My school tour guide, Carrie, and her friends Danielle and Nicole became my close friends, and to this day they love to repeat my opening line to them—“I’m not going to remember any of your names!”—while bursting into laughter. We four girls were a relatively innocent group: we liked to stay up late watching funny movies and swim in Danielle’s pool and play billiards in the rec room above her garage. We could make one another laugh at any stupid little thing. We didn’t party or drink or smoke weed; I felt safe with them.
But when I was alone I felt different, far apart. Very late one night in my bedroom, I turned to a random cable station and began watching a movie called Freeway. In the movie, an orphaned, fifteen-year-old blonde is driving to her grandmother’s house when her car breaks down. A nice-looking man in glasses picks her up, but soon she figures out that he is a serial rapist and murderer, one she’s heard about on the news. She eventually manages to shoot the man several times, by being tough and nasty and smart. I watched this movie in a state of hypnosis, not just cheering this girl on but becoming her. I was in that cab in the night: I could feel the busted springs of the grimy bench seat, the forward-sweeping motion of the truck, the weight of the gun in my hand. And I felt, in my body—in what had become her body—the desire to kill. Oh, if I could kill some man, one of these men who prey upon us. It wouldn’t even have to be the one who killed Mom. Any violent man would do. My hands tightened into fists; I was a torch upon my bed. When the movie ended, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t dare leave my room. If I did, I might take all the glasses and dishes from the cupboards and throw them to the floor one by one, just to destroy something. I stayed up until sunrise, visions of the night of the murder competing with fantasies of myself as killer.
It might have been then that I began consoling myself with thoughts of a long silver gun. I saw it clearly, for years after the murder: a shiny barrel at the end of my hands, both weapon and shield. I’d sneak it into the courthouse on the first day of the trial I longed for, somehow using my victim’s innocence, my blond harmlessness, to get it past the guards. A few hours of the proceedings would pass before I’d get my moment. The killer would be sitting on a witness stand, ready to defend himself, and I’d stand up from the gallery, stride to the front of the courtroom, and destroy him before anyone knew what I was doing. In the fantasy, my hands and the barrel and the explosion always obscured his face.
Those fantasies, and that rage, eclipsed the grief and love I felt for my mother. My memories of her were becoming dimmer with time, and it was easier to feel fear and anger, because they seemed to have an endpoint: the trial, if it would ever come. Sadness was more dangerous, because I knew it would never end.
32
* * *
Near the beginning of senior year, just as I was starting to research colleges, the cops returned. I met the new primary investigator on the case, Walter Grzyb (?pronounced “Gribb”), who would consult with Dick Pickett for some time. They’d had a few small leads here and there, but they hadn’t made any real progress. Despite the fact that Dennis’s DNA had twice failed to match the samples from the crime scene, Dick still thought Dennis was the killer, and still thought that I had repressed some memory that would solve the case. When I met Walt, he seemed more reasonable, more personable and empathetic than Dick, but by then I was angry at all cops. They were incompetent and lazy. They should have solved the case long ago. But still, I agreed to be interviewed again.
After a few weeks of research, Walt found Dr. Daniel Brown, a psychiatrist who specialized in memory recovery using a combination of therapy and hypnotherapy. He had a professorship at Harvard and an international reputation; if we were going to uncover repressed memory, this was our guy. Walt asked if I’d be willing to see Dr. Brown down in Boston, for four to six two-hour visits. If Dr. Brown concluded that I had no repressed memory, the police would never again try to retrieve it. They would take my word that I’d told them everything I could. I agreed. I was sure we wouldn’t uncover anything.
I hoped I’d be proven right. And I hoped I’d be proven wrong.
Walt drove me down to Boston himself: four hours of awkward attempts at conversation. He insisted I select the radio station, but it was hard to enjoy the music when I thought he was just humoring me, suffering through the monotony of “Bittersweet Symphony” for my benefit. I was relieved when we finally pulled up and parked next to a long brick office building, when we were finally sitting with Dr. Brown, getting started.
I liked Dr. Brown right away, because he was a bit strange. I liked that this Ivy League memory expert had wild gray hair and a shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest, with a gold chain showing. That he was matter-of-fact and didn’t spend a lot of time cozying up to me. Here was a man who drew his own conclusions, I thought, who wouldn’t listen to a bunch of easy bullshit. He seemed like a truly neutral party, not a tool the cops were wielding against me.
Walt was excused from the sessions, which were videotaped for Dr. Brown’s later analysis. I quickly forgot about the presence of the camcorder, because I spent the sessions with my eyes closed, following Dr. Brown’s quiet prompts. The goal was to immerse me in the night of the murder and the weeks preceding it, so I could take another look around and try to report more than I had before. I entered an altered state—just a little more conscious than hypnosis—where I could perceive details but felt little emotion in connection with them. This was meant to make details less threatening, and therefore easier to retrieve. At the end of the session, it always felt like only a few minutes had passed.
The visits were on Tuesdays, and when Carol explained the situation to my school principal, he readily agreed to excuse my absence. The days afterwards, though, always felt a little unreal. I told my closest friends why I was going out of town, and word must have spread—in such a small class, absences were always commented on the next day—but I can’t remember anyone asking me anything. Carol and Carroll and I didn’t even talk about it, just as we rarely talked about Mom.
The final session came in the last week of school before Christmas. Afterwards, Walt and I sat waiting on one side of a narrow conference table: wood laminate, edges wrapped in black rubber that I pressed my fingernail into, making satisfying hatch marks. Dr. Brown came in and settled into a chair across from us. Winter light flowed in through a tall window, and the hum of traffic below threaded between the panes. I could see the white hulls of boats lined up along the Charles.