28

VIENNA

“SO, YOU’RE USED TO fixing things,” Debra Parlow said to Claire, “and this woman on the bridge was one of the few things you’ve encountered in your life that you simply couldn’t fix.”

Claire nodded from her seat on the edge of the sofa in Debra’s office. She’d been talking to the therapist for ten minutes, and her anxiety was mounting rather than abating. She had her eye on the office door. She had asked Pat Wykowski for the name of a therapist without telling her who the referral was for, and Pat had recommended Debra highly. “She’s very skillful and warm,” she’d said. Claire didn’t doubt Pat’s assessment, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t talk easily about this topic to anyone. With one exception.

“And ever since that night, you haven’t been able to concentrate on your work?”

“That’s right,” Claire said. If she were not half the team of Harte-Mathias, she would have been fired by now. She was of no greater value at home, either. The laundry was piling up, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d cooked a meal or made more than a quick run through the grocery store.

“And you mentioned vertigo?” Debra said.

“Yes. Ever since that night. It’s not constant. Not too bad. Sometimes I feel like I’m falling, but it doesn’t last very long. That’s not the worst part.”

“What is the worst part?”

“I’ve been having these little flashbacks—at least that’s what I call them. A friend suggested they might be memories from my past. But maybe they’re a fabrication, I don’t know.”

“What are they like?” Debra asked.

Claire shook her head quickly. “I don’t think I can talk about them. Not yet. Not specifically.”

“All right. How about generally?”

“Well, they’re odd. Sometimes they pop up out of the blue. Other times they’re triggered by something. The worst happened the other day at Monticello. I saw something there—just an architectural feature that disturbed me for some reason—and I actually threw up in the house.”

Debra wore a frown. “That must have been very embarrassing.”

“Well, yes, but it’s over and done with.”

“Is it?”

Claire started to nod, then made a face. “Well, though, now I feel nervous it will happen again. It’s unpredictable, and what if I’m in a meeting or the grocery store or—?”

“Or in this office?”

She felt her cheeks redden. This was so childish. “Yes,” she said.

Debra offered a sympathetic smile. “The restroom is right outside my door. The trash can is inches from your right leg.”

“Okay. Thank you.” Claire tried sitting back more fully in the sofa but succeeded only for a second before returning to her perch on the edge of the cushion. She wished she could relax.

“So, do these memories seem tied in some way to events from your past?”

“’Memories’ is really the wrong word for them,” Claire said. “They’re more like little visual fragments, and I can’t seem to connect them to anything that’s ever happened to me.” She looked out the window. There was a large, full weeping willow in her line of vision. “At first I wished they would go away. Just stop. But it’s obvious they’re not going to, and now I really want to understand them. To pursue them, wherever they want to take me. It terrifies me, though. The unknown. I want to know and I don’t want to know.” She doubted she would ever be able to pursue those images with Debra Parlow. She was digging her fingers into the seat cushion, ready to push herself up and out of the room.

“It makes sense that you feel that way.” Debra shifted position in her chair. “But memories we’ve blocked for one reason or another don’t usually come to us until we’re ready for them.”

“Well, I’m not sure I’m ready.” Claire described the dream she’d had the night before. She’d been standing in her kitchen, and all the cupboard doors were open, the space inside black, like the black behind the oval windows in Thomas Jefferson’s bedroom. She’d walked around the kitchen with a determined stride, slamming the cupboard doors shut, one by one, saying, no, no, no.

Debra looked intrigued. “What are you afraid you’ll learn if you really take a look at those flashbacks?”

Claire studied her hands in her lap. What was she afraid of learning? That her life was not what it seemed? That her childhood had been bad? Her marriage was bad? “I’m not sure,” she said.

“Was there any abuse in your past, Claire? Anything you recall from your childhood?”

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Sexual, you mean?”

Debra shrugged.

“No. Not sexual or physical or verbal. Nothing. And the flashbacks are not at all abusive in nature.”

Blood on white porcelain.

Claire jerked on the sofa, raising her hand as if to bat the image away. She quickly composed herself, lowering her hand to her lap. “I just saw…” She shook her head.

“An image?”

“Yes. I don’t want to talk about it. Sorry. I don’t mean to be evasive.” If Randy were here, she could talk.

“That’s all right.” Debra was studying her closely. “What do you remember about growing up?” she asked.

Claire looked out the window again. “That it was pretty wonderful,” she said. “I spent a lot of time on my grandparents’ farm, and it was great. Although”—she looked at Debra—”there are things that happened to me, and I know from a factual standpoint they must have been unpleasant—like my parents divorcing—but I have no memory of them.”

“Are your parents still living?”

“No.”

“How long ago did they die?”

“Both of them died around ten years ago, I guess.”

“And how did they die?”

“I don’t know how my father died. We were estranged at the time. My mother had lung cancer.”

“And you were close to your grandparents?”

“Very. Especially my grandfather. He was a carousel horse carver and fun to be around.”

“Wow, I can imagine.” Debra’s eyes lit up. She asked some questions about the carousel and her grandfather, and Claire answered them matter-of-factly. She knew that Debra was using the topic to put her at ease, to gain rapport. She wished the ploy were working.

“How old were you when your grandparents died?” Debra asked.

“I was…” Claire was suddenly aware of a hole in her memory. She pressed her fingers to her temples, eyes closed, struggling to pull an answer from the void. Finally she looked up at Debra. “I have absolutely no idea,” she admitted.

Debra wore a puzzled expression. “Can you remember how they died?”

Again, Claire searched the void, and this time found a small particle of truth. “My grandmother died in her sleep,” she announced.

“Of?”

Claire shrugged. “Old age? I don’t know. Wait. We stopped going to the farm when I was…thirteenish? So she must have died around then.”

“And your grandfather? Do you recall when and how he died?”

“He…” She made her visit to the void brief this time. She shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Any siblings?”

She told her about Vanessa, and Debra’s frown deepened as she listened to Claire talk about their father’s stealing Vanessa away. Debra asked several questions about Len Harte, and Claire answered them as best she could. It was true, though, that there was a great deal she didn’t know.

“And how about your husband,” Debra asked. “Can you talk to him about the flashbacks?”

Claire hesitated. Slowly, she shook her head. “I’m not comfortable talking about them to him, and he’s not comfortable hearing about them. But…” Claire gnawed on her lip. “There’s a man. He’s the brother of the woman on the bridge.” She described her connection to Randy. “For some reason, he’s the only person I feel I can talk to about what’s going on. I feel completely safe with him.”

Debra shifted in her seat again, this time with a complete change in posture that suggested she was thinking: Aha! So that’s what’s really going on!

“It’s not romantic.” Claire tried to nip the therapist’s specious theory in the bud.

“I see.” Debra asked a few questions about Randy, questions about Jon. Claire tried to describe her love for her husband and the tender sense of security she felt with Randy, but she soon realized that nothing she said was going to change the therapist’s new course of reasoning.

This was useless, she thought, sinking low into the couch. If she couldn’t make Debra understand her feelings, if she couldn’t even imagine letting one of her flashback images leak into this room without the need to bat it away, what good was this going to do? She remembered her dream. Slamming shut the cupboard doors. No, no, no.

“It would probably be best if you had a couple of sessions a week,” Debra said. “I know it’s frightening right now, Claire, but we’ll make this office a safe place for you to let your memories out.”

Claire could think of nothing Debra could do to make this office feel safe. “How about once a week?” she countered, and it took her more than a few minutes to convince the therapist to accept her proposal.

She told Jon the truth that night: She had felt extreme discomfort in Debra Parlow’s office. She would go back, she said, but she had serious doubts that she would ever be able to solve her problems there.

“If it doesn’t work out with her, then we’ll find you another therapist,” Jon said with the simple optimism that she herself had once possessed in grand measure.

THE MORNING AFTER HER session with Debra, Claire awakened to the sound of sirens and hammering and shouting and the throbbing, persistent strains of an organ.

Let me call you sweetheart.

She tried to scream, but the sound was locked in her throat. She grabbed Jon’s arm, shaking him, and when he didn’t wake up, she bolted from the bed in a panic. The room spun as she ran across the floor and into the hallway.

In the family room, she pulled the afghan from the sofa, wrapping it around herself as she sat down and reached for the phone. She dialed Randy’s number, the sirens still in her head. Her heart pounded against her ribcage, and she leaned back on the couch, hoping she wouldn’t get sick.

“Hello?” Randy’s voice was muffled by sleep. What time was it? She had no idea.

“I woke you. I’m sorry, but I had a nightmare, or maybe a memory. I don’t know.” She was crying, and only then realized she’d been crying from the moment she’d opened her eyes that morning. Maybe she’d even been crying in her sleep. “It’s terrible, Randy. I can still—”

“Slow down,” Randy said. “Take a deep breath.” His voice was low and calm and warm, and she clutched the phone with both hands and tried to settle her breathing. Her heart was going to leap from her chest.

“There were ambulance sirens,” she said. “First they were in the distance, then coming closer and closer. And ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart’ was playing. It was organ music, like on the carousel. And they were hammering crates closed—big wooden crates, and—”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

Claire closed her eyes to try to recapture the image, but instead she saw a towel hanging on a towel rack, the wall behind it tiled in white. The towel was also white, but stained with blood. Claire leaped from the couch as if she could run from the picture in her mind.

“Oh, God, Randy,” she said, “make them go away! The flashbacks just keep coming. Or maybe I’m making them up. They’re too crazy to be real. But if I’m making them up, then I must be crazy.”

“Whoa, Claire.” Again the calm, deep voice filled her head, and she stood still in the middle of the room. “Did you figure out who was hammering the crates?”

“No.” She pressed one hand to her forehead. “It was just a sound. The hammering.”

“How do you know it was a crate?”

“I just do.”

“What else?”

“Someone was screaming.”

“Male or female?”

“Female, I think.” The vertigo struck suddenly, and she sat down on the couch again, swallowing hard. “I can’t think about it anymore. I have to stop.”

“What makes you think the sirens were from an ambulance? Not a fire truck or the police?”

“Randy, I can’t now! I’m so dizzy, and Jon could wake up any second.” She was shaking. She stretched the afghan to cover her feet. “I wish you were right here next to me,” she said. “I think I could do it then—think about the dream.”

There was a long silence. Her heart thudded dully in her ears.

“What do you want me to say, Claire?” Randy asked finally. “I would love to be right there next to you. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. But we can’t see each other without feeling guilty, and I don’t want that.”

“I know,” she said softly, glad he was willing to provide the voice of reason she seemed to have lost.

“I’m sorry you’re still going through all of this,” he said. “I was hoping Jon was right and that once I was out of your life, you’d feel better.”

“I don’t think I’m ever going to feel better until I know why this is happening to me. I started seeing a therapist, but I’m afraid to talk to her about the flashbacks. I feel like something terrible will happen if I start talking about them without you around. Like I may completely lose any grip I still have on my sanity, which isn’t much anymore. Oh Randy, how can I see you? I don’t want to lie, but Jon will never understand.”

“Does he know what you’re going through?”

“A little. Jon wants to help me, but he just isn’t capable of it. Maybe if I begged him to listen to me, he would, but the truth is, I only feel able to really get into the details with you.”

She drew in a breath. Her heartbeat had finally slowed down. The trembling had stopped, and she didn’t think she could conjure up the sound of sirens or hammering or music if she tried. “I’m better now,” she said. “I should go. Jon will be up soon.”

Randy didn’t speak right away. “I don’t want to let you off the phone,” he said finally.

And she didn’t want him to. “If I can come up with a way to see you, would you be willing?”

“Of course. But not if it involves a lie.”

“No, I won’t lie anymore.” She thought she heard a sound in the hallway. “I have to go.”

“All right, Claire. Please take care of yourself.”

She hung up the phone but stayed on the sofa, wrapped in the afghan, clinging to the small sense of calm Randy had given her, wondering how she could hold on to it for the rest of the day.

JON HAD AWAKENED ABRUPTLY as Claire fled from the bedroom. She hadn’t taken the time to pull on a robe, and the gray morning light washed over her bare skin as she ran. She was crying, gasping for breath, as if something were chasing her. He’d called her name, but she didn’t seem to hear him, and he’d gotten out of bed and into his chair to follow her.

From the hall, he’d heard her on the phone and knew immediately whom she had called. He’d sat and listened, eavesdropping shamelessly. The sound of her crying cut through him. He had never heard such desperation in her voice before. Such panic. The fear she had allowed him to see these past couple of months was nothing compared to the real terror churning inside her. She was pouring it out to Randy Donovan, though. Talking to Randy, her guard was down; she held nothing back. Jon wants to help me, but he isn’t capable of it.

She was right. He sat quietly in the hallway, waiting for her to hang up. He was steeling himself, trying to find a sort of courage he’d never needed before. He was going to help Claire the only way he could.

She hung up the phone, and Jon wheeled into the family room. Claire was wrapped in the afghan, her legs folded beneath her on the couch, one shoulder bare. Her face was pale and pinched with the guilty look of a child caught in some forbidden act. He felt a painful rush of love for her, and although he wanted to pull his chair close, he stayed in the doorway. It would be easier that way.

He could almost see her mind racing as she tried to create an explanation for why she was up so early, wrapped in a blanket on the sofa.

“I had a terrible dream,” she said. “I panicked and called Randy before I stopped to think about it. I’m sorry.” She had obviously meant what she’d said about not lying anymore.

“I heard the call,” he said.

“You did?” Alarm sharpened her features.

“Yes. All of it.”

Her tears started again, and she pressed a fist to her mouth. Still, he made no move toward her.

“Claire,” he said, his voice strong, “I want you to leave.”

“Leave? What do you mean?”

“I mean, I want you to leave the house. Leave me.”

“What?”

“Then you can see Randy as often as you like without—”

“No!” She put her bare feet on the floor and leaned forward. “That’s not what I want.”

“Apparently that’s what you need, though. You just said that. I heard you.”

“Jon—”

“You’re right. I haven’t been able to help you with this. I’m very sorry…” He felt the threat of tears and struggled to hold them back. “I’m too close to it to help you.”

“You’ve helped me, Jon. You’ve—”

“I want you out.” He cut her off, suddenly sick of the way she always changed reality to make problems disappear.

Claire sat back. She licked her lips. The crease between her eyebrows was deep. “You can’t be serious.”

“Yes, I am. You cannot stay here.” His hands were tight on the wheels of his chair. “I don’t want you here.”

“But you…how would you manage?”

He drew in a sharp breath. Her words made him angry, and the anger felt good. “I’m not a child!” he said. “I need a wife, not a fucking caretaker!”

“Don’t yell!” She lifted one hand from the afghan to tug anxiously at her hair. “Please don’t be angry. I didn’t mean anything. I just…I can’t leave you. It doesn’t make any sense for me to—”

“It makes more sense than going on the way we have been, with you wanting to be with someone else.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off again.

“Don’t deny it, Claire. You want him; I’m giving you permission to have him.”

“It’s not like that,” she snapped. “It’s not what you think. It’s never been what you think.” Her anger was raw and unfamiliar. “I had the first real male friend in my adult life and you took him away from me.”

“So, now I’m giving him back to you.” He started to turn his chair around. “And I’m getting dressed for work. You’ve got all day to pack up and get out, but please be gone by the time I get home.”

“What do you mean, I’ve got all day? I have to work, too.”

“Forget work. You haven’t been doing any anyhow. I’ve done ninety-five percent of the work on the retreat.”

She looked down at the floor. He knew she couldn’t argue with him on that.

“I know I haven’t been able to concentrate very well at the office,” she said, “but I still want to come in and—”

“No, Claire,” he said, unnerved by the thought of her there. “I don’t want to see you, all right? Get it? I don’t want to have to look at you in the morning after you’ve been sleeping with Randy all night.” His voice broke then, and the tears he’d been fighting spilled over his cheeks.

Claire was instantly on her feet. “Jon, please!” She grabbed his arm, but he pushed her away. His fingers caught in the weave of the afghan, accidentally pulling it from her breasts, and he let go quickly. He pressed his palms hard on his thighs.

She sat back on her heels, clutching the afghan across her chest. “Sleeping with Randy is not what I want.” Her voice was tiny, defeated. He could barely hear her. “I only want to feel better. I want to feel happy, like I used to.”

He wished she would yell at him again. Her sadness made this harder, and he had to force himself to turn his chair around and wheel back into the bedroom.

Once in the bedroom, he stared at the closed door for several minutes before starting to get dressed. The useless muscles in his thighs began to spasm as he pulled on his pants, and once or twice he had to blink to clear his vision. He thought of Claire in the family room. Maybe she was calling Randy. Or maybe she was crying, still struggling to make some sense of his order to leave. That had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. Hard and painful and filled with risk. But as he brushed his teeth and combed his hair and studied the lines around his eyes in the mirror, he felt a growing certainty that he’d been right to do it.