The Syndrome (30 page)

Adrienne screamed, and the man in the doorway roared—haplessly, if that’s possible. Easing the gearshift into
Drive
, Duran reversed direction, pulling away from the scene with the comment that “Seat belts aren’t just a good idea, y’know. They’re
the law
.”

They were out of the parking lot, and almost to the highway before Duran noticed that the rain had turned to mist. Pools of water glowed in the indelible twilight that passed for night in the city. Up ahead, a dull roar rose from the interstate like heat shimmering over a desert highway.

Adrienne groaned. Duran glanced at her.

She was acting as if she had a concussion, fading in and out like a weak radio signal. No sooner were they on the highway, heading north, than she asked him to pull over onto the shoulder so she could throw up. After that, she seemed a little better. More alert.

But they didn’t talk. Using the controls on the armrest, he rolled down the car windows, so the cold air could help them focus. Driving past Capitol Hill, he turned to her, and asked, “You mind if I say something?”

She shook her head. “What?”

“I told you so.”

She blinked. Frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I said: I
told
you so.”

Her frown deepened. “And what was it you told me?”

“Not to go to work.”

Her lips parted in reply, then closed in a pout. It was disgraceful of him to throw that in her face—even if he was right.
Especially
if he was right. And if he didn’t know that, well … After a while, she asked, “Where are we going?”

“Bethany Beach.”

She looked at him in disbelief, and he could see that she was feeling better. “Are you out of your mind? I can’t go there! I have to work!”

Duran rolled his eyes toward the roof.

“Turn around,” she demanded.

Duran laughed.

“I mean it!”
she said. “Get off at the exit.”

“No.”

“What do you mean,
‘no’
? Stop the fucking car! I’m the one who
rented
it. It’s my—
oooh!
” Her hand went to the contusion at the back of her head. When he glanced at her again, she was staring at the blood on her fingers.

“It isn’t safe,” she complained, almost in a mumble.

“What isn’t?”

“Being with you.”

A huge truck rolled past, rocking the car with its turbulence, kicking up clouds of mist. Neither of them said anything for what seemed a long time. They passed the exits for Annapolis and Duran noted the first sign with the seagull logo, pointing the way to the Bay Bridge.

After a while, she asked, “Why Bethany?”

Duran shrugged. “I spent the summers there as a kid. We had a beach cottage.”

She gave him a skeptical look. “You sure?”

“Yeah—of course I’m sure.”

“Because your record’s not so great on this kind of thing. I mean, who you are, where you’re from and all that.”

Up ahead, a green sign cautioned them against drinking while driving:
Reach the Beach
, it told them. A second sign offered a radio frequency for traffic advice. Then they passed over a series of rumble-strips on the way to a line of toll-booths. Braking gently, Duran handed the attendant a five-dollar bill, and thanked him for the change before continuing on his way. The clock on the dashboard read 2:49.

Halfway across the Bay Bridge, he turned to her and said, “I remember the cottage,
exactly
.”

“Then tell me about it,” she said.

Duran shrugged. “Well, it’s got a name. They
all
have names, all the cottages in the old part of Bethany.”

“What else?” Adrienne asked.

“The town used to be a church camp.” He looked at her. “Our house was called ‘Beach Haven.’ It was written—in script—on a wooden plaque. Next to the front door. Screen door.”

“How original … what else do you remember?”

“The sound the screen door made when it slapped shut, the way the paint was peeling on the ceiling over the porch swing.” He paused. “I remember the garden—not that it was a garden, really. I remember the
plants:
a couple of hydrangeas, some irises, a stand of black-eyed Susans. I remember the outdoor shower, the way you could see the ground through the slats.”

“Hunh,” she said, impressed in spite of herself. “So who owned this cottage?”

They were crossing Kent Island, with its commercial strip of outlet stores and fast-food franchises. It was all very familiar. “My parents,” he replied.

“The Durans?”

“I know
what you’re thinking,” he said, “but—yes. The Durans. That was their name.”

“The Durans weren’t your parents.”

“These ‘Durans’ were.”

She looked away in frustration.

Somehow, even though it was long before dawn and there was no way to see beyond the stores, Duran could feel the nearness of the ocean. Maybe it was the sense that there was nothing
behind
the stores, no backdrop, no forms or shapes, no distant points of light.

“I remember so much,” he said, talking as much to himself as to Adrienne. “I remember where we kept a key, under the third white rock in a series of rocks arranged along the walkway. I remember the battered Monopoly game that we kept at the beach. One year the shoe piece went missing, and my mother went crazy looking for it. It was her favorite piece.” He smiled. “She used to say: ‘I guess I’ll have to settle for the iron.’ Like it was a big disappointment.”

They were rolling through the flat farmland of the Delmarva peninsula, the horizon an invisible line between the black earth and even darker sky. An occasional silo rose from the ground, where metal skeletons of irrigation equipment stood idle in fields of stubble corn. Every few miles, they
passed produce stands that were boarded up for winter, hand painted signs leaning against the ramshackle buildings:

Arriving at an intersection, where signs pointed north to Rehoboth and south to Ocean City, Duran hesitated, unsure of which way to go.

“Take 113,” Adrienne told him.

“But—”

“Trust me,” she said. “I used to live around here, remember?”

Duran frowned. “No.”

“Oh, that’s right,” she remarked in a sarcastic voice. “You had us down south. Where was it? Alabama?”

“South Carolina,” Duran told her.

“Turn left.”

About forty-five minutes later, they drove through Denton, Delaware, detouring past the house that Adrienne said she and Nikki had lived in. It was a tidy brick rancher, with a vinyl carport, and a mailbox painted with morning glory vines. In the front yard were a pair of trees whose rounded crowns had been gutted to accommodate a power line.

Half an hour later, they were on the outskirts of Bethany Beach, the horizon pink with dawn. Duran could feel the excitement mounting within him. Once he saw the beach house—once he actually stood before it—the past would be his again. And undeniably so. He could show it to Adrienne—the white rocks and outdoor shower, the little garden. Even if the place had changed, it would still be the same. He was sure of it.

Soon, he was announcing their arrival. “Coming up—the Bethany Beach totem pole!” A minute later, they rounded a curve and there it was, the towering kitsch emblem that marked the intersection of Main St. and Highway 1-A. As they drove closer, he could make out the elongated face of the
Indian carved into the wood. It was like seeing an old friend. He remembered, with sharp nostalgia, arriving at this intersection as a boy, how he and his father shared a ritual, filling the car with war whoops.

“When’s the last time you were here?” Adrienne asked.

He thought about this, but … “I don’t know. I was just a kid.”

When the street dead-ended at the steps to the boardwalk, he turned left onto a road that ran parallel to the beach.

“Were you thinking we could
stay
here?” Adrienne asked. “I mean, if you can’t remember the last time you went to the cottage, it’s not like it’s still in your family, is it?”

She was right, of course, but he didn’t know what to say—and that was strange, even to him. He’d never given a thought to the cottage. Was it still his? Was it
ever
his? It ought to be, but he couldn’t say for sure. The question had never come up. But now that he thought about it: no, he hadn’t been here since his parents died. His only memories of the place were childhood memories. Yahtzee and Boggle, Monopoly, and playing in the waves.

But all that would resolve itself, Duran thought, as soon as he saw the place.

Some of the houses they passed were modern and built on stilts to protect them from hurricanes. These tended to be much bigger than the old cottages, with elaborate multilevel decks. Fabric flags—lighthouses, crabs, sunflowers, ghosts—snapped in the breeze. The new houses were unfamiliar to him but everything else was just as he remembered it, right down to the realtors’ signs beside every other driveway.
For Rent: Anna Liotta, Hickman Realtors. For Rent: Connor Realty Co.
Same old firms. They would rent out the beach houses on a weekly basis all summer long—when the families who owned them were not in residence. He tried to remember if his own family had stayed at the beach all through the summer, but he couldn’t.

“Well?” Adrienne asked.

“What?”

“I asked you—”

“I don’t know,” he told her in a distracted voice. “I don’t know what happened to Beach Haven after my parents died.”

“But you should—”

“I just want to
see
it,” he insisted. “And anyway—it’s right around the corner.” Turning left onto Third Avenue, he recited the numbers: “One-thirteen. One-eleven. It’s the fifth house, on the left. Right …
there”

It was an old cottage, a little shabby. The sign that hung from the post beside the walkway trembled in the wind.

Gill’s Nest

He stepped from the car, and stared. Adrienne got out, and came around to his side. The air was fresh with the smell of the sea, and they could hear the ocean’s susurrating boom, just a block away. “They changed the name,” Adrienne observed. “So that answers one question. Someone named Gill bought the place.”

Duran shook his head. “This isn’t it.”

“What?”

He put his hand on his forehead, and closed his eyes, recalling the things that just weren’t there: the wraparound porch and wide wooden steps to the front door, the dormered windows on the second floor. He tried to understand how the house in his head could have been changed—remodeled—to resemble the one in front of him: a narrow frame structure with two steps up to the door, no porch, no dormers. No hydrangeas, either, and no white rocks to hide a key.

“This isn’t it,” he repeated.

*    *    *

At Adrienne’s suggestion, they drove up and down the streets of Old Bethany for nearly an hour. Maybe he’d gotten the address wrong. Maybe it had been torn down. Maybe. But try as
he did to superimpose the house in his memory on the landscape before him, it didn’t work. Beach Haven was a figment.

“God,” Adrienne said when they stopped for coffee and she took a good look at the crumpled mess that was the rear of the Stratus. “I’m in for it with Budget.” A little laugh escaped her. “Of course, at fifteen bucks a day, I waived the collision coverage.”

“I’ll pay you back.”

She shook her head. “Forget it. My credit card will cover it. It’s just—there’s going to be a ton of paperwork.”

Going inside the Dream Cafe, they found themselves the target of half a dozen stares. “My God, what happened to you?” the waitress asked, seeing the matted blood behind Adrienne’s ear.

“I hit my head,” she replied, and got up to go to the ladies’room.

While she was away, Duran sat, brooding over his latte. He knew, now, that something was terribly out of whack—that he wasn’t who he seemed to be, that his memories weren’t his own. Not the long-term memories, at least.

But last night was real—of that he was sure. He was sure because he hurt in so many places. His ribs ached, and his tongue was cut in a way that made it painful to speak. And not only that: his imagination wasn’t up to inventing the sound he kept hearing, the crack of his assailant’s neck as Duran drove his foot into the man’s chin.

The noise was eidetic, like the pain that he felt, and like the pain, it wouldn’t go away. So that was real.

But Sidwell? Had he gone to Sidwell—or just to the reunion? Because he’d certainly been to the reunion—he could hear the polite hellos, see Adam Bowman peering at his name tag. He’d remembered the school, but had the school remembered him? Not really.

“I used every, single paper towel,” Adrienne told him as she sat down, hair wet, but free from gore.

“You ought to see a doctor,” Duran told her. “You took a bad knock.”

She shook her head. “I’m okay. I just need a scarf.”

At Hickman Realtors—this was another of Adrienne’s ideas—they asked about a house called Beach Haven, owned by a family named Duran. The agent, Trish, said she’d grown up in Bethany, and thought she knew everyone—but she didn’t remember the Durans, and she was certain there wasn’t a house called Beach Haven.

“I don’t think so,” she told them. “But I’m not infallible.” She offered to look in the computer. “Even if Connor or one of the other firms handled the place, it’ll be in here,” she said, tapping the keys.

But it wasn’t.

“What about another place?” she asked. “Pretty good pickings this time of year. Low rates. Get you a deal!?”

Duran began to stand up, when Adrienne surprised him. “Sure,” she said, tossing a glance at Duran. “Nothing too big or expensive—so long as it’s got a working phone.”

Trish tapped the keyboard, manipulated the mouse, and studied the possibilities. “I can put you a block from the beach … two bedrooms with cable.”

“How much?” Adrienne asked.

“Three-fifty a week.”

Duran sat in his chair, barely listening, as Adrienne finalized the arrangements. Though his face was impassive, and his body still, he might as well have been hanging from a cliff. It seemed to him that the more he found out about himself, the less he knew. The more he looked, the less there was. And now, seated in a real estate office in the imaginary playground of his fictional childhood, it seemed to him as if his whole perspective—his stance toward the world and himself—was sliding toward a vanishing point from which there was no return, or no return that he could imagine.