Amnesia

by Andrew Neiderman

  “What surprises me is how well some things are kept secret in this small town,” Aaron said. “Sometimes, I believe everyone knows when and how often you sneeze around here.”

  Harlan laughed. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  “I suppose it’s who the secret is about, when it comes down to it,” Aaron said. “In that sense, Driftwood is not much different from anyplace else.”

  “In that sense, maybe, but, Aaron, it’s a lot different. You just haven’t been here long enough to appreciatehow much. This is a real close-knit community.”

  The big man patted him on the shoulder and walked on. Aaron watched him, thinking to himself that every resident of this village is truly a member of the chamber of commerce.

  That evening Aaron told Megan what Harlan had revealed. She didn’t seem at all surprised, either.

  “Did Mrs. Masters talk about the mall project at work?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, don’t you think it’s something significant that she’s involved in this big project?”

  “Not Mrs. Masters, Aaron. Nothing she does surprises me. She’s truly a leader, a woman with great talents. I know,” she said when he was silent. “You saw an attractive woman, a widow, and you thought that was it. She’s inherited some money and has a business, but she’s a lot more than just a pretty face. It seems to me that men have a great deal of difficulty looking past a woman’s beauty to really appreciate the full potential she might possess, whereas women have no problem seeing that in men. Why do you think that is, Aaron?” she asked as if he knew the answer and was being tested.

  He shook his head. Then he smiled. “Men are just not as perceptive, I guess.”

  “I guess not,” Megan agreed. “Men are more easily fooled. That’s why the femme fatale is far more dangerous than your run-of-the-mill Don Juan. She has more to exploit and an easier time doing it.”

  He started to laugh. Megan looked dead serious, even angry.

  “What? Did I do something else I don’t remember, something unpleasant?”

  She turned away.

  “Well?”

  “We aren’t bringing up anything unpleasant if we can help it, remember?”

  “Yes, but if I committed some heinous crime—”

  “You did nothing of the sort,” she said quickly. “You just . . . flirted with it. Okay? Enough said, Aaron.”

  “Jeeze,” he muttered. “I feel terrible, guilty, remorseful, and I don’t know what I did. It doesn’t seem fair.”

  “It’s fair,” she said, smiling.

  “Does this have something to do with that other face I see occasionally, like that dimple in your cheek I mentioned, a dimple that isn’t there?” he asked softly.

  She took a deep breath, as if his question squeezed her so tightly she couldn’t breathe.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pursue unpleasant memories, but—”

  “I don’t want either of us to suffer anymore, Aaron. Let’s just be happy. Please, honey. What’s in the past is gone, swallowed up by time, the good and the bad, especially all the bad, okay?”

  “Sure,” he said, shrugging. “Who’d turn that down?”

  “You’d be surprised at how many fools there are,” she said cryptically. “You’d be surprised.”

  Aaron wasn’t particularly immune to surprise, but when someone was retrieving most of his past in small and unexpected ways, it was natural he would grow used to being jolted, stunned and dismayed. It hadgotten so he was full of anticipation every time he turned a corner, answered the phone or looked up to see someone entering his office. Like meteorites sailing through space and being pulled toward earth when they entered its gravitational circle, his memories could be plucked out of the darkness by the sound of someone’s laugh, a particular color or shape or a particular scent and aroma. It all came packaged in surprise, waiting for him to unwrap it and relive a moment. It was truly like being caught in a tape replay of his very existence.

  But one afternoon he was shocked in a different sort of way. It was as unexpected as anything he had experienced, but it carried with it something more. It brought along a dark, foreboding layer of abject terror.

  It was day of his next appointment with Dr. Longstreet. She had asked him to keep track of his memory retrieval in some fashion, and he had decided to keep a sort of diary. Just recently his college days had come tumbling in like water falling over a rocky cliff. He would stop work and recall an event, a person, and smile to himself. Or he would remember something that was particularly inspiring, something a teacher had said or done, something he had done in class or on a special project. Whole portions of his past were fitting back neatly in place like pieces of a puzzle. Whatever it was and whenever it came, he jotted the notes in his Memory Book, as he liked to call it now. He was eager to share this with the doctor, and he was sure it would please her.

  Normally, Megan would go along for his doctor visits, but it was open house at Sophie’s school, and oneor both of them had to attend. He promised to rush over as soon as he was finished with Dr. Longstreet.

  The extraordinary Indian summer that had possessed the East Coast had begun to show signs of weakening. Nevertheless, it was a very bright sunny day with one of those skies similar to skies caught or tinted in travel magazine advertising photos placed to tantalize possible tourists. He wrapped a black silk scarf around his neck and wore his tweed sports jacket. He thought he looked like a college professor who worked in one of the Ivy league schools. Fantasizing was not something he did often these days, so he was delightfully surprised at his playful imaginings. Anyone who saw him driving along was sure to think that there goes a very happy and contented man. What a smile.

  When he pulled into Dr. Longstreet’s clinic parking lot, he caught sight of an ambulance parked in the rear of the building. What peaked his interest, however, was what he saw after he stepped out of his car. A patient was strapped on a gurney and apparently left alone just to the rear of the ambulance. It was a man, and when the man turned his head and saw him, he managed to lift his lower left arm and beckon him.

  Aaron stared for a moment, a confused smile on his face. He listened for the sounds of other people, voices, movement, something, but it was very quiet. He started toward the man, and as he drew closer, he started to recognize him. This was the man who had been watching him from time to time, the man who had accosted him in his office doorway, the disturbed patient from the clinic lobby.

  “Hello there,” Aaron said. “What’s happening?”

  The man held out his hand and smiled. Aaron stepped closer, smiling back.

  “What can I do for you?”

  Suddenly the man jerked his hand forward and wrapped his fingers tightly around Aaron’s wrist. His smile disappeared and the look of abject terror Aaron had seen on his face that day in Dr. Longstreet’s office lobby returned.

  “Hey!” Aaron cried.

  “I’m going back,” the man said in a throaty whisper.

  He seemed to have great strength. Aaron tried to pull his hand free, but the man’s grip was as good as steel handcuffs. He pulled Aaron even closer and lifted his head. “I warned you.” He began to sob, his face shaking and his whole body trembling so hard, the straps around him tightened. “I’m going back because I remember.”

  “Mr. Moly,” a woman’s voice sang. “What are you doing to this nice gentleman?”

  She stepped out of the rear of the clinic, a clipboard in her hand. She wore an ambulance attendant’s uniform. A moment later, a man stepped out behind her, also in uniform. He glanced at the woman and then at Aaron.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked.

  “I . . . he was waving to me when I got out of my car, so I just stopped to see what he wanted and he took hold,” Aaron said, lifting his right arm. The man’s hand was still wrapped around Aaron’s wrist, but the man’s eyes were closed. It was like being caught in the grip of someone in rigor mortis.

  The male attendant stepped for
ward and pried the man’s fingers off of Aaron. His wrist was bright red.

  “Sorry about this. Jenny,” he said, and the female attendant moved quickly to open the rear doors of the ambulance. “We’ll take care of him from here, sir. Thank you,” the man said.

  Aaron nodded and started away. He looked back to see the man being loaded into the ambulance and the woman getting in as well. Then the male attendant closed the door and paused to look back at Aaron, who had stopped to watch. He stared for a moment and continued around to the driver’s side.

  Aaron shook his head and walked toward the entrance. He had his hand on the door when a memory came rushing back. He turned quickly, just in time to see the ambulance pulling away, the driver still in view.

  He had seen those two before. He felt positively sure of it. Who were they? Who?

  And then it came to him. They were the couple he had seen embracing at the station in Westport, the couple who eventually directed him to the pay phone to call Megan.

  He was sure of it.

  . . . twelve

  it isn’t unusual for you to be experiencing some paranoia, Mr. Clifford,” Dr. Longstreet began after Aaron described who he had seen at the ambulance. “We all suffer some paranoia normally. It’s a holdover from more primitive times when every sound, every movement in the dark seemed foreboding. Paranoia was once essential to survival, especially at a time when trust was weakness. The fact that it’s intensified in you at this time is expected.”“Really?” He did feel some relief hearing this from his doctor.

  “Absolutely. The mechanisms in your brain which organize your thoughts, your memories, images, have, for the lack of a better way to describe it, malfunctioned. It’s like having the power interrupted to your computer,” she continued, obviously happy with the comparison she had found for him, “and all that you have set up gets jumbled and confused inside.”

  “Often some of it gets lost,” he added.

  “Yes, some of it will be lost. You’ll have to make the best of that,” she said.

  For a moment he considered how easily, unemotionally, she could write off large portions of his past and expect him to do the same.

  “Now, what we’re doing, you’re doing, is going back and reorganizing what we can, making sense of as much of it as possible, if you will. Until you’re fully restored, these confusions, hallucinations, will continue for a time.

  “However, you, yourself have told me and shown me that this is happening less and less now, correct?”

  “Actually, up until this morning, I haven’t had any serious problems like this for a few weeks,” Aaron admitted.

  “Precisely and your energy level is good. All your vitals are in the normal range. Your heart is fine. Your work is going well, and so is your family life. I wouldn’t change a thing we’re doing,” she said, smiling with confidence. Then she paused and thought a moment, a new look of concern flashing. “You’re not doing anything else that you haven’t told me, are you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not drinking any alcohol within a few hours of taking your pills, are you?”

  “Oh, no. I take the pill in the morning as you prescribed, and I don’t drink anything but juice and coffee and water in the morning. I don’t really drink very much anyway, just at social gatherings, some wine at dinner, but not every night.”

  “Fine.” She smiled. “Then let’s not worry aboutthis. Actually,” she added, “it’s a good sign, a very good sign that you were willing to tell me about those people, that you trusted me with it.”

  “I just . . . it was so confusing, I thought you had to know.”

  “I did. Very good,” she said.

  “That man being taken away in the ambulance,” Aaron pursued. “What happened to him? I recall seeing him in your office some weeks ago, and then I’ve seen him on the street near my office. Recently he seemed to be waiting for me to arrive at work so he could give me some crazy warning.”

  “About what?”

  “My medication, his medication, I don’t know.”

  She smiled.

  “Paranoid-schizophrenics are often suspicious of their medications. I know some physicians who actually put the medication in food. I suppose that justifies the paranoia in a sense,” she said, actually laughing. “Think nothing of it.”

  “But who is this man? What’s actually wrong with him? Where’s he being taken?”

  She kept her smile, but her tone became quite stern.

  “I don’t discuss my other patients with anyone but their doctors or my colleagues.”

  “Sure. Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound nosey. He was just frightening.”

  “He’ll be fine,” she said.

  “And so what about those attendants?”

  “They come out of New York City, not Westport. You’re just confusing them,” she assured him.

  “Why would I do that?” he pursued.

  She sighed and thought for a moment, as if she was deciding whether or not to continue.

  “Well, I’m not trained as a psychiatrist,” she began, “but it’s not hard to figure out, Mr. Clifford. From the way you described those two people when you first saw them, they were like ambulance attendants, coming to your aid, giving you the advice you needed. Now you see two attendants helping someone. It’s understandable,” she said, “isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Yes, I guess that sort of makes sense.”

  “Precisely,” she said and stood. She made some notations on his chart and then said, “See you on the seventh, unless there is another problem beforehand, which I don’t expect.”

  “Okay,” he said, rising. “Thank you.”

  He left the office and drove to the school to join Megan at Sophie’s classroom for the open house. On the way he decided not to talk about the incident at the clinic. Dr. Longstreet had made it clear that it was quite detrimental to obsess about any of these dark events. He had to concentrate on the good things, the happy things, if he was to restore his mental health, and, she made clear, he had to do this to help Megan deal with him and his problems as well.

  “Don’t forget that your wife is under some strain here, too, and even though it’s harder to see sometimes, your daughter as well,” Dr. Longstreet underlined. It impressed him.

  As soon as Megan asked him how things went at the clinic, he smiled and said, “Okay. Everything’s going along fine,” he told her.

  Her worry dissipated quickly and was replaced with a happy glowing smile. They both turned to Sophie’s teacher, who was now showing the parents how the children learned math on the computers. The students performed in front of their mothers and fathers, who glowed with pride almost as brightly as the computer monitors.

  “Computers in the third grade, imagine. When I was her age, I was lucky to have ten fingers to count on,” Aaron quipped afterward as they were leaving the school building.

  “Now I know you’re getting better. You always loved to make it sound like you had the hardest childhood, especially compared to the way children have it today.”

  “I thought I did,” he said, maybe too quickly.

  Megan’s smile faded.

  “You did, Aaron. Emotionally, that is. But you still had a warm house, clothing, food, and attended a good school. You went to college, too, Aaron. You were denied a great deal; you lost so much so young, but you didn’t grow up in an urban slum or on some tobacco-road dilapidated farm where they made you trek ten miles to a one-room schoolhouse with no heat in the cold winter months.”

  “Right,” he said. The memories of childhood were still locked behind a wall of thick smoke. “Maybe it would help to go back and visit some of my childhood places, Megan. What do you think?”

  “We’ll ask Dr. Longstreet,” she replied. “I’m sure it will be fine after a while.”

  “What’s a while? I’ve been treated for weeks andweeks. I don’t see what difference it makes now,” he protested.

  “The doctor will tell us what to do and
when, Aaron. You seem very agitated today. Is something wrong? There is something you’re not telling me.”

  “No,” he said quickly. “Not any more than usual. I’m just as impatient as ever, that’s all.”

  Megan’s beeper went off. She checked it.

  “I’ve got to get back to work right away. You’re doing so well, Aaron. Everyone says so,” Megan assured him. “See you at dinner. I’ll make something special,” she promised and hugged him.

  He watched her go to her car and then he got into his. For a moment he just sat there, thinking about the morning’s events. What did that hysterical man mean by “I’m going back.” Back where? And what did that have to do with memory? More important, why did he pick him out of everyone else in this small community to give warnings to anyway? Was it just because he knew that he was being treated by Doctor Longstreet as well? It did sound like blatant paranoia, Aaron thought, and I can see some of that in myself. The doctor had made sense. She was good. He was lucky to have her.

  But still, it was more than a bit frightening to think he could end up like that man. He wished he knew what his problems had been and how similar they were to his own.

  On the other hand, every patient was different, and Dr. Longstreet was dealing with some very unique and unusual cases, according to what Megan had been told and what she had told him. This man simply hadother problems, he concluded. What right did he have to assume there could possibly be any similarity between them?

  He started his car and pulled out, driving slowly at first and then a bit faster when he saw Megan’s car turn right at the end of the street. Odd, he thought. He had lived here long enough and been to the school enough times to know his way around. She should have gone left toward the village and her offices. She said she had to hurry back to work, didn’t she?

  He paused at the corner and watched her disappear around another turn.