How We Remember Read online

  ‘You fell asleep,’ I said, pleasantly, in the courteous way my mother had taught me, at the same time trying to practise a new, much-needed level of assertion, which may have been noticeable in my tone. ‘Did you know you fell asleep?’ I asked, smiling.

  The shrink held his accusing eyes on mine with a long stare. ‘Are you angry?’ he said.

  That stumped me.

  He coughed and straightened his posture, although not enough to hide his fat stomach. ‘You’re upset that I can’t be who you want me to be,’ he declared.

  And there it was. My first experience with my very own shrink and I couldn’t keep him interested or awake for long enough to offer me any useful advice or to even hand over a prescription for sleeping pills. I hadn’t even got on to the nightmares and what he proposed to do about them. I was being tested again. That night I knew I was finished with him. My plan was to walk away from this one and start another search for a new shrink. I could do it, I could have control.

  Seven

  Constance Rosenfelt. Tall, thin, Jewish. In spite of her full head of shoulder-length silver hair, it was difficult to guess her age. Her complexion was olive without the need for much make-up except for a dab of subtle lipstick and blusher. Her wide, dark-brown eyes sparkled when she smiled, a nice thing she did often, no holding back. She offered clarity, a ticket to a world of sanity that I almost resisted at first. She had admirable posture, something I tried to emulate in my sessions with her. It was rare to see her wearing pants, but they did something for her.

  Over time I trusted Constance completely. I was like a long piece of yarn let loose, twisted and torn in places that seemed beyond repair. But Constance knew exactly where to tug and unravel, eventually guiding me to a point where I felt more rounded and secure. I talked about my parents, what it was like growing up with a brother like Dave, and I confronted my inner battles with him. I told Constance every detail I could remember about what happened with Uncle Ron, my aunt’s disclaimer, how I gave my mother my blessing. And it was during that session when I was forced to examine the hole inside me that had swelled with helplessness and regret.

  ‘You didn’t see him mixing the drinks?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, no. I mean, I didn’t see how much whisky he added but I knew they were pretty strong and I just went along with it.’

  She hesitated, then added, ‘Did you ever think he might have drugged you that day? Put something in your drink? It’s likely too, Jo, that he may not have mixed any whisky in his Coke if you didn’t see him making the drinks.’

  As she was talking my stomach began to ache. How could I have not realised it then? My aunt had suffered with insomnia in those days, never as bad as mine, but she always had a prescription of sleeping pills. She wouldn’t have noticed if Ron had taken one.

  As this sped through my mind another horror descended on me.

  ‘My period was late after that,’ I said, then held my hands over my stomach. ‘And when my period did come…’ I stopped and closed my eyes. ‘I remember it was the worst one ever, I had to take a few days off school I felt so awful. I felt awful for weeks. Do you think…do you think I could’ve been pregnant? Do you think maybe it could have been an early miscarriage? Can that happen?’

  She was silent, her expression sympathetic, then nodded. ‘I suppose it’s a possibility, Jo.’

  ‘Oh, God. Ohhhhh God.’ I closed my eyes again, hunched over and wept till I emptied her box of tissues.

  It was clear, we acknowledged, there was nothing we could do about this now. Years later, there was no proof of any crime. It was our guesswork, assumptions; it would always be his word against mine, the fifteen-year-old tease, the liar. No, I told Constance, I would not tell my mother, or anyone else. There was no point. Never, never, never, I insisted, would any of these revelations leave the walls of her office.

  After I’d been seeing Constance a while, she told me she had a husband and children. The daughter was a bit younger than I, the son a bit older. At some point she had offered to see clients at her home in the desirable Lexington area. I expected it would be a worthy abode, but nothing prepared me for the colonial-style house with two white columns in the front framing the entrance. It was set back off the street with a long driveway large enough to accommodate about five cars. I imagined there must have been an in-ground pool in the back.

  As she led me through to her office I glanced into a room lined with bookshelves and a white grand piano. It reminded me of stage sets I’d seen in classic Hollywood films. We passed another smaller TV room where her daughter was resting, covered in a blanket, with a box of tissues on her lap. She was home from college with a red nose, flu, and was trying to recover. She offered me a genuine smile. We had a friendly exchange. I felt certain I said the right things, that she wouldn’t think I was some weirdo with head issues. I could pass as a young working woman with a few stresses to overcome. She looked nice, Mom, like she was normal. Not like the other guy who was here yesterday.

  When I left that day – it was a sunny and mild early spring evening, which I remember brightened my mood – I understood that I had reached a new place in life. I had no feelings of envy or resentment towards Constance and her family for what they had in comparison to me. I knew I didn’t have to hate them just because I wanted a good life for myself too, a respectable career, a smart, decent husband who would love me, a beautiful home, yes, maybe one with lots of books and a piano. And a pool would be nice. I wasn’t so sure about the children.

  I am sure about one thing. Constance cared, maybe enough to even love me. I could tell by the way she looked at me. Her patience when I must have been, I don’t know…impossible. When I think of her these days I notice a swelling sensation around my nose. I imagine Constance could have died by now, but in reality she may have been only several years older than my mother. She may actually still be alive and well, enjoying a good old life with grandchildren by her poolside. Would her mind ever wander back to our sessions when she’s having her morning coffee, when she’s shopping in the mall and sees someone who looks so much like her girl, Jo O’Brien? Would she miss me as much as I miss her?

  Constance made me work hard. It started right from the beginning when I told her about the shrink who fell asleep.

  ‘Oh, yes, I know him. He’s a colleague of mine. Yes, I’ve known him for years,’ she said, the small world of shrinks being what it is, I guess.

  Before the end of that first session, she paused, folded her elegant hands together and said, ‘Now Jo, I think it’s a good idea you see him one last time so you can formally end the therapist/client relationship. You can be as honest as you like but it’s important to have closure.’

  I resisted. ‘You mean you won’t see me again if I don’t do it?’ Why was a woman forcing me to do a thing like this when it was usually stupid men doing the stupid things?

  ‘I would very much like to continue, Jo, but it’s important that you do this first. And as I know him professionally it wouldn’t be right if I knowingly took a client of his without his knowledge.’

  Like it or not, if I wanted to see her again I had to go through this therapy rite of passage.

  So I returned to the first shrink’s office the next week and told him the news. I was dumping him for someone else, a better prospect. A woman. It felt good to be the dumper and not the one being dumped.

  ‘It’s not personal. Her office is more convenient, near work. I’m just trying to be practical,’ I lied.

  ‘It looks like you’re running away from your issues,’ he said, then adjusted his glasses. ‘It’s a common problem with clients who begin to confront challenges in therapy. They run away when it gets difficult.’

  I thought about Constance, pictured her angelic smile, and held my ground. I loathed him. Educated shrink he might have been, but underneath the framed degree awards on the wall, the suit and tie, the bifocals, he was a selfish, greedy, cock-sucker out for the one and only, just like the others.

  E
ight

  Around the time I reached puberty, close to age twelve, when I suddenly packed on weight everywhere, grew a girl-moustache and struggled with tampons, my brother taught me how to French kiss. He instructed me carefully on the right ways to move my tongue and lips. He showed me by demonstrating on himself what to do with my hands at the same time.

  ‘Move ‘em up and around the guy’s chest, his shoulders, through his hair, then later, not straightaway, go for the crotch if you like him enough. Don’t do it until you’re older and not straightaway or he’ll think you’re a slut. And you’re not the slutty type. Make ‘em beg for it.’

  At the time I guessed he may have had some experience himself, but it was probably minimal. He was a bit taller than other boys his age, but lanky to a fault, with his knobbly elbows and ostrich knees seeming too bulbous for his limbs. He had the gift of soft, pastel-blue eyes from my mother’s side of the family and brown, wavy hair that he had tried to highlight with Sun In hair lightener. The way he did it, instead of adding a subtle, sun-kissed look, he looked like he was wearing a blond hair-piece. To make matters worse, he tried giving himself a haircut. That was when all the fun started. He also had the misfortune of early-teenage acne, made worse from all the picking. This left him with pockmarks that stayed. I caught him one day in the bathroom trying to cover them with our mother’s foundation.

  ‘What the fuck are you staring at? Fuck off,’ he shouted, after which he quickly washed it all off, only to start applying it again.

  He couldn’t shake his tendency to fall frequent victim to seemingly harmless jokes, teasing, and the odd gruelling bullying session from the other guys and even some of the girls who joined in. He was a necessary figure in the gang; the one who was always willing to take risks the others wouldn’t, the one who could find money to score the booze and drugs they wanted, the one who knew how to party and make everyone laugh, the one who became the most disposable.

  Our parents’ bedroom was directly below ours, next to the kitchen. The bedroom that Dave and I shared was large enough for two single beds, a chest of drawers each for clothes, and we had a reasonable-sized shared closet. A low wall split the room some of the way down the middle. Dave slept on the side closest to the stairs. He had to walk through my side to get to the shared built-in closet. I wouldn’t have described our relationship as ever being close, but we shared sibling escape fantasies that materialised in different ways over our young lives.

  When we were younger we would often sleep together in one of our beds and reveal our daydreams about what our lives would be like if we were rich and sent to an expensive boarding school where we could learn how to ride horses, speak a foreign language and have European vacations. To make this fantasy plausible we’d have to be adopted into another family, a wealthy one that was desperate to have us.

  ‘It’s weird though,’ Dave once whispered. ‘Are there really people out there who actually want kids that bad that they’d pay to adopt them? Maybe they’re just pervs or sickos.’

  As we grew older we draped a couple of old sheets over some string to create more privacy. Curtain or no curtain though, this set-up had its obvious limitations as we grew older. David’s masturbating habit felt relentless at times, and he took any opportunity he could, whether I was occupying my side of the room or not. It was when it happened in the middle of the hottest, most sweltering summer days that I couldn’t quite understand, when he’d crawl into bed facing the wall, cover himself with a blanket, make muffled heavy breathing sounds then fall asleep afterwards – for hours, it seemed. Sometimes I wanted to tap him on the shoulder and say, ‘Are you OK Dave? Is everything alright?’ But I thought it best to keep my distance.

  There was another time that serves as a difficult reminder of the growing anger I harboured towards my brother for being who he was and for my parents for being who they were: too broke to buy a bigger place where I could have my own bedroom. It only happened one time and that was certainly enough. I must have been around thirteen and sleeping heavily one weekend night when my brother came home late after a party, drunk and clearly drugged up. He woke me after he stumbled fast through the door, which banged the chest of drawers. It wasn’t unusual for him to make this kind of entrance although most times he fell into his bed and slept through the rest of the night. On this occasion he pulled at the room’s divider sheets, causing the string to break, tripped over the fabric and ended up on my side, crawling over to my bed, mumbling my name, asking me if I was awake. I turned away from him, shouted through my blanket for him to go away, but he persisted and climbed in with me.

  ‘Come on JoJo, I want a hug. Please JoJo, I need a hug.’ He didn’t wait for an answer, slid quickly under the sheets and began running his cold hands clumsily along my arm, waist and thigh while I shifted to nudge him away. ‘You’re so warm… It’s nice, yeah, that’s nice.’ He moved in closer and held my upper body tight. His speech then grew incoherent. ‘No, don’t do that,’ he said when I struggled. ‘No, I can’t…wait, no, wait,’ he said with agitation, his desperate tone mounting.

  Soon there was no more talk, but a concentrated effort on his part as he let go of me while he unzipped his jeans. He then grabbed my hand, and placed it inside his underwear. I was able to free myself at some point but was left with the awful memory of the rough texture of his moist pubic hair and the smooth shaft of his hard penis on my hand. His efforts didn’t stop there. I fought with him and tried to get out of the bed but he cornered me, gripping my shoulders and neck. He pressed his cold face and wet mouth hard on my back while he pleasured himself with his hand. He started to grunt again senselessly.

  ‘Don’t do that. No. Fuck. Fuck you. Fuck,’ he said.

  He mumbled more things I couldn’t understand and after it was over he fell back and slept quickly. None of my nudges, whacks, even punches would wake him at that point. I moved downstairs to the couch and tried to sleep again but couldn’t. Each time I dozed I’d wake up soon after, startled.

  The next afternoon when he dragged himself to the kitchen I glared at him across the table, expecting him to acknowledge what had happened. It was just the two of us in the empty house.

  ‘What the hell were you on last night?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you mean? Nothing. I wasn’t on nothing.’

  I locked my eyes on his while he stared into his coffee.

  ‘What?’ he said, looking up.

  ‘You don’t remember anything? The sheets coming down. You getting in my bed.’ I paused. ‘You’re an asshole.’

  ‘And you’re a fucking bitch. Yeah, I woke up in your bed, saw the sheets. So what, I was fucked up.’ He stood and headed towards the medicine drawer.

  I watched him fumbling through the bottles and packets of Band Aids. After anticipating naively that he’d offer something more in return, some recognition of what he did, maybe even a tiny apology, I realised that Dave most likely recollected everything, and that he knew, while he’d been sipping his coffee and smoking his Marlboros, that I was aware he was lying. I understood also that he expected me to accept this, to succumb to the idea that it was my job to keep my mouth shut and go along with it. This was the way things were in the O’Brien household.

  And yet this was the same brother, my one and only sibling, to whom, when I was around nine, I had planned to hand myself over, every last inch of my being, in trust, when we decided to run away together.

  We had talked about it in low voices, almost whispers, across our shared bedroom the night before while our parents watched TV downstairs. We confirmed our plan to pack up and go after an eventful family evening meal. It was Friday. My father was collecting a special McDonald’s treat. By the time the food was laid on the table and we started to tuck in, it appeared eleven-year-old Dave felt a bit short-changed with his portion. He’d been expecting something big, the works, something special like a juicy Big Mac with large fries, apple pie and milkshake, all the things my parents had and we weren’t allowed. I guess I knew other
wise. His shrivelled single burger with soggy pickle and slab of ketchup on a cold, plain bun and small fries was a let-down. Mine was too, but I knew better. I was keeping quiet.

  ‘Hey, why do you and Ma have the shakes and apple pies?’ he shouted. ‘What about us? Why can’t I have an apple pie? I’m hungry. I want an apple pie too.’

  All mouths were busy munching except for Dave’s.

  He continued, this time louder. ‘I want an apple pie.’

  Before he could finish the last word the back of my father’s hand swung fast across the table and struck Dave’s mouth. The force drew blood, a trickle mixed with saliva that crept out of the corner. Dave wailed through his tears as a pool of the red stuff filled up and bubbled in the middle of his bottom lip. His pale complexion next to the blood reminded me of the look of vampires I’d seen in the movies.

  I glanced at Ma. At times like this she always managed to hold that same frozen, hollow expression, looking downward.

  ‘I just want apple pie,’ Dave cried.

  ‘I don’t need this shit. I don’t need it after work,’ Dad shouted back, stood, leaned over and sent another hard smack his son’s way, this time higher up near the cheek and nose.

  Dave’s crying stopped at some point and he ate what he was given after my mother shared some of her fries. Otherwise she stayed mute. Her reaction never seemed to change much. She would sit at the kitchen table with that look on her face. I told myself there was a reason for this, for her silence, for her inability to shout, Stop, Jimmy, please, just stop it now, don’t hurt my babies. I knew there was something holding her back, because there were other times, those days and nights when my father wasn’t around, when her eyes told us she held something else inside her heart.