Robert Tanenbaum - Counterplay

There was a minute of silence while Guma poured himself a glass of water. Quiet before the storm, Karp thought.

“Okay, well, why don’t you tell us your story?” Guma suggested.

“My story,” Zachary repeated, looking down at the box, his face suddenly haunted. “Yes, I have to admit that it seems more like a story than reality.” He cleared his throat. “My mom’s name was Teresa Aiello Stavros. I don’t really remember much about her, because I was five years old when she…disappeared. I know what she looked like because of photographs and sort of dreamy memories of her face smiling at me. But one thing I do remember distinctly was this blue dress she used to wear-it might have been sort of a housedress or nightgown because she wore it a lot. It was probably satin or silk because I remember how cool it felt against my face when she held me.”

Stopping for a moment to gather himself, Zachary tried to clear his throat again as tears welled in his eyes. He wiped at the tears, which left a streak of makeup on the side of his face. “Sorry I’m being such a baby,” he said. “Anyway, I was about to say, one thing I am sure I remember is that she loved me. I felt it whenever she was near me and knew it was missing when she was gone. That’s why I know she didn’t walk out on me…us, if you include my old man, but that’s what he says. She walked out and abandoned us, like he cared.”

Zachary opened the cigar box he clutched in his hands. “This is the only supposed contact I had with her after she disappeared,” he said, removing a small bundle. “A few Christmas and birthday cards. They never said much, all of them typed, just saying some shit like ‘someday you’ll understand. Love, Mom.’ Don’t even know why I kept them, except I guess I hoped that someday I’d see her again and I could show her these and ask her to explain. But they stopped coming after I was about ten or so-Emil said it was because she wanted to forget about me entirely. But now I think it’s because she was already dead…. I think these, these are fake.”

Placing the bundle back inside the box, which he handed to Guma, Zachary continued. His father had waited for about five years and then married his mistress, the former Rockette dancer named Amarie Bliss. That was about the time the cards and letters stopped, as well as his introduction to boarding schools throughout the Northeast.

“I’ve been kicked out by all the best,” Zachary said. “Fighting, drugs, suicide attempts. They say I’m quite the poster child for manic depression.”

Zachary took another drink. “I hope I’m not boring you,” he said looking at Karp, who shook his head but didn’t say anything.

“You’re very kind,” the young man said. “I think I’d be bored to tears by now. Anyway, about the third time I cut myself-here you can still see where I messed up my body art…” Zachary rolled his tattooed arm over to show where ugly pink scars ran through a blue, black, and white wave that formed a ying-yang symbol. He snorted derisively as he added, “The psychologists say that ‘cutting’ comes from anger and a lack of self-esteem…. My dad paid thousands of dollars for someone to tell him that.”

Zachary turned his arm back over and sighed. “But then some friend of my dad’s suggested I go see this psychologist, Dr. Donald Craig. And for once, my dad did something that actually helped me. The short version is that Dr. Craig hypnotized me and when I came to, all these memories were swimming around in my head like fish in an aquarium. It took some time to sort them out-the stuff that was obviously imaginary from those that Dr. Craig said were ‘repressed memories,’ shit I’d submerged into my subconscious when I was a kid because I didn’t want to deal with it.”

The young man bowed his head. “You okay to go on?” Guma asked. Zachary nodded.

“Yes, I want to finish, then you guys can decide what to do about it,” he said. “If it’s nothing, fine, I understand and I’ll forget about it. Going up against my dad will be tough, even for the district attorney; he’s got a lot of powerful friends. And even if that doesn’t bother you, what have you got here: Emil Stavros, self-made millionaire immigrant, philanthropist, and political heavy-hitter versus his whacked-out, suicidal kid who suddenly remembered his mom’s murder after fourteen years. Believe me, I still have my own doubts.”

“Why don’t you let us be the judge of that,” Guma, said. “Just tell us your story like you told it to me.”

Zachary looked at Guma, then Karp and nodded. “Okay, I’ve come this far…. Here’s the deal: one of those repressed memories is the crystal-clear image of watching my dad with his hands around my mother’s neck. He’s screaming in her face as she tries to tear his hands off her throat. But he chokes her until she falls to the ground and didn’t move. I remember this was at night. They were on the back patio, and I was watching from inside the house-probably supposed to be in bed, but I got up for some reason. I remember seeing my dad stoop over her. I remember her lying there in that blue dress.”

Zachary stopped and looked at Guma as though waiting to be challenged. Carefully selecting his words, Guma said, “First, I’m not saying I don’t believe you. No one in this room is; however, there are some big obstacles to pursuing this case, the biggest is that we’re going to have to prove it with evidence that we can get in front of a jury. For instance, we know for a fact that your mother disappeared fourteen years ago under what were at first considered suspicious circumstances. A concern right now in this room, however, is with the so-called science of forensic hypnotism. If we were to go forward with this case with the idea of pursuing a murder charge, there would be a significant legal hurdle just to get you on the witness stand.”

Zachary took a drink of his water and nodded. “Yes, implanted memories,” he acknowledged. “To be honest, after I was hypnotized the first time, I had a hard time dealing with the whole idea. I mean, I want nothing to do with Emil, but he is my father and the idea that he killed my mom then pretended she’d left me was not something I really wanted to believe. So I looked for all sorts of reasons why this was a bunch of crap. At first I wrote it off as fortune-teller nonsense. But I also read a lot of the literature on repressed memory that’s out there, including some of the case law that’s available on the internet. I know it’s not always accurate and has been rejected by some courts, sometimes with good reason.”

The agitated young man got up and walked over to the window and looked down on the street. “You know what I’d give to be any one of those people out there? Maybe I’d be more miserable. But I’d take a chance that maybe I’d be one of those with a happy life,” he said. “You know, my dad used to tell me that the reason my mother left was that she was selfish and had never really loved either of us. I was just a burden to her, so she ran off so that she could enjoy her life.”

Zachary stopped speaking, his entire body slumping. “When Dr. Craig told me about these repressed memories, I wondered if I wanted them to be true so that I could stop dealing with the idea that she left me. She hadn’t left me at all, she’d been murdered. Maybe, I thought, I wanted it so bad, my subconscious had made it all up. Maybe the doctor accidentally implanted this memory by something he said. But all I can say is, to me, they’re real.”

The young man seemed to have finished, but the attorneys in the room remained quiet to let him compose himself. At last Guma spoke. “If you can, tell us the rest, Zachary.”

Slowly, Zachary turned to look at the ADAs sitting around the table, his pale cheeks wet with tears. “Yes…there are a couple of other things I remember distinctly from that night. The first is that when I was back in my bedroom, too scared to sleep, I heard two ‘pops.’ ”