False Memory

— knees, hips, elbows, shoulder blades, skull — as if her skeleton might secede from its union with her flesh.

When Dusty stepped into the shower, Martie said, “Don’t, oh, please, please, don’t,” her voice resonating hollowly along the tile walls.

“I can help you.”

Weeping, face wrenched, mouth soft and trembling, she said, “Baby, no. Stay back.”

“Whatever this is about, I can help you.”

When Dusty reached for her, Martie slid down the wall and sat on the floor, because she could not back away from him any farther.

He dropped to his knees.

As he put a hand on her shoulder, she convulsed in panic around a word: “Key!”

“What?”

“Key, the key!” She extracted her fists from under her clamping arms and raised them to her face. Her clenched fingers sprang open, revealing an empty right hand, then an empty left, and Martie looked amazed, as if a magician had caused a coin or a wadded silk scarf to vanish from her grasp without her sensing a thing. “No, I had it, still have it, the car key, somewhere!” Frantically she patted the pockets of her jeans.

He recalled seeing the car key on the floor near the nightstand. “You dropped it in the bedroom.”

She regarded him with disbelief, but then appeared to remember. “I’m sorry. What I would’ve done. Thrust, twist. Oh, Jesus, God.” She shuddered. Shame welled in her eyes and washed across her face, imparting faint color to her unnaturally chalky skin.

When Dusty tried to put his arms around her, Martie resisted, urgently warning him not to trust her, to shield his eyes, because even if she didn’t possess the car key, she had acrylic fingernails sharp enough to gouge his eyes, and then suddenly she attempted to tear off those nails, clawing at her hands, acrylic scraping against acrylic with the insectile click-click-click of beetles swarming over one another. At last Dusty stopped trying to put his arms around her and just, damn it, put them around her, overwhelmed her, forced his loving embrace upon her, drew her fiercely against him, as though his body were a lightning rod with which he could ground her to reality. She went stiff, retreating into an emotional carapace, and though she was already physically drawn in upon herself, she curled tighter now, so it seemed the tremendous power of her fear would press her ever inward, condensing her, until she became as solid as stone, as hard as diamond, until she imploded into a black hole of her own making and vanished into the parallel universe where she’d briefly imagined that the car key had gone when it had been in neither of her fists. Undeterred, Dusty held her, rocked slowly back and forth with her on the floor of the shower, telling her that he loved her, that he cherished her, that she was not an evil Orc but a good Hobbit, telling her that her Hobbitness could be proved by taking one look at the curious, unfeminine, but charming toes that she had inherited from Smilin’ Bob, telling her anything he could think to tell her that might make her smile. Whether she smiled or not, he didn’t know, for her head was tucked down, face hidden. In time, however, she ceased resistance. After a while longer, her body unclenched, and she returned his embrace, tentatively at first, but then less tentatively, until by degrees she opened entirely and clung to him as he clung to her, with a desperate love, with an acute awareness that their lives had changed forever, and with an unnerving sense that they now existed under the shadow of a great looming unknown.

27

After watching the evening news, Susan Jagger went through the apartment, synchronizing all the clocks with her digital wristwatch. She performed this task every Tuesday evening at the same hour.

In the kitchen, clocks were built into the oven and microwave, and another hung on the wall. A stylish, battery-operated Art Deco clock stood on the fireplace mantel in the living room, and on the nightstand beside her bed was a clock radio.

On average, none of these timepieces lost or gained more than a minute during the week, but Susan took pleasure in keeping them running tick for tick.

Through sixteen months of near isolation and chronic anxiety, she had relied on ritual to save her sanity.

For every household chore, she established elaborate procedures to which she adhered as rigorously as an engineer would follow the operational manual in a nuclear power plant where imprecision might mean meltdown. Waxing floors or polishing furniture became a lengthy enterprise that filled otherwise empty hours. Performing any task to high standards, while conforming to codified housekeeping rules, gave her a sense of control that was comforting even though she recognized that it was fundamentally an illusion.

After the clocks were synchronized, Susan went into the kitchen to prepare dinner. A tomato-and-endive salad. Chicken marsala.

Cooking was her favorite work of the day. She followed recipes with scientific exactitude, measuring and combining ingredients as carefully as a bombmaker handling explosive, unstable chemicals. Culinary rituals and religious rituals, like no others, could calm the heart and quiet the mind, perhaps because the former fed the body and the latter fed the soul.

This evening, however, she wasn’t able to concentrate on dicing, grating, measuring, stirring. Her attention repeatedly strayed to the silent telephone. She was eager to hear from Martie, now that she’d at last found the courage to mention the mysterious night visitor.

Before recent events, she’d thought she could reveal anything to Martie with complete comfort, without feeling self-conscious. For six months, however, she’d been unable to speak of the sexual assaults committed against her while she slept.

Shame silenced her, but shame inhibited her less than did the concern that she’d be thought delusional. She herself found it hard to believe that she could have been stripped out of her sleepwear, raped, and redressed on numerous occasions without being awakened.

Eric was no sorcerer with the ability to steal in and out of the apartment — and in and out of Susan herself — utterly undetected.

Although Eric might be as weak and morally confused as Martie said, Susan was reluctant to consider that he might hate her enough to do these things to her, and hatred was undeniably at the heart of this abuse. They had loved each other, and their separation had been marked by regret, not by anger.

If he wanted her, even without the obligation to stand by her in time of need, she might welcome him. There was no reason, then, why he should scheme so elaborately to take her against her will.

Yet…if not Eric, who?

Having shared this house with her and having used this top floor as his home office, Eric might know a way to circumvent the doors and windows — as unlikely as that seemed. No one else was sufficiently familiar with the place to come and go undetected.

Her hand trembled, and salt spilled from the measuring spoon.

Turning from the dinner preparations, she blotted her suddenly damp palms on a dish towel.

At the apartment door, she checked the dead bolts. Both were engaged. The security chain was in place.

She leaned with her back against the door.

I am not delusional.

On the phone, Martie had seemed to believe her.

Convincing others, however, might not be easy.

Evidence supporting her contention of rape was inconclusive. Sometimes she experienced vaginal tenderness, but not always. Bruises the size of a man’s fingertips occasionally appeared on her thighs and breasts, but she couldn’t prove they were the work of a rapist or that she hadn’t sustained them during ordinary physical activity.

Immediately on waking, she always knew when the phantom intruder had visited her during the night, even if she wasn’t sore or bruised, even before she grew aware of the deposit he left in her, because she felt violated, unclean.

Feelings, however, were not proof.