The Memory Thief

by Rachel Keener

  It was about that thing, that horrible thing that she did, that sent her to that room.

  And how Hannah suddenly knew there was something even worse than remembering it. Even worse than speaking of it. It was the possibility—however small, however misguided she was about Bethie’s words—of having a miracle occur, her miracle, just like everything else did. Without her.

  “I’m just ready,” she whispered to the camera. “I’ll tell you now. I will. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  III

  It started with dimples. Little crescent-moon creases. The kind you can only find in fat, running baby knees. Hannah was at the market when she saw them. Down the aisle a mother’s mouth pulled tight, yelled the dreaded words Time out. A little boy ran to her, buried his body in his mother’s legs until the only baby skin Hannah could see was one knee peeking out. Round and pink, a smudge of dirt across it. Hannah stared at those dimples, the truth swelling strong inside her like high tide. Baby would have had those knees.

  Hannah left the market and went to a party. It was for a three-year-old girl, the daughter of one of Daniel’s partners. The girl stared, wide-eyed, at a pile of gifts set before her. Everybody cooed over her, whispered “how sweet,” except Hannah. She hated that little girl. And loved her, too. Those eyes, that joy, all of it should have been Baby’s.

  Hannah left the party and walked ahead of Daniel. She told him she needed fresh air. She glanced at an old woman, at least eighty, leaning against a wall. She expected exhaustion, but when their eyes met she saw only Baby. She saw peace.

  She was building something new. A patchwork baby. And every day that followed she searched out new, stranger scraps to build with. It was the only thing she could do to distract herself from the truth that once Baby had been real. Even if she only held her for a moment. Even if she abandoned her.

  It was a hard word, abandon. One that her mind sometimes fought against. Mother’s the one that did it, she’d tell herself. But the truth always found her. And the truth was, she didn’t fight. She had broken every single one of Mother’s rules. She was immodest. She was impure. And so she had no idea why, when it was finally good for her to break the rules, when it was finally the right thing to do, she didn’t. She wouldn’t fight anymore. She let Mother take her daughter because she was afraid. If that’s not abandonment, she told herself, nothing is.

  One morning, not too long after the dimples, she dropped Daniel off at his office and returned to the market. She was supposed to be working with him that day. He had insisted on it, told her he was desperately behind in client billing. She knew it was a lie. But it was easier to agree with him than offer an excuse.

  She was supposed to run a quick errand to pick up coffee filters for the break room. But she found herself in the produce section. It would be the reason they said she planned it. They had the tape of her from the store security. It showed her standing there by the oranges going over each one. Looking around slowly. Baby shopping, that was what the prosecutor said she was doing. And, oh, there were so many babies that day. It seemed every woman in the world had one but her. They passed by in shiny carts. Babies with sippy cups of juice. Mothers singing, “Row Row Row,” and counting out apples.

  Hannah must have touched a hundred oranges that day. She held each one up to the light, pretending to inspect for flaws. “Watch her eyes,” the prosecutor said. “She doesn’t even see the orange. She’s a predator. She’s on the hunt.” Around the aisle came Baby. Hannah had waited so long for her. Wrapped in a soft blanket. Hannah could ignore the little ducks stitched around the edge. She could ignore the pink stripe down the center. She blinked her eyes and saw everything she’d ever desired: Baby Girl, wrapped in soft green cotton.

  Hannah followed her through the store. Always a safe distance behind. Baby started crying. And Hannah tried to name it. Hungry? Sick? The woman with her didn’t even look at Baby, just reached into her purse and popped a pacifier in her mouth. Baby Girl cried more.

  “Stop it,” Hannah whispered. “You’re not listening to her.” The pacifier fell, and the woman picked it up and sighed. Wiped it off and put it back in Baby’s mouth. Still she cried.

  “Listen to her,” Hannah whispered. “She doesn’t want a pacifier. She wants her mother.” The woman was sorting coupons. Searching for something on the shelf. She was too busy to listen. Too busy to hear what Baby was screaming: Mother! Mother!

  Hannah looked around the store quickly. She stepped toward Baby Girl. Their eyes met. And Hannah told her, Hannah promised her. She wasn’t too busy to listen. She wasn’t too afraid to fight anymore. She’d never abandon her. They belonged together.

  IV

  Dr. Vaughn sat inside Hannah’s room, not writing but listening. When Hannah finished, Dr. Vaughn smiled. “You did good.”

  Hannah sighed and dropped her head into her hands.

  “I was just wondering about when they found you. The report says they found you at home later that day. Why did you go there?”

  “I wanted to rock her. I wanted to feel what it would be like to have my nest full. To have a baby in my empty nursery.”

  “You were arrested and the baby was returned unharmed.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then your husband began his fight. Do you know how hard he fought to have you placed here instead of in a state prison?”

  “He asked me over and over to tell him what happened. To tell him why.” Hannah sighed. “I couldn’t look at him.”

  “He made deal after deal, stacked favor upon favor, to get you to us.”

  “I do remember one thing, his last words,” Hannah said. “He said he was going to find someone to fix me.” She looked up at Dr. Vaughn. “So fix me.”

  “I’ll do my best. But you’ve owned your crime tonight. Now you’ve got to find peace with it.”

  Hannah shivered. Peace. Had she ever known it? Even as a girl, a baby girl with her nose pressed up against a false bridge, there was always something off. Tiny cracks in the plate.

  “Hannah,” Doctor Vaughn said softly, “you had a baby when you were seventeen. She was adopted by another family. You do not know her. You may never know her. And that may not be the best thing. It may not be your dream or your vision. But that is your story. And when you own it, when you accept it, then you will begin to heal.”

  Hannah nodded slowly.

  From then on, doctors came to her room every day to ask hard questions. About growing up as a Holy Roller. About Sam and then Daniel. About what it meant, what it felt like, to have a daughter. To never know her.

  Hannah learned how to answer to the doctors’ satisfaction, even as she wondered what good it could do. To pretend that a life like hers, an ache like hers, could be reduced to a few quick sentences. Say it dryly enough, fast enough, and the pain might disappear.

  Flowers were brought to her room. A simple spring mix of soft colors. Hannah restrained herself around them. Her first thought, the one that worried her, the one that proved crazy, was to taste them.

  It was because they were more than beautiful. They were excessive. So much color. So much perfume. It seemed wasteful to enjoy them with only one or two senses and not more. Taste them, her mind demanded. She snapped her mouth shut and sat on her bed and watched them. When the petals fell as the flowers died, she saw splashes of paint. Picked them up and arranged them into rainbow swirls across her white floor.

  Next, came noise. The doctors turned the intercom on, even when they weren’t speaking to her. She heard them talk about the coffee, how it tasted burnt. She heard them typing at their computers. She heard the radio playing in the background. The phone ringing. People arguing. People laughing.

  Soon the man that carried the meal trays left a menu. When Hannah picked it up she didn’t read Grilled Chicken Sandwich or Baked Cod. She rearranged letters. Searching out all the new words she could create. Her eyes saw the pencil on the tray. Check off one entrée choice, please. She picked it up and turned the
menu over. Slowly, with careful marks, she drew a flower. A clear pencil design across vanilla cardstock.

  Repetition was key. The doctors had Hannah repeat her story—what she did, why she did it—on a daily basis. They had her say, over and over, that she was a mother. That she might never know her daughter. She had to own it, they told her. She had to stop running from it. She had to be able to talk about it. To tell people, to allow people to know the real Hannah. It was the hiding, they told her. That was what drove her to take that baby. The pretending that everything was okay. She was simply trying to make her fantasy become reality.

  She didn’t ask them about going home. About freedom and being well. She already knew the answer. It was up to them. They could keep her as long as they wanted. They could keep her until they believed she was truly well.

  So she read the menus. She marked off her entrée choice. She listened to the intercom, the flow of random noise that spilled into her room. She met with doctors every day. She answered the questions. She told the right story. And she waited.

  “Have you thought of what it would be like to see Daniel?” Dr. Vaughn asked one day.

  Hannah nodded slowly, careful to hide the pain and joy that surged together inside her.

  “He’s here today. I didn’t tell you before because I want you to speak to him from your heart. I didn’t want you to worry or practice.”

  Hannah turned to Dr. Vaughn. “Bring me a mirror.”

  As Daniel walked the hall toward her room, Hannah studied herself slowly. The white hair, hanging limp at her shoulders. The pale skin. The tiny lines around her eyes. She wished for mud to smear across her hands. She wished for paint to smear across her chin. She wished the whole room were yellow instead of white. So she could frame her body with her best color, with something almost heavenly.

  When he walked in, Hannah stood in the middle of the room. Unsure of what she should do, just like old times, when she used to find him waiting for her in the Great Room. He hurried to her, hugged her tightly. His hand reached up to her head and pushed it against his shoulder.

  “Hannah,” he whispered. “Put your arms around me.”

  She slid her arms up and around his neck.

  “Let me see your eyes,” he said.

  As he stared at her, she wished that she hadn’t asked for the mirror. Wished she didn’t know exactly what he saw.

  “I’m different,” she said. “They cut my hair.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m different, too.”

  Hannah saw the patches of gray above his temples. Had it really been three years since she’d seen him? Three years? She thought of all the nights they hadn’t spent together. All the breakfasts she hadn’t prepared for him.

  “I’m sorry,” she choked, as she laid her head against his shoulder.

  “It’s all right.”

  “No. It’s not. Nothing is. Daniel, I had a baby when I was seventeen. I’ve spent every year after that trying to pretend it never happened. Trying to make up for the fact that it did. But I can’t.” Hannah sobbed against his shoulder. “And it doesn’t feel all right. I should have told you the truth—”

  “I knew,” he interrupted. “Your mother told me.”

  “What?”

  “She told me. About Sam. About when you were seventeen.”

  “She told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe you. She wouldn’t. Everything, every lie I’ve told since then has been because of her. She promised me—”

  “I’d had some friends track down information on the family that called to offer us the baby. The trail led back to your mother’s hotel. There was a worker there, a former prostitute she’d hired from a truck stop. She had a fifteen-year-old sister who was pregnant. Your mother found out. Offered the family twenty thousand dollars if they would give you that baby.”

  “Mother,” Hannah whispered.

  “Yes. I called the family myself and heard from them that the deal had been called off long ago. You hadn’t told me. And you were still fixing up that nursery. I knew then something bad was wrong. So I went to her. Told her I needed answers. Asked her what she was fighting.”

  “Fighting?”

  “There’s a war inside you. I’ve known that from the beginning. She was still trying to fight it.”

  “All those years she groomed me to pretend it never happened. It’s the reason we settled on the mountain, changed our name. So that I could start over. So we could all start over. And then she just tells you—”

  “You could have told me, Hannah.”

  “It wouldn’t have changed anything that happened.”

  “Might have. I would have at least known what to fight.”

  They sat on the edge of her bed together and Hannah told him about Baby Girl. How Mother staged a false reunion, shortly after the failed adoption. What Baby Girl looked like the day she was born. How sometimes it was hard to remember, and that was why Hannah had created her from the scraps of strangers. Daniel told her about the trial. Hannah, out of her mind, had missed much of it. Daniel told her about the doctors he hired. How Bethie testified on her behalf, and how he forced Mother to testify, too. She nearly went to jail for contempt when she wouldn’t answer his questions.

  “So the whole world knows, then,” Hannah whispered.

  “It had to come out. I had to prove that your motive was pain, not evil, if I was ever going to get you placed here instead of with the State.”

  Everyone knew. The judge. The newspapers. Guests at the hotel. Her customers at the artisan’s fair. It was in all the records. Like the ones Hannah’s parents had paid so much money to avoid. She’d never hide it from anyone ever again. There was nothing to pretend anymore. Everyone already knew.

  “No more secrets,” she said.

  “There’s still one,” Daniel said lowly. “I’ve spent so many nights thinking about the pottery. Every single piece broken, Hannah… all my favorites. Was that message—was it meant for me?”

  Hannah shook her head. “It happened the night before… when you were working late.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I know what’s in the mist. What nobody else could figure out. And I couldn’t bear to see it anymore.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s home.” She turned from him, until her whole body faced the wall. “With every stroke of paint, with every layer of color, I was painting home. Not ours.” She began to cry. “Hers. Sometimes I just painted myself. Because my body was the only home we ever shared. Other times, I painted the unknown. All the places she may have lived. All the somewheres she might be.”

  Daniel’s arms slid around her, pulling her to him. They sat there together, until her whole body relaxed against him. He leaned down and kissed her forehead.

  “You should know better,” she whispered bitterly. “I’m not safe to love.”

  “No,” he agreed. “But I knew that about you, I loved that about you, from the very beginning. Love is an emergency. Remember? If we have that, who needs safe?”

  A five-minute warning was called out from the intercom. And it occurred to Hannah, for the first time since Daniel had walked into her room, that he would have to leave. It was up to Legion when she would see him again. It was up to Legion, if she would see him again. And as she started to cry, he told her to be strong. To fight the war with him. For him.

  Hannah remembered her sister then, and how Bethie had screamed her good-byes. Screamed those magic last words.

  “Have you seen Bethie?” Hannah asked. “She came here a few months ago. Have you seen her? Did she say anything?”

  Daniel shook his head. “I haven’t seen your family since the trial. But last week there was a message from Bethie on the machine.”

  “Did you call her back?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not? What if she needed you?”

  “No. It had something to do w
ith your art, I think. A piece of yours she’s found and thought I’d want. I’ll call her back tonight, don’t worry.”

  “Daniel,” Hannah cried. “Tell me exactly what her message said.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. Tried his best to remember the right words. “Hi, this is Bethie. I need to meet with you… There’s something of Hannah’s here… I can’t describe it on the phone. You’ll have to see it to believe it.”

  ANGEL

  I

  In the middle of the night I heard them, right outside the door. They were loud. Every once in a while they shushed each other and tried to be quiet. I couldn’t make out their words, but their voices were new. And that was all that mattered.

  “Hello?” I cried. “Is somebody there?”

  It was quiet for a moment. And then a man answered.

  “Who are you?”

  It was a test. The old woman was testing me, to see if I would keep my end of the bargain. I sighed.

  “I’m Lily.”

  “Lily who?”

  “Adams.”

  “Are you her?” he called out. “Are you Hannah’s daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you let us in?” he asked.

  “I’m tied to the bed.”

  They raised their voices again, and this time they didn’t bother to shush one another. Someone tried to force the door open. It didn’t work. I knew then, when I heard the boom of a shoulder against that door, they were coming to rescue me. I knew when I heard the knob rattle and shake in its socket, they weren’t with the old woman.

  “We’ll be back, Lily,” the man called out. “We’ll be back for you.”

  I waited all night. I lay there in total darkness, my eyes playing tricks sometimes. Imagining I saw light coming from under the door. Imagining I heard them whisper. But they never came.

  The old woman did, though. The next morning she walked in happy.

  “Good morning, Lily. How have you been?”