by Marta Acosta
I got up and put on the ill-fitting pointy booties. Had I lost all my fantastic fashion sense in the intervening two years? What else had happened in my life?
In the bathroom, I found a hairbrush, a new toothbrush, and toothpaste. I forced myself to look in the mirror. Oswald was quite dishy, and I looked hideous.
I tilted my head forward until it touched the cool glass of the mirror. Don’t panic, I thought.
I went to the window and looked out. The garden had so many of my signature touches, including Kathleen hybrid musk roses, that I should have known it was mine immediately. Oh, I’d made an herb knot just like I’d always wanted to! This was the bright side.
I walked to the kitchen and called, “Hellooo?”
There was a glass pitcher on the table with red liquid. Just looking at it made my stomach spasm with want. I got a tumbler, served myself, and took a sip. It was a tasty fruit juice, heavy on the raspberries. I gulped it down and had another glass.
I wandered through the house to the study.
Oswald was on the phone and when he saw me, he said, “I’ll get back to you when I learn more. Yes. Bye.”
“Hey, Oswald.”
“Hello,” he said, rather flirt-deficient.
“I haven’t remembered anything yet. What exactly is the range of time for this kind of memory loss?”
He hesitated for worrisome seconds. “At first I thought that you had transient global amnesia, but it’s possible that you have dissociative amnesia as a result of emotional trauma.”
“I’m badly dressed, but not traumatized. Why have you abandoned the injury theory so quickly?” I felt the back of my head again. “I could have internal hemorrhaging, or maybe a weevil is eating its way through my brain.”
“If you had taken any serious courses in college, you wouldn’t be bringing up brain-eating weevil theories.”
“Spoken like someone who couldn’t get past the first chapter of Henry James’s The Art of the Novel,” I snipped. “What happened to your bedside manner?”
“I’m sorry, Mil. I’m under some pressure today, and I’m having a problem handling this.”
“Apology accepted. So what’s stressing you out?”
“Besides your condition? My grandfather is visiting. He’s out sightseeing now,” he said. “But don’t worry about that. I got in touch with a psychiatrist through a, um, professional association. She was visiting her folks in Seattle and hopped on the first flight down. She’ll be here soon.”
“That’s swell, but I’m sure I’ll be fine before happy hour at the closest watering hole. I certainly don’t need therapy. I’m an exceptionally well-balanced individual.”
Oswald raised his eyebrows.
“I am so well-balanced,” I said. “How traumatized could I be, anyway? Was I devastated by rejection letters from agents, or did I get evicted from my subterranean hovel, which wouldn’t matter since I suspect that there are rats in the walls?”
“No, you didn’t get evicted,” Oswald said. “You own a loft.”
“What!”
“You bought it with a legal settlement you got.”
“That’s amazing! Have I published anything?”
“Yes, you ghostwrote a memoir that became a bestseller, and Mercedes told me that you’ve got a commission to write the follow-up book.”
“You’re kidding!” I laughed with delight. “What else has happened? I expanded my gardening business this far. Do I have more clients out here?”
Oswald hesitated and then said, “Yes, you gardened here. There’s something else, though. We dated for a while.”
When I recalled his earlier standoffishness I said, “I gather it didn’t end well.”
He looked as if he was being forced to confess to an abominable crime. “We didn’t just date, Milagro,” he said. “We were engaged and you lived here.”
I stared at the stranger, waiting for memories to come back to me. “I don’t think so.”
Oswald opened one of the desk drawers and rummaged beneath notepads and folders. He lifted out a framed photo and said, “Look.”
I took the frame from him and saw a picture of Oswald and me. His arm was around me and I was leaning in toward him. We were standing under a grape-covered pergola by a white stucco building. My left hand was on his chest and I was wearing a shiny ring. We were laughing.
A strange feeling rose in me and I shoved it back down.
Oswald said, “That’s the winery where we were going to have our wedding.”
“What happened to us?” I asked, as incurious as I would be if someone was telling me about a movie he’d seen.
Oswald pressed his lips together and then said quietly, “We just couldn’t manage to work things out. There’s another thing. You got a condition from me. It’s a rare family thing. It makes you crave red foods and that’s why your eyesight is good.”
“The buzz I feel when I touch someone’s skin? Did you give that to me?”
“Not me, but it’s an ancilliary trait. You’re stronger, too, and you have faster reactions. You heal easily from cuts and injuries, but you’re not a carrier of the condition.”
“So I’m like a superhero?” I said with excitement.
He laughed a little, a nice, warm laugh. “No, you’re not a superhero.”
I thought he had a narrow definition of superhero. “It sounds as if my life is fabulous. I certainly haven’t suffered any trauma except that I look as if I’ve been really sick or starving myself.”
Oswald’s brow wrinkled and he came close to me. “You have suffered trauma. Your latest boyfriend, Wilcox Spiggott—”
“How cool to date someone called Wilcox!” I said. “Wil-cox.”
“Someone murdered him and left his body at your loft.”
A shiver went down my spine. “Did I … was it me … was I the one?”
“You told Mercedes you didn’t and she believes you, which is good enough for me.”
“What happened then?”
“You took his body and got out of there. That was about nine days ago. You showed up last night back in the City.”
“Was I in love with Wilcox?” I asked. “I’m sorry. That was a thoughtless question.”
“It’s okay.” Oswald ran his hand through his thick brown hair. “Mercedes said you liked him a lot. That he sounded … fun. A fun guy interested in progressive politics.”
A fun guy named Wilcox Spiggott had been left dead in my loft. “It seems wrong, to have someone die and not remember him,” I said. “That’s the least we can do for those we care for, those we love, to keep them alive in our thoughts.”
“I’m sorry about your friend, Milagro.”
“Thank you, Oswald. Did you know him?”
He shook his head.
“What did I do with his body?”
“You told Mercedes you had it, but I didn’t see it. You just showed up here out of the blue looking crazier than usual.”
“Where was I during the time after I found his body and before I got here?”
A buzzer sounded, and Oswald said, “We can talk about that later. That must be the psychiatrist.”
“I don’t need a psychiatrist. We need to go to the police.”
“We can’t go to the police because of complications,” he said. “Who’s seen the body? You and the killer. Whoever set you up is probably looking for you and is willing to murder your friends. That’s why Mercedes made you promise to stay here.”
“I don’t understand any of this—secret enemies, misplaced corpses, superhero powers.” So I started shouting, “Wake up, wake up, wake up!” and then I slapped myself in the face.
“Stop that. You’re already awake,” Oswald said. “You’ll understand when your memory comes back and then we’ll figure out things. Now I’ve got to get the gate.”
He stood up and I followed him to the hallway, where he grabbed a hat. He said, “My family is sun-sensitive, but you’re not.”
“I’ve always tanned beauti
fully,” I said. “I’m not paying for a psychiatric visit that I didn’t request.”
“It’s taken care of. The most important thing is for you to get well.”
I went with him outside. “Why are you doing this for me, Oswald? Did we stay friends after we broke up?”
He stopped and gazed into my eyes. “It was too hard to stay friends, but I’ve never stopped caring for you, Milagro. I’ve never stopped worrying about you.” Then he continued walking to the gate.
I couldn’t help but notice Oswald’s nice butt in his faded jeans. I’d seen that butt without jeans, and yet, alas, it was to me as a stranger’s butt. Oswald was what I’d always dreamed about in a man, wasn’t he? Someone serious and accomplished and sexy, and I wouldn’t have gotten engaged to him unless I loved him. Shouldn’t I feel something besides lust?
I walked in my stupid pointy booties to the stupid truckasaurus. Looking through the window, I saw a bulky sports bag. I opened the truck door and pulled at the strap of the large bag, lifting it effortlessly.
At the end of the lane, Oswald opened the gate and a new white Prius drove in and stopped. The driver was talking to him.
I took the sports bag inside to the maid’s room and unzipped it, curious to find clues about my life. I unpacked jeans, T-shirts, sweaters, and tennis shoes. Beneath these were lacy and silky things—sexy bras and panties more expensive than anything I’d ever owned. A black and turquoise polka-dot vinyl bag contained high-end cosmetics and toiletries. I’d awoken in a much improved economic bracket.
Several composition books were bound by a large rubber band. I opened the top one and a slip of paper fell out. The upper- and lowercase alphabet was written on it, along with basic words.
The first pages of the notebook contained an outline for a metaphysical story based upon Shakespeare’s plays, all done in the same handwriting, but with a different pen. I must have been using my talent for forgery on the ghostwriting project.
I spotted a red velvet cloth covering something. When I unwrapped it, I saw three pressboard books. The volumes were the first edition of Jane Eyre. It seemed incredible that I could have something this rare and valuable. I opened the pages and inhaled the scent of the paper.
The next finds were even more puzzling: a tangle of black velvet ropes with padded straps and an incomplete knitting project, a blue-gray scarf.
The last item was a leather case. I opened it, expecting to see my costume jewelry, and saw instead real jewelry, mostly exquisite antique gold pieces with rubies and garnets. There were also elegant enamel fountain pens, a delicate engraved gold pocketknife, pretty old postcards, tiny carved stone animals, and amusing plastic mirror ball earrings.
Had Oswald or Wilcox given them to me? I took the books, the velvet ropes, and the jewelry, and hid them in the corner of the closet, behind a box of old shoes.
As I changed into the clothes in the sports bag, I examined my body. I was gaunt, but otherwise healthy enough. The only thing I didn’t recognize was a pale pink scar on the inside of my arm. Perhaps it was from a gardening accident.
The cups of the periwinkle satin bra were loose, as were the jeans, but the slip-on flats and T-shirt fit okay. I spackled concealer to hide the dark circles under my eyes and blush to make me less corpse-like.
I found Oswald in the study with a pretty woman wearing a leaf green cotton dress and a bold necklace of purple glass beads. She had a wonderful tumble of black curls, contrasting with her ivory skin, and she managed to be both slim and voluptuous, which seemed unfair to the rest of womanhood.
She smiled when she saw me and said, “You must be Milagro.” When she stood to shake my hand in both of hers, she was a few inches taller than me. Her eyes were green-hazel and angled up at the corners, making her look as if she was smiling even when she wasn’t.
“I’m Dr. Lily Harrison, but you can call me Lily. It’s such a pleasure to meet you, Milagro. I’ve heard so much about you.”
No one had heard about me, but I said, “Very nice of you to come, but I’m sure I’ll regain my memory toot sweet. My gray matter is usually quite reliable.”
Lily looked at Oswald and said, “If Milagro and I could talk alone, please.”
He left us, closing the door behind him.
“Let’s sit, Milagro.” When I joined her on the leather sofa, she said, “People don’t recover quickly from disassociative amnesia, DA, and you’re an unusual case anyway.”
“I’m really just a normal chica,” I said. “I feel fine.”
“DA is your brain’s way of protecting you from painful memories.”
“Not to state the obvious, but someone died,” I said. “Also, I conked my head hard enough to knock myself out. Oswald, while decidedly fab, is being very dismissive of my physical injury.”
So was she. “Incidents of DA are extremely rare, Milagro, but people who get it usually share one thing, an abused childhood.”
“That’s not me. I wasn’t abused.”
“What about your mother?”
“My mother Regina never even raised her voice to me.”
“I had conversations with Mercedes, Oswald, and his family on my drive from the airport. Everyone’s on the same page about your mother. They say that her neglect was criminal, and your father did nothing to intervene. You could have died on many occasions.”
“But I didn’t,” I said. “It wasn’t as if my mother Regina ran after me with a butcher knife screaming.”
“She left you in a shopping mall.”
“My mother Regina was very busy that day.”
“She gave you spoiled meat.”
“My mother Regina wasn’t interested in food, so she didn’t pay attention to those things.”
“She let you play alone in a pool when you were a toddler who couldn’t swim.”
“I didn’t drown, did I? The water, the water …” There was something about water that I didn’t want to think about.
“You were having so many ‘accidents’ that your grandmother took custody of you before you were three. When she died and your mother had to take you back, she locked you in your room after school and on weekends.”
“It was a treat to have time alone with my books. It’s one of the reasons I excelled academically. So you see, it all worked out for the best.”
“You can’t even call her ‘my mother’ or ‘mom.’ Can’t you see that you were as abused, if not more so, than a child who is beaten?”
I smiled patiently and said, “No one has a perfect childhood, but I’m absolutely fine. I went on to a fabulous university. I own property, a loft in fact.”
“You were on the verge of being kicked out of your apartment before you met Oswald.”
“I have fabulous friends and date fabulous men.”
“Your friend Nancy didn’t invite you to be part of her wedding because you couldn’t get along with her husband. As for men, you use your sexuality to get the attention you needed as a child, but you can’t sustain a relationship with any man. The last one was murdered.”
“I realize that looks bad, but it was an individual incident. I have a fabulous career as a ghostwriter.”
“I did some research, Milagro. You haven’t published anything of your own. The only recognition you’ve ever gotten was winning a regional contest for a horror story about a llama.”
“It wasn’t a llama; it was La Llorona, the terrifying weeping woman of Latin American folklore,” I said. One stupid typo—hitting the “replace” button on a spell-check program—had defined my entire literary career. “Lily, I appreciate your eagerness to help, but your profession always assumes that everyone is damaged in some way. I prefer to assume the best about life and people, including myself.”
“Milagro, you’re in complete denial about your current situation and your life. You don’t realize it, but you’re screaming in pain, and I’m here to help you heal and become whole. Won’t you please work with me?”
Lily looked so earnest, and I had nothing
better to do until my memory returned, so I said, “If it would make you happy, of course I’ll work with you.”
twelve
Headshrinkers, Blood Drinkers,
Mental Blinkers
As a general rule, when you can’t remember where you left a corpse, you have to accept that maybe you could have done some things a little better.
So I really tried to listen when Lily yammered about integrating my inner child with something or other. I nodded my head a lot while admiring her necklace and noticing that my fingernails looked terrible even for a gardener.
When Lily called Oswald back to the study, she looked as happy as a kleptomaniac who’s found an unsupervised perfume counter. She said, “We’re in agreement now about the need for therapy.”
I wanted to be proactive so I said, “Give me a quick synopsis of everything that’s happened in the last two years and then we can go after the dirty bastard who killed Wilcox.”
“That’s Milagro all over,” Oswald said to Lily. “She rushes into situations.”
Lily looked sympathetic to my goals. “Milagro, your mind is fragile now. You’re going to go through a process of evolving like—”
“Like a butterfly from a chrysalis?”
She tipped her head. “I was thinking more of a frog from a tadpole.”
“Not as appealing,” I said.
“Use whatever image you like,” she said with a patient smile. “Oswald and Mercedes have agreed not to overwhelm you with information when you don’t have your own perspective on your recent history.”
“Okay.”
Oswald looked concerned and said to Lily, “Usually she’s much too curious.”
Lily smiled at me but spoke to Oswald. “Milagro’s lack of curiosity is a symptom of her illness. Her inquisitiveness will return when she’s feeling more secure.”
Oswald nodded and said to me, “Mercedes and I have talked to my cousin, Gabriel, who’s a security specialist. He’ll investigate Wilcox’s murder. You should sleep now. It can be the best short-term restorative and, who knows, you might wake up with your memory.”
I felt the need for comfort so I reached out to take his hand, but Lily shook her head. “No skin-on-skin contact, Milagro. It will just be more confusing until you’re better. Let me walk you to your room.”
