Community Read online

  ‘Where are you going?’ Michael asked her. ‘Anyplace exciting?’

  Jemima tapped the side of her nose with her finger and said, ‘Mind your own beeswax, Mr Nosy Parker Cripple!’

  With that, she furiously pedaled off to catch up with her friend.

  ‘Kids!’ said Catherine. ‘Mind you, I was probably worse than that when I was her age. I was always getting myself into scrapes!’

  Michael would have liked to have been able to say ‘me, too!’ but he couldn’t remember his childhood at all. Nothing. He couldn’t remember if he had ever owned a bicycle, or roller-skates, or even if he had ever climbed trees.

  Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree.

  Catherine continued to push him around the playing field. The sun was shining on the snow so brightly that it was difficult to look at it without being dazzled. As he lifted his gloved hand to shield his eyes, Michael had another momentary flash of feeling, like the sensation he had experienced in the rose garden. The sound of a voice – maybe a woman’s voice. A flicker of light, and the faint smell of some floral perfume. Then it was gone.

  Looking across the playing field, he saw two forlorn basketball posts, their nets clotted with snow. What he thought was strange, though, was that there were no footprints in the snow, none at all, human or animal. No ski-tracks or sledge-tracks, either, which he would have expected, especially so close to a winter resort like Mount Shasta, where almost everybody must own a pair of skis or a sledge or at least a child’s toboggan.

  He thought of mentioning the playing field’s pristine condition to Catherine, but he decided not to, although he didn’t quite know why. Instead, he said, ‘So, Catherine! Where are you taking me? Or are you going to tell me to mind my own beeswax, too?’

  ‘I’m taking you right here,’ said Catherine. She pushed him up the snowy slope in front of a pale yellow house and then maneuvered his wheelchair through the narrow space beside a snow-covered Jeep Compass. As they approached the front porch, the door opened, and a young woman appeared, smiling and lifting her hand in greeting.

  ‘Isobel! Hi!’ called Catherine. She turned Michael’s wheelchair around so that she could heave it backward up the two front steps. The young woman took one side of it and helped her to lift it over the ledge into the hallway.

  ‘Now I do feel like a cripple,’ said Michael.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so silly,’ Catherine scolded him. ‘You’re just recuperating, that’s all!’

  She turned the wheelchair around and pushed Michael through to the living room. There was a wide bay window, with a window-seat, but natural-colored calico blinds had been drawn right down to the window sills, so that the light in the living-room was pale and muted.

  Michael looked around. The room was furnished with two traditional armchairs and a bulky couch, all upholstered in a busy floral fabric. On the left-hand wall there was a sandstone fireplace with a gas log fire blazing in it, and over the fireplace hung a large framed print of a log cabin, in a gloomy forest, with three or four trappers gathered outside it.

  Below the print, on a varnished pine shelf, stood a collection of small china figurines, most of them dogs or Native Americans in buckskins or Disney characters like Bambi and Thumper – although, if anybody had asked him, Michael wouldn’t have been able to remember what their names were.

  ‘Here, why don’t I help you take off your jacket?’ said Isobel. ‘It’s real warm in here, isn’t it, but I do like to keep it toasty.’

  She came up to him, untucked his blanket and lifted it off his knees. Then she started to unfasten the stud at his neck. He said, ‘Hold up, Isobel. I can stand up, just about. That will make it a darn sight easier.’

  It took him two attempts, but he managed to heave himself out of his wheelchair into a standing position, and balance himself unsteadily in front of the fire, shuffling his feet every now and then as if he were drunk. Isobel smiled and tugged down the zipper of his padded jacket.

  ‘You’ll be walking before you know it,’ she told him. ‘And that will be useful, especially in the fall, when the leaves need sweeping.’

  When she said that, Michael blinked his blurry eyes and made a first effort to focus on her more acutely. She was slim, about five-feet-four, with a shiny brunette bob that was cut up high and angular at the back of her neck, but with a heavy fringe. She was actually quite pretty, with high cheekbones and big, brown, wide-apart eyes. She had a small, straight nose and a well-shaped chin, and full pink lips that looked as if she were pouting, or just about to blow him a kiss.

  She was wearing a clinging purple roll-neck sweater and tight black slacks. She had very large breasts for a woman so small and so slim, but very narrow hips.

  ‘I’m sorry, Isobel,’ he said. ‘I can’t introduce myself for the simple reason that I can’t remember who I am.’

  Isobel helped him to drag his arms out of his sleeves, and then she folded his jacket over and laid it down on the window seat. ‘Catherine told me that your name is Gregory. Or Greg, according to your sister.’

  ‘Well, she told me that, too. But I don’t feel like Gregory. I don’t remember anybody calling me Gregory, or Greg, not ever, or signing my name Gregory. If you gave me a pen right now and asked me to give you my autograph, I wouldn’t know where to start. I really wouldn’t.’

  ‘What’s in a name?’ said Isobel. ‘You know what W.B. Yeats once said?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t. Who’s W.B. Yeats?’

  ‘He was a famous Irish poet. He said that the creations of any writer are nothing more than the moods and passions of his own heart, to which he gives Christian names and surnames, and then sends off to walk the earth.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand what that means.’

  ‘But I believe that’s what we are, Gregory – us human beings. All of us, we’re nothing more than the moods and passions of God, to which He has given names, and then sent out to do what He wants us to do. What really counts is what kind of a mood we happen to be in, or what kind of a passion – not what we’re called.’

  ‘Well, I guess that’s one point of view,’ Michael agreed. ‘But I’d still like to know what my name is. I’m ninety-nine per cent sure that I am Gregory. I must be. That’s the name in my driver’s license, and the name embossed on my credit cards. But I don’t know that I’m Gregory, not in my head, and not in my heart, either.’

  ‘But it won’t upset you if I call you Greg?’

  ‘Of course not. You can call me anything you darn well like, so far as I’m concerned. But you said something about your leaves needed sweeping, in the fall.’

  ‘Oh, I was only joking. That’s unless you really like gardening, then you’re more than welcome.’

  ‘I don’t remember if I do like gardening or not. But I don’t think I’ll still be here in the fall. At least I very much hope not.’

  There was a long, awkward silence. Isobel looked across at Catherine and then Catherine said, ‘I’m afraid it’s more than likely, Gregory.’

  ‘What? You’re not serious!’

  ‘I didn’t want to depress you before I brought you to meet Isobel, but Doctor Hamid thinks he probably won’t be able to discharge you until the late summer at the earliest.’

  Michael sat down heavily in his wheelchair. ‘That long? I thought you said three or four months! Surely I’ll start to get my memory back before then?’

  ‘We’re hoping you do, of course. But that’s why I brought you here today, Gregory. I wanted to prepare you.’

  ‘Prepare me for what, Catherine? I don’t understand.’

  ‘I wanted you to meet Isobel. As soon as you’re physically well enough not to need twenty-four-hour care, you’ll come to live here, with her. That way, you’ll be able to live as flush-centered a life as possible, but still be close enough to come to the clinic twice a day for post-traumatic amnesia therapy.’

  She held up both hands. ‘If you don’t like the idea, or if you think that you and Isobel won’t get
on together, please tell me now. We did everything we could to select somebody compatible for you.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll get on wonderfully,’ smiled Isobel. ‘I hope you like lasagne, Greg! That’s my specialty.’

  Michael slowly shook his head. ‘I don’t know if I do or not, Isobel. I don’t remember. I don’t think I can even remember what lasagne actually is.’

  ‘But you don’t have any objections to coming to live here?’ asked Catherine.

  ‘I suppose not, no.’

  ‘OK, then. If you could wait here just a couple of minutes, please, Gregory. I have to have a quick word with Isobel about some of the arrangements.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Michael. ‘I’m not going anyplace.’

  Catherine and Isobel went out of the living room and through to the kitchen. Michael heard them talking for a few seconds, something about ‘not expecting too much’. Then they closed the kitchen door and there was silence.

  He sat in his wheelchair for a while, looking around. He thought that Isobel was good to look at, and very likeable, although he wasn’t at all sure about her taste in home decoration. She couldn’t have picked a bleaker and more depressing picture to hang over the fireplace, and as for all of her china figurines …

  But maybe he had china figurines over his fireplace, back at his apartment on Pine Street, and pictures hanging on his walls that were even bleaker and more depressing than this one. He just couldn’t remember.

  In the opposite corner of the room stood a small side table, with a crochet mat on top of it, and on top of the crochet mat stood a framed color photograph of a sallow, solemn-looking man with rimless eyeglasses and swept-back gray hair. Maybe it was Isobel’s father, although Michael couldn’t see much of a family likeness. In fact the man in the photograph looked Hispanic.

  After a few minutes’ more waiting, Michael thought that he might as well put his jacket back on. Grunting with effort, he hoisted himself out of his wheelchair and limped across to the window seat. He bent over stiffly to pick up his jacket, but as he did so he heard an engine running, right outside. He reached over and lifted up the calico blind, so that he could see what it was.

  A black Escalade was parked in the street right in front of Isobel’s house. Its windows were all tinted black, but the passenger-side window had been lowered halfway down, so that he could see a white-haired, white-faced man in sunglasses sitting in it. When he lifted the blind a little higher, however, so that he could have a better look, the passenger-side window was immediately closed, and the Escalade drove off, leaving nothing but a ghostly cloud of exhaust fumes.

  FOUR

  Doctor Connor knocked on his open door and said, ‘Surprise! Guess what?’

  Michael was sitting in the armchair beside his bed trying to solve a general knowledge crossword. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I have no idea. I can’t even guess ninety-nine per cent of this goddamned crossword.’

  So far he had managed only to fill in the word mesa, in answer to the question ‘Large flat-topped mountain on which standing water may be found, and cattle grazed?’

  He knew that it was a mesa with even more certainty than he knew his own name. He also knew that a larger flat-topped mountain was a plateau and a smaller flat-topped mountain was a butte – but he had no idea how he knew it, or why.

  ‘Your sister Sue is coming to visit you this afternoon. She should be here around three. Isn’t that great?’

  Michael looked up. ‘I guess so, yes. I just wish I could remember what she looked like.’

  ‘Well, that’s the main reason she wanted to come. She thought that if you saw her it might spark some memories.’

  ‘You showed me that picture of her. That didn’t help.’

  ‘Maybe when you see her in person, and hear her talking.’

  Michael folded up his newspaper and tucked it into the rack at the side of his nightstand. ‘I hope it helps, for her sake. It must be taking her at least five hours to drive here from Oakland.’

  ‘See? You know that much. She’s staying overnight in our hospitality suite, so you’ll be able to see her again tomorrow before she drives home.’

  When she had gone, Michael eased himself out of his chair and went to look out of the window. His room was in a wing at the south-east side of the clinic, and so he could see the front entrance with its covered portico and its two snow-topped bay trees standing guard by the doors. He could also see part of the parking lot, with a fluorescent orange snow-sweeper being driven slowly up and down between the rows of parked cars.

  So, his sister Sue was coming to see him. He supposed that he ought to be pleased, and excited. After all, she was the first member of his family to come see him since he had regained consciousness. The problem was, he didn’t feel anything at all. He simply felt adrift, like the sole survivor of a yacht sinking in mid-ocean, without a single landmark in sight. Doctor Connor had shown him a picture of Sue printed from her Facebook page, a tall blonde in a blue-and-white dress, squinting at the sun, but he hadn’t recognized her, and neither could he remember growing up with her, or anything that they had done together when they were children. The name ‘Sue’ meant nothing.

  Still – it was possible that Doctor Connor was right, and that when he saw her in the flesh, and heard her talk, he would remember her.

  He was still standing there, looking out of the window, when he heard somebody coming into the room behind him, without knocking.

  He turned around and saw that it was a tall, gray-haired man in a silvery-gray suit. He had a long, narrow face, with that slightly yellowish look of a faded suntan. His eyes were hooded and he had a thin, curved nose, which gave him the appearance of an elderly bird of prey.

  He gave Michael a lipless smile and held out his hand.

  ‘Mr Merrick! Gregory! It’s very good to see you up and about! My name is Kingsley Vane. I’m the medical director of Trinity-Shasta Clinic.’

  Michael hesitated for a moment and then shook Kingsley Vane’s hand. It was a strange handshake, dry and elusive, as if a snake were slithering out of his grasp.

  ‘I’ve been watching your progress closely, ever since you were brought in here,’ said Kingsley Vane. ‘Do sit down; I know that you’ve been suffering some pain in your knees.’

  Michael returned to his armchair. Kingsley Vane leaned back against the side of his bed, with his arms folded.

  ‘How are you feeling in yourself, Mr Merrick? You don’t mind if I call you Gregory, do you?’

  ‘Confused, mainly,’ Michael admitted. ‘Confused and kind of depressed. I want to get out of here and get on with my life but since I can’t remember anything about my life, not a single goddamned thing, I don’t see how I can get on with it.’

  ‘I do understand,’ said Kingsley Vane, nodding. ‘I remember that one of our amnesia patients described his condition as being like losing his place in a book he was reading, only he had lost the book, too.’

  ‘Yes. That sums it up pretty well. Except that I can’t even remember the title of the book, so that I can order another copy.’

  Kingsley Vane said, ‘Believe me, Gregory, we’re doing everything we can to restore your memory, and our expertise in post-traumatic care is second to none. As you’ll discover when you leave the clinic and take up residence with Mrs Weston, several Trinity residents are former or ongoing patients of ours. That’s part of the reason they live here, to have continuing access to our aftercare facilities.’

  He gave Michael another thin smile. ‘From our point of view, Gregory, we care about our patients, not just while they’re here in the clinic proper, but long after they’ve been discharged. Post-traumatic care never really ends, ever.’

  ‘I guess it ends when you die.’

  Kingsley Vane said nothing to that, but continued to smile at him. After a while, he unfolded his arms, stood up straight and said, ‘Anyhow, I very much hope that you’ll be comfortable with Mrs Weston. If you’re not, for any reason at all, please let Doctor Connor know immediat
ely, won’t you? We need you to be stable, and positive. Your amnesia therapy will be much more effective if you are.’

  ‘OK, thank you,’ said Michael.

  Kingsley Vane turned to go, but then he stopped, and turned back, with a very concentrated expression on his face, and said, ‘By the way … the other residents of Trinity that I was talking about … those who have undergone treatment here at the clinic … How shall I put this? Some of them still bear the scars, so to speak … if not physically, then mentally. So if their behavior on occasions is a little off-key, I trust that you’ll understand, and respond with sensitivity.’

  ‘Off-key?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Well … some of them have been through a lot, and it’s taken them months if not years of therapy to come to terms with it. We’re always very anxious not to set them back.’

  ‘OK,’ said Michael. ‘I get it. I’ll be sensitivity incarnate. And don’t worry about me and Isobel Weston. She seems like a real nice person.’

  ‘One more thing,’ said Kingsley Vane. ‘I gather your sister is coming to see you this afternoon. Do give her my good wishes. And I very much hope that her visit rings a few bells.’

  He left the room, calling out as he did so to an intern who had just passed the doorway, ‘Newton! A word, please!’

  I hope her visit rings a few bells. For some unaccountable reason that made Michael think of the bells which people who were fearful of being buried alive would have suspended above their graves, with a string that was connected to their casket and knotted around their finger. He knew that was where the term ‘graveyard shift’ had first come from – a verger who would sit up all night in a cemetery, listening for the sound of bells. He also knew that the people who rang those bells were called ‘dead ringers’. Not that any of them ever did.

  Now, what the hell made me think of that?

  They brought him his lunch on a tray – three slices of roast chicken with green beans, sweetcorn, hash browns and gravy. It tasted microwaved. Outside his window, as he ate, a light snow began to fall.