by Hood, Ann
As she did every Friday, Vivien opened her leather-bound scrapbook and read the first page, a habit now since she could recite it by heart.
The causes of amnesia have traditionally been divided into the “organic” or the “functional.” Organic causes include damage to the brain, through physical injury, neurological disease or the use of certain (generally sedative) drugs. Functional causes are psychological factors, such as mental disorder, post-traumatic stress or, in psychoanalytic terms, defense mechanisms.
Her fingers touched the words, as if she were reading Braille. Physical injury. Post-traumatic stress. David, she knew, could have suffered either. Vivien thought of that April morning, how she had run into the street, Fu Jing screaming at her in Chinese. After that first shock, Vivien had climbed out of her bed and crawled under it. She couldn’t remember what a person should do in an earthquake, even though she had read it somewhere.
When she heard the heavy front door slam, she had been certain it was David coming home to rescue her. Vivien had slid from beneath the bed and run downstairs, calling his name. She could still smell sex on her, and taste him on her lips. Barefoot, her ice blue silk nightgown tangled around her, she’d found not David, but her maid Fu Jing, wild-eyed and covered in dust, speaking in rapid-fire Chinese. What has happened? Vivien said, taking hold of the woman’s shoulders and shaking her roughly. Zai nan, Fu Jing had said. She said it over and over. Zai nan. Later, Vivien would learn that zai nan meant catastrophe.
A hand on her arm startled her and Vivien let out a little yelp.
“I’m sorry,” Kay Pendleton said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Vivien, eye to eye with Kay’s breasts rising above her lemon yellow silk blouse, got to her feet. “No, no,” she sputtered. “I apologize for overreacting.”
Kay was holding out a newspaper. The Denver Post. “I thought something in here might be of interest to you,” she said. She was a person who looked you right in the eye when she spoke, another unnerving trait of hers.
“Oh?” Vivien said.
“Page nine,” Kay said. She placed the newspaper on the table and sashayed back to her desk in the other room.
Without sitting again, Vivien opened the paper, flipping the pages impatiently until she got to page nine. Her Friday morning routines were a comfort to her, and she didn’t like them interrupted. She glanced at an article on mountain lions, and another on a disease affecting cattle in Colorado and New Mexico. From where she stood, she could clearly see Kay adding books to her shelf of oddities and curiosities, her body a curvy figure eight, her bun lopsided. Vivien sighed. Sick cattle? She shook her head, trying to think of a polite comment to give Kay when she asked what she’d thought of the article. But then a smaller headline caught her eye. Man Found Wandering Down Colfax Avenue; Claims He Has No Memory of His Past.
Sinking into her chair again, Vivien lifted the paper closer to her face, as if it would bring the man himself closer to her. Phrases leaped out. No identification . . . Utterly confused . . . Otherwise healthy . . . And then: Doctors confirm that the man is suffering from amnesia.
Vivien glanced over at Kay, who had paused to watch her.
“How did you know this was my particular interest?” Vivien asked her.
“I see what’s in that book,” Kay said. “I don’t ask questions.”
Vivian nodded and returned her attention to the newspaper article. The man was estimated to be fifty to sixty years old, in good health except for his lack of memory, and had in his pocket a key to a room at the Hotel Majestic on Sutter Street in San Francisco. The Hotel Majestic, the article continued, opened in 1902, and was one of the few hotels to survive the devastating earthquake of 1906. Vivien’s heart beat faster. She and David had spent a weekend at the Hotel Majestic. Not just any weekend, but their first weekend together. Despite Lotte’s warnings, Vivien had met him for dinner that night. He was older than she’d remembered, ten years older than her.
They’d finished dinner before she’d blurted, “What about this wife of yours?”
“We’re unhappy,” he’d said matter-of-factly. He sipped his cognac, then stared into the glass. “But she won’t give me a divorce.”
“So you seduce young women to stay happy?” Vivien asked.
He’d smiled up at her. “Have I seduced you?”
She blushed.
“It is my intention,” he admitted, which made her blush deepen.
“I don’t go out with married men,” Vivien said. It was what Lotte had told her to say.
“But you’re out with me now.”
He was teasing her, she saw that. But it angered her enough to bring her to her feet and pull on the jacket she’d draped over the back of her chair. How she wished that she’d kept it on instead of revealing her collarbone and flesh below it to him. Had she intended to reveal so much of herself so readily?
David stood too. He reached over and very carefully buttoned her jacket for her.
“There,” he said. “Now I’ll call a taxi to take you home.”
For three miserable weeks, she heard nothing from him. In that time, Lotte got married, and Vivien dutifully danced with the dentist from Boise and even let the neighboring vintner kiss her outside as the band played the last dance of the evening. He kissed her too roughly, and groped at her, and invited her to come to Napa soon. She’d agreed, anything to keep David out of her thoughts. Then Lotte and Robert left for their honeymoon in Yosemite, and for the first time in her life, Vivien was alone. She had other friends, of course. But there was only one Lotte, who had been by her side from the start.
When finally David’s calling card arrived in her mailbox, Vivien almost cried with relief. The way he’d buttoned her jacket that night, so tenderly, had made her feel safe. With Lotte ensconced at Robert’s family’s vineyard in Napa, Vivien needed to build a new life for herself, to create a new family.
I will find a way. Trust me, he’d written.
Don’t trust him, Lotte had warned her.
That very night she had hurried to meet him at Coppa’s, and she had decided that, yes, she would trust him.
She could imagine what Lotte would say, that this was a coincidence. The fact that Vivien and David spent their first night together—a night that turned into an entire weekend—at the Hotel Majestic, and that this amnesiac who happened to be the age David would be had he survived had a key to a room there, all of it Lotte would write off to coincidence.
But how could Vivien dismiss it so easily? She went to the atlas that lay open on a table behind her, and flipped first to the United States, and then to the western United States. There was Colorado, a big square state roughly a thousand miles, Vivien guessed, from where she stood. She allowed herself to believe for a moment that the only thing between her and David was one thousand miles. That she could be on a train this very afternoon, heading eastward. That she might walk into the hospital where he was held for observation and that his memory would return when he saw her. Thinking these things made her breathless, and Vivien gulped air, trying to breathe normally again.
She had barely known him when she’d agreed to go with him to the Hotel Majestic that spring night. They had gone to Coppa’s in North Beach for dinner and Vivien had recognized the writer Jack London there, sitting at a big table in the middle of the restaurant.
David was telling her about the case he was preparing for trial, and Vivien had put her hand on his—the first time they had touched, really—and whispered, “I can’t hear a word you’re saying. All I can do is stare at Jack London.”
David took her hand in his, closing his fingers over it, and followed her gaze to the crowded table. “Which one is Jack London?” he asked her. “So I know which one to beat up.”
“He’s the handsomest one at that table,” Vivien said.
“I’m going to have to break that perfect nose of his,” David said, leaning into her. His mouth on her ear made her shiver, and Vivien leaned her head back, allowing his li
ps to graze first her ear, then her neck. “Would you find me too forward if I invited you to come with me to the Hotel Majestic for the night?” he whispered.
She did not look at Jack London again as she placed her stole around her shoulders and left hurriedly with David.
Lotte would tell her to be sensible. She would tell her that rather than get on a train and travel a thousand miles, she should contact the hospital in Denver. Vivien’s breathing slowed. Yes. That would be the sensible thing to do. More than anyone, she could tell them about the thin white scar beneath his chin. She could even tell them how he got that scar as a young boy, trying to jump a fence. She could describe the constellation of freckles on his back, and the distance one would have to travel to reach his thighs from his toes.
The sharp smell of earth and spice brought her out of her reverie. That Italian man, the one who knew Lotte and her husband, who always asked her to dinner, stood in front of her, a worried look on his face.
“Miss Lowe,” he said in his halting English, “you need to sit? You need some water?”
“No,” Vivien said. “I’m fine.”
He peered at her. “Your face,” he said, “it’s very . . .” She watched him struggle for the word. “White,” he said finally, defeated.
“You mean pale,” she said.
“Pale,” he repeated, giving the simple word too many syllables.
“Well,” Vivien said. “Nice to see you again.”
“Sebastian,” he said.
She had started to walk away from him, but she turned. “What?”
“I am Sebastian,” he said. Se-bah-sti-ahn. He held a black hat in his hand, and worried the brim as he spoke.
Vivien nodded. “Yes. Of course. Sebastian.”
The light was changing, morning becoming noontime, and here she did not even have her books yet. She left the Reference Room and went into the smaller room where Kay sat at the circulation desk, immersed in a book.
“Is the new Zane Grey in?” Vivien asked her.
“I put it aside for you,” Kay said. She retrieved it from the Reserved shelf behind the desk.
“How’s that one?” Vivien said, motioning to The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse opened in front of Kay.
Kay hesitated. “I have no idea,” she admitted, blushing.
Vivien laughed. “I knew you were listening.”
“Guilty,” Kay said. She lowered his voice. “Poor guy. He comes in here every Friday morning, just hoping to have a few words with you.”
“You sound like my friend Lotte. Just have coffee with him, she says. What could it hurt?”
The two women watched as Sebastian studied a copy of National Geographic, frowning over it.
“I think he’s handsome,” Kay whispered.
He was short and well-built, with dark wavy hair and a voluminous mustache. No matter what time of day Vivien saw him, he appeared to need a shave, his cheeks always covered in five o’clock shadow. His eyes were large and deep brown, and gave him an air of sadness somehow.
“I suppose,” Vivien said. “I . . .” She considered explaining to Kay Pendleton how she was in love with a ghost, but stopped herself. Vivien knew too well how easy it was to open your heart to strangers.
Kay waited, but Vivien just shook her head.
“I’m not interested,” she said finally.
Kay held up her book. “You can have this one if you’d like.”
Relieved for the change of subject, Vivien agreed.
Kay stamped the books in red and handed them to Vivien. “I would remind you when they’re due,” she said, “but I know you’ll have them back next week.”
Vivien tucked them into her bag, beside her scrapbook. “I wonder,” she began.
“You want that newspaper?” Kay said.
“I know the rule is not to let them leave the library—”
Kay leveled her gaze at her. “I’ve never followed a rule in my life,” she said. “And I suspect you’ve broken a few yourself.”
Vivien looked away from her.
“Go on,” Kay said. “Take it.”
“Thank you,” Vivien said.
She went back to the Reference Room and carefully folded The Denver Post, sliding it too into her bag. When she looked up, Sebastian was watching her. He was handsome, in a way, Vivien thought.
Sebastian smiled at her, and she noticed that his front teeth were slightly crooked, which made him even more attractive.
“Vivien,” he said, “tonight I will see you perhaps?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said as she hurried past him.
“Ciao,” he said.
She murmured a goodbye.
Outside, Vivian paused on the sidewalk. The rain yesterday seemed to have washed everything clean—the sky was a bluer blue than it had been, the morning glories climbing the fence a more vivid pink. The air itself smelled of spring and new beginnings. Vivien breathed in a deep lungful. It was almost April. In just a few weeks it would be thirteen years since she had last seen David.
She remembered how only a few nights before the earthquake they had gone to Coppa’s for dinner and David noticed that someone had written on the wall: Something terrible is going to happen. Vivien had feared it was prophetic, but David had laughed. “Probably your friend Jack London,” he’d said. “Afraid that I’m going to marry you sometime very soon.” He’d asked his wife for a divorce, and even though Vivien was afraid to hope she would grant him one, David had been full of optimism.
Vivien closed her eyes against the memory and thought instead of that man in Denver. The room they had stayed in at the Hotel Majestic was number 208. She imagined that key held in David’s pocket all these years, waiting for her to find it.
“This is crazy,” Lotte said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“But that key,” Vivien said for what seemed like the hundredth time. “To the Majestic.”
Lotte sighed and went back to attending the large pot of beans on the stove.
What if it was Robert? Vivien wanted to say. Wouldn’t you try anything to find him? But maybe Lotte wouldn’t try anything. Her friend had always been practical, the one to worry over consequences and risks. As children, she’d kept Vivien out of danger many times. Lotte had warned Vivien not to get involved with David in the first place. He’s married, Viv, she’d said, horrified and concerned. You just don’t do that.
Lotte lifted the long wooden spoon to her mouth and tasted, frowning. She took a hefty pinch of salt from the canister and tossed it in, stirring. Lotte’s life had a rhythm, a predictability that Vivien sometimes envied. The tending to Robert and their three children, feeding her family and all of the workers at the vineyard. In September, when it came time to harvest the grapes, Lotte was out there with all the men, from first light until it grew too dark to work. Her once-smooth ivory complexion had grown ruddy from years in the sun, and lined enough to make her look her age, or more. Although her long legs were muscled and her arms strong from the physical labor of having babies and working the vineyard and doing the laundry and cooking for so many people, Lotte had gone thick around the middle.
“You probably won’t hear till Monday at the earliest,” Lotte said, hoisting a ceramic platter of chicken. The chicken had been sitting in oil and lemon and garlic all day, and pressed flat under heavy bricks.
“I know,” Vivien said. She’d gone straight from the library to the Western Union office: MIGHT HAVE INFO ON AMNESIAC IN YOUR HOSPITAL. STOP. IS HOTEL KEY FOR ROOM 208? STOP.
Lotte paused on her way to the large outdoor grill where she would cook the chicken. “I just don’t want you to get hurt again,” she said softly.
“Grief is a strange thing,” Vivien said. “There isn’t an again. Not really. It’s always there, always present. Again implies it can end and then start up anew. But it never goes away in the first place.”
“Once a teacher always a teacher,” Lotte said, laughing softly.
Vivien watched her friend’s b
road back as she walked outside. Were all old friends this way, somehow stuck in time? To Lotte, Vivien was still a teacher acting foolish over an older married man, instead of an obituary writer, a woman who had lived alone for over a dozen years. A widow, Vivien thought, though Lotte wouldn’t grant her that status.
“Vivvie!” Lotte’s daughter Pamela screamed. “I didn’t know you were coming today!”
“Well, here I am,” Vivien said, scooping the child into her arms. At six, Pamela had the same brown curls as her mother, and the same vivid blue eyes. Looking into her face, Vivien could see the child Lotte all over again, as if thirty years hadn’t passed and they were still sitting side by side at the Field School.
“I’m mad mad mad at Bo and Johnny,” Pamela said, her whole face seeming to frown. “They won’t let me ride the ponies with them. They say I’m too little but I’m not. I’m big, right, Vivvie?”
“Quite big, darling,” Vivien said. “And getting bigger every minute.” She hugged Pamela good and hard before setting her back down. Poets and mothers spoke of the lovely smell of children, but to Vivien they smelled acrid, like vinegar. And in Pamela’s case, earthy too, like the soil here in Napa.
Pamela dragged a small wooden chair with a straw seat over to the stove so that she could inspect the beans. “Do you wish I were a boy, Vivvie?” she asked, tasting one.
“Not at all,” Vivien said truthfully. Lotte’s boys were not at all like the boys she’d grown up with in San Francisco. They thought nothing of shooting and skinning deer or rabbits. There was always dirt under their fingernails and in the creases of their palms. She couldn’t remember seeing them dressed in anything but blue jeans and flannel shirts. No, Bo and Johnny were mysterious creatures to Vivien, and even to Lotte. When Pamela had been born, Lotte was the happiest Vivien had ever seen her. At last, Lotte had told her, I won’t be alone.
