Tabula Rasa (11 page)

When I looked in the mirror, I felt like even more of a stranger to
myself, as if a new wave of amnesia would come along and drag me
under its empty dark water, erasing everything before I’d met
Shannon.

He left during the day sometimes. Not every day, but most days. And
it wasn’t a set schedule like he was going to the nine-to-five
grind. Sometimes he was gone when I woke. Sometimes I was sure he
left in the middle of the night. Sometimes he left around noon. There
was no set schedule, no rhyme or reason. I’d asked once or twice
where he went, and he would say, “to the gym”.

I think he probably did go to the gym sometimes. Sometimes he was
dressed for it. And there was a gym bag that often left with him.
Being as paranoid as he seemed to be about everything, it wouldn’t
surprise me if he constantly varied his routine, working out at
bizarre hours to throw
whoever
off this trail.

Why would a man need to be that paranoid if he wasn’t doing
something wrong or dangerous? But then, I don’t think I’d ever
believed Shannon was a nice guy with a normal job. He was dangerous
like a wild animal was dangerous. Whatever it was that had come along
and civilized humanity so we could function properly in groups, had
bypassed him. He was his own law.

One evening at dinner, Shannon dropped an orange manila envelope on
the table in front of me.

“What’s this?”

“It’s you.”

I stared at it. “What do you mean?” But I knew what he meant. I
was just stalling.

“Open it.” He slid a silver letter opener across the table.

I stopped it with the edge of my hand and slit the envelope open.
Inside was a dossier. On me. There was also a DVD. A shiver traveled
down my spine. He’d been out there stalking my information. I
wasn’t sure if this felt like a kindness or a threat. I couldn’t
bring myself to read the details just yet.

“Where did you get all this? H-how did you get all this? How do I
know this is the truth? You could be lying like Trevor.”

Shannon shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him one way or the other
what I believed. “I could be. It’s up to you whether you want to
believe what’s in there. But it’s a narrative that doesn’t
include the end of the world. Do what you want with it. I need to
make some calls.”

He got up and put his plate and glass in the sink and ran some water
over them. Then he went to his office down the hall and closed the
door.

I put the papers back inside the envelope without reading them and
took them upstairs to my room. I slid the envelope under my mattress.
I wasn’t ready for more stories about me. Even though I had a
strong feeling these were the stories that were true. Now that I held
it in my hands I was afraid to know that truth.

What kind of a misfit hermit had I been if no one had called the
hospital or police to claim me? Maybe I was afraid to see a bunch of
wasted time staring back at me—no accomplishments to speak of.
Nothing the world cared about. As long as I didn’t know, I could
pretend I’d had a meaningful impact, even though I knew that
couldn’t be true. If it were true, someone would have called.
Someone besides Trevor would have missed me.

When I went back downstairs, the office door was still shut. I eased
up to the door and pressed my ear against it. I could hear Shannon on
the phone. Just barely. He didn’t have a land line, just what he
called a
burner
. It was a simple black pre-paid cell phone. He
routinely disposed of them and bought new ones.

“I told you I’ve been busy... I got a new pet. I needed to get
her housebroken and acclimated... of course another cat... you know I
can’t have a dog with my travel schedule...” Why did I think I
was the cat in this scenario? Shannon could be lying about how long
he’d had the white cat, but she was far too territorial to be new.
“... No, the money’s not the problem. It’s our agreed rate. You
said it wasn’t dire, so I took you at your word. But I’m ready
now. It’ll be done within the week. Be out of town next Thursday
with people who can account for your whereabouts.”

When the call ended, I practically flew to the living room couch, and
sat there trying to look like I hadn’t just heard what I was nearly
a hundred percent certain was a discussion about killing someone.

Shannon came out and looked at me for a long moment. Then his gaze
shifted to the dining room table. “Elodie?”

“S-sorry.” I got up and quickly took my plate and glass to the
sink and put it in the warm water. I don’t know why I got so
freaked out whenever that tone came to his voice. Actually, I did
know why. It’s just that he’d never done anything personally to
me to illicit this fear.

Shannon was so fastidious. I was sure he would just
snap
if
something was left sitting out... if a towel was left crumpled on the
counter... if a box of crackers fell over on its side. It wasn’t
like he’d ever harmed me for leaving anything out. He’d never hit
me or yelled at me or smashed or thrown things. It was just... this
disappointed tone like you get with a kid who eats an unauthorized
cookie before dinner. I hated doing something wrong in his
house—especially given how much he provided for me without asking
for anything in return. I felt like my behavior had to be...
perfect—to somehow compensate for what an inconvenience I must be.

I also felt like I had to somehow make him trust me so I could be a
free range human
again. I liked the comfort of his home, but
it felt like a clock was running. At some point, he’d get bored
with the novelty of another person taking up space like the white
cat. He had to believe I could be trusted or... I didn’t want to
think about the
or
right now.

“I’m tired,” he said. “I’m going up to bed. I’m having a
party tomorrow night, and I’ll need you to stay in your room until
it’s over.”

“O-okay.” The next day was Sunday. Was he killing someone
tomorrow? Or was he really having a party? Aside from his supposed
urban exploring friends, Shannon didn’t strike me as a super social
guy. What kind of a party could he be having?

“Shannon?”

He stopped at the bottom of the staircase. “Yeah?”

I was afraid I might make him mad, but I pressed on with my question
anyway. “We disguised my appearance. The media has forgotten about
me. Why can’t I go to the party?”

He offered me a kind smile, which I swear he must have stood in front
of the mirror for hours practicing because it didn’t look right on
his face. “It’s not your kind of party. Trust me. I’ll take you
out next weekend if you want. I’m sorry I haven’t been a better
host. Oh, and I’ve got to be out of town a few days next week.
Business.”

Then he drifted up the stairs. Moments later, I heard his door click
shut.

I’d tried to sneak into his office early on, but he kept the door
locked at all times when he wasn’t in there. And I wasn’t foolish
enough to think it would be any different tonight. There were a few
other doors in the house he kept locked all the time as well. But he
pretended as if those doors didn’t exist, and I wasn’t dumb
enough to let him know I was aware that they did.

I sat on the sofa and looked around, at a loss for what to do. It was
only nine o’clock and felt way too early for sleep. The cat sat on
a chair opposite from me, glaring, plotting.

I went back up to my room and took the envelope from under the
mattress. There was no way I would be able to sleep with my life
lying a few inches underneath me. I came back downstairs with it and
dumped the contents out on the coffee table.

The DVD was in a clear plastic freezer bag and just said “Cache”
on it. I set it aside for the moment and turned to the information
Shannon had somehow acquired about me.

“Elodie Rosen. Age: 28. Graduate student of Botany at University
of Washington.”

Washington state was on the other side of the country. Did Trevor
live and work there? Had he taken me all the way across the country,
or had I gone to where he was? Maybe spring break or something.

But why had nobody called? The story must have made national news if
Shannon heard about it, unless he’d been traveling in the area. For
business. Maybe I’d been wrapped up in my studies and had no close
friends. But no family either? Didn’t my professors give a shit
about me? Or did they think someone else would come forward?

I looked back to the list. It didn’t appear that I’d had a job.
I’d mostly kept to myself. But according to Shannon’s search, I
didn’t have student loans, either. Had I inherited a lot of money?
Surely I had to have money. And nobody was speaking up for me?

People really
didn’t
like to get involved in things. It was
just like what Shannon said. I could have screamed my head off, and
that kid at the motel might have pretended he couldn’t hear
me—anything to not get involved. What was wrong with people?

I scanned further down the paper. “Fluent in French. Spent several
semesters in Paris as an undergrad.” Maybe someone in France gave a
shit about me.

I glanced back at the DVD and slid it out of the plastic. I put it in
the player and settled back on the sofa. It was a French film. It
must have been a version of the film made specifically for a French
audience because there were no subtitles or dubbing.

But I understood all the dialogue.

I wasn’t sure if Shannon had chosen a creepy foreboding movie on
purpose or if it was just difficult to find a French film that didn’t
fit that mold, but I nearly leaped off the sofa when Shannon came
down the stairs during an intense scene. It didn’t help that he
moved as stealthily as the cat did.

He went to the kitchen for a glass of milk and then came back out
into the living area. He wore pale gray pajama pants that showcased
his tan and no shirt. The white cat jumped down off the chair and
took the opportunity to weave in and out of his legs, leaving her
scent on him. She stared at me pointedly while she did it. As if I
were going to rush over there and fight for cuddle privileges with
perhaps the least cuddly person in the world.

“
Est-ce que tu t’es rendu à l’histoire
du chien dans la scène du dîner?”
, Shannon said.

“
Ne me gâche pas tout.”
Even though I knew I understood French, it still shocked me when
I spoke it. Or did it shock me that Shannon spoke it? Maybe he’d
just learned the one phrase. But his accent and enunciation were
impeccable.

“Interesting,” he said. “Have you read all of the file yet?”

“Not yet. I wanted to watch the DVD, and then I got sucked in.”

He nodded. “It’s a good film. You should read the rest of the
file. I think this confirms a theory I had.”

“And what theory was that?” I asked, trying not to look too
eager.

“You’ve clearly got retrograde amnesia, but your skills and
general knowledge seem to be intact, just not specific
autobiographical memories. That’s generally how it works. So you’ll
find you know things but you won’t know how you know them. Like
with the French.”

“Do you think I’ll ever get my memories back?”

Shannon shrugged. “I’m not a doctor. But I did a lot of research
on the condition when I was collecting information. Realistically,
probably not. If you’ve gone this long with memory loss this
severe, you’re probably stuck with it. Anything’s possible, but
this isn’t a movie.”

A part of me had been living in fear of memory recall. I’m not sure
why. I’d also equally been harboring the fear that my memories
wouldn’t come back but someone else would show up claiming to be a
husband or a friend or a relative and feed me bullshit stories that
weren’t real, or else feed me real stories that still smelled like
bullshit. I worried that over time I would hear stories about myself
so much that I would start to believe them and start to imagine them.
Maybe I would even reconstruct them in my mind and think they were
true memories.

If there was little hope for recovery, I was glad Shannon had spared
me the police and media circus. Surely someone real or fake would
have shown up claiming to know all about me, and then it would just
be Trevor all over again, only without the apocalyptic backdrop.

“Why didn’t anybody call about me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe someone did. But the authorities only wanted
family—someone who could legally take responsibility for you. You
know how the hospitals are. They weren’t going to just send you
home with any random person who knew you for five minutes in some
vague capacity.”

I looked back down at the papers. Shannon had discovered my mom was a
single mother who had me young and had died from complications of the
flu a few years ago.

“If I was raised by a single mother, how did I live without a job
and have no student debt?”

“That’s where it gets interesting. You have or had a mysterious
benefactor. I think it’s your father. I think he set you up for
life to avoid a scandal. That makes him a powerful politician or
someone famous whose brand would be damaged by an illegitimate child.
Whoever it was is as much of a professional as me because the trail
runs cold.”

“He didn’t call when my face was all over TV, though. Did he not
recognize me?”

“Oh, I’m sure he recognized you, and equally sure he considered
his problems over, with the woman he knocked up dead and the
inconvenient child he didn’t want no longer a problem.”

I wondered if I’d known who my father was before the amnesia.

“Do you remember anything from your childhood at all?” Shannon
asked.

“I... I’m not sure.” Honestly, at this point I wasn’t even
sure what a memory felt like. At least not an old one. The whole
concept seemed too wispy to nail down into anything solid. I did
occasionally get a few images, bits of conversation and activity. It
could be from my childhood. It definitely wasn’t anything recent.