Ms. Bromley’s shoulders shook with laughter and her face wore a lopsided smile. At the community building, she tugged on an outer glass door. I held it open and watched as she entered, walked across a small vestibule, and inserted her house key into a slot. When the inner door opened, I followed her along a corridor hung with artwork, some of it, she said with pride, created by the residents.
She paused and stood before an accomplished watercolor of a cat curled up on a chair. I thought I recognized the window. “Yours?”
She nodded.
“Impressive.”
She ran a fingertip along the aluminum frame as if checking it for dust. “Art is my pleasure now. What do you do in your spare time, Hannah?”
“Read mostly, or sail, but not at this time of year. My husband’s sister has a boat.”
When we reached the dining room, I had to mask my surprise. Each of the waitstaff, clad in black trousers, white shirts, and bow ties, greeted my hostess by name. The tables were set with quality china on white tablecloths; red napkins, elaborately folded, sprang from each water glass like astonished birds. Because there were no leaves on the trees, a pleasant view of the South River lay beyond the window. There were restaurants in Annapolis not nearly as attractive as this.
A petite blonde, her hair held back at the crown by half a dozen miniature butterfly clips, showed us to a table set for two by the window. Her name tag said “Trish.”
I settled comfortably into a chair while Trish held Ms. Bromley’s chair and scooted it closer to the table. Once the elderly woman was comfortably seated, Trish laced her neatly manicured fingers together and held them against her chest. “The specials today are spaghetti Bolognese and shrimp scampi. I’d recommend the scampi,” she announced with a grin. “And if you clean your plates, ladies, there’s our famous apple pie.”
“The scampi will be fine for me. Hannah?”
“The same.”
“And some tea, too, Trish.”
“Okeydokey!” Trish flounced away and returned almost immediately, carrying a teapot and a saucer of lemon slices. She set the teapot on the table with a flourish, knocking over the bud vase in the process. A puddle of water spread across the tablecloth. “Oops! Sorry. I’m a butterfingers today.” She handed me the lemons, then dabbed at the water with a napkin she’d snitched from an adjoining table.
Ms. Bromley seemed unruffled. “Never mind, Trish.” She pulled the napkin from the waitress’s hand and waved her away. “We’ll take care of it.” She folded the napkin in half and laid it carefully over the stain.
When Trish was safely back in the kitchen, Ms. Bromley poured a cup of tea for each of us. “So you’re the young woman they’ve saddled with all my children.” She dropped a thin slice of lemon into her cup and watched it float to the surface.
I chuckled. “And I’m honored.” I slipped a sugar cube into my tea and mashed down on it with the tip of my spoon, persuading it as gently as possible to dissolve.
“You said on the telephone that you had some questions to ask me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Goodness! I feel old enough without you ma’aming me. Call me Nadine, please. Or Naddy.”
I could no more call this famous woman I had just met “Naddy” than I could call my grandmother Laureen. I decided I’d avoid the issue altogether, if I could manage it. “I’m making good progress on your collection, getting all the titles together. Are all your books included?”
“Every blessed one. Including a few in Portuguese.” She noticed that the level of the tea in my cup was a tad low, lifted the pot, and raised an eyebrow.
I nodded, and she topped it off.
“And your short stories?” I asked.
“They’re all on the list I gave St. John’s. But I’m afraid I didn’t always keep copies of the short stories.”
“I’ve located sources for most of them and arranged to get photocopies through interlibrary loan.” I sipped my tea. “The newspaper and magazine interviews are more difficult, but I stumbled across an article in Parade magazine that was fascinating.”
“I remember that one. A near disaster. Carrie-that was my dog-nipped the reporter on the ankle and drew blood. We had to report the naughty girl to dog control.” She leaned back in her chair, her face alive with the memory.
Remembering my husband’s unfortunate experience with the press the previous spring when reporters had lurked about on the street outside our house, ambushing him whenever he appeared, I said, “Give the pooch a medal.”
Ms. Bromley crinkled her nose thoughtfully. “I wrote a radio play once for NPR, but it was never produced.”
“I don’t remember running across any of your plays.”
“And you won’t, my dear. There was only the one, and it should stay well and truly buried.”
The waitress brought our food at that moment and the conversation turned to children (mine) and pets (hers) and grandchildren (hers and mine). I confess I even dragged out my wallet-size photos of Chloe, aged one month and already cute as a button. When our plates were taken away and Trish went off to fetch the world-famous pie, I figured I had beaten around the bush long enough. “I was interested in one of your books in particular.”
Ms. Bromley looked up from her tea. “Oh, yes?”
“Triple Jeopardy?”
Ms. Bromley cast her eyes upward as if what she was about to say was written on the ceiling. “Ah, yes.” She laid her elbows on the table, made a tent with her fingers, and rested her chin on her thumbs. The eyes studying my face were green, flecked with brown. “That was an interesting one. I spent some time with a woman in Charleston whose therapist claimed to have identified twenty-three distinct personalities. She wasn’t so much a woman as a club!” She straightened her back and leaned forward, confidentially. “Can’t imagine what I’d do with all those people cluttering up the place. I have a hard enough time managing the one personality I’ve got.”
Trish set a thick slice of pie crusted with cinnamon in front of each of us. Ms. Bromley took a bite from the pointy end and chewed it thoughtfully. “I wrote that back in the days when multiple personalities were all the rage. You probably remember Sybil?”
I nodded.
“But before that, there was The Three Faces of Eve.”
“Joanne Woodward,” I said.
“Exactly.” She took another bite of pie. “That theory’s been largely debunked, though.”
I was surprised to hear that. If you believe what you see on Lifetime TV, one woman out of three is harboring multiple personalities. “It’s not the multiple personalities I’m curious about, actually. It’s the idea that memories of things that never happened-like sexual abuse-can be recovered.”
I watched her face carefully when I said that. I didn’t want her to think that I had been sexually abused.
“The two are related,” Ms. Bromley said matter-of-factly. She dabbed her lips with her napkin, then rearranged it in her lap. “Some therapists theorize that abused children develop these alternate personalities as a coping mechanism to help them deal with the abuse. The only way to integrate these individuals, they feel, is to help them remember the traumatic experiences that triggered the split.” She leaned back in her chair and studied me thoughtfully. “I suppose there may be genuine instances of memories being deeply buried, then remembered sometime later, but unless we are to believe that there’s been a recent epidemic of child sexual abuse, most experts now discredit this theory, too.”
I felt my spirits soar. “They do?”
She nodded. “Experiments have shown how easy it is to create false memories in even the most levelheaded of people. I think you’ll find a lot of background material on this in my files.”