by G. M. Ford
“Wow” was all Helen could think to say.
“The new bone has a very different curve compared to whatever he may have looked like before the original injury. Should give him a very strong appearance.” Again he anticipated her next question. “We were working blind here,” he said. “Usually we have a picture or something, a photo of what the person used to look like, or wants to look like, a picture of his father, or, God forbid, some movie star he wants to resemble…you know…something, some idea of what the patient’s got in mind.” He waved a hand in the artificial air. “Here…” He gestured at Paul. “…here we were flying solo. This…” He motioned toward Paul with his head. “…this is a brand-new person, somebody who never existed before…straight off the assembly line.”
He touched the area around his own right eye. “Not only did we move his eye orbits closer together to make up for all the little fragments we had to remove, but he’s got a whole new forehead.” He grinned. “It’s a damn good thing Mr. Hardy here doesn’t have a wife and kiddies or anything.”
“Why do you say that?”
He leaned in closer. His voice took on a conspiratorial edge. “This surgery…this is new ground here. This is where science meets art,” he said. “A few months from now, not even his mother would recognize this guy.”
4
Suzuki Landscaping was the sole holdover from the mansion era of Harmony House. Ken Suzuki reckoned it was thirty-five years this April he’d started doing the yard work, back when the house was still grand and belonged to a family named Bryant, who’d made a fortune in the moving and storage business and who had more kids than even they could count.
Helen watched as Ken finished up washing his hands in the kitchen sink. For a while, early on, Helen had felt certain it was just a matter of time before Ken made a move on her. Dinner and a movie or maybe a walk in the park. It made sense. They were about the same age. Single. They obviously liked each other and enjoyed the time they spent in each other’s company.
She’d considered taking the initiative herself but found that something in her background made anything that forward…anything that liberal…well…they had names for girls like that, didn’t they?…and so Ken Suzuki and Helen Willis had settled into the friendly confines of middle-aged kindred spirithood.
She handed him a wad of paper towels and watched in veiled amusement as he first straightened and then separated the towels, which he then arranged in a neat pile on the counter, before first drying his palms, then the backs of his hands, and finally each finger separately. Helen had to turn away to avoid seeming impolite.
She’d often wondered whether Ken’s ultrafastidious nature was innate or whether it was the reaction of a man born in a Japanese internment camp. She’d wondered whether a proud man like Ken felt a special need for perfection as a result of what happened to his parents. The way they’d never been able to forget the twenty-six months they’d spent sweltering on the Gila River, as Ken put it…without privacy…without hope…without honor. And then coming home to find another family living in their house and discovering there was nothing they could do about it and how the experience had somehow tainted the rest of their lives, as if they were cursed or had neglected some detail which had led to losing everything, some subtle oversight of the soul which Ken Suzuki was going to make damn sure he didn’t repeat.
Outside the kitchen window, Paul Hardy wiped his brow with his sleeve, shoveled the last of the remaining soil into the hole he’d dug earlier this morning, and set the shovel aside. They watched as he got down on his knees. The newly planted Japanese maple basked in the spring sunshine as Paul lovingly worked the soil with his hands now, pushing here and patting there, making sure the dirt was tight enough to keep it upright in the winter winds but not so tight as to cramp the development of roots.
“He’s way different than he used to be,” Ken Suzuki said.
“He still spends most of his time downstairs on the exercise machines.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Helen’s heart quivered. “What then?”
“You don’t have to show him things more than once anymore.” Ken sensed her discomfort and looked her way. “You noticed?”
“I’ve noticed,” Helen said, averting her eyes and hoping Ken would let it go at that. The change in Paul Hardy was not something with which she was at all comfortable, probably because she couldn’t come up with a suitable explanation. Any notion of miracles had been forever thwarted by having gotten to know the miracle makers. Over the past several months, Jerry Donald and his “post-op posse” team had stopped by Harmony House three times to check on Paul, to adjust this and to rearrange that. Last time, a month or so ago, they’d removed the final bandages and then layered away the last of the suture lines, revealing a rugged-looking, blue-eyed…stranger.
“He’s funny about it, though,” Ken Suzuki added.
“How’s that?”
“If he sees you noticed…he tries to cover it up.”
“Goes back to acting stupid.”
“Yeah.” Ken finished with his hands and deposited the damp towels in the recyclable container under the sink. “I asked him if he was ready to come back to work. Maybe make a little cash.”
Helen cocked an eyebrow at him. “And?”
“And he pretended he didn’t understand.”
Helen made a doubtful face. “He’s been through a lot…” she began.
Ken Suzuki was having none of it. “He understood me. I could see it in his eyes. There’s a flicker in him…something that was never there before.”
“He’s still the same old Paul,” Helen soothed. “Mrs. Dahlberg knew who it was the minute he walked in the room and that old woman’s stone blind.”
Ken Suzuki started to speak but Helen beat him to it. “He and Shirley are tight as ever,” she scoffed. “He’s still the only one understands what she’s saying.”
“I’m not saying he’s a different guy or anything, Helen. He’s still the only human being I’ve ever met who can walk around with a ninety-pound bag of concrete in each hand. I’m just saying he’s not completely out of it like he used to be. There’s something back there now. And—” He stopped, seemed to have a brief conversation with himself, then pulled out his invoice book and started to write up the pruning job.
“And what?” Helen elbowed him gently in the ribs.
Ken Suzuki pretended not to notice; he kept writing.
“And what?” she said, louder this time, bumping him with her shoulder.
Ken stopped. He let his hands fall to his sides. “And whatever’s back there…for whatever reason…he doesn’t want anybody to see it.”
A silence settled over the kitchen. Ken finished his invoice. Helen promised to submit it for payment that afternoon. They shared a humorless laugh about how long it would take the state to pay up.
Out back, Paul was watering the maple. A pair of Ken’s workers suddenly appeared, their forest-green coveralls covered with wood chips. One still wore his ear protection. The other had dropped them down to neck level. The pair had been working out front, feeding the pruned limbs into the steel jaws of a chipper. Neck level used his hands to simulate turning a steering wheel.
“Looks like we’re ready to go,” Ken said. “I’ll come by middle of next week and see how it looks. Maybe ask Paul if he wants to work.”
Helen patted him on the shoulder. “He just needs to get settled in again.”
Helen said it, but she didn’t believe it. Ken was right. Some fundamental aspect of Paul had changed. How could it not? she asked herself. How could someone who’s been through what he’s been through not be changed by the experience? It was one of those situations where her intellect told her one thing but her instincts told her another.
She followed Ken Suzuki down the steps and out into the backyard. Paul was wrapping the hose around the green metal holder mounted on the back of the house. He didn’t look up as they passed. His aura seemed to press in upon t
hem as they walked along the back of the house.
“Spring has sprung” popped out of Ken’s mouth as soon as they rounded the corner. The pair gratefully made small talk all the way back to Ken’s truck. She waved him good-bye and then turned and walked up the front steps, only to find the door locked and her pockets devoid of keys. She rang the doorbell. Nothing. Repeated the process and got the same result. Banged the big brass knocker. Ditto.
“Damn,” she said, retracing her steps down to the sidewalk before turning left, the opposite way, around the north side of the house, A legion of once-golden daffodils, now gone white with age, pushed their pale faces up through the rich brown loam. The century-old iris plants, running the width of the house, was beginning to bloom.
Paul was closing up the garage. She watched as he locked the side door and pocketed the key, a task with which he could not ordinarily have been trusted. He felt her presence and turned his gaze in her direction.
She gave him a wave and a smile. “Paul,” she called. “The tree looks beautiful.”
In the seventeen years since Helen had come to Harmony House, Paul Hardy was the only resident she’d ever cared for who was totally unresponsive, which perhaps explained her tendency to talk to him as if he understood what she was saying, in spite of the fact that he obviously did not. What else was she going to do? Ignore him? Treat him like he wasn’t there?
Paul pushed his hands deep into his pockets and walked her way, head bent, looking silently down at his own shoes, just like always. His flowing hair had not been cut since the accident, nor had his beard. Another six months, Helen thought with a smile, and he’ll look like one of those rock-and-roll guys from Texas.
She moved forward to meet him. Her skin tingled in the rapidly cooling air. She threw a hand onto his shoulder. “You did a great job,” she began. As they crossed the yard, she kept it up…about how good the tree looked and what a good job he’d done cleaning up after the job, all the while flicking what she imagined to be sly glances his way, surreptitiously trying to see if Paul understood what she was saying.
As they approached the back stairs, she was saying, “…fifty years from now people will be sitting under that tree…they’ll…”
Suddenly Paul Hardy stopped walking. When Helen turned her eyes his way, she shuddered. The close-set blue eyes no longer looked inward. For the first time in seven years, he met her gaze…and in an instant, she knew Ken Suzuki had been right. Whoever this was…The thought stopped her. She searched for something to call him and realized her conscious mind had no way of dealing with anyone or anything it couldn’t put a name to…especially a big, powerful anyone or anything standing four feet away staring holes in her deeply furrowed forehead.
She brought a shaky hand to her throat. “Paul…” she began.
“My name isn’t Paul,” the stranger said.
5
Helen Willis sat on the edge of the mission-style divan she’d ordered from the Pottery Barn catalog, her face ashen, her breathing shallow, her knees still weak and unresponsive. Only Paul’s great strength had helped her negotiate the back stairs and then the elevator.
Paul stood just inside her room, leaning back against the door, his eyes locked on Helen. “You okay?” he asked finally.
The voice sounded as if his throat was lined with leather.
“I…why I…I don’t know what—” She stopped and sipped at the glass of water Paul had fetched from the sink. The blood was rising so quickly to her head she thought she might faint. She allowed her skirt to fall down between her knees. She brought a hand to her forehead. Felt like she had a fever. She picked up a dog-eared copy of The New Yorker from the adjacent cushion and began to fan herself. “I had no idea,” she offered finally. “When did you…I mean…”
He held up a hand and cleared his throat. “As soon as I woke up in the hospital, I knew something was different,” he said.
“What was that?” Helen continued to fan herself.
“I could read. The signs on the wall. The numbers on the screens.” He massaged his throat and continued. “Took me a couple days to figure out what was so different.”
A chill ran down Helen’s spine. Different was indeed the operant word. And Paul wasn’t merely different than he used to be. Oh no. Brand-new face notwithstanding, this was a whole different person. A stranger, someone about whom she knew nothing. About whom she knew even less than she’d known about the unresponsive, enigmatic Paul Hardy. At least the old Paul had been predictable and not prone to surprises. “But…” she began, “you remember your life here.”
“All of it. From the day I came here to the moment the car hit me. I remember how kind you always were to me. How you always made sure I was included in everything.” He smiled.
Helen felt her shoulder muscles relax. She exhaled hard and put the magazine back on the cushion. She raised a questioning finger and opened her mouth to speak.
“I bet I can guess what you want to know,” Paul said in a playful tone.
“What?”
“You want to know how come, if I remember all of it, then why didn’t I seem to know what was going on around me? How come I didn’t respond to anything.”
Helen nodded her assent. “Exactly,” she said.
He pulled his other hand from his pocket and showed his palms to the ceiling. “I don’t know either. It’s hard to explain. It was like I was there, but I wasn’t…like I was…I know this sounds weird, but it was like I was working on a problem the whole time. Nothing else meant anything to me except figuring out whatever it was I was trying to figure out.” He knocked on the side of his head. “Nothing else got in or out.”
“And you don’t remember what that was.”
“Strange, huh?”
“What about before you came here?”
“Nothing.”
A nearly imperceptible slant in his eyes suggested he might not be altogether forthcoming. “Nothing at all?” she pressed.
He looked away. “A name,” he said.
Helen waited. He folded his arms and looked uncomfortable.
“Wesley Allen Howard,” he finally said.
“That’s all?”
“That’s it,” he said. “One night, about a week after I woke up in the hospital…right before I went to sleep, the name just came to me. It’s been in my dreams ever since.”
“And you think that’s who you are?”
“I don’t know. Right now it’s just a name that came to me.”
“That’s all? Just a name?”
He hesitated. “Palm trees,” he said. “When I dream of the name, I dream of palm trees.” He waved a hand slowly in front of his face. “You know…kind of like swaying in the breeze.”
Helen sat back on the couch and smoothed her skirt. “Does anyone else know?”
“Just Shirley,” he said. “I’ve been practicing my talking with her.” A wide smile cracked his face. “Except Shirley does most of the talking.”
The both laughed. “You should smile more often, Pau—” She stopped herself. “I don’t quite know what to call you anymore.”
He shrugged. “I guess Paul will have to do for now.”
“For the time being, I think we should keep this to ourselves.”
“I think maybe Ken suspects,” he said.
She nodded knowingly. “We talked about it,” Helen admitted. “You know…in your top drawer—”
He stopped her, patted the right front pocket of his jeans. “The money…” he said. “I found it.” He sighed. “Nine thousand dollars.”
“It’s what you made working for Ken.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“He always paid you the same thing he was paying the rest of his men. Not a penny less.”
“He’s that kind of guy.” He allowed himself an ironic smile. “I tried to put it in the bank.”
“And?”
“And…you have to be somebody to put money in the bank.” The smile disappeared. “You have to
have ID. A Social Security card. A driver’s license. Things like that. Otherwise…”—he raised a disgusted hand—“you get to carry cash.”
“You want me to hold it for you?” she asked.
He nodded. “Might as well,” he said, pulling out the wad of bills.
“Take some for yourself,” she said.
He peeled off half a dozen twenties and then handed the rest of the roll to Helen. “I need to know about myself,” he said.
“I can tell you what I know,” Helen offered.
Took all of a minute and a half before she was out of info and a strained silence settled over the room.
Paul broke the spell. “That’s it?”
Helen made a rueful face. “That’s it,” she repeated.
Another silence and then he wanted to know, “What’s next?”
She met his intense gaze. “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question now, isn’t it?” She sighed and then stared off into space. The sound of raised voices filtered up from below. Helen stiffened and looked first at her wristwatch and then at the door.
Ten minutes until dinner. Saturday nights it was Mrs. Forbes cooking until seven-thirty and Mr. Hallanan helping out with the supervision till nine. Unlike some of the others, Mr. Hallanan took no prisoners and could, if necessary, be trusted to handle dinner without her.
“I don’t know what’s next,” she said after a while.
His face said it wasn’t the answer he was hoping for.
“What do you want to happen next?” she asked.
“I guess I want to find out who I am.”
This time a full minute of silence passed.
“Let’s think about it,” Helen said. She lifted four fingers to her temple. “This has all happened so fast. I’m just not sure what to do.”
“Me neither,” he said. “But if I knew who I was, I’d at least know where to start looking.”
“Looking for what?”
