The Heat of the Moon: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) Page 15

  What came into my mind then was one of the paintings I’d seen in the Picasso exhibit at the National Gallery. “The Mother.” A thin dark-haired woman in motion, head thrust forward; a white-swaddled infant in her arms; an older child, a girl, clutching her hand. The mother was tense with urgency and purpose. Fleeing from something, taking her children to safety. The way Mother had fled with us.

  Fled from what?

  I got rid of the painting with a shake of my head. “If Mrs. Coleman hadn’t brought her little girl with her the day Maude was hurt, none of this would be happening to me.”

  “It probably would have surfaced some other way,” Luke said. “Rachel, you’ll never get answers if you don’t confront your mother. Whatever the truth is, you’ve got a right to hear it.”

  “You don’t know—” I broke off, pulling back inside myself, reluctant to go on.

  “I don’t know what?”

  “I haven’t told you what happened today. I went to Theo Antanopoulos—I told you about him—”

  “I remember. Go on.”

  “I wanted him to hypnotize me to see if I could get back some memories. And he tried. But when he was putting me under I panicked, I just lost it completely.”

  Luke rubbed my shoulder. “Why? Were you afraid of what you might remember?”

  “Yes, I was. But I’d made up my mind to face it. It was the induction itself that scared me the most.” I paused, recalling the rising tide of panic that had overwhelmed me. “I felt like I was doing something terribly wrong. Something I’d been forbidden to do. I think Mother’s conditioned me not to let anyone except her hypnotize me.”

  “What? You mean she’s hypnotized you?”

  “Lots of times. Michelle too.”

  “What for?”

  “To help me get over my father’s death. According to Theo. Then for other things later on. I used to get jittery before important exams at school, but after Mother hypnotized me I’d calm down. Michelle used to be afraid of thunderstorms, and dental work, anything involving a needle in the mouth, but Mother used hypnosis to—”

  “Hold on,” Luke said. “I want to hear what happened after your father died. You were just a little kid. She was using hypnosis on you?”

  “Theo said she used hypnotherapy to help me deal with my father’s death.” I looked at Luke. “But I didn’t deal with it. I forgot it completely. I forgot him.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, understanding growing in his eyes. “Jesus Christ.”

  “I heard her voice when I was with Theo. I remembered her telling me never to let anybody else hypnotize me.”

  My mind circled, closing in on the unspeakable thought. A vulnerable child, a child in pain who longed for comfort and approval. A powerful adult who knew how to burrow deep into the minds of others. So many things I’d never asked about. Things I should have wondered about and didn’t. My natural curiosity had been stamped down and silenced. Until now.

  Luke was angry, almost shouting, but I barely heard what he said.

  Why would Mother do that? To protect me? Or to protect herself? From what?

  “Whatever it is,” I said, “this thing she doesn’t want me to remember, it’s important enough to make her—”

  “You’ve got to get away from her,” Luke said. “Listen to me.” He grasped me by the shoulders. “Stay here with me. No pressure, no decisions, I promise. I just think you ought to get away from your mother.”

  “I can’t.” My voice cracked. “Mother’s the only one who knows the truth. If I leave she won’t forgive me for it. I’ll never find out anything if I don’t stay close to her.” The sudden thought of Michelle sent a shudder through me. “And my sister needs me, whether she knows it or not.”

  I leaned against him, and he closed his arms tight around me, as if he feared I might evaporate. I felt like a ragged scrap of silk, ripping down the middle.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Come on,” I said to Michelle. “We haven’t done this in such a long time.”

  She laughed her sweet girlish laugh. “Okay, just let me change my shoes.”

  I waited out on the patio while she put on athletic shoes that she didn’t mind getting dirty on our walk along the creek. She came back smiling eagerly, looking like the little sister I’d dragged along on such walks all through our childhood.

  Every step down through the backyard took us farther from the house and our mother. I turned once and wasn’t surprised to see her watching us from her study window. She smiled and waved; we smiled and waved back. I would get Michelle down into the woods, where Mother couldn’t even see us from her window, and then I could talk to her openly.

  The tiny flowers of some creeping weed covered the creek banks in yellow. Above us, tree branches were misty green with emerging new leaves. “Look,” I said, pointing up. “A pileated.”

  The big black-backed woodpecker clung to a tree trunk and gave its loud cackling call, and from perhaps fifty feet away came an answer. Only one pair lived in these woods. In summer we’d see one or two young ones with the parents for a while, but by the following spring they’d be gone, killed by the winter or off to find their own mates and territories.

  “I forget sometimes how peaceful it is here,” Michelle said. She linked an arm through mine. “Thanks for reminding me. We used to have fun down here, didn’t we?”

  “We always had fun together,” I said. It was silly to miss being ten or eleven years old, but I did, sharply, painfully.

  “You taught me so much,” Michelle said. “I grew up seeing the world—nature—through your eyes. You’ve always been in tune with the natural world, but I have to make a conscious effort to connect with it. I wish I could be more like you.”

  I barked a surprised laugh. “You’re kidding.”

  She stopped, withdrew her arm and stepped back to look at me. “No, I envy you sometimes. You’re able to be passionate about things—”

  “Hot-headed, Mother would say.” I forced a grin.

  Michelle went on looking at me, serious, almost contemplative. “Well,” she said, “Mother’s always believed calm and rational behavior is better than passion. I’m not sure Mother knows what passion is.”

  Startled to hear her say such a thing, so close to criticism, I was speechless for a moment. Finally I said, picking my way toward the subject I’d brought her here to discuss, “I think all the passion went out of her life when our father died, and she’s been trying ever since not to feel anything too deeply.”

  Michelle nodded. Somewhere nearby a squirrel chattered a warning and a bluejay screamed. “It’s sad that she’s completely closed off any possibility of falling in love and getting married again,” Michelle said. “I guess in a way I’m glad we didn’t have to change our lives to fit in a stepfather while we were growing up, but now—”

  “She’s still young,” I said. “Fifty-two’s not old. And she’s attractive.”

  We were both silent a moment. Then Michelle said, “She wouldn’t like us discussing her this way.”

  “She can’t hear us, Mish.”

  At the same moment we both glanced back, in the direction of the house. I could just see the roof and chimney through the trees.

  I said, “If she’s clinging to his memory, if she can’t forget him and that’s the reason she won’t see other men, why do you suppose she never talks about him? Why doesn’t she want to make sure his children don’t forget him?”

  “Oh—” Michelle looked faintly annoyed, as if she’d had an automatic negative reaction to my question. “It’s her way of coping.”

  “To blot him out of our lives? To blot out the first few years of our lives?”

  “Rachel,” Michelle said, slipping her arm in mine again. “Why are you bringing all this up now? You were talking about Daddy just recently. What—”

  I pulled away. “I’d like to remember those years and I’d like to remember our father. I was old enough. I don’t understand why I can’t remember him clearl
y. Something’s missing, and I want to find it. Don’t you ever feel that way?”

  She shrugged. “I was too young to remember. We’ve talked about this before—”

  “I tried to have myself hypnotized so I could remember,” I blurted.

  “Hypnotized?” She looked confused. “By Mother? Why would she—”

  “No. Another doctor. But I couldn’t go through with it. I panicked during induction.”

  “Oh, Rachel,” she said, touching my arm, concerned. “When? Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

  I told her now, in as much detail as I could remember.

  She sighed. “Mother wouldn’t like this if she found out. She’d be hurt that you went to someone else for help.”

  “Don’t tell her,” I said. Why had Michelle’s first thought been for our mother’s feelings?

  “I won’t,” she murmured. Then, curious, studying me, “Did you remember anything—”

  “No, I didn’t get that far, I told you.”

  She chewed her bottom lip, an old habit when she was thinking.

  I said, “Mother thinks I shouldn’t try to remember because I was so traumatized by our father’s death. I gather I had some kind of breakdown.”

  Michelle’s eyes widened. “What? She said that?”

  I told her what Mother had said about my destroying the pictures. Michelle’s expression went from surprise to a kind of concerned acceptance. “I don’t remember that at all,” she said. “Well, I can see her point. Mother’s just looking out for your emotional well-being.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” I cried, and the loudness of my voice startled a couple of chickadees into angry chitters. “Let me look out for my own emotional well-being. What right does she have to keep our father a mystery to us? What right does she have to tell us what to think and feel and how to act and who to see and—Why do you let her dictate who you’ll see, Mish? Why did you let her stop you from seeing Kevin when I know you wanted to?”

  She took a couple of steps back, and her face was a cold mask. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I made my own decision about Kevin. This is the busiest time of my life, finishing my degree, planning my future, and I don’t need the distraction of—”

  “She told you to stop seeing him, didn’t she? She sat you down when I wasn’t around, and talked you into it, just like she’s been trying to talk me into breaking it off with Luke.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Michelle said. “You’re imagining things. She did no such thing.”

  “Don’t use that voice with me! That patronizing therapist voice. You’re my sister, my baby sister, don’t talk to me like a stranger.”

  She spun away, marched raggedly along the path, back toward the house. I caught up and took her arm. She faced me, and I was startled to see tears on her cheeks. “I’ve seen Kevin a couple of times,” she said in a whisper, as if afraid of being overheard even here. “I’ve been wanting to tell you. But I’m not dating him. It’s just been lunch. I made the decision not to date him, I explained to him why.” She closed her eyes briefly, pressing a hand to her forehead. “Please don’t let Mother find out—”

  I took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Michelle, you’re a grown woman. You can see anybody you want to.”

  She let out a long sigh. “It’s just easier if she doesn’t know about it.” Then she shook her head, making her blonde hair whip around her neck. “Rachel, I wish you’d stop dragging up all this about Daddy. It upsets her, she doesn’t want to talk about it. And it’s obviously hurting you, it’s got you confused and torn. Can’t you let it be?”

  “Is that what therapists are telling patients these days? You’re better off if you let the past be?”

  “You’re not a patient!”

  “No, I’m your flesh and blood, and I deserve at least as much support as you’d give a patient who’s trying to understand her past.”

  She swiped at her cheeks with the back of a hand. “All my patients are going to be children,” she said. “They won’t have pasts.”

  I laughed, although I felt like crying. “Well, that’s one problem solved.”

  She sniffled and looked up, beyond me, as she blinked rapidly. “You’ve got your work,” she said. “You’ve got Luke. You function well, you’re not a neurotic crippled by unresolved issues. You should be enjoying the present, not digging around in the past. I’m not going to help you do something that will only hurt Mother.”

  Before I could answer, she turned and hurried away, toward the house, leaving me feeling as alone as I’d ever felt in my life.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Friday, the Fourth of July. This day that would end so badly began in a cool mist, the air a white gauze of fog drifting in from the Potomac.

  Mother, fussing over preparations for the party she gave each year, peered out through the patio doors and wondered aloud whether it would be cloudy all day. When the fog burned off and sunlight drenched the back lawn, she fretted that the afternoon would be unbearably hot. Then the clouds settled back in to stay and she worried that we might have rain for the first time in three weeks.

  Rosario went on with her baking, Michelle and I set up rented tables and chairs on the patio, and none of us bothered to respond to Mother. Rosie and Michelle knew as well as I did that her concern over the weather was more than a convenient focus for free-floating anxiety. Any extreme would force the guests indoors, and Mother didn’t want two dozen people roaming her house.

  It would have been useless to ask why she did this every year, inviting a group of near-strangers to the house. The July 4 party, a longtime event at the home of Theo and his wife Renee, moved to our house when Renee’s battle with cancer began. The arrangement was supposed to be temporary, a favor, until she recovered. But she didn’t recover. For some reason Mother felt obliged to continue the annual ritual after Renee’s death, even though it was a chore and a strain.

  Michelle and I worked silently, unfolding chairs, pushing card tables together in two long rows. She avoided my gaze and shied away every time I brushed against her. Watching her from the corner of my eye, I began to wonder. She was acting secretive, guilty, the way she used to as a kid when she was waiting for some misdeed to be discovered. Candy pilfered from the basketful meant for trick-or-treaters. Christmas gifts unwrapped for a peek, then inexpertly rewrapped. A sister’s confidence broken.

  Mother gave no sign that Michelle had told her what I was up to, but I wouldn’t expect that. Mother would choose the moment to reveal what she knew.

  I had another reason to worry—I’d invited Luke to the party without telling Mother. He’d said yes without hesitating, and he was entirely too enthusiastic about showing Mother she hadn’t driven him out of my life. For days I’d been trying to make myself tell her he was coming, but now the party was hours away and she still didn’t know.

  My mother and sister and I floated through the house in our separate bubbles of anxiety, occasionally bouncing off one another.

  It was also Michelle’s birthday, but our pause at lunchtime to celebrate was only a momentary break in the tension. At the dining room table, when our barely touched sandwiches had been cleared away, Mother presented Michelle with a small oblong package. She smiled as Michelle stripped off the silver ribbon and glossy white wrapping paper, opened a blue velvet box and gasped at an elegantly simple gold bracelet. “It’s beautiful, it’s perfect!” Michelle cried, and she rose to give Mother a hug and kiss.

  My gift, a navy blue leather briefcase with her initials in brass, was something she’d pined for and hinted about, but it was accepted now with a short “Thanks” and a flick of a smile in my general direction.

  ***

  I was in jeans and Michelle wore Bermuda shorts, but Mother’s idea of informality was black silk slacks and a white short-sleeved blouse. At four o’clock she stood stiff and alert on the patio, waiting for the first guests to arrive. They would all show up because none of them had anywhere else to g
o, and they’d all arrive precisely on time like patients keeping appointments.

  They advanced up the driveway in little chatting groups, dressed in Bermuda shorts and tee-shirts or sun dresses. These people, all psychiatrists and psychologists, were Theo’s friends, not Mother’s. Many had been his students decades ago and were in the habit of attending Renee’s July 4 party.

  I worked the drinks table, handing out glasses of chilled white wine and cans of cold beer. Every few seconds I scanned the driveway for Luke. Mother stood next to the table, greeting her guests.

  Melinda Morse, a tiny woman with moist bush baby eyes, grasped Mother’s hand and said in a whispery voice, “I always appreciate the invitation, Judith. Since Robert died, and with my son living so far away—”

  I saw Mother’s gaze shift beyond Dr. Morse and lock on something, someone. Luke was rounding the corner of the house onto the patio. Mother looked at me, brows lifted inquiringly.

  “I invited him.” I handed Dr. Morse a glass of white wine. She murmured her gratitude and crept away into the crowd.

  “Well,” Mother said, “you’re certainly entitled to invite a friend.” As Luke approached she put on a brilliant smile. “Hello, Dr. Campbell. I’m glad you could come.”

  She didn’t give him a chance to answer, but exclaimed that she’d forgotten the rest of the appetizers, and vanished into the house. Luke leaned to kiss me lightly and murmured, “Better than being shot on sight.”

  Michelle didn’t bother to put on a show of civility. She returned Luke’s greeting with a cold glare, then turned her back on him.

  I was still steaming over that when Theo arrived.

  “Rachel.” He squeezed my hand and studied my face. “How have you been?”

  “I’m okay, Theo.” I withdrew my hand and cast a quick glance around, making sure Mother wasn’t in earshot.

  Theo stepped closer, keeping his voice low. “I’ve felt terribly guilty all week. I know it was my fault. I didn’t adequately prepare you. Why don’t you come see me this weekend and we can get into some of your issues in more depth.”