When I Was Jane

by Theresa Mieczkowski

  I start to take off my clothes. “I wonder if I could.”

  “You’d have to be crazy not to.” She struts into the bathroom to fill the tub. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” she says with a gasp.

  “Is it that good? I can’t wait to see. What is it about us girls and our bathrooms?” I take the ponytail out of my hair and slip my robe on. “Even with amnesia I know how important a girl’s bathroom is. Are you stunned to silence, Dottie?” I ask as I limp through the door.

  She’s frozen, staring straight ahead.

  “Dottie, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  I suddenly realize what’s wrong. Large, white ceramic tiles stretch out beneath my feet, covering the floor and most of the walls. Directly above me, a flower-shaped stained glass skylight illuminates the room. A daisy. Giant, yellow petals surrounded by mosaics of reds and oranges against a deep blue background. In the center of the room, raised up on a higher level, looms a vintage clawfoot bathtub. I can almost hear the screaming from my dream, and I’m afraid to look down for fear of seeing a pool of blood.

  Dottie grabs my arm. “Is this what I think it is?” She’s probably got the scene memorized, she’s heard about it so many times.

  “Yes.” I nod in case I haven’t actually gotten the word out. “This is my nightmare.”

  ~16~

  “I think you should go in,” Dottie says as she tries to pull me off Jason’s bed.

  I cling to the headboard and refuse to move. “I’m not going in there.”

  “The man planned a nice treat for you. He brought flowers in there. You’re gonna go back down and tell him you decided not to take the bath you’ve been beggin’ for?”

  “Doesn’t this seem a little strange to you? That I dreamt of that room without ever seeing it?”

  “No. Of course you remember that bathroom. You lived here. I don’t think it’s all that weird now that I’ve had some time to think about it logically.”

  “Oh, right. Logically,” I say. “You mean after you ran from the room with every hair on the back of your neck standing straight up.”

  She puts her hands on her hips. “Look at you, a grown woman hangin’ on to a bed, afraid to go in the tub. I may as well be tryin’ to bathe a golden retriever.”

  “You know I’ve been terrorized for weeks about that very room.”

  “It’s all part of that collective subconscious of yours. I’ve been readin’ up on memories. I got a whole stack of books so I can understand you. Your brain is tryin’ to let go of little pieces of memories, and they can get stuck to other little pieces that are floatin’ ’round in there. You obviously remember that bathroom, but you also remember all the blood from your accident.”

  I push my face into the pillow, wanting to scream. It smells just like Jason, and for some reason that stops me.

  “Ok, let’s assume you’re right,” I say, sitting up straight as I realize the advantage being handed to me, “and my mind is letting little chunks of memories just float around and stick to other memories.”

  Dottie eyes me suspiciously. “Mm hmm.”

  “Then in order to sort things out, I’d need to investigate these chunks so I can toss them aside and find new ones, right?”

  “Why do I feel like I’m gonna be makin’ prank phone calls again?”

  “No more phone calls. I’m saying we should explore the memories as they float through and then dismiss them if we think they’re junk.”

  “Maybe. Is that gonna get you in that tub any faster? If not, I might as well get in.”

  “I’ll get in.” I stand up slowly trying to keep the weight off my leg. “But you’re staying with me.”

  She smiles. “I’ll stay if you promise to relax and enjoy yourself.”

  Moments later I’m submerged in bubbles. The bathroom doesn’t seem so nightmarish now. Light filters through the stained glass above me, projecting a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors onto the water and my skin.

  “Promise me you’ll take a bath later, Dottie. You need to experience this decadence,” I say.

  She sits on Audrey’s vanity stool. “I’ll take a bath in my own house. Dr. Gilbert doesn’t need some nurse floatin’ in his tub.”

  I peer over my shoulder at her. “You aren’t some nurse; you’re our friend.” I’d assumed she felt the same way. She’s really the only friend I have other than Thomas. But then again, she’s being paid. “I hope at some point you’ll feel like we’re friends.”

  “I already do, honey,” she says. “I’m just gonna get some fresh air in the bedroom. It’s so steamy in here I can barely breathe.”

  I lay my head back on the cushion and melt into the soothing water. It really is a spectacular bathroom. Jason and Audrey each have a massive vanity area on opposite sides of the room flanking a huge shower built for two. Beside each vanity is a door labeled Toilette, a separate one for him and her. Everywhere I look, plants fill large containers, even at the ceiling where trails of ivy spill from their hanging baskets and creep down the walls to the floor. The entire place feels like an oasis. I stick my toe into the antique faucet and wonder how many generations of women in Jason’s family have sat in here soaking their cares away.

  Without warning, a scene begins to unfold before my eyes. Audrey bathes a baby, but I’m her. I know I am; I feel I am. A small inflatable tub full of water sits inside the one I’m in now. Daisy slaps the bubbles and giggles until her belly shakes. Her amusement fills me so completely, I can’t help but laugh too.

  Do it again, sweetie, I hear myself say.

  Daisy slaps the water and sends it splashing over the side. The echoes of her laughter hang in the air so tangibly I want to reach out and collect them as treasures. But just as quickly as it came, the vision slips away.

  “No!” I frantically grasp for them, but they dissolve into the air with the rising steam. For one brief moment I felt something real, only to have it stolen before I could make it my own. I grieve the memory as if a piece of me has been taken away.

  Dottie crouches next to me and pulls me into her arms. “What is it, honey?”

  “I saw something.” I know I won’t be able to explain how I feel without sounding like a lunatic.

  “The nightmare again?”

  “No. Something lovely,” I say though tears. “I want it back.”

  “What?”

  I punch the water. “I don’t know. I saw Audrey bathing Daisy and laughing. They were so content, and I felt like it was me. I felt… happy.”

  Dottie claps her hands excitedly. “Oh! You had a memory! Maybe things are comin’ back to you now.”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  I want that feeling back so badly, even if it means becoming her again. I just need to find a way how.

  “Damn you, Audrey,” I whisper. “You could have at least given me a little more.”

  “Dr. Gilbert! She’s remembered something!” Dottie calls down to Jason and prances around excitedly, proudly sharing the news as if I’d given birth to the memory and she’s the grandmother.

  I slowly make my way down the stairs. Jason stands up from the couch and rubs his palms on his shorts.

  “What do you mean?” he asks.

  Dottie claps again. “A memory! In the bathtub! Should we call Dr. Patel?”

  “A memory of what?” He comes to the landing and watches me navigate the steps one by one. It’s impossible to tell if he’s happy or not. With all the nightmares lately and the difficulty we’ve had getting to know one another, I’m not surprised. He’s probably braced for anything.

  I try to catch my breath from maneuvering the stairs. “I think it was a memory of you and me bathing Daisy.”

  Jason stuffs his hands in his pockets and exhales heavily as if he’s relieved. “Oh.”

  “Oh?” I say. I’m surprised he isn’t happier about me remembering a piece of our life together.

  “Yeah. Oh. I thought maybe it was another nightmare.” He runs his hands through his hair and looks over
his shoulder into the kitchen where Daisy is coloring and singing to herself. “Listen, Jane, something’s happened. There’s been a bus accident on the freeway. The driver went off the road and flipped the bus. It caused a ten-car pileup and there are a lot of people hurt…fifty-seven on the bus alone. I have to go to the hospital to see how many they bring in for surgery. I could be there for a few days. Can we talk about this when I get back?”

  I realize now his tone may have had nothing to do with me. “Of course,” I whisper.

  He kisses me on the cheek and heads towards the door.

  “And good luck,” I say awkwardly. “I hope you can help a lot of people.” I don’t know what Audrey would say when sending him off like this, if she would have any eloquent words of motivation to offer as he goes into this kind of battle. As his car screeches out of the driveway, I realize there’s a whole other world that waits for him outside of our house. One I’m not at all a part of. I’ve monopolized his time and energy for too long. A patient living in his home.

  I find Dottie a few inches from the TV, watching the coverage of the accident as though she’d like to crawl through the screen and set up triage.

  “You should go,” I say. “They’ll need all the help they can get.”

  “But what about you? Dr. Gilbert won’t like—”

  “I’ll call Vivienne. I can get around a bit on my own now, and I need to start doing more for myself anyway. Please go, Dottie.”

  She pauses, pretending to think about it. “If you’re sure…”

  “I’m sure.” As soon as I say it, I realize that this is my chance to spend time with Daisy without anyone watching over us. I make the decision to call Vivienne only if I must.

  “So it’s just you and me?” Daisy asks excitedly, bouncing on her stool in the kitchen.

  “Yup. Total girl time.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Whatever you want. I’ll make dinner and then maybe we can watch a movie together.”

  “Daddy said you can’t watch TV because you whacked your noodle.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “My noodle will be just fine as long as you know how to work the TV.”

  I heat her usual fish sticks and serve them on her favorite plate, a dolphin shaped plastic dish with a little compartment in the tail for her ketchup and separate spots for her carrots and apples. “I thought people were supposed to eat fish sticks with tartar sauce,” I say teasingly as she licks ketchup off her fingers.

  “Tartar sauce looks like chunky bird poop,” she says with a stone serious face and then laughs so abruptly I’m afraid she’s going to choke. She points to her mouth and giggles. “Did you hear what I just said? Bird poop!”

  “Can I assume that Daddy taught you that?”

  “Uncle Thomas. He talks about poop a lot.” She smiles. Her mouth is missing three teeth now. She puts her hand up in the air dramatically and rolls her eyes like a sixteen-year-old. “Sooooo much. Seriously.”

  I want to scoop her up and kiss her face but I manage to contain it. “Yeah, boys are gross. So what movie would you like to watch?”

  She shrugs. “You can pick. You haven’t picked in a while.”

  While Daisy washes her hands and face from dinner, I sit in front of the wooden armoire and go through their movies. “How about The Parent Trap?”

  “Is there kissing in that movie?”

  I look over the back of the box. “I don’t know, maybe. Maybe this mommy and daddy kiss,” I say pointing to the pictures of the actors.

  “You and Daddy don’t kiss, do you?”

  I don’t know how to answer. “Do you want us to?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She pretends to lock her lips and throw away the key.

  “OK,” I say with a sigh, allowing her to keep her secret. “Couch or floor?”

  “We can put all the pillows on the floor and put a blanket down and pretend it’s a movie picnic,” she says, already starting to remove couch cushions bigger than she is.

  “Are we supposed—” I stop myself, realizing I sound like someone who has no idea what she’s doing. “Sounds like fun.”

  We watch the movie surrounded by cushions, which works out for me because I’m able to rest against the couch and keep my leg elevated on the pillows. It takes a long time to get through the entire thing because she pauses to go to the bathroom every ten minutes. I paint her nails while we watch, and she somehow talks me into painting Otis’s nails, too, though it’s hard to keep him still while they dry.

  Towards the end of the movie, Daisy turns to me. “Is that how you did it?”

  “Did what?”

  She tilts her head. “Do you have a twin sister like the girl in the movie? So you could switch places with my other mom?”

  “What?” I say much louder than I intend, and struggle to sit straight up without falling over.

  She bites her lip like she’s trying not to cry.

  I open my arms to her. “I’m so sorry I yelled. Come here. I was just surprised, that’s all. I’m really interested in what you’re thinking about.”

  She looks up at me with wide eyes. “My Audrey-mom got in a bad accident. And then you came here, but you aren’t the same as her.” She stops and scratches her nose. “I mean you look the same as her, kinda, but you aren’t the same as her inside.”

  “Because I don’t do things as well as she does?”

  “No, you’re just different.”

  There’s nobody here to tell me what to do or say. I could lie to her, but that doesn’t seem to be working as well as we thought. “Wait…is this why you don’t want me to kiss your daddy? Because you think I’m not your same mom?”

  She nods her head.

  “First, I love you just as much as your Audrey-mom did. And I really am just the same as her. It’s just that when I whacked my noodle, some of the thoughts in my brain got a little mixed-up and that made me forget a few things.”

  “Like where our dishes go and where we buy the strawberry milk. I know, Daddy told me.”

  “No, more than that. Like how to be exactly like myself. I kind of forgot how to be me, the Audrey me. So I seem a little different. Do you understand?”

  She nods. “I think so.”

  “I’m not another person or a twin sister. See this birthmark?” I pull my shirt up and show her the jellybean-shaped patch on my side. “Your Audrey-mom had this too, right?”

  She nods again.

  “So you know I’m the same person. It’s just that the bump on the head makes me act funny.”

  “You are funny,” she says shyly. “She was really sad. You aren’t sad.”

  “I remember you told me that. Do you know why she was so sad? Everybody has bad days once in a while.”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  “Lots of people get sad. Some people get sad, some people get lonely, some people get angry. That’s just the way things are sometimes.”

  She widens her eyes. “I know. Daddy used to get really angry. But not anymore.”

  “He did?”

  “Uh-huh. Like this.” Squeezing her face into a scowl, she balls up her fists and holds her breath until she turns red. The look in her eyes makes my blood run cold.

  “What was he so angry about?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. But he said if we didn’t have a mommy anymore we’d be OK. It would be me and him and Mamère and Monpère and Thomas and Otis and we would all love each other so much.”

  “Oh. He probably said that to you because your mommy got really hurt in an accident and he didn’t know if she was going to be OK.”

  “No. Daddy didn’t say that to me after Mommy had an accident. He said it to me before. He said to me the day the ice cream truck came. Then the next day I went to Mamère’s house for the night and that’s when Mommy crashed her car.”

  My stomach drops at hearing this. Audrey was sad, Jason was furious, judging by the demonstration Daisy gave of his ange
r, and he was talking to her about not having a mother before the accident. But I can’t interrogate a five-year-old about the night her mother nearly died in a car accident. She’s just a little kid—there’s no way I can put too much faith in what she says. “Will you still love me like your Audrey-mom until I remember everything again?” I ask, hugging her.

  “Of course, silly.” Her muffled voice squeaks out from where she’s smothered in my bathrobe. If only it could be as simple to talk to adults as it is to talk to children.

  I let Daisy sleep in the living room since I can’t navigate the stairs alone. I lie on the couch and hold her like Thomas held me during my nightmares. Every so often her little leg jumps in her sleep and she mumbles or purses her lips. I love her so much I could lie here forever and watch her sleep. Nuzzling my face into hers, breathing in the smell of her hair and skin, I close my eyes and drift off.

  Soon I’m back in the bathroom, watching the blood spread across the floor. I wake up sweating and breathless, but I’m somehow able to keep myself from screaming out and scaring Daisy. I peel myself out from under her and head to the kitchen.

  I flip open the laptop computer and go right to Amazon. I access Dottie’s account, remembering that she uses her cousin’s name for her passwords.

  “Thank you, Charlotte Baker,” I whisper and type Luminol in the search box. I check the expedited delivery option before placing my order. If all goes well, the box will arrive tomorrow afternoon. I’m tired of waiting for answers to come to me. It’s time to seek them out.

  ~17~

  “What on Earth?” Dottie carries the Amazon box into the kitchen, having beaten me to the door when the bell rang. I’d expected her to be at the hospital for at least another day helping out with the bus disaster, but she was sitting in the kitchen when I woke up the next morning. Now she stands before me with a confused expression, holding the box like it’s a bomb. “Who’d know to send me a delivery to your address?”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, I ordered something and couldn’t remember my account information so I sort of…used yours.”

  I grab one of the checkbooks Jason keeps in the kitchen drawer and write the amount for twice what I paid, scribbling Audrey Gilbert on the bottom line like a perfect forger. I hold out the check and smile at her cautiously. “This should cover the cost and the trouble.”