Steven Watson - Before I Go to Sleep

He must have sensed my surprise.

“A few weeks ago,” he said, “you told me you’d seen a child, out in the street. A little boy. At first you had the overwhelming sense that you knew him, that he was lost but was coming home, to your house, and you were his mother. Then it came back to you. You told Ben, and he told you about Adam. Later that day you told me.”

I remembered nothing of this. I reminded myself that he was not talking about a stranger, but about me.

“But you haven’t told me about him since?”

He sighed. “No—”

Without warning, I remembered what I had read this morning, of the images they had shown me as I lay in the scanner.

“There were pictures of him!” I said. “When I had my scan! There were pictures…”

“Yes,” he said. “From your file…”

“But you didn’t mention him! Why? I don’t understand.”

“Christine, you must accept that I can’t begin every session by telling you all the things I know but you don’t. Plus, in this case, I decided it wouldn’t necessarily benefit you.”

“Benefit me?”

“No. I knew it would be very upsetting for you to know that you had a child and have forgotten him.”

We were pulling into an underground parking lot. The soft daylight faded, replaced by harsh fluorescence and the smell of gasoline and concrete. I wondered what else he might feel it unethical to tell me, what other time bombs I am carrying in my head, primed and ticking, ready to explode.

“There aren’t any more—?” I said.

“No,” he interrupted. “You only had Adam. He was your only child.”

The past tense. Then Dr. Nash knew he was dead, too. I did not want to ask, but knew that I must.

“You know he was killed?”

He stopped the car and turned off the engine. The parking lot was dim, lit only by pools of fluorescent light, and silent. I heard nothing but the occasional door slamming, the rattle of an elevator. For a moment, I thought there was still a chance. Maybe I was wrong. Adam was alive. My mind lit with the idea. Adam had felt real to me as soon as I read about him this morning, yet still his death did not. I tried to picture it, or to remember how it must have felt to be given the news that he had been killed, yet I could not. It did not seem right. Grief should surely overwhelm me. Every day would be filled with constant pain, with longing, with the knowledge that part of me has died and I will never be whole again. Surely my love for my son would be strong enough for me to remember my loss. If he really were dead, then surely my grief would be stronger than my amnesia.

I realized I did not believe my husband. I did not believe my son was dead. For a moment, my happiness hung, balancing, but then Dr. Nash spoke.

“Yes,” he said. “I know.”

Excitement discharged within me like a tiny explosion, turned to its opposite. Something worse than disappointment. More destructive, shot through with pain.

“How… ?” was all I could say.

He told me the same story as Ben. Adam, in the army. A roadside bomb. I listened, determined to find the strength not to cry. When he had finished, there was a pause, a moment of stillness, before he put his hand on mine.

“Christine,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

I didn’t know what to say. I looked at him. He was leaning toward me. I looked down at his hand, covering mine, crisscrossed with tiny scratches. I saw him at home, later. Playing with a kitten, perhaps a small dog. Living a normal life.

“My husband does not tell me about Adam,” I said. “He keeps all of the photographs of him locked away in a metal box. For my own protection.” Dr. Nash said nothing. “Why would he do that?”

He looked out of the window. I saw the word CUNT sprayed onto the wall in front of us. “Let me ask you the same question. Why do you think he would do that?”

I thought. I thought of all the reasons I could. So that he can control me. Have power over me. So that he can deny me this one thing that might make me feel complete. I realized I didn’t believe any of those were true. I was left only with the mundane fact. “I suppose it’s easier for him. Not to tell me, if I don’t remember.”

“Why is it easier for him?”

“Because I find it so upsetting? It must be a horrible thing to have to do, to tell me every day that not only have I had a child but that he has died. And in such a horrible way.”

“Any other reasons, do you think?”

I was silent, and then realized. “Well, it must be hard for him too. He was Adam’s father and, well…” I thought how he must be managing his own grief, as well as mine.

“This is difficult for you, Christine,” Dr. Nash said. “But you must try to remember that it is difficult for Ben, too. More difficult, in some ways. He loves you very much, I expect, and—”

“—and yet I don’t even remember he exists.”

“True,” he said.

I sighed. “I must have loved him, once. After all, I married him.” He said nothing. I thought of the stranger I had woken up with that morning, of the photos of our lives together I had seen, of the dream—or the memory—I had had in the middle of the night. I thought of Adam, and of Alfie, of what I had done, or thought about doing. A panic rose in me. I felt trapped, as though there was no way out, my mind skittering from one thing to another, searching for freedom and release.

Ben, I thought to myself. I can cling to Ben. He is strong.

“What a mess,” I said. “I just feel overwhelmed.”

He turned back to face me. “I wish I could do something to make this easier for you.”

He looked as though he really meant it, as though he would do anything he could to help me. There was a tenderness in his eyes, in the way he rested his hand on mine, and there, in the dim half-light of the underground parking lot, I found myself wondering what would happen if I put my hand on his, or moved my head slightly forward, holding his gaze, opening my mouth as I did so, just a touch. Would he, too, lean forward? Would he try to kiss me? Would I let him, if he did?

Or would he think me ridiculous? Absurd? I may have woken this morning thinking I am in my twenties, but I am not. I am almost fifty. Nearly old enough to be his mother. And so, instead, I looked at him. He sat perfectly still, looking at me. He seemed strong. Strong enough to help me. To get me through.

I opened my mouth to speak, without knowing what I was going to say, but the muffled ringing of a telephone interrupted me. Dr. Nash didn’t move, other than to take his hand away, and I realized the phone must be one of mine.

I retrieved the ringing phone from my bag. It was not the one that flipped open but the one my husband has given me. BEN, it said on the screen.

When I saw his name, I realized how unfair I was being. He was bereaved, too. And he had to live with it, every day, without being able to speak to me about it, without being able to come to his wife for support.

And he did all that for love.

And here was I, sitting in a parking lot with a man he barely knew existed. I thought of the photos I had seen that morning, in the scrapbook. Me and Ben, over and over again. Smiling. Happy. In love. If I were to go home and look at them now, I might only see in them the thing that was missing. Adam. But they are the same pictures, and in them we look at each other as if no one else in the world exists.

We had been in love; it was obvious.

“I’ll call him back, later,” I said. I put the phone back in my bag. I will tell him tonight, I thought. About my journal. Dr. Nash. Everything.

Dr. Nash coughed. “We should go up to the office. Make a start?”

“Of course,” I said. I did not look at him.