It was Dr. Nash. He introduced himself, though his voice had sounded familiar anyway. He asked me if I was okay. I told him I was, and that I’d read my journal.
“You know what we talked about yesterday?” he said.
I felt a flash of shock. Horror. He had decided to tackle things then. I felt a bubble of hope—perhaps he really had felt the same way I had, the same confused mix of desire and fear—but it did not last. “About going to the place where you lived after you left the ward?” he said. “Waring House?”
I said, “Yes.”
“Well, I called them this morning. It’s all fine. We can go and visit. They said pretty much any time we liked.” The future. Again it seemed almost irrelevant to me. “I’m pretty busy over the next couple of days,” he said. “We could go on Thursday?”
“That seems fine,” I said. It did not seem to matter to me when we went. I was not optimistic it would help in any case.
“Good,” he said. “Well I’ll call you.”
I was about to say good-bye when I remembered what I had been writing before I dozed. I realized that my sleep could not have been deep, or else I would have forgotten everything.
“Dr. Nash?” I said. “Can I talk to you about something?”
“Yes?”
“About Ben?”
“Of course.”
“Well, it’s just that I’m confused. He doesn’t tell me about things. Important things. Adam. My novel. And he lies about other things. He tells me it was an accident that caused me to be like this.”
“Okay,” he said. He paused for a moment, then said, “Why do you think he does this?” He emphasized the you rather than the why.
I thought for a second. “He doesn’t know I’m writing things down. He doesn’t know I know any different. I suppose it’s easier for him.”
“Just him?”
“No. I suppose it’s easier for me, too. Or he thinks it is. But it isn’t. It just means I don’t even know if I can trust him.”
“Christine, we’re constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them fit in with our preferred version of events. We do it automatically. We invent memories. Without thinking. If we tell ourselves often enough that something happened, we start to believe it, and then we can actually remember it. Isn’t that what Ben’s doing?”
“I suppose,” I said. “But I feel like he’s taking advantage of me. Advantage of my illness. He thinks he can rewrite history in any way that he likes and I will never know, never be any the wiser. But I do know. I know exactly what he’s doing. And so I don’t trust him. In the end he’s pushing me away, Dr. Nash. Ruining everything.”
“So,” he said. “What do you think you can do about it?”
I knew the answer already. I have read what I wrote this morning, over and over. About how I should trust him. About how I don’t. In the end, all I could think was: This cannot go on.
“I have to tell him I am writing my journal,” I said. “I have to tell him I have been seeing you.”
He said nothing for a moment. I don’t know what I expected. Disapproval? But when he spoke, he said, “I think you might be right.”
Relief flooded me. “You agree?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve been thinking for a couple of days it might be wise. I had no idea that Ben’s version of the past would be so different from what you’re starting to remember. No idea how upsetting that might be. But it also occurs to me that we’re only really getting half the picture now. From what you’ve said, more and more of your repressed memories are beginning to emerge. It might be helpful for you to talk with Ben. About the past. It might help that process.”
“You think so?”
“Yes,” he said. “I think perhaps keeping our work from Ben was a mistake. Plus, I spoke to the staff at Waring House today. I wanted to get an idea of what things were like there. I spoke to a woman who you became close to. One of the staff. Her name is Nicole. She told me that she’s only recently returned to work there, but she was so happy when she found out that you’d gone back to live at home. She said no one could have loved you more than Ben. He came to see you pretty much every day. She said he would sit with you, in your room, or the gardens. And he tried so hard to be cheerful, despite everything. They all got to know him very well. They looked forward to him coming.” He paused for a moment. “Why don’t you suggest Ben come with us when we go and visit?” Another pause. “I probably ought to meet him, anyway.”
“You’ve never met?”
“No,” he said. “We only spoke briefly on the phone when I first approached him about meeting you. It didn’t go too well…”
It struck me then. That was the reason he was suggesting I invite Ben. He wanted to meet him, finally. He wants to bring everything into the open, to make sure that the awkwardness of yesterday can never be repeated.
“Okay,” I said. “If you think so.”
He said that he did. He waited for a long time, and then he said, “Christine? You said you’d read your journal?”
“Yes,” I said. He waited again.
“I didn’t call this morning. I didn’t tell you where it was.”
I realized it was true. I had gone to the closet myself and, though I did not know what I would find inside it, I found the shoebox and opened it almost without thinking. I had found it myself. As if I had remembered it would be there.
“That’s excellent,” he said.
I am writing this in bed. It is late, but Ben is in his office, across the landing. I can hear him work, the clatter of the keyboard, the click of the mouse. I can hear an occasional sigh, the creak of his chair. I imagine him squinting at the screen, deep in concentration. I trust that I will hear him switch off his machine in readiness for bed, that I will have time to hide my journal when he does. Now, despite what I thought this morning and agreed with Dr. Nash, I am certain that I don’t want my husband to find out what I have been writing.
I talked to him this evening, as we sat in the dining room. “Can I ask you a question?” I said, and then, when he looked up, “Why did we never have children?” I suppose I was testing him. I willed him to tell me the truth, to contradict my assertion.
“It never seemed to be the right time,” he said. “And then it was too late.”
I pushed my plate of food to the side. I was disappointed. He had got home late, called out my name as he came in, asked me how I was. “Where are you?” he’d said. It had sounded like an accusation.
I shouted that I was in the kitchen. I was preparing dinner, chopping onions to fry in the olive oil I was heating on the stove. He stood in the doorway, as if hesitant to enter the room. He looked tired. Unhappy. “Are you okay?” I said.
He saw the knife in my hand. “What are you doing?”
“Just cooking dinner,” I said. I smiled, but he did not reciprocate. “I thought we could have an omelet. I found some eggs in the fridge, and some mushrooms. Do we have any potatoes? I couldn’t find any anywhere, I—”
“I had planned for us to have pork chops,” he said. “I bought some. Yesterday. I thought we could have those.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I—”
“But no. An omelet is fine. If that’s what you want.”
I could feel the conversation slipping, down into a place I didn’t want it to go. He was staring at the chopping board, above which my hand hovered, clutching the knife.
“No,” I said. I laughed, but he did not laugh with me. “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t realize. I can always—”
“You’ve chopped the onions now,” he said. His words were flat. A statement of fact, unadorned.