Unbreathed Memories

chapter 22

You can’t judge a book by its cover. The proverb came to mind as Paul and I stood on the sidewalk in front of Scott and Georgina’s neat, middle-class home, complete with white picket fence. Paul reached out to open the gate, but I stopped him. “Just a minute.” He seemed puzzled, but waited patiently while I stood in the cold night air admiring my sister’s house. Golden light shone through the lace curtains and cast warm rectangles on the porch. A TV murmured softly somewhere inside; a shadow, probably Julie, darted across the glass like a nymph. It was a Norman Rockwell painting, the epitome of home and family. It was difficult for me to contemplate what really might be going on inside that house. I sighed, and my breath came out in a white cloud.

“Hannah?”

I shivered inside my warmest jacket. “It’s OK. I was just thinking that appearances can be so deceptive.”

“Do you want to come back later?”

“No. I need to let Georgina know that they’ve arrested Diane Sturges’s killer.”

“When she finds out who did it, do you think she’ll welcome the news?”

I shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

Paul opened the gate and I passed through ahead of him. Once on the porch, we discovered that the screen door was locked for the night, so we rang the bell.

The porch boards vibrated as pint-size feet scrambled to answer. The chain lock rattled, the door eased open, and the serious blue eyes of one of the twins peered around it. “It’s Aunt Hannah!” he shouted, throwing the door wide.

I could see from the pattern of freckles on his nose which twin it was. “Hi, Sean.”

“We already ate dinner.”

“We haven’t come for dinner, Sean. We came to talk to your mommy.”

“She’s in the kitchen.” Sean unlatched the screen door and backed away as we opened it and came through. At that moment, Dylan careened around the corner, chasing a ball. He fell on it, hugged it against his chest, and rolled over three times. “Hi! Wanna play soccer?”

“Me or your uncle Paul?” I asked.

Dylan scowled. “Girls don’t play soccer.” He looked at Paul for confirmation, then asked, uncertainly, “Do they?”

“I’m afraid they do, squirt.”

“Oh.” Dylan struggled to his feet, still clutching the ball. He aimed it at Sean, threw, and made a direct hit, thumping his brother soundly on the head.

“Ouch!” Sean whined. “You cut that out!” We were instantly forgotten as Dylan streaked around the corner into the living room with Sean in hot pursuit. Still wearing our coats, we wandered back to the kitchen.

The table held the remains of dinner. Julie sat in a chair, stirring a bowl of ice cream into chocolate soup. Scott lounged at the head of the table, leaning on his elbows, sipping coffee. Two empty bowls, one licked clean, marked the places Sean and Dylan had recently occupied. Georgina stood at the sink, her back to us. A flowered apron was tied in a bow at her waist.

Scott’s eyebrows disappeared into his hair. “Well, look who’s here!”

With her hands still dealing with a greasy roasting pan in the sink, Georgina glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, hi.”

I pulled out a chair and sat down. “Paul and I have news for you.”

Scott set his mug down and stared at me curiously. “What news?”

Georgina turned, the picture of domesticity, wiping her hands on her apron. “Julie, are you going to eat your food or just play with it?” She must have suspected the worst. I could tell she was trying to get rid of her daughter.

Julie laid down her spoon, picked up the bowl with both chubby hands, tipped it toward her mouth, and slurped. When the ice cream was gone, she burped loudly.

Georgina snatched the bowl from her daughter’s hands and banged it on the table. “That’s enough for you, young lady. Go get ready for your bath.”

Julie’s chin was coated with chocolate. Scott held her chin and gently wiped it off with his napkin. “Off you go, missy.”

Julie slid off her chair, ran across the room, and threw her arms around my knees. “Hi, Aunt Hannah.” Traces of chocolate remained in the corners of her mouth as she grinned up at me.

I patted her head. “Did you save any ice cream for me, Julie?”

Julie shook her head solemnly. “Daddy ate it all up.”

Scott smiled broadly at his daughter. “Bath. Go.”

“Bye!” Julie scampered down the hall.

Georgina watched her go, then turned to stand behind Scott’s chair, a damp dish towel draped over her shoulder. “What’s wrong?” I could see the wheels turning. She thought something had happened to Mother.

“Why don’t you sit down, Georgina?” Paul pulled out a chair and motioned her into it.

Georgina settled into the chair and turned her face toward us, lined with worry.

“It’s what’s right,” I told her. “The police have arrested Dr. Voorhis.”

“What?” Georgina shot a panicked look at Scott. “Why?”

“He killed his daughter, Diane.”

“No!” The color drained from her face. Against the bright red and yellow flowers on the bib of her apron she looked pale. Scott reached out and gathered her hand into his.

“It’s true. He confessed. He’d sexually abused her throughout her childhood, Georgina. When she confronted him about it, he panicked, they fought… and the rest you know.”

“Then Daddy didn’t kill Diane?”

“No.”

“I was sure he’d done it.”

“Daddy didn’t kill Diane Sturges, and he didn’t hurt you.”

Georgina shook her head. “That doesn’t change what he did to me.”

I tried another tack. “Do you remember a woman named Stephanie Golden?”

Georgina nodded. “She used to come to the therapy group, but dropped out all of a sudden.”

“Do you know why?”

“No.”

“She told me she had come to believe that no matter what Diane Sturges seemed to think, she had not been sexually abused. When she mentioned this in therapy, something must have triggered a memory in Diane. Memories of abuse at the hands of her own father came washing over her. I think Diane realized then what a mistake she had made with some of her patients.”

“Mistake?” Scott held tightly to his wife’s hand.

“Georgina was never abused, Scott. Dr. Sturges just made her think she was.”

“That’s not true!” Georgina leapt to her feet, snatching her hand away from Scott’s. “It happened! Why doesn’t anybody believe me?”

“Georgina, you had a collection of symptoms that were similar to the doctor’s own, which when put together in her own troubled mind screamed ‘abuse.’ But, they can also be symptoms of depression, Georgina.”

Georgina pressed her back against the refrigerator door as if she were trying to merge with it, sobbing. “No, no!”

“Christ!” Scott was on his feet, too. “Can’t you leave her alone?” He tried to gather his wife into his arms, but she pushed him away.

“I want you all to go away and leave me alone.”

“Georgina, just do me one favor. Ask your new therapist about it.”

Georgina stared purposely at a blank wall, her lower lip quivering.

At that inconvenient moment, the telephone rang. We all ignored it. I thought that the answering machine had picked up until Dylan poked his head into the kitchen. “It’s Aunt Ruth,” he announced. “She wants you, Daddy.”

Scott took a long look at this wife, as if to reassure himself that she wouldn’t disappear the minute he took his eyes off her. He raised a hand, palm out, in a hold-that-thought way, indicating that we were all to stay put until he had taken care of business. He reached for the extension which was mounted on the wall next to the refrigerator. “Yes, Ruth?” His face grew so serious that he had all of our attention. “I see. When?” He looked at me and shook his head. “Hannah and Paul are here. Sit tight, Ruth. We’ll be right over.”

“It’s your mother,” he said as he hung up the phone. His slender hands gripped the back of his chair. “She’s had another heart attack. It doesn’t look good.”

Georgina’s eyes grew wide and she slid down the refrigerator door until she was sitting on the floor just as she had done that day in my kitchen. “Mommy!” she wailed. “Mommy!” I didn’t wait to hear any more. I raced out of the house with Paul on my heels.

I beat Paul to my car and had the engine running even before he folded his long legs into the passenger seat. We lost a few precious minutes turning the car around at the end of Colorado, where I used some language I bring out only on special occasions.

The light snow had turned to rain, transforming the streets into a glistening black ribbon that rolled out ahead of me. The traffic signal at Falls Road and the lights of the Texaco station merged into a kaleidoscope of colors, patterns that changed every time the wipers swept across the windshield in front of my face.

“Slow down, Hannah.”

I accelerated through the intersection and swerved right onto the entrance ramp, then left, merging easily into traffic southbound on the JFX. “What if something happens before I get there?”

“Why don’t you pull over and let me drive?” The last time he’d used that tone Paul had been disciplining Emily.

“No. I’m fine, really.” I slowed to fifty-five and concentrated on the winding expressway, trying not to think about what life would be like without my mother. At the hospital, I screeched to a stop, wrenched my door open, and slid out, leaving Paul to deal with finding a space in the parking garage around the corner.

The revolving door spit me out into the hospital lobby, which was warm and dry. I brushed drops of water off my jacket and out of my hair and, ignoring the reception desk where I should have signed in for a visitor’s badge, I turned left and hurried past the various concessions, now closed for the night. A glass elevator took me to the coronary care unit on the third floor, where I pushed my finger impatiently on the buzzer until I could identify myself and the nurse let me in.

I was surprised when I saw Mother, because she looked just the same: a thin, pale form beneath a light blanket. The same number of tubes and wires still tethered her to a bank of machines that whirred and sighed and bleeped in the same familiar, almost comforting, way.

Daddy and Ruth had arrived and were sitting in armless chairs on either side of the bed. Ruth glanced up when I entered, but Daddy didn’t even seem to notice that I was there. My sister rose and pulled me aside. She spoke softly, her voice husky with emotion. “She’s stable now, Hannah. But her heart is too weak.”

I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt tears slide down my cheeks. “What are we going to do?”

Ruth’s fingers dug into my arm. “Daddy talked it over with Mother. She’s signed a paper that the next time her heart stops, they won’t try to revive her.”

Something inside me died. “Oh, no!”

“It’s what I want, Hannah.” My mother’s voice was surprisingly strong. She raised an arm, then let it fall back onto the covers. “Living like this is no life.”

I rushed to her side, knocking over the chair that Ruth had been sitting in. “Oh, Mom. Please. Don’t!”

“It’s my decision, darling.”

“But you haven’t even seen your great-granddaughter! You haven’t met Chloe!”

Mother sighed, and turned her head toward my father. “She’ll get to know her great-grandfather.”

“Please don’t talk like that! It sounds so final.” I had faced death before, the possibility of my own. But that was easier somehow, because it would have been I who was doing the going. When I thought about a future without my mother, it tore at my heart.

Ruth stood behind me, a steadying hand on my back. “We love you so much, Mother.”

Mother’s mouth curved into a half smile and her violet eyes, shrunken within their sockets, moved from my tortured face to Ruth’s. “Tell me more about Bali, Ruth.” The subject was closed.

Ruth righted her chair and positioned herself next to the bed, while I alternately paced across the small room or stared out the window into the wet Baltimore night, consumed with self-pity. When Paul arrived after parking the car, Ruth was describing emerald hills and rice paddies, ancient Oriental temples with fat golden gods. My sister had a poet’s way with words. Paul took up a position in the corner as if acknowledging that he wasn’t an integral part of the family by blood but would be there if I needed him.

“I’m sorry you had to cut your trip short,” Mother said when Ruth paused in her story to allow a nurse to check on the equipment Mom was attached to.

“I was coming home anyway, Mom.” Ruth jerked her head in my direction. “Someone needs to keep Hannah on the straight and narrow.”

If only she knew, I thought.

Paul spoke for the first time. “Hannah, have you told them?”

I gawped at him, like a stranded fish. How could it be that the events of the past four hours had flown so completely out of my head? Bali! What the hell did Bali have to do with anything? I had important news, and I’d nearly risked letting my mother go without telling her.

“Mom.” I approached her bed. “Dad.” I touched his hand where it rested on the covers. “They’ve arrested someone for the murder of Georgina’s therapist.”

Dad’s jaw dropped, and my mother lifted her head slightly from her pillow.

“It was her father who did it, Dr. Voorhis.”

“Dr. Voorhis?” My mother’s pale face grew even paler. “Isn’t he the children’s pediatrician?”

I nodded and sat down.

“Why on earth?”

Dad stood behind me while I talked, his fingers drumming rhythmically on the metal frame of my chair, sending vibrations skittering up my back. I told the whole story, except for the part about Dr. Voorhis’s attempt to silence me.

“They’ve taken him away,” I added. “I think he’ll have quite a headache in the morning.”

Mom’s eyes moved from my face to my father’s. “Thank God.”

“Have you told Georgina?” Ruth wanted to know.

“That’s what we were doing when you called.”

“Do you think Georgina finally realizes that those memories she had were strictly in her imagination?” Daddy sounded more hopeful that he had any right to be.

“I really don’t know. Dr. Sturges had a powerful influence on her patients. All of them. It may be tough to overcome.”

Ruth massaged her neck as if it were sore. “I thought you said that Georgina is seeing a new doctor.”

“Scott says she is. We can always hope that the new guy doesn’t see abuse lurking behind every tree.”

“You know I didn’t do anything to that child,” Daddy said.

“We all know that, Daddy.”

“Where’s Georgina now?” Mom’s voice was barely a whisper.

“I don’t know, Mom. I’ll see if I can find out.” If Mother died while I was trying to locate Georgina, I would never forgive my sister.

“Do you want me to come?” Paul lurched to his feet.

I shook my head. “I’m just going to make a phone call.”

“There’s a phone right here.” Daddy pointed to the telephone on a bedside table.

I wanted a little privacy, but couldn’t think of a graceful way to escape. I dialed my sister’s number.

“Hello?” It was one of the twins.

“Sean?”

I had guessed right. “Hi, Aunt Hannah.”

“Can I talk to your mommy?”

“She’s not here.”

That was a good sign. “How about your daddy?”

“Not here either. Want to talk to Mrs. Crombie?”

“Who’s Mrs. Crombie?”

“She’s the lady next door. Mommy started crying, so Daddy got Mrs. Crombie to come over. She made us popcorn.”

“That’s nice. Can I talk to Mrs. Crombie, Sean?” I held the phone away from my ear while Sean summoned the helpful neighbor with a shout so loud it made me wonder if she was watching my niece and nephews from her own home.

“You don’t need to shout, Sean. I’m right here.” Mrs. Crombie sounded upbeat and young, like one of the upwardly mobile professionals who lived on Georgina’s street. She told me that Scott and Georgina had left for the hospital forty-five minutes ago, saying that she didn’t know when to expect them home.

That was the best news I had heard all day. I wished the woman good-bye, then leaned back against the wall. I checked my watch. If they left the house forty-five minutes ago, they should be here now. Where the hell were they?

When I tuned back in, Ruth was talking about feng shui. All the beds in Bali were oriented with their heads toward some sacred mountain. Still no Georgina. Mother lay quietly, almost smiling while her machines beeped in a regular, reassuring rhythm. I talked myself into thinking that it was going to be all right. Where there’s life there’s hope.

My mouth was furry and dry, tasting of the garlic in the slice of pizza I’d had for lunch. “Want something to drink?”

Ruth nodded. “Tea would be nice.” Dad just shook his head and pointed to a paper cup on the bedside table.

Paul came to life. “Let me help.”

“That’d be great.” I didn’t want to be alone. Not for a single minute.

I was hungry, too, but I knew from past experience that at this hour, all the food concessions would be closed. Paul and I left the coronary care unit and went in search of the vending machines, which were tucked into an alcove farther along the hall. We bought a Coke and two teas.

When we returned I was delighted to find Scott and Georgina sitting in the waiting area just outside the door that led into the coronary care unit, holding hands. I noticed that Georgina had come away wearing her apron. A bright red corner of it peeked out where her coat fell open at her knees.

“Georgina?” Her face was red and puffy from crying, her eyelids swollen.

“Oh, Hannah!” She sprang to her feet and lunged in my direction, startling me so that I nearly dropped the Styrofoam cup I was holding. I spread my arms wide while Georgina wrapped herself around me. Paul lifted the cup from my hands, freeing me to hug Georgina properly.

“How’s Mom?” Scott directed the question to Paul over my head.

“Stable for now.”

Georgina released me and stepped back, her tear-stained face a mask of misery. “I’m so ashamed.”

I felt like saying You ought to be, but was so glad that my sister seemed to have come around that I didn’t dare. “She’s asking for you,” I said.

Georgina raised an eyebrow. “She is?”

“She wants to see you, Georgina.”

Georgina turned to her husband. “I don’t know what to do, Scott.”

“It’s up to you, honey. Remember what Dr. Loring said.” He stared at his wife for a long time without blinking.

Georgina flopped onto a chair and patted the one next to her. “Can you sit down for a minute, Hannah?”

“Sure.”

Paul dragged another chair over so we could all sit together. It took a while for Georgina to come to the point. She sat there peeling the frosted pink polish off her nails, not looking directly at me. “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” she began. She chipped away at a nail with her index finger. “After you left, I telephoned Dr. Loring. He’s helping me put things together.”

I nodded, my hands wrapped around my cup. “And?”

“Suggestion can be a powerful thing.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Dr. Loring indicated that I might have been unduly influenced by some of the other women in that therapy group.”

Hallelujah! A crack in the facade. I hoped that if I waited long enough, it might split wide open and my real baby sister would arise from the ruins.

“Stephanie Golden said the same thing, Georgina. It wasn’t until she withdrew from the group that she started thinking more clearly and began to question Dr. Sturges’s diagnosis.”

Georgina made the connection. “Hannah, you have to understand that all that stuff about the Cabbage Patch doll seemed so real to me. I could see her face just as plain as day. She had on a yellow flowered dress and little buttoned shoes.” She shook her head. “But I checked into what you told me, and you’re right. There’s no way I could have had one.”

I leaned against the back of the chair and exhaled. I felt dizzy, as if I’d been holding my breath for a week.

“I have to be honest,” Georgina continued. “I’m still not one-hundred-percent sure that nothing ever happened, but after listening to you and to Dr. Loring, I’m willing to give Dad the benefit of the doubt.”

After all we’d been though in the past seven weeks, I felt like tossing my teacup into the air and dancing a jig on the tabletop. Scott looked more thoughtful. “That therapy group was like a fire. Each member was a log. The more logs, the hotter the fire. But as the logs were pulled away…”

“When I pulled myself away,” Georgina corrected, “it was if the fire grew cooler.” She studied me silently, chewing on her lower lip. “But I still have a feeling that something happened in Sicily. If it wasn’t Daddy…?”

I grew suddenly cold, as if a cloud had passed over the sun. Paolo? Charming, lighthearted Paolo? I shivered. No. No way.

As if he had read my mind, Paul laid a comforting hand on my shoulder, then spoke directly to Georgina. “It’s your mother who needs you now, Georgina. We may not have much time.”

Scott grabbed his wife’s upper arm and shook it. “Go!”

“But…”

Scott stood, took her hand, and pulled her to her feet. “Go, Georgina, or you may regret it for the rest of your life.” He pulled a crumpled tissue out of his shirt pocket and waited for her to blow her nose and wipe her eyes. She turned a blotched face toward me.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Ready.”

Outside our mother’s room Georgina stood frozen, looking in. I knew she had to be taking in the machines and the sounds and smells of serious illness. Fresh tears brimmed in her eyes, and she must have seen what I did-Ruth and Dad flanking the bed; Paul perched on the arm of a chair talking to Emily on the telephone. And our mother.

Daddy spotted Georgina first. His face lit up, causing Ruth to pause in mid-sentence, turn her head, and follow his gaze toward the door. “Georgina!”

Georgina ignored him, brushing past Ruth without a word of greeting, and leaned over the bed. She grasped Mother’s hand where it lay on top of the covers and pressed it to her cheek. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Mother’s eyes had been closed, but she opened them and smiled.

“How can you ever forgive me after all the terrible things I said?”

“We love you, Georgina.” She reached up to touch her daughter’s cheek, still glistening with tears. “We both love you.”

I hoped that Georgina would apologize to Daddy then, but she didn’t even look at him. She bowed her head and stared at the floor, then positioned herself on the side of the bed nearest Ruth.

I crossed the room and stood on the opposite side of the bed with my father, watching until Georgina’s sobs subsided and Scott helped her settle into a chair he had dragged in from somewhere.

Mother’s eyelids fluttered closed. I panicked, thinking she had died. I laid my hand on her chest and was comforted to find that it still rose and fell beneath the blanket, however slightly. She was asleep.

Daddy had taken Mother’s hand and was rubbing it tenderly. Her skin was translucent and slipped easily, too easily over her bones. It was so thin, I worried it would tear. After a few moments, she awoke and beamed up at my father, a radiant smile reminiscent of happier times that quite took my breath away. “I’m ready, George.” Her eyelids closed and I heard a shuddering sigh.

I didn’t need the machines to tell me that Mother was gone, leaving her body, still warm, beneath my hand. Her spirit simply departed, fleeing its broken-down body and soaring, I knew with confidence, toward heaven. I gazed up, imagining I would see it, a flickering light like Tinker Bell, hovering near the ceiling-flick-flick-flick-gazing down upon her family with love. All the clapping in the world-I believe! I believe!-wouldn’t bring Mother back now. Only her shell remained, pale and serene, the hint of a smile on its lips. What made Mother Mother had simply floated away.

One of the machines screamed; another bleated. Nurses rushed in from all points of the compass. One grabbed for the crash cart, but my father stayed her hand. “Not this time,” he said. The nurse complied. “I’m sorry, sir.” It was then that his face crumpled. Daddy’s knees buckled and he slumped, racked with sobs, over my mother’s body.

My tears wouldn’t come. I imagined I saw Mom still, hovering near the window. Any minute her gossamer wings would batter against the pane and I would lift up the sash and release her spirit into the night.

Georgina had been curled in a chair, her cheek resting against her arm. Her hair had escaped from its clip and cascaded over her arm, the color of rust in the subdued light. When the alarms began to sound she ground a fist into her eye, focused on the scene around the bed, and said, “Daddy?”

Daddy sucked in his lips, struggling for control. Huge tears coursed down his cheeks and glistened in the shadow of a beard that had sprouted on his face over the past few days. Georgina’s wail rent the night, more piercing than the machine that the nurse had just silenced. She fell across the bed. “It’s my fault! It’s all my fault!”

I bent over my sister. Her skin felt hot and damp, as if she had a fever. “Georgina, you know it’s not your fault. Mother told you so herself.”

Georgina’s cheek was pressed against the blanket. I took her by both arms and pulled her away, but she laid a flat hand against my chest and shoved. “Leave me alone!”

The nurse drew the privacy curtains across the windows, leaving us to say our final farewells and give free rein to our grief. Ruth sat stiff as a mannequin, mascara-tinged tears marking crooked bluish paths along her cheeks. I turned to her as I had done as a child. “Oh, Ruth.” We clung desperately to one another, and I began to weep. After a few minutes, Paul’s embrace was large enough to encompass us both.

When I looked up again, Georgina was sobbing in Daddy’s arms, her flushed cheek pressed against his chest. He smoothed a wayward strand of hair back behind her ear. Fragments of a familiar tune danced at the edges of my consciousness-Hush little baby, don’t you cry-as if a TV were playing low somewhere in the next room. The song, in gravelly snatches, teased my ears until I realized that the familiar lullaby was coming from my father. Daddy was singing to Georgina, holding her securely in his arms and rocking, rocking, rocking.