The Marble Collector

by Cecelia Ahern

  It’s evening now. The cafeteria is all closed up apart from the tea/coffee facilities, which we help ourselves with. Dad is asleep, he was asleep from the moment I parked and ran inside like I was hunting him down. I’m glad. Even though the swim calmed me down, it stops me from barging in there and asking him about everything that has come out today.

  I don’t have to say anything and Lea just knows, Dad has always said that about her. A skill we all wish we had, and wish the nearest and dearest to us had. Like Aidan, for example. I would just like him to know how I feel without having to ask, because he asks me all the time, convinced something is so wrong with me, with us, that he needs to fix it. Two months we’ve been going to a marriage counsellor yet there’s nothing wrong with our marriage. It’s me. I’m closed. I’m all inside. This is what he tells me. But I’ve always been like that, I don’t know why it’s bothering him now.

  Yes, I do know; he said so at the last session: he feels like I’m not happy with him. But I am. There’s nothing wrong with him.

  Are you happy?

  Yes I’m happy with you.

  Are you happy with yourself?

  Jesus, Aidan, you’re starting to talk like one of those counsellors.

  Yeah, I know, but are you happy with yourself?

  Yeah. I am. I like my job, I love my kids, I love you.

  Yeah, but that’s not yourself.

  What is it if my job, my kids and my husband aren’t myself? I shout.

  I don’t know. Relax, I’m just asking, you’re stressed.

  I’m only bloody stressed because you keep asking. Okay, fine, you want to do this, let’s do this. Am I happy with myself? Yes, I am mostly, but I’m tired, exhausted, up at seven, breakfast, school lunches, school drops, work, collection, lunch, activities, dinner, bath, bed, sleep. Do it again. Butter, ham, cheese, bread, slice. Raisins. Next.

  But we can’t really change that, can we? The kids have to get to school. You have to work.

  Exactly, so stop asking.

  But would you like to change your job?

  No! I like my job.

  Do you?

  Do I? Yes, I do. But lately, no.

  And another thing: I’d like to lose the weight I put on after Alfie. Seven pounds. My tits are full of fat, I want that gone. I want to be able to do the splits in a bikini on the beach while we’re at it, while everyone’s looking.

  So work out.

  I don’t have time.

  Yes you do, in the evening, I’ll stay home, you go out. Go walking with the ladies around the block.

  I don’t want to fucking walk with the fucking ladies around the fucking block – all they do is gossip and ramble, I don’t want a gossipy ramble. Stop laughing at me, Aidan.

  Sorry. So join a gym. Go swimming for yourself, you never get to do that any more.

  In the evenings, Aidan? When I’m so tired all I want to do is lie down or watch TV on the couch. Or be with you, because if I went out in the evening, when would I be with you?

  Stay up an hour later.

  But I’m already fucking wrecked.

  Okay, okay, stop swearing so much.

  Sorry. I just don’t want to have to ask you a favour to mind the kids while I go to the gym of all places. I’d rather do something else, like go out. Feels like a wasted favour.

  Is that it? You want to go out more? You always say you’re too tired, that you don’t want to go out.

  I am too tired. And I’m tired of this conversation.

  I just want to help you, Sabrina, I love you.

  And I love you too. Really, it’s not you, it’s not anything, you’re just making it something.

  You’re sure? It’s not because of …

  No. It’s not because of that. I’m over that. I don’t even want to talk about that. It’s not that.

  Okay. Okay – you’re sure?

  Am I sure?

  Yeah. Yeah I am.

  Do you want me to do more around the house? Help out more?

  No, you’re great, you do enough, remember we filled out that list of duties at the last session, you’re great, you do way more than I thought, you’re great, Aidan, it’s not you.

  But it’s something?

  Aidan, stop it. No it’s nothing. There’s nothing.

  If there is, tell me, because it’s hard to tell with you, Sabrina. I can’t read you. You’re quiet, you know. You keep it all inside.

  Because I don’t want to make a big deal of things, because there’s nothing wrong, because you’re making this all dramatic and really everything’s fine. I’m just tired that’s all, some day the kids will be older and I won’t be tired.

  Okay. And I’ll take them camping on Friday and you can have a day to yourself, rest after work, don’t lift a finger, don’t do anything, okay?

  Okay.

  ‘Tell me, what did you discover?’ Dr Loftus asks.

  Dr Hotness, in Lea’s words, was about to leave work when I dived into the pool, but word spread and he came to see me. And while I appreciate it, I hope I don’t have to pay for this session. I tell Dr Loftus about everything I’ve learned today about Dad, about his double life, and I wonder how much of this Dr Loftus already knows, if he has been speaking with Cat and Dad’s brothers for the past year, if everyone has known everything all along, apart from me. I now know how it feels to be Dad, for everyone around you to know things that you don’t know, and it’s upsetting. It has knocked me off my axis. And I think what hurts me the most is that in some version of his life, I didn’t exist, that he chose for that to happen. I swallow the lump in my throat before continuing.

  Dr Loftus is quiet.

  ‘Did you know about this?’ I ask.

  He ponders this slowly. ‘They came to me at various points during Fergus’s rehabilition to try and help, offer information that they felt I should know about him that he no longer knows, and so yes I do know about some of what you say, but not its entirety, and certainly not that he had been using his brother’s name. This is new.’ He thinks. ‘With a stroke there is often memory loss. You know this, we’ve discussed it before. Confusion or problems with short-term memory, wandering or getting lost in familiar places, difficulty following instructions – we’ve seen some of these with Fergus. The memory can improve over time, either spontaneously or through rehabilitation, and we’ve seen signs of both of these working using the brain retraining techniques. However …’ He shifts in his seat and moves forward, elbows on the rickety table, shirtsleeves rolled up, the tired eyes of a man who’s had a long day. ‘Repression, or dissociative amnesia as it’s sometimes referred to, is a different matter altogether. Repressed memories are hypothesised memories having been unconsciously blocked, due to the memory being associated with a high level of stress or trauma. Repressed memories are a controversial issue; some psychologists think it occurs in victims of trauma, some dispute that. Some think it can be recovered through therapy, again others dispute that.’

  ‘You think my dad has deliberately repressed the marble memories?’

  He takes his time. There are no yes/no answers with him, there never have been with Dad’s condition, which is stressful and confusing. Why does he remember some things and not other things, why does he remember some things on certain days and not others? The stroke affected the memory, that’s the only response that ever made sense to me.

  ‘He remembers you and your mother and the life you’ve had together, he remembers his childhood and his relationship with his family, he doesn’t recall his recent reunion with his brothers which preceded his stroke, this woman that he was in love with, and he doesn’t remember the marbles at all.’

  ‘But you said that people block out things that have been stressful and traumatic. Marbles made him happy. This woman and his brothers made him happy, by the sounds of it.’

  ‘But by your telling, marbles forced him to separate his life into two. They forced him to become two different men, living two different lives. He was clearly under a lot of st
ress in his life before his stroke, his financial strains and losing his job, but this stress would have been heightened by the fact he was trying to live two separate lives. Now this is just a theory, Sabrina,’ he says more casually, and I realise we’re off the record here, this is not an official diagnosis. ‘And it’s late, and I’m tired and I’m just offering theories, but if he blames the marbles for bringing that stress on him, then it would offer some explanations as to why he has repressed the marble memories, despite the obvious joy they brought him before. They began as a kind of freedom to him, a place he could get lost in and then, as the years went by, they trapped him. He may not have seen a way out of it.’

  ‘So forgetting them is a way out?’ I have been so angry with him, so selfishly hurt about it all, that I didn’t think of the pressure he must have been under, albeit self-imposed pressure.

  ‘Again, repression is an unconscious thing. He wouldn’t have consciously made the decision to block it out, but to survive …’ He leaves it hanging in the air.

  I think of Dad’s expression when I showed him the bloodies. Recognition. Joy. Turmoil. Confusion. ‘If I showed him the marbles, would it have a negative effect on him? Send him into … a stroke again?’

  He’s shaking his head before I’ve even finished. ‘It wouldn’t give him a stroke, Sabrina. It could upset him. But it could also bring him joy,’ he says, with a shrug of the shoulders. No yes and no no.

  I think of Dad’s face when he saw the bloodies this morning, of how it changed from innocence to confusion, the other part of him caught between who he is now and who he has blocked out, both battling against each other. I don’t want to cause him more stress.

  ‘He had both reactions when his brothers showed him the marble game tonight. Delight at seeing them, followed by tears, but he seems to be working out something today, dealing with it all on an unconscious level.’

  He’s healing, I think to myself.

  Lea had told me that my uncles had visited, I’d just missed them when I arrived and dived into the pool. Meanwhile Dad had fallen asleep, exhausted by his day.

  ‘I discovered the marbles in the boxes that were delivered this morning,’ I explain. ‘Some are missing and I started out trying to find them. They’re worth a lot of money. But then I found all of this out.’

  He nods along encouragingly.

  I cover my face in my hands. ‘Or maybe it’s me that’s losing it.’

  ‘You’re not,’ he laughs. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I thought if I could find all the marbles, and then show them to him, then they would magically unlock whatever is blocking his memories. I know you can’t just fix a person like that, but … at least I’d be doing something to help.’ My head pounds at the revelations the day has brought me, not just over Dad’s secrets but, as the night draws in, my own intentions slowly surface, perhaps feeling safer under the cover of dark.

  ‘Sabrina, just being here for him is helping. Talking to him. No one knows the triggers for the reoccurrence of memories; it can be sense, sound, or aided triggers like guided visualisation, trance writing, dream work, body work, hypnosis. And in my field, the existence of repressed memory recovery has not been accepted by mainstream psychology, nor proven to exist. Some of my fellow memory and cognitive experts tend to be sceptical.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I have a roomful of books on all of this stuff, what to say to Fergus, what to do with Fergus, but really,’ he opens his arms, looking utterly exhausted and I feel so guilty for keeping him so long, ‘really what matters is, whatever works.’

  I’m thinking fast as I know he’s about to leave any moment, return home to his real life with his own concerns. I’ve now decided that I don’t want to upset Dad by showing him his marble collection; each will have a memory attached, it could be too much for him. But I want him to remember the joy of marbles. ‘What if I buy him new ones, make new memories, make new joy?’

  He smiles. ‘I don’t see what harm that could do.’

  ‘What time is it?’ I look at my watch. ‘It’s almost ten. Who sells marbles at ten at night?’

  He laughs, ‘Why does this have to be solved all in one day?’

  Because it does. Because I can’t tell him why, but I have a deadline. Fix things today or else. Or else what? Everything remains unfixed forever? Tomorrow I’m back on the hamster wheel.

  As Dr Loftus bids me farewell, I take stock of myself. My jeans are still wet from the pool no matter how much I’ve tried to dry myself under the heater in the changing rooms, and I’m braless and T-shirtless beneath my hooded top, with the wet T-shirt and underwear in a plastic bag. Reality is setting in. I’m contemplating the fact that my mission to save my dad in one day is just not going to happen. Tomorrow I will wake up, Aidan and the children will come home and I will be all consumed by them, and this dream will have vanished, like so many other daily aims that never happen. I should go home, get some sleep, get the rest and recuperation I should have been getting while Aidan has the boys. That was the whole idea. But then Nurse Lea clears her throat from the doorway.

  ‘Dr Hotness gone?’

  I laugh.

  ‘I wasn’t eavesdropping … okay, I was, but don’t ask any questions.’ She hands me a folded piece of paper. ‘I met a fella on Facebook, we were supposed to go out tonight to a party, meet in person for the first time – okay, it wasn’t on Facebook, it was a dating site, but if by some divine miracle he looks anything like his profile then I’ll marry him tomorrow.’ Nervous laugh. ‘Anyway. He’s an artist. Does stuff with wood. And he has lots of artist friends. Here.’

  She hands me a piece of paper with an address.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘I’m mad about your dad, I’ve never seen anyone come on so much in one day. I want to help.’

  Cat is sitting at a table dressed in a white dress, white flowers pinned in her hair. She sips on a glass of white wine and throws her head back and laughs, a naughty dirty laugh which instantly makes the others laugh. That’s the way with Cat, it’s not always what she says that’s funny, it’s her reaction to it that is the hilarious part. It would be naïve to say she is always in flying form, she certainly is not, especially with her eldest daughter who gives her so much grief, a troubled young woman who is constantly problematic, not happy unless she is making her mam unhappy. Aside from that and almost in spite of that, Cat has the ability to put those things aside and enjoy life for what it is, or at least enjoy the other part of it. She never allows things to overlap, she separates her worries. Despite the way I have separated my life, I have never been able to do that. A problem in Hamish O’Neill’s life is a problem in Fergus Boggs’s life and vice versa. For example today, this beautiful day, she says, ‘To hell with all of life’s problems, let’s just enjoy now, this moment, what we are doing now.’

  I both admire it and am driven crazy by it. How can she ignore problems? But she doesn’t, she puts them aside, chooses her moments to dwell on them. I have never been able to do that. I constantly dwell until they’re gone away. And where are we ignoring our problems today? Five thousand miles away in the central coast of California’s wine region at the wedding of Cat’s dearest friend. At fifty years of age and the groom at sixty they’re no spring chickens and it’s not the first time for either of them, though they appear like two love-struck teenagers, as in love as I feel with Cat when I’m in her company. It seems to be the year of second marriages, this is my third wedding this year, and I remember the first on all three occasions, especially as one of them was mine. I wasn’t invited to Gina’s wedding but it was the one which affected me greatly. I wasn’t expecting to be invited, Gina and I haven’t had a pleasant word to say to each other since our separation over fifteen years ago but still, despite boyfriends after me, I considered her my wife. Now she’s someone else’s and I think of all the things that I did wrong. How good it was at the beginning, how I looked up to her, worshipped her, and only ever wanted to please her. It was that th
inking that ruined our relationship, that ruined me. Why couldn’t I just have seen her for what she is, known that she loved me for who I was? No matter how hard I tried to change myself, the roots of me were the same and she loved that. For a time at least. That sweet young woman with the freckle face is gone, now just a scornful woman who snaps at the slightest chance. Did I make her that way? Is it all my fault?

  We are in Santa Barbara county, in July, in the sweltering heat. Cat, who is in her element, is bronzing herself in the full blaze of the sun, shoes off, manicured toes wiggling, cleavage big and tanned, jiggling when she laughs. She is the sunshine in my life and yet the greater she shines upon me the greater I feel the shadow cast behind me. Time is creeping up on me. I’m away from the sun, unable to take the heat. I have completely soaked my white shirt and because of that can’t take off my jacket, which makes me all the warmer. I’m in the shade as much as I can be, drinking gallons of water, but at the heaviest weight I have been. Four stone above my usual weight, I’m feeling the heat, the discomfort, the heat of my balls, my thighs sticking together, my shirt too tight around my neck. The man who has plonked himself next to me in a white casual suit and a white hat tells me he’s an art dealer, he talks of nothing but golf courses that he’s played all around the world in such detail I want to tell him to shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up. But I hold back, for Cat’s sake. I made the mistake of mentioning I played golf, which I once did, though it feels like many moons ago. I played mainly for work purposes, when I was a financial advisor and was keeping up with what was going on. I’ve had to sell my golf clubs, lose my membership as I couldn’t keep up with paying the fees and I don’t have the time for leisure any more. Anybody I played with has done the same and instead invested in Lycra and a bike and goes cycling on Sundays. Hearing about a game I had to give up does nothing to help my mood.

  I didn’t want to come away. As soon as Cat told me of the invitation I didn’t want to come. I said as much, but she put her foot down. She insisted on paying. Whatever I felt when I was younger on honeymoon, I don’t feel it now. I don’t want anyone else paying my way. I want to pay my own way, but I couldn’t afford the flight and now that I’m here I can’t afford anything. Cat is covering it all. Every gesture, every kindness just makes me feel even worse, like my balls have been chopped off. And the company I’ve been in has been horrendous. I’m sure she’s wishing she left me behind after all.