words be lingering, waiting to be pulled from the stacks of files? Could I pull them out and refile them, not with that afternoon in the pool house, but from that night in the woods?

Jenny closed her eyes.

“Are you ready” I asked.

She nodded. I took a breath and shook my head with disgust at myself and what I was about to do. Then I started to say the words.

“Oh my God.… My God … Yes … Do you like that?… Yes … Oh my God … Mmmm.… Uhhhhh … yes!.… Oh my God … Good God.… Good Lord.… Dear Lord … Oh dear Lord, dear Lord, dear Lord…”





Chapter Twenty-two

Jenny did not falsely remember Bob Sullivan’s voice from the night of the rape. Did you think it would be that easy? That session was just the beginning. It was a little seed, planted in the fertile soil. It would take more than just our sessions. More than the gimmick of playing Bob’s commercials right before our sessions. If this work were that simple, any moron could do it. It is not simple. Nor was my plan. But nothing more could be done until Monday.

I went home that night hopeful. And destroyed.

My son was waiting for me. He was annoyed at having been detained on a Friday night by his mother.

“Hi,” I said. He was in the family room playing on the Xbox. My wife remained in the kitchen after saying a nervous hello and kissing me on the cheek.

I stood in the doorway and did not go further. His back was to me and he could not hear anything with his headphones blaring. Soldiers were killing combatants in an urban village. My son was using a knife to cut their throats. He was screaming at his friends who were playing the game with him through the Internet. They were playful screams, followed by laughter. A combatant came up from behind and stabbed my son. He yelled, then laughed very hard. He told his friend, You’re a f*cking idiot. Where were you? What? Stuck at the bridge. Dude, you have to get on the bus to get over the bridge. You killed me, dude. What the f*ck. Hahaha.