Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

emotionally. Then she put them out of her life.”
    Excited, I grabbed this slender thread of information. “What made her do that? What was so terrible about her family?”
    Theo sighed. “I’ve already said too much. I must ask you again not to put me in the position of betraying Judith’s confidence.”
    Frustration almost got the better of me and I was on the verge of lashing out at him when Helen, with a fluid leap, landed on my lap. She plastered her purring body to my chest. Stroking her, I silently reminded myself that I couldn’t push Theo. If I made him betray Mother’s confidence, he might feel compelled to betray mine.
    His voice became cajoling. “You’re not in a terribly unusual position,” he said. “Very few people are well acquainted with the facts of their parents’ lives. You should hear my patients trying to patch together coherent portraits of their parents. I myself have often regretted not learning more about my parents while I had the chance—”
    “Theo, I’m trying to learn about mine,” I said quietly.
    He sighed, his shoulders slumping. “I said I would help you, but instead I only seem to be putting roadblocks in your path. I suppose I’m reluctant to see you become obsessed with these questions. With the past.”
    “You’re trying to protect me, just like Mother is. I know that. But now that I’ve started wondering about these things, I feel like I’ll go crazy if I don’t get some answers.” I hesitated, then added, “Would you hypnotize me, to see if I can pull out some memories?”
    My mother’s face rose in my mind, her sad reproachful eyes making me feel furtive and deceitful. But I had to do it this way. I didn’t believe Mother would ever tell me more about my father. I couldn’t press her; I was afraid the slightest touch on a tender area would make her withdraw from me completely. She didn’t have to know what I uncovered. She need never know.
    “Do you believe you can accept whatever memories you bring forth?”
    “Yes,” I said, hoping I sounded confident. I didn’t feel that way. I was less certain with every second that passed. I wanted this. I didn’t want it. Eager but frightened. What if I’d guessed right, and something unspeakable had happened, something I’d buried because it would destroy me if I faced it? The clutching pressure in my chest warned me to stop now.
    “You realize,” Theo said, “that what you recall may not be the literal truth? And you must take into account the fragmentary nature of early memory.”
    I shook my head. I had no early memories, fragmentary or otherwise. “What do you mean?”
    “Few people can remember very much, if anything, before the age of two and a half to three. And childhood memory after that is seldom crystal clear or complete. It’s selective, and frequently confused. And sometimes highly inventive.” 
    “Inventive?”
    “Children don’t see the world the same way adults do. They naturally give events a different interpretation, colored by their limited experience. That flawed and totally subjective view becomes cemented in place as memory.”
    “That sounds like we shouldn’t trust any childhood memories.”
    “No, not really. It’s our emotional perceptions that shape us, more than the literal truth. And emotions don’t arise without cause. They are certainly linked to reality at some level.”
    A woman’s sad tears, a man’s angry shouts, a child’s fearful cries. Were these my emotional perceptions of early childhood? Would I ever know what reality they were tied to? Before I lost my courage, I said, “I understand. But I want to do it.”
    “I’m going to insist that we wait a bit,” Theo said. “Two or three weeks, perhaps, then we’ll talk again. If you still want to try hypnosis, we’ll discuss it then.”
    I didn’t want to prolong this. I wanted answers now, I wanted to know what my father had meant to me, to my mother, my sister, and why he’d been erased from our lives and memories. But I had no choice; I had to wait. Theo was behaving ethically, the only way I could reasonably expect him to behave.
    This was the best I could get, and I took it gratefully.
    ***
    Mother must have guessed that I spent my evenings out with Luke, at dinner, at the movies, at his apartment, in his bed. But to my surprise she watched me coming and going and said nothing. Two weeks went by before she brought it up.
    I came home one night and found Mother and Michelle in the