In Her Skin(25)

Ginny slices the air with her hands and yells, “Hold up!” which is wrong for a fifty-year-old lady with too-long hair. Everyone stares at her in shock.

Harvey recovers first and sees his opening.

“Childhood trauma can result in difficulty with memory storage and retrieval. When a memory is forgotten, clinicians say that a likely explanation is dissoci-ation.” He says this like the detective is a little kid, and though Ginny nods nicely, I think Harvey is making the wrong play.

“Dissociation?” Lawyer Gene says. I cringe at the staged feel of it.

“Yes, Gene,” Silver says. “Dissociation means that a memory is not actually lost, but is ‘unavailable’”—air quotes; God—“for retrieval. That is, it’s in ‘memory storage’”—more air quotes, at which Curley rolls his eyes—“but cannot for a period of time actually be recalled.”

“What’s the bottom line, Mr. Silver?” growls Detective Curley.

“Doctor,” Ginny corrects.

Everyone ignores Ginny, even Dr. Silver, who directs his answer to the detective, the only person in the room who needs convincing.

“It’s Vivienne’s way of protecting herself from the pain of that memory,” Dr. Silver says.

When my name is spoken for the first time, everyone remembers I am there. They turn and look at me. I scowl.

“Dissociative amnesia has been positively linked to overwhelming stress caused by a traumatic event: an event suffered, or witnessed, or even simply imagined. Until those memories are unlocked, we will never know for sure.”

“You’re saying either she was abducted, or she saw someone abducted, or she imagined she was abducted? Fantastic,” says Detective Curley.

“There isn’t cause for sarcasm, Detective,” says Mrs. Lovecraft.

“What my wife means, Detective, is that we understand your skepticism. It was hard for us to believe, too,” says Mr. Lovecraft.

“Seven years is a long time to forget,” Detective Curley says. “Can’t she be treated to make her memory come back?”

I want to yell at this guy to take the excuse we’re offering him and retire early. Boston must be a boring city if he’s looking for stuff to do. A working vacation in Immokalee would keep his reflexes sharp.

“There are no laboratory tests to diagnose dissociative disorders. A doctor might use blood tests or imaging to make sure Vivi doesn’t have a physical illness or side effects from a medication. She might be referred to a mental health professional such as a psychiatrist, psychologist, or psychiatric social worker who is specially trained to diagnose and treat mental illnesses,” says Dr. Silver.

Ginny sits up a little straighter, though I’m pretty sure she is not the mental health professional Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft would choose, as “court-appointed” and “free” are probably not on their list of requirements.

“So we’re just supposed to wait until the girl remembers if there was a crime?” Detective Curley says, rolling his eyes.

“That is exactly what we mean,” Lawyer Gene says, standing. “Vivienne has nothing else to say.”

We take that as our cue to get our stuff.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to speak with Mr. Lovecraft alone for a moment,” Detective Curley says from behind his desk, irritation replaced by something cooler.

Mrs. Lovecraft blinks crazily at Mr. Lovecraft. Lawyer Gene puffs up. “Anything you have to say to Henry Lovecraft you can say to me,” he says, and there’s a badass behind those wire-framed glasses.

“I gotta be honest, Lovecraft. I don’t get why you’re lawyering up over this.” Detective Curley sounds like a TV cop. The others move into and down the hall, thick in conversation, and I stay behind, just outside the door, forgotten. I slide down to the floor and bury my face in my knees so no one walking by will bother me; unfamiliar crying kids scare people. Scooting closer gives me a good slant-view angle back into the room, where Lawyer Gene nods for Mr. Lovecraft to sit beside him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” says Mr. Lovecraft.

“I mean, this has got to be a public relations windfall. You and your wife came under some heavy criticism after that girl disappeared. Some people called you negligent. ’Course it wasn’t your fault the girl went missing: How could you have known? Still, some people didn’t see it that way. Gotta hurt business, in a small city like this. But now: now you got a chance to be the hero. I’m just a dumb Boston detective, but it seems to me that this whole thing works out for you.”

Suddenly I understand who Detective Curley is. When everyone else maybe forgot Vivienne Weir, Detective Curley is the guy who remembered. He’s the guy who kept Vivi’s photo taped inside his locker here at the station. The one who never felt the case get cold.

“Are you saying I waved a wand and made Vivienne Weir magically reappear?” Mr. Lovecraft is aggressive. Aggressive won’t work with Curley. Lawyer Gene knows this and tries to calm things down.

“The detective isn’t accusing you of anything. Are you, Detective?” says Lawyer Gene.

“I am not. And yet, you have your lawyer here,” says Detective Curley. His chair squeals, and if the man had his feet up on his desk, I would not be surprised.

“Mr. Lovecraft and his wife have been through significant emotional trauma. It has taken years to get their lives back from a press that criticized them unfairly. Criticism, I would add, that would not have been heaped on them were they not public figures. Over the last seven years, they have grieved, they have prayed, and their prayers have been answered. Travis and Marie Weir were not alive to witness the miraculous return of their daughter. Let’s not compound the tragedy by casting aspersions on the only family that Vivienne Weir has going forward,” says Lawyer Gene.