How good is your memory? I know I’ve mentioned that one of the few things Jenny remembered was a strong odor. I obtained samples from a physical rehabilitation center, a variety of “scratch and sniff” patches that are used for patients with anosmia (loss of smell due to brain injury). They use them mostly to test—to see if there are any particular odors that are recognized by the patient. Any recognition prompts hope because if there is none within six months, the condition is considered permanent. It is a terrible condition, but that does not concern my work with Jenny. The patches were extremely useful to us.
Jenny always held her clothing in her lap. They are not the actual torn and bloodstained articles from that night, but new ones her mother purchased—exact replicas. The short black skirt, the ballet slippers, the cropped sweater and underpants. All exactly the same. She rubbed some makeup on her face and lips, the same makeup she has always worn and wore that night. It has a fruity smell. We now know which songs were playing during the party and the entire hour of the rape. I won’t bore you with the list. It was what you would imagine. Demi Lovato, Nicki Minaj, One Direction, Maroon 5, et cetera, et cetera. With closed eyes and the room dark, we played the music and took her back to that night. I did the initial prompts until she knew them herself.
I’m so happy when we walk in. I feel pretty. I feel excited. All I can think about is Doug Hastings. I walk with Violet through the kitchen. We’re looking for kids from our grade. People say hello to us. We get a drink. My eyes are scanning every doorway, looking for a glimpse of Doug. Violet pokes me. She tells me to stop being so obvious. I try to talk to a girl we know who’s already drunk. She sounds like an idiot.
I placed the paper strip that smells like vodka under her nose. She inhaled and let the smell sift through her brain. The music was playing. We know what song it was. “I Knew You Were Trouble” by Taylor Swift. Jenny remembered this all very well. She explained to me that this song is about a boy who breaks a girl’s heart and how the girl is singing that she should have known better. This song was still playing when Jenny and Violet walked into the family room and she saw Doug there with another girl. They were definitely “together.” We discussed briefly the irony of the song.
I felt dizzy. It wasn’t the drink, either, because I’d just had a couple of sips. I felt like the world had just exploded, my world. My entire world.
Jenny and I have discussed this many times. I am an “old man” by her standards, but I can remember what it felt like to be rejected by a girl when I was fifteen. We all know that feeling, don’t we? Don’t you?
Violet stares at me and then Doug and then back at me. She tries to make me laugh by saying she’s gonna go kick his ass. She says she heard he has a little dick anyway. She makes fun of his hair, how it’s sticky with gel. She calls him metro. None of it matters. I could not sit with the feelings I had, so I went to the kitchen and started chugging vodka.
Jenny had begun to adopt “therapy speak.” It’s very common. We talk about “sitting” with our feelings. Being able to process them and redirect them with thoughts so they lose their power over our bodies. It is then that we are able to live our everyday lives.
Jenny continued with the parts she remembered. They ended with her vomiting in the bathroom.
Violet was holding my hair. I could hear people talking about me, laughing at me. Someone was pounding on the bathroom door. Violet yelled at them to go away. She told them to fuck off. This song was playing, and I hate this song.
“Moves Like Jagger” was playing when they were in the bathroom. It was playing in my office as she was talking about the bathroom. It is here that we stopped to smell the strips. It was my suspicion that the strong odor she recalled was something in that room—the vomit, or bathroom cleaner, or one of those toilet disinfectant disks that turn the water blue. I had strips for the vomit (yes, they do have those) and for the cleaners. I have an actual blue disk—the same brand used by the family in that house on Juniper Road. None of them had a greater reaction than any other beyond what would be expected (the vomit strip making her cringe).
But on this day, I had added one more. Bleach.
I had not thought of it originally. I do not clean our bathroom. It was my wife who had this thought when I was confiding in her our failure with the memory of the odor. I went through the list of things we’d been working with. The family had given me a list to the best of their recollection. But remember, nine months had passed. My wife thought about it for a few seconds and then blurted it out—Bleach! The irony of this will soon be apparent.
I went through our strips and the blue disk with Jenny. Then I introduced a bleach disk. Bleach smells the same (unless it’s scented) in all forms—liquid, powder, granules, pressed-powder disks. She looked startled and opened her eyes.
“It’s something new. Just let it come in,” I said.