Always Watching

CHAPTER NINE

Back in my mid-twenties, when I was still living in Victoria and starting my second year of university, my therapist suggested that I talk to my mom and my brother about my experience at the commune, to see if they could open the window to my memories. But if anything, they slammed the door shut on them.

My mother never liked speaking about the commune after we left, especially if my father was around, but I caught her alone in the field one fall morning as she spread hay into piles for the horses. The sun was out, warming dew from the night before and making the ground steam. Mom was dressed in one of Dad’s bulky work coats, her dark hair stuffed under an old cowboy hat. Even in that masculine garb, she was pretty.

I grabbed a flake and started to help her. After a moment, I said, “Mom, I need to talk to you about the commune.”

She kept working. “I don’t like talking about the past.”

“I know, but this is important. I’ve been in therapy, for my claustrophobia, and my therapist thinks something happened to me at the commune.”

My mother stopped and looked at me. “Like what?”

She was shorter than me, but she pulled herself up tall, her shoulders squared, work gloves on her hips. I felt a small thrill at her protective stance.

“Something traumatic that could have made me scared of the dark and small spaces. Like maybe I got stuck under something.”

“You’ve never liked the dark.” She took her hands away from her hips.

My thrill disappeared as I picked up the new tone in her voice. The one that said: Is this what you came here to bother me about?

“It’s not just nervousness, it’s more than that. I have panic attacks, and when I think back to the commune, I get uncomfortable sometimes.”

“About what?” She looked confused, her brows pulling together.

“I think I was scared of Aaron. I didn’t like being around him.”

“Why on earth would you have been scared of him? He was so nice to you. When he took a few of us on that picnic up at the lake because we’d been working hard, you even got to sit in the front of the truck with him.”

I tried to think about a time we might have gone on a picnic, but nothing came to mind. I shook my head.

“I don’t remember any of that.” But I did remember the fog my mom had been in back then. “Are you sure it was me?”

“Of course it was you. You liked Aaron. After Coyote died, Aaron spent hours down at the river teaching you how to swim.”

I thought back. “I can’t remember that either.”

My mom looked like she couldn’t understand why I was being so dense. “We couldn’t get you back in the river until he started helping you.”

“I didn’t like him. He made me nervous.”

She sounded surprised now. “He’s the reason you know how to swim.”

I was embarrassed that I had no recollection of any swimming lessons, and that I’d voiced my uncomfortable feelings about Aaron—feelings she obviously didn’t share.

“Do you remember a girl named Willow?”

She paused for a minute, thinking, and then nodded. “What about her?”

“She was just really nice to me. The commune, some of the people there, for a kid it was scary. But I liked her.”

She said, “Aaron could get carried away with all that New Age spiritual stuff, but they were all just harmless hippies.”

It was the first time my mom had ever given an opinion on the commune’s beliefs, and her tone made me wonder if she hadn’t been on board with them as much as I’d thought. I said, “Maybe, but I just wanted to go home.”

She looked upset for a moment and almost defensive, as she said, “You had it a lot better there than at home.”

Feeling defensive myself, I said, “Then why did we leave?”

Her whole body flinched, like I’d hit her, and it took her a moment to speak. “That little boy…” Her eyes were sad. “He was so sweet, just a baby still.” I was surprised by her emotional reaction after all this time, the sorrow in her face, and thought she might cry. But then she took off her glove and rubbed her hand across her nose, tossed her head with an angry jerk. “Social services were involved, the cops. It wasn’t good for you kids to be there anymore. Your dad said he was going to be home more, and I wanted to give our marriage another try.”

Though Dad forgave her for running away, and he quit working on the boats, their marriage had never improved. If anything, it was worse. I couldn’t count how many times we had to buy plates because they’d thrown them at each other. Eventually, Dad had started spending all his time hunting, or at the pub, until Robbie came to collect him. Mom spent all her time with the horses.

Mom put her glove back on and took another flake out of the wheelbarrow, dumped it on the ground. “The commune left after that—moved down to Victoria.” She held my gaze. “Don’t go looking for trouble, Nadine. You’ll only cause yourself pain.” She touched my cheek gently, the glove rough on my skin. “I might make a lot of mistakes, but that one I know for sure.” She grabbed the handles on the wheelbarrow and headed back to the barn.

It was only a few weeks later that she died in the car accident.

I didn’t have any more luck with Robbie. Back then, he was living in a rental house with two guys in the village. They worked for the same logging company, building roads. I caught him alone a while later, changing the oil on his truck.

He stopped, lit a cigarette, took a long drag. “What’s going on?”

“I was just out at the ranch talking to Mom.”

“Yeah? What about?” He took off his baseball cap, ran his hands through his sweaty hair and jammed it back down, black tufts winging out by his ears. He was twenty-nine at the time and still handsome, in a tough don’t-mess-with-me way, though he was uncomfortable in his body, pacing restlessly, especially in social situations, like he couldn’t wait to escape. And he never seemed to date, or have a girlfriend, that I knew of anyway.

Since I’d moved to Victoria after high school, we didn’t spend much time together anymore, only seeing each other at family dinners and holidays, where I’d sit, depressed, staring at my father’s and brother’s beer cans on the table, their stony faces as they dug into their mashed potatoes and gravy. Mom, mixing wine with whatever pills she was taking, just picked at her food. If Mom and Dad hadn’t erupted into a fight by that point, she’d disappear to the barn after dinner, and Robbie would head outside for a smoke. I’d follow him, making small talk that hurt my heart as I babbled about my life, trying to find something that would interest him. Once in a while I’d make him laugh, then, mistakenly thinking that meant we were on the same team again, I’d say something about being concerned about Mom and Dad, who was having trouble keeping a job since he’d left the boats. Robbie would angrily butt out his smoke, and say, “They’re fine. Worry about your own life.”

Now I said, “I was asking her about the commune.”

He took another drag before he said, “She doesn’t like to talk about it.”

I didn’t know he’d tried to talk to Mom about the commune and wondered what they’d discussed, if anything.

“I know, but I’ve been seeing a therapist, and I underwent hypnosis, so I can—”

“You’re letting some guy hypnotize you?” He raised an eyebrow, a smirk playing at the corner of his lips.

“It’s called Recovered Memory Therapy. It’s a real thing. He thinks something happened to me when we lived there, and that’s why I have claustrophobia and have to sleep with the light on.”

“You were always freaked out about the dark. When you were little, I had to give you my flashlight to sleep with.” Now I remembered Robbie sneaking into my room when I was crying one night. He’d whispered, What’s wrong? I’d told him there were bad things in the dark.

“But it seems like it got worse when we came back.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know anything about that.”

I said, “Do you ever think about the commune?”

“Not really.” But he took another long drag and looked away.

I said, “Remember Willow?”

His face was blank, but his eyes narrowed, like he was wondering where I was going with my question. “What about her?”

“It was weird how she left. Did she say good-bye to you?”

He shook his head. “As far as I know, she didn’t say anything to anyone.”

“Don’t you think that was strange?”

“No. She probably knew everyone would give her a hard time.”

“Why do you think she left?”

Another shrug. “She was probably sick of the commune, being told what she could and couldn’t do. She was a free-spirited kind of chick.”

“She left her stuff, though….”

“She left one bag.” He sounded annoyed. “She probably forgot it.”

“I guess…. There’s some other stuff that’s freaking me out. Mom told me about some picnic we all went on and how Aaron taught me to swim, but I don’t remember any of it.”

“Shit, there’s tons of stuff I don’t remember from when I was a kid.” He took another long drag. “You gotta stop letting this doctor mess with your head. He’s giving you problems.” He blew his cigarette smoke out in a laugh. “If you weren’t fucked up before, you will be now.”

I went home that day more confused than ever, wondering if Robbie was right—my therapist was trying to make something out of nothing. A theory I started to believe more when he never could unlock my trauma. Instead he taught me some coping techniques for my claustrophobia, and I was eventually able to sleep with the lights off. We ended our sessions, and I moved on with my life.

In my last couple of years of earning my Bachelor of Science, I worked part-time at a vet clinic and fell in love with Paul. We married as soon as I graduated and had Lisa a year after. There were new challenges, raising a family, finishing medical school, commuting, but we were happy for the most part.

In the nineties, Recovered Memory Therapy was discredited, and I grew even more convinced that there hadn’t been any mysterious trauma in my past. But once in a while, when my claustrophobia was triggered, by a small room, someone standing too close, or even a busy shopping mall at Christmas, I’d think back to those sessions with my therapist. Was he right after all? Did something traumatic happen at the commune? I always managed to push the doubts away.

Now I remembered something else my therapist had said, that my psyche was protecting me, and when I was ready, the memories would come back. They might be triggered by a scent, photo, or even a voice or phrase.

If they were coming back now, I wasn’t sure I was ready.