Ivy clutched his arm. “But I don’t remember any of that! It can’t be true. How could I not remember being the King?”
Stonehouse said, “The King is, to all intents and purposes, dead. You aren’t him, really, so much as you’re his latest avatar.”
“But how could I not know?”
Chesterford patted her shoulder. “It might be easier if you thought of yourself as his daughter, with a great deal yet to learn.” He nudged Stonehouse’s arm. “Open the door, why don’t you, before your boy turns into an icicle.”
Stonehouse gave him a quelling look, then said to Ivy, “I wouldn’t worry if I were you. I’m fairly certain he left everything you need to know inside.”
He turns the handle and pushes open the door, and like a conjuring trick a flock of doves bursts out to circle against the blue sky.
Ivy looks at him warily. “You aren’t going to lock me up in here, are you?”
The three of them smile. Stonehouse says, “Didn’t you notice? I broke the key. The Palace can’t be locked up again. It isn’t a prison any longer.” He steps aside and bows. “Welcome home, your Grace.”
She looks at him, at the others shaking with cold. A delicious scent as of peaches and cloves drifts against their faces. “Thank you, Edmund,” says the Queen, and she steps inside.
Eyes shining with delight, her three ministers follow, leaving the door ajar. Warm perfumed air from the Palace spills out and, with the help of the sunlight, melts a path across the frozen cobbles to the street. With a flash of brown and a whistle of wings, a hawk darts out to scatter the doves still wheeling across the sky.
THE OTHER GRACE
i.
As if she dreamed she were walking, and wakes, and is still walking. Hot feet in heavy shoes. Dust and gravel. The side of a road. A car goes by. There is a ditch, a playing field, a mower. A car goes by. Exhaust and the fresh sap of cut grass. Blue sky. A car goes by. Mosaic without pattern. Dream, except she has awakened and the dream surrounds her. Walking. Her arms are full of books. She stops.
The boy beside her says, “What?”
She hadn’t realized. She looks. A face, bristle-cut hair. He makes no more sense than the rest. Sensation without sense. Suspended in the fragmentary world.
The boy beside her says, “Are you all right?”
She gasps. She has forgotten to breathe. She is not all right, but she does not know the word to say— She does not know.
“Grace?” The boy takes her arm. “You look like you’re going to faint.”
His hand is hot.
“Grace?” he says again.
Is that her name?
“Grace?”
She does not know.
A car pulls up beside them. An open car full of boys. The driver calls out, “Hey, Will! We’re going to Georgie’s for a malted before practice. Did you want to come with?”
The boy with his hand on her arm says, “Ted, can you give us a lift? I don’t think Grace’s feeling so good.”
“Sure, we can make room.”
A boy climbs from the back to the front. A car drives around the convertible and honks its horn. The mower in the field chatters and grumbles, close. The boy with his hand on her arm steers her. The boys in the car watch.
“Come on, Grace. Get in.”
There is no sense. She doesn’t know. The world has come apart and she is being pushed—pushed—
“Grace! What the hell’s the matter with you?”
She twists free. Books scatter in the dirt. A bright blue cover slides into the ditch. The boy reaches. She runs.
Running, it is as if she dreams, and, dreaming, cannot wake.
ii.
The heat broke with a rainstorm near dawn. The gully where she hid grew slick with mud. It stank. The rain was cold. Her hair, stiff and sticky with something, became tangled when she tried to push it off her face. The rain ran through it into her mouth and tasted of chemicals. The fear that shackled her loosened with the discomfort. She got to her feet and climbed through garbage-strewn bushes to the street. There was a streetlight, some houses across the way. She didn’t know what to do, but she was tired enough to be calm and calm enough to know she should do something. She asked herself where she lived but received no answer. How is memory supposed to work? As if some muscle in her head had gone to sleep. How does the body know how to move?
She said aloud, “I don’t know who I am.” Just to prove she knew the words. Just to prove the words made sense. They did, but there was no sense behind the sense. Behind the facade of reason, only nothing.
The rain matted her hair to her shoulders.
The police found her before the day was fully light, a black and white patrol car that slid past her and stopped. Fear broke through again, but the two men wrapped her up in a blanket and drove her away. Her skin felt strange inside the wet clothes inside the dry blanket. She wondered if it was strange because she had never felt it before, or strange because she couldn’t remember feeling it before. But she hadn’t noticed feeling dry before, so that was probably normal. People didn’t normally get wet and then wrap themselves in blankets.
Did they?
A delicate structure of logic that collapsed when the driver stopped the car at the hospital. She knew what that was, the same way she had known what the police car was, but there was no reassurance in the knowledge. She didn’t know what was supposed to happen. A policeman pried her out of the back seat and handed her like a package to a man and a woman in white clothes. They were strong and they barricaded her with their arms. The woman said soothing things, but they gave her no ground to stand on. She heard herself gasp for air.
They levered her up onto a high bed and a doctor came. He was a tired-looking man with neat dark hair and smudges under his brown eyes. He shone a pen light into her eyes and pushed his fingers through the sticky mess of her hair to probe her scalp. It stung when he pulled on a tangle.
He said, “So what’s your name, sweetheart?”
She had to reach for her breath. In. Out. In. Out.
“Sweetheart?” He touched her chin so she would look at his eyes. “Do you understand what I’m asking you?”
In. Out. Her body made two false starts before the nod came.
“What’s your name?”
The tension in her body spat out in jerks and twitches whenever she moved. She shook her head and the fear seemed to expand, stretching her skin. Other people were watching, a couple of women, a younger man. Nurses, her mind said. Intern.
“I’m not crazy,” she said. Gasped. On a breath.
“Okay, sweetheart,” the doctor said. He turned his head and spoke to one of the nurses, who parted the curtain around the bed and left. He turned back. “Do you remember what your name is?”
“No.” Gasp.
“That’s all right. Take it easy. You’re doing fine.” He peeled the blanket away from her and pulled at her arms. She had them locked tight against her chest. He moved slowly and carefully, but he was strong. “Let me take a look here, sweetheart. We have to make sure you aren’t hurt anywhere.”
“Not. I’m not.”
“Okay. Let’s just make sure.” He smoothed his hand up the inside of her left arm, and then her right. His skin was dry and warm. The other nurse came over to unlace her shoes. She pulled her knees close and tucked in her arms. The fear was huge and threatened to escape. The nurse who had left came back and said something about a family, with a little steel dish in her hand. There was a needle in the dish. The doctor and the other nurse were pulling at her limbs. If they untied her the fear would get loose. She tried to tell them that, but they didn’t listen. Maybe she couldn’t get the words out. There were three of them pulling now. She pulled back. The needle was out of the dish. Someone screamed.
A face at the curtain stared in.
The needle was in her arm and a huge relief was drowning her. She had seen that face before. The boy beside her on the road. She remembered. She remembered.
She was gone.
It was a slow awakening, nothing like the walking dream at all. She was so warm and limp in the bed she could hardly feel her legs and arms. In her easy breathing she could feel the soreness of—of the fear— It felt very distant. A fold of sheet lay against her throat, and after a while it began to feel heavy, a pressure instead of a touch. Somewhere rubber wheels squeaked, voices talked. There was light beyond her eyelids. She lifted her hand to push the sheet away and her wrist was caught short.
Fear took a step closer.
She opened her eyes and rolled her head and saw thick brown leather padded with sheepskin. Buckles, a strap, a metal rail. Both her wrists were bound. She turned her head to look at the other one—fear a little closer still—but there was a boy beside the bed, on a chair looking worried. The boy who’d been by her on the road.
“I remember you,” she said. Sleep was thick in her throat. She coughed it clear.
Relief washed over the boy’s face like a wave. He would be handsome when he was older, with his knobby nose and big jaw. His blue eyes were innocent under the harsh buzz of brown hair.
She said, “You’re the boy by the road.”
Relief crashed and died. “Don’t you—you don’t—remember. Before that.”
The sheet on her throat bothered her. She went to push it away and her wrist was caught. “Why am I— What are these for?”
His face pinched, discomfort added to worry. Embarrassment. Shame? “You fought. Before. The doctors.”
“I was scared.” Her breath left her on a sigh. She looked at the ceiling a while, then the boy. “I’m supposed to know you, aren’t I?”
Pain now. She was awed at how clear his face was. He said, muffling the words, “I’m your brother. Willis. Will.”
“And I’m, you called me, Grace.”
“Grandma’s name.” He put his elbows on his knees and looked at the floor. His brow was wrinkled, his skin red on pale. When he leaned over like that his face was cut in half by the metal rail on her bed. She tried to sit up but the wrist cuffs grabbed her again.
“Could you undo these for me, please?”
He looked anguished. She felt sorry for him. It was a struggle but with a shove from her legs she sat up after all. The cotton hospital gown she wore slipped off one shoulder. The air was cool. Blushing, the boy—Willis—got up and pulled the gown decent again. He even tied it behind her neck, his touch cool and tentative on her skin.
“Thanks,” she said.
He sat and tugged at his fingers.
“I don’t think I’m crazy,” she told him. “I just can’t remember.”
“But how— What happened?” He peered at her from under his wrinkled brow, then looked down. “They kept asking, the doctors, about drugs. Did you ever do any drugs, or did you ever drink at school. They said there wasn’t anything on the X-ray. They even called the school.”
The straps were long enough that she could stretch her fingers within half an inch of the other cuff. That, she decided, was an unnecessary tease. “Did I?”
“What?”
“Take drugs.”
“No. I don’t know.” Then he gave an angry shrug. “No. It’s stupid. You didn’t even— You don’t even like beer.”
She bent over to scratch her nose. When she straightened her matted hair fell over her face, and throwing it back made her dizzy. She squeezed her eyes shut, then open, and watched the black spots fade.
He said, “What was it like?”
“It was like waking up.”
He thought about that. “I’ve never seen anyone look so scared.”
“Well,” she said, “it was scary.”
He reached through the metal rails and unbuckled the cuff on her wrist.
“Thanks,” she said, and unbuckled the other one. The leather was supple and dark from use.
“I should go tell them you’re awake.” He got up and headed for the door, then paused to tap his fingers on the foot rail. “You going to be okay, do you think?”
She shrugged and scratched her wrist. The left one had a plastic strip around it, and the cuff had pressed it into her skin.
“I’ll go tell them,” the boy said, and he left. Willis. Her brother Will.
She wasn’t sure she believed it.
The parents looked like real people. Neither beautiful nor ugly, neither young nor old, they were tired and sad and holding themselves up inside. The mother had a graceful form and a rumpled dress with coffee-cream butterflies, black hair in a pony tail and lines and folds around her pretty blue eyes. The father looked a lot like Willis, older and craggier, with a nose crooked as well as knobbed at the bridge, and gray-brown hair cut nearly as short. He wore a blue striped shirt with short sleeves, buttons, and a collar. She could feel their need.
The mother said in a small voice, “How are you feeling, sweetheart?”
The father eyed the unbuckled restraints, then looked at her face and tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed.
She said, “All right.”
They stood by her bed looking at her and away. They took turns in a fashion that made them seem like a couple, a pair. She tried to use that recognition to open a door onto more, but it didn’t come.
“We were awfully worried about you, Grace,” the mother said. The father gave her a look that suggested that was something they weren’t supposed to say. The mother’s blue eyes filled with tears that didn’t fall.
The father’s eyes were gray. Willis’ eyes were blue.
She wondered what color her eyes were.
Fear was inside her again, and a sudden loneliness, her heart locked inside her throat. Her hands pulled blanket and sheet over her lap and burrowed beneath them.
“You don’t remember us at all, do you?” the mother whispered.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered back.
The father put his arm around the mother’s shoulders. Someone outside knocked on the door. The father said, “The doctors need to take a look at you, Grace. We told them we wouldn’t be long.”
The mother wiped at her eyes and said, “We just had to say hello. So you’d know we were here. So you’d know you’re not alone.”
“Okay,” she said.
Then the doctor came in.
He wasn’t the one from before. So far, Willis was the only person who had reappeared. This doctor was older, with a stiff brush of gray hair and eyebrows as black as his glasses frames. He noticed the undone restraints, but then he noticed everything, her eyes, her hands, the way she sat with her knees pulled up tight.
“Don’t be nervous.” He sat in the chair Willis had used. “I’m just going to ask you a few questions.” He lifted the clipboard in his hand. It was thick with papers. “Do you know what a neurologist is?”
“A brain,” she cleared her throat, “a brain doctor.”
“Right.” His eyes noticed her again. “Well, these questions I’m going to ask you are going to help me find out what’s happening inside your skull. Okay?”
There were tests first. Follow the light with your eyes, stand on one foot, squeeze my fingers. A stick that scraped the soles of her feet. Standing she felt sick and sluggish from the drugs, and cold, but she didn’t fall over or try to run. The doctor nodded to himself as he wrote on his clipboard. Then he flipped the page over and the questions began. Where was she, who was the prime minister, what was the year, what was the thing she would look at to know what the date was, what grade was she in, what town was she in, what time did his watch say and was it a.m. or p.m. and how did she know? And a dozen more, a hundred more, and a hundred more after that. Mapping out the limits of what she didn’t know. The size of the blank space was terrifying. She knew she was in a hospital, she knew what a calendar was, and she knew it was two in the afternoon because of the light coming through the window, but beyond that was formlessness. Groping in fog, except that again she had the sensation that the part of her brain that was supposed to do the groping was asleep, or missing, or dead. How do you
find a memory when you don’t know what it is you are looking for, or even how to look?
When the questions finally stopped and he was writing again, she sat in her bed and hugged the fear inside her.
He finished a note and looked at her again. “You can relax, Grace, you’re doing just fine.”
This was so obviously untrue she smiled.
He leaned toward her. “Tell me the first thing you remember.”
“Walking. I was walking, by the road. I had books. Willis, my brother, was there.”
“Did you know who he was?”
“No.”
“Did you know who you were?”
She shook her head.
“How did you know you didn’t know who you were?” He gave a little smile to show he knew how absurd that question sounded.
“He called me Grace. And I didn’t know. If that was my name.” She was holding the fear in so hard the words escaped in jerks.
“What happened next?”
“I ran. Away.”
“Why did you run?”
“I was scared.” Almost whispering now.
“Let’s go back for a minute, Grace. Tell me about when you were walking by the road. When did you notice something was wrong?”
“I didn’t notice. I woke up.”
“It felt like you were asleep?”
“Like I was dreaming. Like I dreamed. That I was walking. And then I woke up. And I was walking. And nothing made sense.”
“What didn’t make sense?”
“Everything. The world. Me.”
“You’re doing fine, Grace. How didn’t it make sense?”
“It was all—pictures and sounds and—smells and—it was all in pieces—everything—was around—me—crowding—in pieces—”
“All right, Grace.”
“—it didn’t make sense—”
“That’s good, Grace, you don’t have to—”
“—nothing made sense—”
“—say any more.” The doctor stood and put his hand on her shoulder. “Try to breathe, Grace. Take some deep breaths. That’s a good girl.”
The fear was tying knots in her body. He went to the door and she was glad because she wanted him to leave her alone. If she could just be alone she could wrestle the fear back again. But then he returned, and a nurse was behind him, and she had a needle in her hand.
In the Palace of Repose Page 4
