However, he couldn’t stop thinking about himself, about the things he had learned from Megan and from his own research. Despite it all, he didn’t feel like that kind of a man. He’d have to ask Dr. Longstreet more about this. How could memory lapses make such a change in his personality? How could they make me a nicer person?
And indeed he was a nicer person than the man Megan had described, wasn’t he? He wanted to do things with his child now. He enjoyed helping her with her homework, seeing her facial expressions when she made discoveries. He had just been considering buying one of those newer digital cameras, too. Why were these things important to him now if they had never been before?
It’s maddening, he thought and reviewed some of those video pictures in his mind.
And then, something occurred to him that nearly caused him to have a serious accident. The realization blocked out his awareness that the traffic light was red. He went right through it, just missing a collision. The driver of a pickup truck sounded his horn and waved his fist. He looked as if he was going to turn around and chase him down. He pulled over. Aaron shouted back apologies and pulled to the side himself. He waited, his heart pounding.
The truck driver pulled away and disappeared. After a moment Aaron started away from the curb, but instead of continuing to his office, he pulled into a driveway and turned around so he could head back to the house. Inside again, he went to his office and scooped up the second video. He brought it back to the player, turned on the set, and fast-forwarded the tape ahead to where he appeared on the beach. He stopped it and studied the picture. Then he rewound it to where Megan was walking on the beach with Sophie. He moved it forward to himself again and then sat back.
Megan and Sophie were walking the beach in Palm Beach. No doubt about that, but when he appeared in the video, the sun was dipping below the sea.
The sun set in the West.
This was not a beach in Florida. This was a beach in California or Oregon or even Mexico.
The pictures of him had been edited into this tape.
Why?
What the hell did this mean?
Another thought occurred to him, another possible place to discover some answers.
He extracted the tape, turned off the player and television set, and went upstairs to Megan’s jewelry cabinet. He opened the top drawer and found the safety deposit box key. Twenty minutes later he pulled into the parking lot of the Driftwood National. It wasn’t his first time there. He and Megan had been there before to open their checking account. He remembered Teresa Krepski, one of the vice presidents, and went directly to her desk.
The bank executive gave him a warm smile. “Why, Mr. Clifford, how are you? I’ve been hearing so many good things about you,” she said quickly.
“Really? From whom?” he challenged. His aggressive tone took her by surprise, and her smile quickly faded.
She shook her head. “So many people,” she said and then brightened to add, “Especially Mrs. Masters.”
“What are people saying?” he pursued.
She smiled as if he was asking dumb questions. “Why, just how quickly you’ve adapted to the community, how eager people are to work with you, and how your initial projects are so brilliant.”
“It’s like everyone gets reviewed here or something,” he muttered.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“How can I help you today?”
“I have to get into my safety deposit box,” he said.
“Oh. Of course,” she said. She produced the book for him to sign, and he noted that Megan hadn’t been there since they established the box. After he signed,Teresa Krepski led him around the counter to the door and opened it with a key. He followed her in, and she asked for his key. She inserted hers into his box and then his and turned them both. “There you go,” she said. “Use either of the two examination rooms.”
She indicated them on his right. He thanked her, removed the box, and went into the first room. There he sat at the table and opened the box. As Megan had described, the insurance policies were on top. He pulled them out, looked at the house deed, and then found an envelope containing his, Sophie’s, and Megan’s birth certificates. It all looked in order. At the very bottom was his and Megan’s marriage certificate. As she had told him, they were married in Virginia Beach. The year was right. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.
The house, fire and car and life insurances all had his signature. He recalled signing them. He couldn’t recall signing the marriage certificate, but that didn’t surprise him.
This is ridiculous, he thought. I’m wasting my day. There’s probably some good explanation for that video. He put everything back, returned the box to its place, locked it, and started out of the bank.
“Everything all right, Mr. Clifford?” Teresa Krepski asked when he was almost out the door.
“What? Oh, yes, thank you.”
“Have a good day, Mr. Clifford, and please don’t hesitate to call on me if you need anything,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said. She stood there watching him leave, a strange, soft smile on her face.
He could recall seeing the woman only once before,he thought, but she acts as if she’s known me forever. And why is she so proud of me?
Could this town be too much of a good thing?
Is there such a thing as too much of a good thing?
He hurried to his office, moving now like someone being chased. When he arrived there, however, he couldn’t get himself back into his work. The video still haunted him. He couldn’t wait for Megan to return so he could confront her.
But what if it amounted to nothing? What if that video was simply a compilation of various trips? Many people did that with their videos, didn’t they? She’d surely think he was severely paranoid. Maybe he was. Maybe that part of his condition was really getting worse. Shouldn’t he be seeing another doctor, taking more tests?
He rose and walked to the front of the office. He truly was feeling as if he had stepped into a sea of anxiety and was on the verge of drowning. Gazing out his front windows at the quiet street in Driftwood, he was convinced that every single pedestrian, every driver in a car that passed his building, looked his way. The whole town was watching him, waiting to see what he would do next. He stepped back from the windows and closed the curtains quickly.
They’ll put me away, he thought. I’m going to end up in some looney bin next.
Get back to work, he ordered himself. Recuperate, stay with the program. If you can’t return to your old self, then at least strengthen the new Aaron Clifford, if not for your own sake, then for the sake of your family.
My family, he thought.
He felt something warm on his cheek and touched it. When he looked at the tip of his fingers, he saw they were wet, and when he glanced in the mirror in his office bathroom, he saw he had tears still streaking down his face.
For no apparent reason, just like Sophie, he had started to cry.
. . . sixteen
aaron decided not to make his questions about the video seem very important. As hard as it was for him, almost like keeping something rotten down in his stomach, he put it aside and instead, pretended to be busy at work and content when Megan returned from her trip with Mrs. Masters. At dinner she was crackling with excitement and very talkative herself, going into great detail about how she and Mrs. Masters had won the account of a major New York jewelry chain.“Every precious jewel, every crystal has something unique about it, something that can stir up an emotion, an image, a whole scenario. What we did was take some of their products and create a storyboard for each. The sequences were mostly my own creation,” she interjected with some modesty, “but they were good enough to impress the corporate suits. You know there was only one woman on the board. Can you imagine?
“Why is it that men are in control of things that mostly involve women, and not only in this country,but in most countries? Can you explain that to me, Aaron?”
> He laughed. “No,” he said.
“Even if men own the predominant bulk of shares, you’d think they would be smart enough to realize they can’t make these decisions for women, these right decisions.”
“But they did,” Aaron said.
“Excuse me?” She looked up from her dinner plate.
“You said they agreed to use your firm, right? So they did realize it would be smarter for you gals to direct their marketing campaign.”
She stared at him a moment and then smiled.
“But that was because of Mrs. Masters. She can be very persuasive, Aaron.”
“Nevertheless, the men made the right decision in the end, didn’t they?”
She looked as if she was attacking her food for a moment.
“They had no choice,” she muttered. “If they wanted to be successful.”
“Same thing,” Aaron said.
“It’s not the same thing, Aaron,” she fired back at him. The tone in her voice startled him and alerted Sophie to the tenseness. Aaron glanced at her and saw she looked as if she might start to cry.
“All right, Megan,” he said.
“It’s not the same thing because we have to work harder for every opportunity, even the ones that logically belong in our hands. It’s always been like that, always!”
“Okay, Megan. I understand.”
“No, you don’t,” she said, still furious, “but that’s expected.”
“Why?”
“You’re a man,” she said. “You can’t get beyond your gender.”
“And you can?”
“Women have always had a more logical and perceptive intelligence, Aaron.”
“Eve wasn’t so perceptive,” he countered.
She stared at him and then smiled, but so coolly she actually gave him a chill.
“That’s a man’s myth, Aaron. Naturally, we’re the villains in it. Eve, Delilah, Jezebel, Lot’s wife . . . It almost makes you think men actually fear women. Deep down inside their testosterone, they feel threatened by us, maybe because from birth to death they’re so dependent on us and they think we’ll desert them for something better.”
“I thought it was the other way around. Women depended on the food getter, the protector.”
“Another male myth, Aaron.”
He stared back at her for a moment. She looked so different when she was angry, androgynous, with the physical strength to crush him.
Sophie ate slowly now, moving carefully like someone trying to get past a wild animal and not stir it up. The whole scene frightened him a bit. Megan seemed to sense it and smiled more warmly.
“But a good marriage like ours is true give and take, compromise and sharing, Aaron. I need you as much as I hope you need me, and I love feeling protected by you.”
“Some protection,” he muttered. “I’m like a shell. Strong wind comes along and I’ll blow away.”
“No, you’re not. You’re becoming perfect!” she cried.
“Becoming? How do you mean?”
“I mean you’re regaining yourself, your talents. You’re a wonderful lover, and you want to be a good father. That’s perfect to me, Aaron.”
“Sometimes I wonder what you saw in me originally, Megan. I said it once before and I’ll say it again. I get the feeling you’re happy I’m going through this struggle to regain my memory. It wouldn’t bother you if I didn’t remember anything before we moved to Driftwood.”
“That’s silly, Aaron, and not very nice. I love you and I feel terrible about what has happened to you. I’m trying to do everything I can to help you and so are my friends. Our new friends, I mean.”
“Um,” he said.
She looked furious again, shooting hot glances his way.
“Come on, Sophie, finish eating. It’s getting late and you still have your book report to finish,” Megan snapped, her tone sharp and hard.
“I’ll help her,” Aaron said quickly.
“Good,” Megan said. They ate quietly for a while, and then Megan asked him about his day.
He wondered if he should start to talk about it, but opted to keep it on hold.
“I had a good day,” he said. “I think I did some very good work.”
“Oh, I know you did, Aaron.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m just trying to be encouraging. Why are you jumping on my every word?”
“Sorry,” he said. He did sense the testiness between them. Itwasas if their dinner conversation had been turned into a Ping-Pong game with words and innuendos the ball and rackets.
He was relieved when dinner ended and he could lose himself in Sophie’s children’s book version of Jason and the Argonauts. He sat beside her, looking over her shoulder and helping her read aloud. They were up to the part where Jason had to get past the sleeping dragon to get the golden fleece. Her children’s book ended with his accomplishment and didn’t mention anything that happened between Jason and his wife Medea afterward. That would be a horror for children to read anyway, Aaron thought. Medea took vicious revenge on her own children for Jason’s desire to be with another woman. Not the fodder for elementary school book reports, he concluded.
For a moment he thought, how remarkable for me to remember all that. His vivid memory of history, books he had read, and lessons he had learned intrigued him. There is a very selective process to my amnesia, he thought, and yet Dr. Longstreet ruled out traumatic amnesia. How could these small strokes dull and destroy only certain things? he wondered again. She’s never really answered that question for me. Oh, she’s talked about repression and defense mechanisms and the like, but that explains why I have forgotten things, not why I remember things.
I should go to another doctor, he concluded. Meganwould probably think of it as some sort of betrayal of Mrs. Masters and even of Dr. Longstreet, but it’s my life, my health. Everyone involved in a serious illness should get a second opinion. It was just prudent behavior to do so. He vowed to himself that he would, even if he had to do it secretly for a while.
Megan helped Sophie get ready for bed, and as usual, he kissed her good night and then went down to the living room to relax. A short while later Megan joined him. For a moment she just stood there staring at him. Then she nodded, concluding.
“Something’s bothering you, Aaron, and I don’t mean your condition. You’re not telling me everything.”
“How do you know that?” he asked, impressed. “You obviously know me far better than I know myself.”
“Woman’s superior perception,” she joked, sitting across from him. “So?”
“Well, I decided to try to regain some memory by looking at the pictures and the videos. I can’t believe how little we have,” he quickly commented. “Isn’t there more?
“No. I told you what you believed about all that. You could be very adamant when it came to your opinions, Aaron. Your conclusions were written in stone.”
“You tell me that, but I just don’t feel like that sort of person.”
“People experience personality changes with your condition, too, Aaron.”
“How do you know that?”
She hesitated and then sat back.
“I had a private session with Dr. Longstreet. I didn’t want to upset you, so I didn’t tell you about it,” she added quickly.
“And?”
“We talked about your changing behavior and personality, and she said it was very common with right hemisphere CVA’s. Usually, it involves more negative changes. People are less tolerant, insensitive, driven to rage quicker, stuff like that. We agreed that what you’re experiencing so far doesn’t require any additional medication.”
“Thanks for letting me know.”
“I’m sorry. I was just trying to—”
“Protect me? That superior female perception is at work again,” he said bitterly.
She was quiet, looking more hurt than angry now.
“I saw something on one of our two family videos that confused me,” he said.
>
“Oh?”
“We’re on a beach, or at least you and Megan are, and in the next sequence, I’m on a beach.”
“So?”
“I’m not on the same beach,” he said. “I’m on the West Coast, and you two are on the East.”
“What? Oh,” she said, smiling. “You were editing some other tapes once. Maybe you put things together.”
“Yeah, but why did I put only myself walking on a beach?”
“It was practically the only time you went before the camera,” she said. “You were always the one taking thepictures. What’s the big deal? That’s what bothering you so much?” she asked with a look of incredulity.
He nodded.
“Is that why you decided to go to our bank deposit box today instead of waiting for me to go along?” she asked.
“How did you know?”
“Mrs. Masters and I stopped at the bank on the way back into town, and Teresa Krepski told me you were there earlier.”
He stared at her.
“It was a harmless revelation, Aaron. Stop looking like you were being spied upon or something.”
“That’s the way it makes me feel.”
“We’re a small community. It’s not unusual at all. Wouldn’t you rather people were personable than indifferent to each other?”
“I don’t know. I’m beginning to feel that a certain indifference has its charm.”
“That’s silly, Aaron.”
“Well, aren’t you going to ask me why I went to our safety deposit box?”
She shrugged. “To check on the policies, documents. I don’t know. What’s the difference? You needed the reassurance that we have the proper insurance policies, or maybe that we were indeed married, I suppose. Did you get it? Was everything about what you would expect it to be?”
“Yes.”
She grimaced. “You still look displeased, Aaron. Why? Did you want to find something wrong?”
“Of course not. I just—”
“What?”
Amnesia Page 21
