The Promise Girls

by Marie Bostwick

  “Yeah,” she said. “I get that.”

  Chapter 13

  Asher hated meetings. Yet, he was the one who had called this meeting with Dr. Handley and Dr. Simon Patel, the head of the hospital’s psychology department. When they were seated in the hospital’s family conference room, Dr. Patel started the conversation.

  “Mr. Hayes, I’ve spoken with your wife. I didn’t detect any signs or symptoms of depression. Can you tell me what leads you to think otherwise?”

  “I didn’t say she was depressed,” Asher clarified. “I just thought she might be. I thought it might help explain why she can’t remember anything, and the way she was behaving before the accident.”

  “And how was that?”

  “Moody, crabby. She and Trina were always getting into it. Though Trina is really good at pushing Meg’s buttons. But it wasn’t just Trina. Some days she’d barely speak to me. It’d been that way for three or four months. I had started to think that maybe . . .”

  “Maybe?” Dr. Patel prompted.

  “I thought she might be pregnant. I hoped she was.” He shrugged. “We wanted more kids, but had a couple of miscarriages. It was tough on her, on both of us. After a few years, we stopped trying. But she’s still young enough and, you know . . . Accidents happen. I thought maybe she wouldn’t want to tell me about it until she was pretty far along. Just in case something happened. But, obviously, I was wrong. They ran a pregnancy test in the ER. So now I’m wondering if her moodiness could somehow be related to the memory loss. Maybe there’s a psychological explanation.”

  “It’s the swelling,” Dr. Handley interjected. “That’s the explanation. As I told you and your sisters-in-law, swelling to the brain can cause—”

  “Memory loss. I know what you said. You also said that it’s very unusual for someone to completely lose her memory, like Meg has. And you said that it would be temporary.”

  “Mr. Hayes, it’s only been a few days.”

  “Seven,” he said, his voice even but firm. “Have you ever had a patient who totally lost their memory and still hadn’t gotten it back after seven days?”

  Dr. Patel leaned closer and spoke in a friendly tone as if addressing someone he’d known for some time.

  “Mr. Hayes, I can certainly see why you’d be looking for a psychological cause to explain your wife’s condition. But I didn’t see any sign of that. Of course, it’s possible that she was trying to put up a good front for me, but it’s pretty hard for a patient to fool me. From a psychological standpoint, she appears to be fine. Actually, she seems quite happy.”

  “I know. And I think that maybe losing her memory is the reason why.”

  Dr. Patel nodded slowly. “Ah. You think your wife has unconsciously suppressed memories of her past because they’re too painful?”

  “That can happen, can’t it?”

  “Well . . . in cases of severe psychological trauma, memories can be blocked. It’s a sort of survival method, a means of protecting the mind from something too painful to endure. We sometimes see it in children who survive physical or sexual abuse, and occasionally in adults, as a response to extreme emotional stress. It’s not impossible, but highly unlikely that—”

  Dr. Handley interrupted. “I still say that it’s the swelling. The most recent MRI still shows some brain inflammation, particularly in the left temporal lobe, one of the areas that affects memory. We should be focusing on neurological causes.”

  Dr. Patel looked at Asher, his voice gentle in contrast to Dr. Handley’s strident tone. “I’d be happy to conduct a more thorough interview with your wife, Mr. Hayes. But I tend to agree with Dr. Handley. Unless Mrs. Hayes has undergone some traumatic event that you haven’t shared with us, it doesn’t seem to me as if—”

  Asher cut him off. “What if I told you that her maiden name was Promise, Meghan Elizabeth Promise? And that her sisters are Joanie and Avery Promise, would that convince you?”

  “Your wife is one of the Promise sisters?” Dr. Patel looked taken aback. “Really,” he said, sounding almost impressed.

  Dr. Handley frowned. “I don’t understand. What’s a Promise sister?”

  “You never read the book? The Promise Girls? It came out about twenty years ago.”

  “Twenty years ago I was in medical school,” Dr. Handley said defensively. “I wasn’t reading anything except organic chemistry textbooks.”

  “It caused quite a sensation. Especially after the author, the girls’ mother, had a meltdown and struck one of the daughters on national television,” Dr. Patel informed his colleague. “They replayed the tape over and over again on all the daytime talk shows. I was doing my residency at the time and I remember discussing it with the other residents. We diagnosed the mother as having narcissistic personality disorder. But,” he added quickly, “that was just medical resident hubris based upon one sensational video of a person at her very worst. It wasn’t a complete picture.”

  “No,” Asher said, “that sounds about right. Meg told me all kinds of stories about Minerva when we first met. After a while, she stopped talking about it. She said that thinking about it just made her feel bad.

  “The state took all three girls away from Minerva. Meg was separated from her sisters because they couldn’t find a foster family that would take all of them. Joanie was in foster care for less than a year, but Meg spent almost three years in the system.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “She came to Seattle and moved in with Joanie. That’s how we met. I was doing some remodeling for Joanie on weekends, helping fix up her house. When Meg moved in, I fell for her pretty fast. We got married six weeks after we first met.”

  “Six weeks? That was fast.”

  Asher smiled. “When you know, you know. And the first time I laid eyes on Meg, I knew. So why wait?”

  “How did her sister feel about that?”

  “Joanie hosted the wedding, baked a big cake and everything. Meg was always close to Joanie, more like a mother than a sister, and Joanie was happy that Meg was happy. She’d been through an awful lot up to then.

  “The lady Meg was living with, the foster mom, was really a witch. She’d tell Meg that she could see Joanie, but then, if Meg did anything wrong—say even if she didn’t put away the dishes in the dishwasher the right way—she canceled the visit.” Asher’s fingers curled into a fist and he clenched his jaw. “If I ever run into her.”

  Dr. Patel said, “Sounds like you felt pretty protective of Meg. Do you still feel that way? Like it’s your job to protect her?”

  Asher drew his brows together into a small frown. “I’m her husband,” he said, as if that should answer the question. “I just want her to get well and be happy.”

  “And she wasn’t happy before,” Dr. Patel said, a confirmation rather than a question. “Not until she woke up after the accident.”

  Asher pushed his body slightly back from the table, addressing both doctors.

  “Listen, I just want her out of here. She needs to go home, to be in familiar surroundings and spend time with the family. Once she’s home, she’ll start remembering again. Don’t you think?”

  “It couldn’t hurt,” Dr. Handley said. “Barring any complications, she should be ready to go by Monday.” She looked toward her colleague. “Unless you can think of any reason we should keep her longer?”

  Dr. Patel shook his head. “No, I agree with Mr. Hayes. Going home may be the best thing for her. However, Mr. Hayes . . . Asher . . . I know how anxious you are for life to return to normal. But keep in mind that Meg may feel differently.”

  Asher’s frown became a scowl. “You don’t think she’ll want to come home?”

  Dr. Patel took off his glasses and laid them on the table.

  “I’m saying, go slowly. Give her space and time. The Meg who woke up in the hospital is not the same woman you knew before the accident. It might be good for you to think of her that way, as someone you are just beginning to know. Last time when you wooed and wo
n your wife, you were in a hurry, impatient for life to begin. This time, go slowly. Reveal yourselves to each other bit by bit, as if you were meeting each other for the first time. Because, for Meg, it will be.”

  Chapter 14

  As the car approached Asher and Meg’s house, Joanie spotted Trina kneeling next to a planter, angrily tugging at tufts of grass and dandelions from the beds and then throwing them into a plastic bin.

  “Looks like Trina is in a bad mood,” Joanie said to Walt.

  “Trina’s always in a bad mood.”

  It was hard to disagree with him. Whatever happened to that sweet, sunny, adoring little girl who used to cling to her mother so closely that Meg had nicknamed her “Velcro-Child”?

  Naturally, Trina was upset after the accident, but the incessant moodiness had been going on for a couple of years now. Meg was always talking about it, trying to figure out what had happened.

  “I’m serious,” Meg told Joanie a few months back. “One day, I was scrambling eggs for breakfast and a completely different person climbed down the loft ladder than the one who’d climbed up the night before. Like some kind of alien entered her body. If Trina slept in a real bed instead of on a mattress on the floor, I’d have looked under it to check for the pod.”

  Still. Poor Trina. This had to be so hard for her.

  “Just be nice, okay? Maybe you could give her a hand with the weeding?”

  The look on Walt’s face told Joanie he’d rather eat the weeds than spend time helping his cranky cousin pull them, but he didn’t say so.

  “How about mowing the lawn?” Joanie suggested.

  “Fine. At least I won’t be able to hear her talk.”

  “Hey!” Joanie called to her niece as they got out of the car. “Looks like you’re getting everything in shape for your mom’s homecoming.”

  Trina tugged at a dandelion. “Dad wants everything perfect for the return of The Amnesiac. You’d think the president was coming to visit or something.”

  “We brought dinner—lasagna, a Caesar salad, and an apple cake,” Joanie said cheerily, ignoring Trina’s grumbling. “Walt, can you put all that in the refrigerator? And then why don’t you get out the lawn mower?”

  Walt went inside. Joanie knelt down next to her niece and reached for the nearest weed. “It’ll be easier if you get your hand down close to the ground before you pull. And if you shake the dirt off the roots before you throw them away, it’ll leave more soil in the flowerbeds.”

  Joanie demonstrated the technique. When she looked up again, she saw two tears rolling out from beneath Trina’s sunglasses.

  “Oh, sweetie,” she said, and quickly brushed the dirt from her hands, ready to hug her niece. “Don’t cry. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “No, it’s not,” Trina sniffled. “Justin Able asked Taylor MacLean to the spring formal. I just read it on Facebook.”

  Trina removed her sunglasses and rubbed at her eyes with a dirty hand. Joanie silently thanked God for giving her a son. Girls could be so self-absorbed. But maybe it was better for Trina to be crying over a boy than her mother’s illness.

  “I don’t care,” Trina mumbled, which Joanie knew was what she said when she did care. “I don’t have money to buy a dress anyway.”

  “I could make you a dress. When’s the dance?”

  Trina’s big brown eyes filled with a new flood of tears. “Sometimes I wish you were my mom,” she said in a choked voice.

  “Oh, Trina. Stop. You know you don’t mean that.”

  “I can’t talk to her the way I can to you. Now she doesn’t even know me,” Trina said bitterly. “Or Dad. How can a mom forget her whole family?” Trina collapsed onto Joanie’s shoulder, sobbing silently, her lithe, little body quaking.

  “It’s the accident, honey. She can’t help not being able to remember.”

  “How do you know?” Trina sniffled. “Maybe she wants to forget us. She and Dad weren’t getting along before. Every time he’d ask her something she’d just cut him off, like she didn’t want to talk to him. And the two of us are always arguing about something. I’m usually the one that starts it,” she admitted. “I don’t know why. If I had me for a daughter, maybe I wouldn’t want to remember me either.”

  Joanie pushed Trina to arm’s length so she could look her niece in the eye.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “Your mom and dad are crazy about you. Did you know that, after you were born, your mom sold her bicycle so she’d have enough money to buy a camera to take pictures of you? You were the most photographed baby in Seattle. She’d stop people on the street to show them pictures of you.”

  Trina blinked. “Really?”

  “Really. It was actually kind of obnoxious,” Joanie said with a smile. “Look, maybe you’re not getting along with your mom right now, but if you check with your girlfriends, I bet a lot of them would say the same thing.”

  “I don’t have friends. Everybody thinks I’m some kind of a freak, a loser.”

  “Yeah, well, I bet most of the girls at school feel the same way about themselves. Take a poll sometime. Look, Treenie-Bean. Of course it hurts that your mom doesn’t remember you, but it isn’t because she doesn’t want to. Really. What if you looked at this as a chance to get to know her all over again? And to let her get to know you? You know, a fresh start.”

  Trina bit her lower lip, looking doubtful, but finally said, “You think?”

  “It couldn’t hurt to try.”

  “I guess . . .” Trina shrugged.

  Joanie smiled. “Good girl. Now, let’s get back to the formal. How much time do I have to make you a dress?”

  “End of May. But it doesn’t matter, Aunt Joanie. Nobody wants to go to the dance with Freakazoid Science Geek Girl. It was winning the freshman science fair that did it. I should have just made a stupid volcano model like everyone else instead of a computer model of the ‘Location and Characteristics of Brown Dwarf Stars.’ Social suicide,” she mumbled, shaking her head.

  “Walt could take you,” Joanie said. “I don’t think he has a date yet. At least he hasn’t said anything about it. I doubt he even knows there is a spring formal.”

  “Go with my cousin?” Trina’s eyes grew wide with horror. “No way! That’s like announcing to the entire world that I am un-dateable!”

  Walt came around the corner of the house, pushing an aged lawn mower. “Honey, do you have a date to the spring formal yet? Would you like to take Trina?”

  Trina groaned and buried her face in her hands. Walt’s eyebrows lifted into an anguished arc. Joanie gave him a pleading look and silently mouthed the words, “I will make you a pie. TWO pies,” exaggerating the movement of her lips.

  There was almost nothing Walt wouldn’t do for a homemade marionberry pie, which was why she made them only on special occasions, reserving them for times when Walt had done something really good or if she was asking him for a huge favor. Taking Trina to the formal definitely qualified as the latter.

  “Uh . . . sure. I guess.”

  Trina lowered her hand from her face.

  “I wouldn’t have to buy her a corsage or anything, would I?”

  “No,” Trina said quickly, answering for herself. “That would just be creepy. And if we go out to dinner, we can split the bill.”

  “Okay. Sure. Why not?” Walt’s face brightened. “Hey, can I wear my general uniform?”

  Trina clutched her aunt’s arm. Joanie felt fingernails digging into her flesh.

  “You have to wear a suit. Or a tux. Whatever the other boys will be wearing.”

  “Tux,” Trina said.

  “I don’t own a tux,” Walt countered.

  “We’ll rent one. So, that’s all settled?” Joanie asked, looking from her son to her niece and getting two somewhat hesitant nods in response. “Good.”

  She peeled Trina’s fingers from her arm and got to her feet.

  “Where’s your dad?”

  “Out back, trying to finish up Mom’s house.”
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br />   “Your mom’s house?”

  “Yeah,” Trina replied, a touch of snark creeping back into her voice. “Since Mom doesn’t remember either of us and we don’t have a guest room, Dad is giving her a tiny house in the backyard, just like Aunt Avery’s.”

  * * *

  Asher was hammering shingles onto the roof of a tiny house that did look very similar to Avery’s. He had his earbuds in and was humming with the music. Joanie wondered it if was The Ramones.

  When she met Asher for the first time, they were standing in line for mango empanadas at a summer street fair. “Rockaway Beach” was playing over the loudspeaker. The line was long. They started talking.

  Joanie had moved to Seattle just a few months before, about the same time Asher dropped out of the University of Washington, where he’d been studying English. He told her he’d grown up outside of Spokane, in a family of modest means. Faced with taking out another round of student loans and realizing that, even should he graduate, the market for sixty-page papers on Beat poets was fairly limited, he decided to leave school, stay in Seattle, and get a construction job.

  “Don’t feel sorry for me,” he said when Joanie expressed her regret about his choice. “Carpentry is great, very satisfying. I get to create something tangible that people can use and at night I get to go home and read anything I want. I only majored in English because I love books. But reading them isn’t the same as studying them. I’d rather put my eye out with a drill bit than read one more page of Milton. What a blowhard!” he said, then laughed and laughed.

  That was what attracted her to him initially, that ability to accept himself as he was and life on his own terms, to find the best in every situation.

  Having grown up surrounded by a particular brand of academics and artists, Joanie knew that a certain segment of the world delighted in mocking those who make lemonade from lemons. For those ivory tower types, the mark of intelligence lies in recognizing and expounding upon the extent of life’s misery with extra credit for glorifying humanity’s hopelessness and inability to alter its pathetic condition.