The Memory Thief (17 page)

Mother heard the guests whisper about Hannah. About how odd it was for such a young and pretty girl to dress so plainly, so
severe. Mother ordered a new dress code for all female hotel staff. It included long black skirts and gray tunics. Aprons
and head coverings. Soon Hannah was surrounded by a dozen polyester twins.

Hannah may have blended in, but there were some things that polyester twins couldn’t fix. Like the crying. At night, she woke
to the sound of babies. Sometimes it was just her. She’d wake herself up screaming into her pillow. But other times, it wasn’t.
She’d sit straight up in bed and listen, as she went over and over each guest who was staying at the hotel.

It was Hannah’s job to check them in. It was her job to notify the workmen when a guest requested a crib or a cradle. If she
woke up to the noise and remembered a baby, she’d lay down and sleep again. But if she couldn’t, if she knew there were no
babies on Bedroom Hall, then she’d dress quickly and step out of her room. Usually, all that met her was the silent hum of
a sleeping hotel. The quiet kitchen crew getting an early start on the workers’ breakfast. The sound of heat or cool air being
pumped into the building. But sometimes, she’d hear the cry again. She’d hurry downstairs. Run through the Great Room to the
front porch. She’d listen and know:
Somewhere
there’s a baby. She’d run through the woods until she came to the edge of the mountain. The sun would start to rise, and
she would see all the land that stretched for hundreds of miles below her. She’d realize there was a whole world living and
growing. It seemed a brand-new discovery each time: a whole big world carrying on without her.

It was Father who brought up school. Not
college
like before. But there was a little school, down the mountain. It offered courses like pottery and watercolors. Some business
and technology classes, too. Mother didn’t approve. If it was up to her, she’d never send her daughters out into the world
again.

“Remember,” Father told her. “When you first convinced me to turn this into a hotel. You said they’d never marry. Not with
Bethie unable to talk. Not with Hannah, now that she’s…” He shook his head. “Your point was that they would have to take care
of themselves. I agreed. I wrote the check that built this place. Don’t you think once we’re gone, it’d help if they had a
bit more education? They’ll have to compete with the rest of the tourism industry. Who knows what that will be like in thirty
years?”

Hannah was signed up for Business Administration 101. And when Father picked her up after her first class, he showed her a
surprise in the trunk of his car. It was the green bike, straight out of Carolina.

“I sent for it by mail,” he said. “I remembered how you loved it before. I thought now that you’re starting to get out of
the house, you might want to explore.”

Hannah thanked him, but she never used it. She was scared of what she might find. Of all the things that lay at the end of
gravel roads. She was pained by the color green. The shade that first wrapped the baby. The baby Mother said was never hers.
The baby that everyone, but her, seemed to have forgotten.

If only I could
, Hannah thought sometimes. If only she could forget the sound of her first cry, the quick rise and fall of her little chest
as she sucked in air. If only Hannah could forget how full she felt as she held her. How empty she felt as Mother walked away.

The pain was distracting. The memory was crippling. Hannah earned a C minus in her business class. The only reason she didn’t
fail was that her small school needed all the tuition money it could bring in. Teachers didn’t give Ds or Fs, simply because
parents didn’t like to pay for failing grades.

“Try pottery,” Father said. “You’ve been out of school for a while. It takes time to remember how to think academically. Try
art instead.”

Hannah did, and she fell in love again. It was the mud that she found irresistible. That something could start out dirty.
And with enough pressure, with enough force, change. Become
something.
Maybe not pretty, because that word scared her. She’d stare at her creations—vases, bowls, a little dish for Father to store
paper clips in—and she’d see
value.

Everyone noticed the difference in Hannah. How she came home from her pottery classes shining, so close to the way she used
to look. Father wrote another check and had a potter’s workroom built for her at the end of the hotel. Sometimes Hannah wouldn’t
go to bed; she’d spend the night pounding her fists against mud. In the morning, Bethie would go to the workroom while Hannah
slept. She’d carry out any vases, bowls, or jugs and proudly show them to Mother and Father. Over breakfast, everyone would
talk about the miracle of it. How all this time, Hannah was an artist. All this time Hannah had a gift. And if she hadn’t
taken that one little class, if they hadn’t stayed on the mountain, they would have never known.

While Mother and Father were admiring Hannah’s art with the guests, Bethie would sneak back to the workroom and take the babies.
Dozens of little muddy dolls with blank clay faces that Hannah formed during the night. They were laid in a shallow bowl that
was in the shape of a loose rectangle. Mother admired that bowl often, said it looked like an antique dough tray. The kind
made of wood and used long ago for kneading.

Only Hannah and Bethie knew the truth about that bowl. How it really was a cradle. Only Hannah and Bethie knew that the plates
and vases were just afterthoughts.

Because, finally, Hannah had a way to pretend she was full again. There was a way to imagine the rise and fall of tiny little
lungs, breathing for the first time. All she needed was found in the mud. Perfect little clay babies.

Hannah repeated the basic pottery class over and over, so that she could watch other people pound the clay and watch strangers
respond to her creations. The teacher took an interest in her. Called her an artist instead of a student. Gave her a set of
paints and encouraged her to embellish her dried pottery.

Hannah returned to her old pieces, the ones scattered around the mountain hotel home, and began to paint them. Guests frequently
would gather at the door of the workroom to watch her. She had a messy technique that splashed colors dizzily across the clay,
across her apron.

Mother stood with the guests and watched. It made her uneasy. All those blurry images. All those clashing colors. She stared
at the paintings on the pots, and felt the same way she did the first time Bethie signed to her. There was a message hidden
there. A warning of some kind. One that she would never understand.

“I’d love a pot with flowers,” she said to Hannah. “Imagine a nice vase, painted with mountain wildflowers and filled with
them, too.”

Hannah said yes, but she never painted the flowers. Instead she painted swirls in clashing shades and waves. Mother thanked
her, pretended she could see mountain wildflowers somewhere in the picture. Hannah’s teacher called the technique Hannah’s
Mist. It was the best description anyone had given that cloudy design, that reckless mixing of odd colors. People were drawn
to it. They would turn each piece over and over, convinced that
somewhere
hid a purposeful design.

“Is something there?” a guest would sometimes ask. “The way these colors meet here… it’s almost as if you were drawing something…
but I can’t quite tell what…”

Hannah always shrugged her shoulders. But her eyes would rest against the piece and stare at all the colors. There was the
golden of a Carolina sunrise. The green ripple of a baby blanket. The pink skin of a screaming newborn.

“You should sell them at the artisan’s fair,” her teacher encouraged her. “Your pieces are quite striking.”

Father thought the idea was wonderful. He rented her a little booth and bought her shelves to display her work. She sold several
pieces those first few months and took a few special orders. Over time, she became a local celebrity. People started coming
to the fair just to stop and look at Hannah’s table.

It was something new for Hannah, to be known and celebrated instead of mocked. For the first time in her life, looking different,
being different, was a part of what made her successful. People didn’t just talk about the pottery, they talked about
that long-haired Amish-looking girl with the pretty pots
. The long hair, the long black skirt, the sad eyes, the headcap, all of it worked together with her pottery. All of it fit
the image of what people expected, of what people wanted to see in the rare
true artist
.

Hannah’s family soon learned something new about mountain people. Though they keep to their own, they are also fiercely proud
when one among them does something remarkable. They ignored her Yankee tongue and adopted her as a true Appalachian. Her work
became something to collect. Conference room tables at all the best businesses in town displayed a piece of Hannah’s Mist,
often filled with ripening fruit. Housewives placed her work across their fireplace mantels. Brides-to-be who were in the
know always registered for at least one piece of Hannah’s pottery.

Hannah was financially independent. She stayed with her parents, not because she had to but because she couldn’t think of
anywhere else she would have liked to go. Her parents celebrated her success. Just as they had indulged her love for tea sets
when she was a baby, they indulged her pottery. They called her gifted and blessed. When they went to bed at night, both of
them knowing that Hannah was still working feverishly in the workroom, they smiled at each other with new peace. “It’s going
to be okay,” Father whispered. Mother nodded. “Yes. It’s all going to be okay.”

And then Hannah met Daniel. The first day he saw her, she was running late. A lady had placed a special order for a set of
twelve dinner plates. The agreed exchange time was Friday afternoon at three. Hannah had worked late into the night every
day that week. As the sun rose on Friday, she fell asleep. When she woke up it was two thirty in the afternoon.

She jumped to her feet and carefully packaged each plate, wrapping them individually before boxing them up. She ran down the
steps and cried out for the hotel driver to come quickly.

She was out of breath, running through the fair with her arms full of pottery. Her headcap was off, her hair was unbound.
Golden chaos spilled all around her. Her hands were covered with mud. Green paint was smeared across her chin. She still wore
her pottery apron. Once white, it was now covered with its own mist. A wild rainbow of colors that suited her better than
anything she’d ever worn.

She came to her booth. Dropped the box gently on the table.

Daniel walked over, peeked inside the box.

“New pieces?”

She nodded.

“Can I look?”

“They’re already sold.”

He laughed. “But can I look?”

She shrugged her shoulders and he opened the box. Unwrapped a plate and held it up next to her.

“I get it,” he said, as he glanced at her paint-covered apron. “It’s you.” He looked at the other pieces on the shelf, then
back at Hannah. “You’re the picture hiding in this paint.”

He had come to the fair because it was his mother’s birthday. He had no idea what to buy her, but he knew that his law partners
often bought their wives things from the artisan’s fair. He had seen Hannah’s pieces brought into work. Secretaries wrapped
them carefully for the partners’ wives. They all turned the pieces over and over, studying the designs. Like looking for pictures
in the clouds.

He bought his mother a vase that day. And she loved it so much it gave him a reason to return. Over the next year, for every
holiday, every birthday, Daniel went only to Hannah. He was her best customer.

“Can you do something just in blue?” he’d ask. “Nothing else, just blue.”

She’d always say yes and take the order. But when it was time to deliver the piece she’d hand over something different. It
would have started out blue and only blue. But by the time she finished there would always be an edge of green. A touch of
gold.

“It didn’t look right otherwise,” she’d apologize. “I understand if you don’t want it.”

“No, it’s perfect.”

One day he asked to see her gallery. “It’s my parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary and I’d like something special. Like I’ve
never bought before.”

“I don’t have a gallery.”

“Is there a place you store your work? A place where maybe you keep back pieces that you like for yourself?”

“That’d just be my home.”

“Great,” he said. “When can I come?”

“Welcome,” Mother said, standing behind the front desk. “Reservation name, please?”

“No ma’am, I’m here to see Hannah Reynolds.”

“What?”

“The artist? She rents a room here. Or maybe…” Daniel paused as his eyes searched the old woman.

“One moment, please,” Mother whispered. She turned around, pretended to look through paperwork, and fought the urge to raise
her hands in blank surprise.
There was a man.
And he was all grown up. Wearing gray corduroys and a thermal shirt. With a bit of stubble for a beard. He had called her
ma’am
. He had asked for
Hannah
.

Another woman walked up to the front desk. “Mrs. Reynolds, the guests in room three are requesting the off-season discount.
They said it was guaranteed at reservation time, but didn’t show up on their receipt.”

“Mrs. Reynolds? You’re Hannah’s mother?” he asked.

Mother turned around. “Yes.”

He reached his hand out to greet her. The surprise of it all made her hesitate for an awkward moment, until she put her hand
in his.

“I’m Daniel Phillips. A friend of your daughter’s.”

“Nice to meet you.” She motioned for Tabby across the room and waited for her to join them. “Tabby, if you’ll please show
Mr. Phillips to the Great Room and offer him tea and coffee service. I’ll try and locate Hannah.” She watched him walk away
with her sharp, busy eyes. She searched him out for any evil intentions. She willed that he was good. She willed that he would
be careful.
So careful
with her daughter.