“If your desire to hurt is rooted in the desire to take back power, to enact revenge, then what do you think the reason is for not being able to remember the details of historic violent incidents?”
Each death is interwoven with fog and haze. It’s one of the things I was most keen to address when I started coming to Dr. Foster; making healthier life choices and keeping my impulses under control while conscious is one thing, but I’m afraid of what I might do if I’m asleep at the wheel. Dimple knows this. Knows I struggle with why these memory holes exist.
I frown. “We’re dancing around what you want to say again, I can tell. Just say it.”
Dimple offers her hands up in a peaceful gesture. “I’m only curious as to whether you might have your own theories on the matter.”
My nose twitches and my mouth twists. “I assume it’s some kind of dissociative memory loss, triggered by trauma.”
She nods, slender fingers flicking through her notepad. “You’ve said before that you believe you’ve inherited your proclivity for violence from your mother. Specifically, your father’s death.” I note her avoidance of the word “murder.”
“Sure.”
“What was your mother’s response to the event? We’ve spoken a little about yours, but in the aftermath, how did she respond?”
“I’m not sure I follow your meaning.” I do; I’m just being difficult. Suddenly, she feels less like Claire and more like my mother, laying traps with her words to catch me in.
Dimple seems unfazed, although we both know what I’m doing. “Did she seem to experience any forgetfulness? Any blackouts?”
My lips press tightly together. The skin pulls taut, a fissure left in a dry patch splitting open. It hurts. “No, she didn’t as far as I know. But I’m not sure what difference that makes. I didn’t expect something like this would be hereditary. It’s psychological.”
She just stares at me with a lukewarm smile. There’s something off about it, like milk sitting all day on the counter of a hot kitchen.
“So, returning to my question, what do you think might be the psychological factors behind your mind dissociating to such an extreme degree?”
My hackles are up, but I want to answer. I won’t understand what she’s playing at until I do.
“Well, take George, for example. What I did was quite an extreme act. I imagine that on some level, I found the act deeply traumatic, even if I felt compelled to do it.”
She sets her notepad aside on the little round table next to her. “Ifyour mind could insist on rejecting such violence, what makes you think you’re capable of enacting it in the first instance?”
Static crackles through my head, making it hard to think. “What do you mean?”
“The other day, in the bar, you described a feeling of nausea overcoming you at the prospect of more seriously harming the man you met.”
“That’s true.”
“And you say you were afraid of getting caught.”
“That’s right.”
“But you weren’t afraid of getting caught when you stabbed George in his own home?”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to put words in my mouth.”
She taps her pen against her thigh, smiles. “Well, were you afraid?”
“Before it actually happened, and after, sure.” The room is too warm. “But I can’t remember how I felt in the moment, can I? That’s the whole point.”
“Does that not strike you as particularly odd? You were drinking heavily on the night that Marc died and were under the influence of other substances at the time of Luca’s death. Gaps in your memory are easy to explain on these occasions. It’s this one that stands out.”
I run my tongue across my teeth. “Yes, that’s why I’m here.”
Dimple leans back in her chair and removes her glasses. She takes a moment to rub the bridge of her nose before fixing them back into place. She looks me dead in the eyes, the gray of her irises now steel, now flint. I want to look away, but I’m caught in her net.
“Have you ever considered that perhaps you don’t remember killing these men—I think we’re beyond the point of euphemisms—because you did not, in fact, kill them?”
The room feels like it’s sliding away beneath my feet. Someone has tipped my world over, setting it at an angle. My nails are digging into the flaking crust as I attempt not to fall away from it completely.
