Authors: G. H. Ephron

Amnesia (14 page)

BOOK: Amnesia

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I'D HOPED to have an hour on the river before sunset, but by the time I got home, it was too late. The days were getting shorter and soon the river would ice up and put an end to the season. My mother was walking home when I pulled in.

“You're home kind of early,” she said, eyeing me suspiciously.

I checked my watch. It wasn't quite six. “And you're home kind of late, aren't you?” I noticed the plastic bag she was carrying said VIDEOSMITH on it. “Aha! Movies?”

She turned a little pink. “Yes. Mr. Kuppel recommends,” she said and drew a videotape from the bag and held it aloft, “Ta dah!”

She had
The Lady Vanishes
, a thriller in which Hitchcock takes the classic amnesia plot device and twists it. I looked at my mother suspiciously, wondering if this was a coincidence. Sheepishly, she admitted, “I showed him the article about the case you're working on.”

“Well, he does have good taste â in movies.”
The Lady Vanishes
is one of my all-time favorites, though I wondered what kind of message Mr. Kuppel was sending. Wasn't there a perfectly unctuous doctor in it? And doesn't he try to convince the
sweet young heroine that she's only imagined the kindly old woman on the train who disappeared into thin air? His diagnosis, false memory caused by a bump on the head. The heroine, of course, spends the rest of the movie proving him wrong. Not only wrong â actually, I can't remember much else about the movie except no one on this whole entire train will admit to ever having seen the old woman whose name is Miss Froy. Such a wonderful name. Funny, isn't it, how little details get snagged in the brain, remaining crystal clear like sparkling bits of glass while the picture around it fades to black?

“And what have you got?” my mother asked, pointing to my bag.

“I bought a pot,” I said, and left it at that. I fished out my keys and opened my front door.

I set the bag on the kitchen counter and took out a wineglass. I sniffed it, then rinsed to get rid of the cabinet smell. Then I uncorked the cabernet and poured myself a glass. I swirled the wine, inhaled, took a sip, and exhaled with pleasure. It had been an interesting day.

I carried the wine and my little bundle up to the second floor, crossed the landing, and stood looking up the stairway to the third floor. The door at the top led to Kate's studio. I hadn't been up there since the cleaners finished their grim work. I remembered the nauseating smell of cleaning fluid that permeated the house for weeks after, even though I'd closed the door. No amount of open windows, cigar smoke, and whiskey could make me stop smelling it. Even when I left the house, it seemed as if the stench clung to my clothes, to my skin, to my hair, so that for months it hung about me like a shroud wherever I went.

I trudged up the stairs, first one step, then the next, pausing midway, pushing myself up the rest of the way. A pink glow seemed to emanate from underneath the door. I took hold of the knob, twisted, and pushed. The door squeaked in protest
before swinging open. The room, surrounded by windows on three sides, was flooded with rose-colored light from the setting sun. I stepped inside and inhaled cautiously. It smelled musty, close, but that was all. I crossed to one side and then to the other to open windows. A breeze immediately swept through the room, ruffling some papers Kate had left on her desk in the corner.

This was the room that had sold Kate on the house. Her studio. We thought the original owner must have been an artist â how else to explain the cement floor, paint-splattered even before Kate took it over? Kate called it her sanctuary. There would to be no distractions â no telephone, no radio, no TV. In a concession to the visitors, the writers and collectors who came and wanted to see where she worked, she'd bought a small settee and shoved it off into one corner.

I had thought coming up there would make me unbearably sad, but it didn't. The beauty of the room, the last of the late afternoon sun, the fresh breeze that pushed the stale air from the room gave me a sense of peace.

Silhouetted on glass shelves against the windows were Kate's pots. Some of them were her own, some of them the Arts and Crafts pottery she collected. In one of the spaces where there should have been a pot, there were the pieces of a broken one. I hadn't been able to throw them away.

Bridges must have watched, learned our schedule, known Kate would be alone in the studio at work. She wouldn't have heard him break the glass in the back door so he could reach around and let himself in. She'd have been unaware as he crept from the kitchen to the foot of the stairs. When they removed her body, they'd found this pot broken beneath her. She must have been holding it when he attacked her. I picked up one of the pottery shards and turned it over and over. It was as I'd remembered it, the glaze very much like the pot I'd just bought.

I took the new pot from the bag and unwrapped it. It was
perfect. No hairline cracks. No chips. No signature, but undoubtedly Grueby. Kate would have been dancing around, hugging me with glee.

I brushed the broken pieces from the shelf and caught them in the empty plastic bag. I got a rag from the sink, dampened it, and wiped down the spot on the shelf. Then I set the new pot in place.

I stood back to admire the effect, but I knew immediately that it was wrong. The new pot was nice, but not in that spot. I moved it to the end of one of the shelves. And then I poured the broken pieces from the bag back in their place on the shelf.

I walked slowly around the room, running my fingers lightly over each of Kate's own pots. On one she'd tooled a figure of a woman in outline, generous breasts, swollen belly. It was an early work, one she wouldn't sell. It was one of my favorites.

The earthy, slightly sour smell of clay hung in the air. Unfinished pieces still sat on her workbench, waiting to be glazed. Her kiln was cold and shut. The potter's wheel had bits of dried clay adhering to it. She'd never have left it that way. The cabinet door hung open and inside, glazes, tools, and supplies were stored neatly on shelves.

I crouched to touch the floor where I knew the reddish tint was not paint but the blood that had refused to come clean, where my Kate had died while I stood two floors down, oblivious. The cement was cold and hard. I squeezed my eyes shut, my mouth opened as a vise tightened around my chest. I gasped for breath. If only I'd come up sooner that day. We were so close, so connected, why didn't I know what was going on?

Later, I stood at the window and drank my wine as the clouds became edged with charcoal and cooled from pink to purple. The evening star had just appeared at the horizon when I closed the windows and left the room, this time leaving the door open behind me.

“THEY TOLD me you were coming back but I didn't believe it,” Stuart Jackson told me two days later when he appeared in the vile yellow cubicle at Bridgewater. “You must bill by the hour.”

I didn't respond. The words were offensive but the body language was not. Everything about him drooped. His shoulders sagged. Under bloodshot eyes, the flesh was pouched in flabby bags. The bantam rooster was now a shuffling old man.

“You doing okay?” I asked.

He gave a bitter laugh that sent a wave of mildewy odor in my direction. “You want the truth? I'm doing shitty. What's the use?”

“You getting any sleep?”

He shrugged. “How is she?”

“Syl? She's getting better. Day by day. By the way, did you know this guy, Angelo?”

“The Italian Ken doll?”

“That's the one.”

“He showed up around the time she came out of the coma.”

“Was that when they told you that you couldn't visit her anymore?”

“She traded one guardian angel for another.”

“That's what she calls him, you know. Her guardian angel. Had you seen or heard of him before that?”

Stuart shook his head. “The day he shows up the first time, she acts like she's never seen him before. But then, that's how she reacted when she first saw me. He still hanging around?”

“Very much so.”

“Sylvia,” he said. “Think she'll ever be the same?”

“As you say yourself, in a lot of ways, she is the same.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Problem is, Mr. Jackson, I don't know exactly what she was like to start with. So it's hard for me to judge. In fact, that's one of the reasons I wanted to see you. You're probably the number one expert on the subject of Sylvia Jackson.”

“She's not on trial for murder.”

“No, she's not. You are.” I waited. The second hand on the wall clock ticked. Far off, I could hear a muffled shout, a door slamming. “I came to talk to you about your ex-wife's account of what happened that night. What I want to get at is whether there's any detail, something that we might corroborate from another witness, that might actually have occurred in her past.”

Stuart Jackson sat forward. “Detail? Like what?”

“Like, did she ever carry anything live, a person or an animal perhaps, in the trunk of her car?”

Jackson thought a moment and shook his head.

“Did she let other people drive her car?”

“Drive her car? You gotta be kidding. That car was her baby. No one, and I mean no one, could drive it but her.”

“So if someone else drove it, that would have been unusual.”

“Very. You'd have to hold a gun to her head.” He stopped.

“Did you ever walk in on her when she was in bed with someone else?”

Stuart Jackson flinched and then steeled himself. “Shit. All the time.” He reddened. “If only I'd walked in on her that night,
I wouldn't be here now.” He stopped and looked at the palms of his hands, then turned the left hand over and fingered the gold band on his ring finger. “I still love her,” he said, looking at me, his eyes glazing over. He sniffed and ran the back of his hand across his nose. “I never wanted to split up. Even when I walked in on her with her â¦
friends,
” he spat the final word.

“Did that happen a lot?” I asked.

“She'd give the damned boyfriends house keys! When
he
walked in on
us
, that was the last straw.”

“He?”

“Tony â Tony what's-his-name. The guy I'm supposed to have killed. Must have thought he was Rambo or something.”

“Rambo?”

“We're in bed and he bursts in. And he's got on this getup. You know, like they wore in Vietnam. Like it was Halloween or something.”

“Camouflage fatigues?”

“Yeah. Camouflage fatigues.”

“Did he have a gun?”

“With that outfit, he needed an Uzi. No, he didn't have a gun.”

“Did you have words?”

“No. I invited him in for a cup of tea. What do you think? Of course we had words!”

I laughed. Anger is a good antidote to depression. “Where were you when you had words?”

“Downstairs.”

“She go down with you?”

“No, she didn't go down with us. I don't know what she did.”

“Did you call the police?”

“And tell them what? She gave the guy the
key
, for God's sake.”

“Have you told the police about this encounter?”

Jackson stared at the table and shook his head.

“Why the hell not?”

“It's too fucking humiliating,” he whispered, “and besides â¦” His voice trailed off.

“Besides what?”

“She likes men in uniform.”

It took a minute for the significance of this to sink in. “Some of the men you walked in on in bed with your wife were â”

“Cops.”

“Lots of cops? Or one in particular?”

“More than one. A few. But those are only the ones I saw. Who knows what was going on that I didn't know about.”

“Could you identify any of them?”

“It was awhile ago. I doubt it. Maybe if they got undressed.”

I had a thought. “Any redheads?”

“None that I remember.”

“The police found a camouflage hat in your closet,” I said.

“Maybe the police put a camouflage hat in my closet so they could find it there.” It didn't sound that far-fetched. “It's not mine. Honest to God. Do I look like the sort of person who'd own something like that?”

I had to admit, he had a point.

THE NEXT morning, I called Annie and told her about my conversation with Stuart Jackson.

“She brought cops home to her bed,” Annie said thoughtfully. Then she asked the obvious question. “You think one of them could have been Mac?”

“Well, what do you think?”

“I'm not exactly unbiased, you know.”

“I gathered as much. I thought you two had some unfinished business.”

It sounded like Annie took a long drag on a cigarette, but I knew she didn't smoke. “Our families were real close, you know. His mom and mine, best friends when I was little. His dad was a police officer. But when my dad was beat up, his father kept his mouth shut, even though rumor was he knew who did it. Protecting other cops mattered more than bringing them to justice, even when one of his friends was the victim. After Dad recovered, they never came by the house again. I don't suppose it's fair to saddle the son with the sins of the father. Still, I've always kept my distance. Never did trust the guy.”

“Even if he didn't know Sylvia Jackson before the murder,
he'd know if she had relationships with other police officers, wouldn't he?”

“Definitely,” Annie agreed. “But that conspiracy of silence â¦ I don't remember any police officer boyfriends being interviewed during the investigation.”

“MacRae could be protecting someone.”

“Or he could be protecting himself. Men.” Annie gave a disgusted snort. “I'll ask around. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out which police officers were banging Sylvia Jackson. And whether Mac was one of them.”

Then I told Annie about Stuart's account of Tony Ruggiero bursting in while Stuart and Syl were in bed together. “Trade the players,” I said, “and the story's the same as Syl's version of what happened the night of the murder.”

“Earlier memories,” Annie murmured. “So you really think she could have taken the image of Tony walking in on her with Stuart â¦ .”

“Switched the roles and now she remembers Stuart walking in on her in bed with Tony. It's a logical way to plug the hole in her memory for what happened the night Tony was killed,” I said.

“Do you think the earlier incident really happened?”

“It could have happened just the way Stuart says it did. Or
he
could have made it up. Stuart Jackson's been reading up on brain damage. He knows the significance of an earlier incident like this one. He might invent a parallel scenario because he knows I'd buy it.”

“If someone walked in on me like that, I might not report it to the police,” Annie commented, “but you better believe I'd talk about it. Maybe Stuart or Sylvia Jackson told someone â a friend, a colleague, someone. And maybe that person remembers. I'll check it out.”

After we hung up, I called Maria Whitson's therapist. Of course, the good Dr. Baldridge wasn't available. His secretary
took down the times I suggested for a call-back. I'd hoped to be in my office when the call came but I was on the unit when my beeper went off. I called him from there.

“This is Peter Zak from the Neuropsychiatric Unit,” I told him. “I wanted to talk to you about a patient you referred to us. Maria Whitson.”

“Hello, Peter,” he said congenially. “Yes, I thought you might be able to help her.”

“Hmm, right,” I said. “How long have you been treating her?”

“I'm not treating her right now.”

“Yes, she mentioned that. But you were, weren't you?”

“Yes. For the last two years.”

“What did you see as her problem?”

“She's an incest survivor.”

“Actually, I meant what kind of symptoms were you treating her for.”

He cleared his throat and I could hear some papers rattling. “She has an eating disorder. You know, Peter, eating disorders often indicate repressed memories of sexual abuse. In addition, she was anxious, depressed, had night terrors. Typical situation. Cold, distant mother. Abusive father and uncle. She adored them. Married a control freak hoping he'd be able to get a handle on what she couldn't.”

As I listened, Mr. Kootz scuttled by, his shoelaces flapping, muttering to himself. He paused, mid-flap, to stare at an exit door on which a hand-lettered sign stated tersely, SPLIT RISK, a reminder to us all how quickly a patient like Mr. Kootz can slip out behind you through a locked door without even being noticed.

Then the elevator across from the nurses' station opened to reveal Mr. O'Flanagan standing inside. It closed again.

“Did you prescribe medication for her?” I asked.

“Medication?” he said vaguely. “Oh, yes. Of course.”

“What did you prescribe?”

More papers shuffled. “Xanax for anxiety. Prozac for depression. Lithium to stabilize her moods. And some Halcion for sleep.”

To name a few, I thought. “I understand you terminated her?”

“That's right. I'm no longer seeing her.”

“I understand she was still symptomatic.”

He cleared his throat. “When I discharged her, she was stable and in control. There was no reason to expect anything would happen. I gave her prescriptions to continue the medications and told her to check back with me in six months.”

The elevator opened and an orderly stepped out pushing a metal cart filled with juice and crackers. I could just make out Mr. O'Flanagan lounging against the back wall of the elevator as the door slid shut.

“Peter,” Dr. Baldridge said impatiently, “I've got a survivors group starting in a few minutes. Will there be much more?”

“No, I'm just about finished. I was wondering, why did you terminate her?”

“I didn't terminate her. Part of her therapeutic regimen is that she needs to find her own way in the world. I'd done as much insight work with her as possible. I'd helped her recover her memories, given her the understanding of what happened to her, helped her to confront her abusers. Now she needs to integrate that.”

“And what was the insight you gave her?”

“That she'd been repeatedly raped by the uncle and by the father from the time she was three until the time she was twelve.”

“She told you this?”

“I suspected as much when I first saw her. All the telltale signs. Of course, the memories were repressed.”

“So you stopped treating Ms. Whitson and yet you continued to prescribe drugs for her?” I knew it was provocative but I couldn't help myself.

He didn't answer.

“You do know what you referred her to us for, don't you? She tried to kill herself with a self-administered overdose of prescription drugs. She mixed herself quite a lethal cocktail.” He may as well have given her an artillery of loaded guns to choose from.

“Peter,” Baldridge said, indulging me, “you don't work with many incest survivors, do you?”

“I don't make it my exclusive practice.”

“Then you probably don't realize that I was following the regimen I outline in my book,
Surviving
.”

I thought, too bad Ms. Whitson didn't read your book. But then, she probably had to as part of her “treatment.” I wanted to ask if he had a stack of copies he sold to patients. But I didn't. We were on a lot of the same committees. It wouldn't pay to piss him off more than I already had.

“Will there be anything else, Peter?”

“Not right now. But I might need to contact you again.”

“Any time at all,” he said pleasantly. “And do let me know how she's getting on.”

As I hung up the phone, the elevator door opened. This time, one of the neurology residents stepped out. Mr. OâFlanagan was still inside. I lunged at the open door. Mr. O'Flanagan looked startled. I led him out of the elevator and down the hall to the common room where the orderly was distributing an afternoon snack to all takers.

When I returned to the nurses' station, Gloria was there talking to Suzanne. “You don't know, by any chance, how Mr. O'Flanagan ended up stuck in the elevator?” I asked.

“The elevator got stuck? I didn't hear anything,” Gloria said.

“No, it didn't get stuck. He did.”

“Wasn't he upstairs with you?” Gloria asked Suzanne.

“He was with me earlier. I was finishing up my evaluation of him. But that was about forty minutes ago. Oh, Jeez! You found him in the elevator, didn't you?”

I nodded.

Suzanne hit herself in the head with the butt of her hand. “Dumb! And you know, that's just what I keep finding in all the test results â no short-term memory. None.” She looked like she wanted to dig a hole in the floor and climb into it. “I'm so sorry.”

“He's already forgotten all about it,” I said.

“It's a good thing Peter noticed,” Gloria added, “or Mr. O'Flanagan could have been riding around forever in the elevator, like Charlie on the MTA.”

“It's a good lesson,” I said. “There's nothing theoretical about test results. They can explain past behavior and predict what someone's likely to do.”

“Right,” Suzanne said. “If a patient's got no short-term memory, don't stick him in an elevator and expect him to get off when he reaches the first floor.”

“And don't leave medication lying around his room,” I added.

“What? Of course not,” Gloria said indignantly. “That would be an accident waiting to happen, much worse than getting stuck in an elevator.”

I knew Gloria expected all the nurses on the unit not only to watch each patient take their pills, but to check hands and mouths afterward. It was standard operating procedure. But then, our average patients don't know the time of day, never mind whether they've taken their meds. “Gloria, what about at other hospitals, say one that treats trauma victims, physical rehab? Would a nurse leave pills for a patient to take?”

“It's just not done,” Gloria insisted. “Any nurse worth her salt isn't going to leave medication in a patient's room.” Period. End of discussion.

So if Sylvia Jackson's goody basket of pills hadn't been left for her by a nurse, then how had those pills found their way to her bathroom?

BOOK: Amnesia

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