A Christmas Visitor

by Thomas Kinkade

  “Carolyn predicted something like that. But the interest has only grown as far as I can see. It’s going to get worse before it gets better, and I’m not sure I should wait. It might be too late by then. We’ll be stuck with a local legend we can never undo.”

  Emily didn’t answer for a long moment, and Ben thought that was the end of the conversation. “Have the deacons discussed it yet?” she asked finally. “I think they would be the appropriate group to call upon for some guidance.”

  The deaconate. Why hadn’t he thought of that? He had been too mired in his own spiritual debates and anxieties. The deacons were leaders of the church, helping him oversee the spiritual life of the congregation. They should be consulted about this situation before he took any action.

  “Yes, you’re right. The question is complicated. I need to hear what the deaconate has to say. Thank you, Emily. You’ve been a big help.”

  “Oh, I didn’t do much,” Emily assured him. “You’ve sorted out my problems plenty of times, Ben. I owed you one.”

  They had reached the end of Main Street. They said good-bye, and Emily headed toward the newspaper office and he headed toward the church.

  As he walked across the green, he noticed a white minivan parked in front of the church. A middle-aged man, who appeared to be the driver, helped the passengers out. They were all seniors, some quite infirm. Oh, no, he thought. Not again! He knew why they had come and where they were headed.

  Normally, he liked to meet visitors, but today he walked around to the side entrance, purposely avoiding them. He went straight to his office to call a meeting of the deaconate.

  Clearly, there was no time to waste.

  * * *

  FRIDAY AFTERNOON, MIRANDA AND ADAM SAT SIDE BY side in a small waiting room at the office of Dr. George Carter. It was a cloudy day and the room was dimly lit. Adam had hardly spoken on the ride to Newburyport and now sat paging through a magazine. Though he was taking pains not to show it, Miranda could tell that he was nervous. Usually, he read things thoroughly, devouring information. Now he was flipping through the magazines, as if he had just completed a course in speed-reading.

  At exactly three minutes past four the door to the doctor’s office opened, revealing a friendly looking man, who appeared to be in his early fifties. He was neatly dressed, wearing corduroy pants and a yellow wool vest over a pale blue shirt and patterned tie. He peered at them from behind wire-rimmed glasses. “Adam? I’m Dr. Carter. Please come in.”

  Adam rose from his chair in the waiting room. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.” He turned to Miranda. “This is my friend Miranda Potter. I told you about the Potters when we spoke,” he added.

  “Yes, I remember. Hello, Miranda.” Dr. Carter smiled at her then turned back to Adam. “Would you feel more comfortable if Miranda joined us?”

  Adam looked surprised by the suggestion. “I guess I would. Do you want to come in with me, Miranda?”

  “If you’d like.” Miranda hadn’t expected to be included, but didn’t mind. If it would help Adam, it was fine with her. If Adam felt he wanted more privacy, she could always leave, she reasoned.

  They walked into the office and Dr. Carter shut the door. There was a large wooden desk near the windows. Shelves filled with books and Native American pottery lined one long wall. Dr. Carter sat in an armchair in front of his desk. Miranda and Adam took chairs that faced him.

  “I’ve read your story in the newspaper, Adam,” the doctor began. “But why don’t you tell me everything you can remember, starting with the night Miranda found you.”

  “All right. No problem.” Adam sat back. He told how he woke up on the cold ground, hearing a dog barking, then opened his eyes to see Miranda. He recounted how she helped him up and down to the house, how Tucker had arrived, and how he had been taken to the hospital.

  “Is that similar to your memory of the night?” Dr. Carter asked Miranda.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s completely accurate.”

  Adam told the doctor about visiting the police department and his interview at the newspaper. “For the past week I’ve been at the orchard, waiting for some news. I’ve been visiting the library in town, too. Looking through the local newspapers, and checking out ideas on the Internet—just random subjects that catch my interest. I’ve printed out anything that seems significant and started a file,” he added.

  “What else have you been doing, besides visiting the library?”

  “Working for the Potters. Painting mostly. And I’ve been reading and writing in a journal at night.”

  The doctor nodded. “That’s good, that’s all good. This journal—whose idea was that?”

  Adam shrugged. “My own, I guess. One night I had a very vivid dream. A nightmare I guess you’d have to call it. Writing it down seemed to help get it out of my system. I’ve been writing every day since, hoping the writing will help me remember something.”

  “Has it helped, do you think?”

  “Not yet. Not really,” Adam admitted. “But it does make me feel better somehow. As if I have some control over the situation, sorting it out. It’s hard to explain.”

  “I think you’re explaining it very well. The journal is a good idea. You can try just letting your mind wander, almost in an imaginary state, not editing or judging at all. Just writing the first thing that pops into your head. You may not realize it at the time, but ideas or images that come to you can be valuable clues to your past. Sometimes a person in your situation needs only one image, like a key, that will unlock the door to your memory.”

  “I’ll keep at it then,” Adam said. “Maybe I’ve been too analytical. I’ll try to let my thoughts wander more, try to relax and not force it so much.”

  “Let’s get back to the dream,” Dr. Carter said. “Why was it so frightening?”

  Adam described the nightmare much the same way he had described it to Miranda the night it woke him.

  “I guess the worst part about it was that it felt so real. More like a memory than a dream. It made me think I’ve been involved in some kind of crime. I was surprised the police didn’t find a record of my fingerprints. Maybe that’s just a matter of time,” he added, his voice troubled. “Or maybe I’ve just never been caught.”

  “Maybe,” the doctor said. “How are you behaving day to day, Adam? Do you feel the urge to act unethically? To steal money from Miranda’s purse, for instance?”

  Adam shook his head. “No, not at all. The thought never crossed my mind. I could never do something like that.”

  Adam turned to Miranda, and in that instant she was sure she could read his mind: the only vaguely unethical urges between them were romantic ones. Yet they both knew that he probably had commitments and ties elsewhere. And she, of course, was seeing Greg.

  Dr. Carter sat back in his chair. “Some people are prone to guilty feelings, Adam. Ironically, these are often people who have nothing to feel guilty about. I suspect you fall into this category, and the images in your dream that seemed so vivid were not actual memories but just a hodgepodge from your subconscious. Like debris on the ocean floor stirred up by a storm, these images were stirred up by the trauma you experienced that caused your memory loss.”

  “So, you’re saying the dream has nothing to do with my past? It wasn’t a memory?”

  Dr. Carter tilted his head to one side. “There’s no way in the world to be sure. I can say that until you have a distinct, clear memory about some event, or some person, it’s impossible to know what your life was like. If you’re really experiencing fragments of memory returning, then more distinct memories will emerge. Not just in dreams, but in your waking life. Or someone will find you and your past will emerge that way.”

  Adam nodded, seeming somewhat comforted. “What about hypnosis? Does that ever work?”

  “In some cases.” Dr. Carter paused, adjusting his glasses. “It depends on the subject, how well their psyche is protecting against the trauma. Sometimes we have a clue or some fragmen
t to work with, to lead us forward. That helps. There doesn’t seem to be any in your case, except the nightmare.”

  “So you’re advising against it?” Miranda asked.

  “No,” the doctor told them. “I’m only cautioning that it could take a while. Sometimes the first session of hypnosis doesn’t break through, but a second or even a third might be successful. Hypnosis doesn’t work in every situation, though. There’s no magic bullet, I’m afraid.”

  “I understand,” Adam said, and Miranda could tell he’d hoped for something more.

  Dr. Carter waited a long moment before speaking again. “We can try a hypnotherapy session today. Are you still interested?”

  “Yes, I am. Definitely,” Adam said, sitting up straight and alert in his chair.

  Dr. Carter nodded. “All right. I think Miranda should wait outside though. It will help you focus better.”

  “Yes, of course.” Miranda rose from her seat. She glanced down at Adam and lightly touched his shoulder. “See you later. Good luck.”

  He met her glance and smiled briefly.

  Miranda left the two men alone and quietly closed the door.

  Out in the waiting room, she picked up a magazine but didn’t open it. She could only think of Adam, what he was going through. She knew how much he wanted this to work, how frustrated he felt, how nearly hopeless. With all her heart, she wanted it to work for him. She wanted him to remember his place in the world, his identity. No matter that it would mean him leaving her, probably forever.

  That probably meant she loved him, she realized, if she wanted his happiness more than her own. The realization surprised her. And made her somehow feel happy and sad at the same time.

  ADAM WATCHED DR. CARTER DRAW THE WOODEN BLINDS so that there was hardly any light in the room. “Do you know anything about hypnosis, Adam?” the doctor asked.

  “I’ve read a bit about it.”

  “Perhaps you’ve read that the word hypnosis comes from a term that means ‘sleep of the nervous system.’ It has been described as a partial sleep, one in which the subject can listen and respond to the hypnotist. Generally, hypnotized people are more receptive to suggestion, though it’s believed the hypnotist can never make anyone do anything they wouldn’t do in waking life.”

  “I guess that’s a common fear. But I trust that you won’t tell me to go out and rob a bank,” Adam replied with a wry smile. “I’m pretty desperate to get my memory back, so I’ll have to take my chances.”

  Dr. Carter smiled back. “Yes, I guess you will. But the state of hypnosis is a familiar one, which people experience all the time. It’s very similar to being lost in thought, when you’re thinking so deeply about something that you lose track of your surroundings. Have you ever felt like that?”

  “All the time.” If he was writing in his journal or even painting at the Potters’, his mind slipped into that meditative state very easily.

  “Excellent. That’s the sign of an imaginative mind, which is good for this sort of therapy. When you’re hypnotized, the body is totally relaxed and focused. All logical levels of thought are bypassed, and the brain is in an altered state. Hypnotherapy is most commonly used to end some type of undesirable behavior, like overeating, or smoking, or phobias. Athletes use it to improve their performance. We’re going to use it for memory regression,” he added. “Though I must tell you that there is no way to distinguish an imagined or false memory from a true one. Only after you leave here, when you’re able to research some name or bit of information that surfaces, will you know for sure.”

  “I’ve read that, too,” Adam said. The doctor’s words made him think of his dream again. Would he talk about it once he was hypnotized? And was it real, or a false memory, as Dr. Carter believed?

  “I’m going to make a recording of the session. Then I’ll give you a copy of the tape when you go. You can listen to it on your own, and you might hear something that rings a bell for you.” Dr. Carter turned in his chair and began the tape player. He first gave the date and time and Adam’s name.

  “Okay, Adam, I’d like you to watch this pendulum. Just focus on it and relax your body completely.…”

  Adam did as Dr. Carter asked, focusing on the small silver object that swung from a string over the tabletop. His eyes followed it right, then left, then right again. That was all he remembered.

  Suddenly, Dr. Carter was calling him. “You can open your eyes and wake up now, Adam.”

  Adam opened his eyes. He felt embarrassed. He shook his head, as if to shake himself awake. “Wow…That was strange. I feel as if I’ve been sitting here, totally asleep.”

  “You just felt as if you were. You were an excellent subject. Very verbal.”

  “What did I say?” Adam leaned forward in his chair. “Anything important?”

  “Well, you didn’t remember your real name or where you live—or anything that definitive, unfortunately. You talked about an orange car. The number fifty-three came up a lot. Maybe that’s part of your address?”

  “What did you ask me?”

  “A list of questions devised for this type of session.” Dr. Carter lifted his yellow pad and Adam saw the long list. “It’s all on the tape. I asked you how you found your way into the orchard. You told me you just jumped.”

  “I jumped?”

  Dr. Carter nodded. “That’s right.…You weren’t wearing any skydiving gear when they found you, were you?”

  Adam smiled. “No, I think someone would have noticed that.” He grew serious again. “Did I mention anything about the nightmare? Any of those places I described from the dream?”

  “No, nothing at all.”

  Adam wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed to hear that. The vivid dream was the most substantial clue he had. He felt suddenly deflated. He watched as Dr. Carter removed the cassette, packed it in an envelope, and handed it to him.

  “When you listen to this, try to keep your mind open. Be nonjudgmental. Don’t dismiss anything as meaningless, even if it sounds strange or illogical.”

  “Like jumping into the orchard?”

  “Exactly.” Dr. Carter gazed down at him a moment. “Do you have any more questions for me, Adam?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” Adam tucked the envelope into his pocket and rose from his chair. His legs felt strange and heavy. He suddenly longed to get moving again. “Thanks for the information. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve helped you all that much. Take some time to listen to the tape and think it over. Keep working with your journal. If you would like to try hypnosis again, we can set up another session. If you’d like to return and talk some more, we can do that, too.”

  Adam thanked him again for his time. The two men shook hands, and Dr. Carter walked him out to the waiting room.

  Miranda jumped up from her seat when she saw the door open. She couldn’t help it. The magazine she’d been reading slipped from her lap and fell to the floor. She quickly read Adam’s expression and guessed that the hypnosis session had not been a miracle cure.

  She felt disappointed, too, she realized with a touch of surprise. Maybe she was ready to learn the truth about him.

  “How did it go?” she asked quietly.

  “I’m not really sure. I was out like a light.” Adam sighed. “The doctor said I didn’t come up with any real breakthrough, like my real name or my address. But he asked me a lot of questions and gave me a tape, so I can listen to it and try to figure out if I mentioned anything important.”

  “Well, it’s a start.” They walked out of the office and got into the elevator. She stood next to him and he stared straight ahead. He looked so dispirited, she fought the urge to put her arms around him in a comforting hug.

  When they stepped outside, it was nearly dark. The streetlights shone against the frosty air. They had been in a rush earlier to park and find the office on time. Miranda hadn’t even noticed that they were in the very heart of Newburyport. The town was much bigger than Cape
Light but just as beautifully decorated for the holidays, with garlands and lights across the main street and all of the shop windows filled with decorations.

  On a Friday night, the streets of Newburyport were bustling with restaurant- and moviegoers, and at this time of year, it was even more crowded than usual, with people Christmas shopping or meeting for parties.

  “Do you mind if we don’t go back right away? I’d like to check out the windows of some of the jewelry stores,” she told him.

  “Sure. I can use a walk. I feel as if I’ve been sitting for hours.”

  They strolled down the main street for a while and Miranda stopped at a store window, looking over the jewelry display. “That piece is nice,” she said, pointing to a rose-gold bracelet set with pink and green tourmalines.

  “Yeah,” Adam agreed. “But your work is just as pretty. Even nicer,” he added.

  Miranda smiled at him. She wasn’t sure if he was just trying to be encouraging or if he really meant it. Perhaps a bit of both.

  She turned from the window, and they started walking again. “Do you remember anything about the holidays, Adam? Or does all this fuss look very strange to you?”

  “I remember something about it. More of just a feeling, I guess. Not any specific day, where I spent it, or who was there.” He glanced at her and forced a smile. “You would think something like Christmas would stick in your memory.”

  “Yes, you would,” she agreed. She thought it was sad that he had no real memories of the holiday. Some of her favorite memories were of waking up on Christmas morning, rushing downstairs to open her presents, or sharing the day with her family.

  “I think you’re making progress.” She was trying to find something positive to say, something that wouldn’t make him feel worse. “Even if you haven’t unlocked any memories yet, visiting Dr. Carter was important.”

  “Thanks for coming with me,” he said. “That was important to me, too.”