To their right was Gloria Bell, the real estate agent, Mrs. Fodder from the furniture store and her husband,Mayor Allan and his wife, and the elementary school principal’s secretary, all with glasses of champagne.
At the center of the group was Dr. Longstreet and her receptionist, surrounded by the young blond man in his gray pin-striped suit, and the couple who had given him the suggestion to call home that fateful night, the same couple who had become the ambulance attendants taking that man called Mr. Moly away from the clinic.
Everyone had stopped talking and laughing and was looking at him with a soft smile of pity on his or her face. The harpist continued to play, but softer. The bartender had his hands on the bar, and the waiter paused at the corner of it, his tray holding only one glass of champagne. Mrs. Masters nodded at him, and he started toward her and Aaron.
“A glass of champagne, Aaron?” she asked.
“Where’s Megan?” he demanded. “She called me and told me she was here.”
“She is here. Champagne?”
“No, I don’t want any champagne.”
“Pity. It’s very good,” Mrs. Masters said. “Aged,” she added, and the entire entourage laughed.
“What is going on here?” Aaron asked, now more frightened than angry. Their calmness, their politeness and apparent glee was terribly unnerving.
“Well, we have a rather modern attitude about things these days, Aaron. Back in what is known as mythological times, people of charm didn’t take lightly to defeat. Revenge was the usual reaction.”
Some light laughter flowed through the now attentive little audience.
“Just finish rereading about Medea. Help Sophie with her homework, and you’ll realize how terrible it could have turned out,” she added, and the laughter became louder, longer.
“Are you all crazy?” Aaron shouted at them. Their laughter stopped, but not their smiles.
“I wish you had taken the glass of champagne, Aaron,” Mrs. Masters said, “if for no other reason than to linger a bit longer here among us. Everyone here likes you very much.”
Some nodded, a few raised their glasses as if to add a toast as punctuation.
“I want to see Megan,” he said, swallowing hard. “Please.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Masters replied. “She’s understandably, what’s the expression? Under the weather?”
Another little titter passed around him, but there weren’t as many smiles. A number of them, especially Laurie, Terri, and Debbie, looked more upset now. Suddenly Laurie stepped forward, coming right at him with such force, he thought she might blow him over. She paused inches from him.
“You’re such a damn idiot, Aaron,” she said.
“What?”
“If I had my druthers, I would have gone back to the days of Medea.”
She turned to Mrs. Masters. “I’ve got work to do,” she said.
“Of course. Good luck, Laurie.”
“I expect I’ll have better luck than Megan,” she said, glaring angrily at Aaron.
“Now, now, don’t be catty, Laurie,” Mrs. Masters chastised. “It’s not becoming.”
Laurie glanced back at the small crowd. All of them cried, “Good luck.”
She looked at Aaron once more, shook her head, and left.
He watched her go and then turned back to Mrs. Masters.
“What the hell is she talking about?”
“Laurie’s always been hot in temper and in passion. Don’t pay any attention to her.” She sighed. “All right, Aaron,” she said. “Right this way. Carry on, everyone,” she told the crowd, and they started up their conversations where they had left off. The bartender began pouring more champagne, and the harpist played louder.
Aaron glanced back at them as he followed Mrs. Masters out of the living room and up the grand staircase. No one was looking after him anymore. He was old news.
As he and Mrs. Masters ascended, he remained a couple of steps back. Suddenly she began to metamorphose right before his eyes, shrinking, widening in the hips, her hair graying. Her clothing remained the same, but adjusted to fit her new form. When she turned, he gasped.
It was Mrs. Domfort.
The shock of it turned him to stone. He barely breathed.
She smiled.
“Hello, Aaron, dear. Don’t be afraid. This is thetime, unfortunately, for revelations. There really isn’t anything for you to fear from us. As I told you downstairs, revenge is no longer a consideration. We accept our failure gracefully.
“Of course, Megan’s still quite upset, but I’m sure you’ll be able to appreciate that in a few moments.”
“Who are you?” he practically gasped.
“I’m Mrs. Domfort, kind old Mrs. Domfort,” she replied with a little giggle. “No,” she said, growing serious again. “Of course I’m not just Mrs. Domfort. Sometimes I think of myself as Mrs. Relief or Mrs. Escape. Everyone at one time or another during his or her lifetime, Aaron, wishes to come under my spell, wants to come live and work in Driftwood.
“Oh, it hasn’t always been Driftwood, you understand. There have been so many places, so many different names for them. Originally, I lived on an island called Aeaea. My father brought me there.”
“Aeaea?”
“Yes, a palindrome,” she said, laughing. “Driftwood just happens to be the contemporary island of sorts, but they are all the same, perfect in many ways, full of contentment, happiness, success.”
She smiled and leaned forward to put her hand on his chest.
“A place where you will do your best work, remember?”
“I still don’t understand.”
“You will. Be patient. Do you know what myths are, Aaron?”
“Myths?”
“There’s been so much written about them, madeof them. Some use myths as a way of explaining creation, the way things are. Some use myths to explain the human condition. Freud, for example did that. You know, the Oedipus complex, the Electra complex? Every culture has them.
“Think of yourself as being part of a myth for a while. We had hoped for as long as you lived, but alas, that couldn’t be so for you.
“But you still need us, Aaron,” she warned. “You will always need your myths if not to escape from your reality, then to help you understand it enough so you can tolerate all the illogical, unjust, seemingly senseless things that happen.
“At one point in time, people explained their misery by blaming it on the gods who played with them like puppets. People just got caught in between the arguments and battles the gods had. Believe that and nothing is hard to understand. Accept maybe, but not understand.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
“Everything. There you were, Aaron, screaming out for understanding, raging, shaking your fist at the heavens, demanding justice, answers, compassion. You were what we like to think of as prime prey. You were eager to accept us.
“Or at least, Megan thought. Poor Megan,” she said, shaking her head and looking at the door of the bedroom. “She takes this so hard. It’s not her first time, but unfortunately, she has now suffered two succeeding defeats. It will go hard for her.”
Mrs. Domfort leaned toward him again, this time to whisper. “She might not be allowed to continue.”
“Continue what?”
“Finding prey, bringing a man like yourself to a place like Driftwood to make a wonderful life for herself, too,” she replied. “All of the men downstairs have accepted it. None of those candidates accepted Moly.”
“Moly? Moly?” He thought. “Mr. Moly, the man I confronted behind Dr. Longstreet’s clinic?”
“Well, that happened to be his name because he was going back. It will be your name for a while, too,” she said. “It’s just a little thing we do to remain loyal to the myth, a silly little thing.”
“What myth?”
“The myth of Circe, Aaron. Remember your mythology? The powerful witch who with the use of some magical herbs and incantation or prayers to her partic
ular gods could turn men into beasts or cause them to forget . . . yes,” she said, smiling, “amnesia.”
He stepped back, grimacing.
“Don’t be afraid. I told you we don’t seek any vengeance, Aaron.”
“This is madness. Magic?”
She laughed. “You know it’s not madness, Aaron. Too many strange things have happened to you, especially over the last few hours or so, right?”
He nodded, his eyes wide.
“Besides, what’s mad about it, about calling it magic? It’s not really all that different today in the so-called modern world, Aaron. People look upon their doctors as if they were magicians, some even as if they were mythological gods, and as for magical herbs, brews, today we have medicine, pills. Even witches change with the times, Aaron. We’re not immune to progress.
“Isn’t it like magic when you take some ibuprofen and your ache or pain disappears? How many people who take the drugs have even a small understanding of how they work? They accept it just the way people once accepted magic, believed in the waving of a wand or the sacrifice of a lamb.”
She laughed.
“Dr. Longstreet is just practicing good magic,” she said. “Modern-day witchcraft has moved into the realm of pharmaceuticals. Why, we even participate on the stock market, Aaron, and own many of the companies. It’s where I accumulate so much of the wealth we need to live and play.”
He nodded. “So, as I once suspected, I was given some drug?”
“Something like that, Aaron, but believe me, at the time you welcomed it. Too soon after, a part of you began to put up a battle against it, a far stronger battle than poor Megan anticipated, but I can’t fault her for choosing you. As I said, it was just her bad luck to have one failure soon after another.”
Aaron stared, thinking. “Jason,” he said
She nodded. “Yes, Jason. He was actually Sophie’s father.”
“I think I knew that,” Aaron muttered more to himself.
“Yes, I believe that,” she said. “You’re a very perceptive man, maybe too perceptive. Who was it who said ‘The wise are doomed to suffer simply because they understand the tragedy of the human condition more’?”
She shook her head.
“It’s getting to be too much for even someone likeme to remember. Thank heaven computers were invented. You can’t even begin to imagine how much easier they’ve made our work, improved our searching capacities. Nowadays, our prey float by in cyberspace. They’re flagged and we, should I say, pounce? Megan did and for a while thought you were Mr. Perfect, the man with whom to start a family again.”
“Is Megan really pregnant then?”
“Oh, yes. Family is very important here in Driftwood, Aaron, good families, good husbands, success, good health, very important.
“Of course, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Even I don’t know all of it, Aaron.”
“Who are you, then, Circe herself?”
“That was my mythological name, yes, and all these beautiful and talented young women downstairs are my daughters.”
“Circe’s Daughters.”
“Yes. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? I’ve had many daughters, Aaron, and they are everywhere. In fact, I’m rather proud of how many places we inhabit, control, so to speak. You’d be surprised at how many men are willing to give up domination in exchange for happiness, how many would rather dress themselves in designer shirts and nauseating Bermuda shorts and spend mindless hours on golf courses whacking and tapping a little white ball into a hole. I suppose Freud could make a great deal out of that imagery, couldn’t he?” she asked, laughing. “How they might be trying to get back into the comfort and security of the womb. How else can you explain the utter ecstasy that accompanies the great ‘hole in one’?”
He nodded. “So that’s why I saw those horrible images, the hallucinations, the men turned into pigs?”
“Very good, Aaron. You remember your mythology. Of course, there’s always a little exaggeration.”
She laughed again and then looked at the bedroom door. She took a deep breath, lifting her heavy, matronly bosom.
“Well, it’s time for you to see Megan.”
She opened the door and stepped back.
He looked at her.
She smiled. “I really did like you, Aaron,” she said and walked toward the stairway.
At the top, she turned and metamorphosed back to beautiful Mrs. Masters.
“Got to return to my guests. It’s still a little party, you understand. In Driftwood, we’re always looking for some excuse to have a party.”
She laughed, smiled at him, and then she began to descend, slowly disappearing like some demon into the very bowels of the earth.
. . . nineteen
the bedroom was grand in size with a high ceiling, the center of which was a full-length mirror, making the room look even deeper, wider, longer. However, the decor of the room itself was so gaudy Aaron actually paused immediately after entering to blink and acclimate himself. There were four large oval mirrors in gilded frames along the wall to his left and far left as well as very big oil paintings of beautiful naked women in settings ranging from bedrooms to the seaside, the pictures more prurient than artistic. All the women had lascivious smiles on their faces and had bodies painted in such rich flesh tones they resembled photographs. Along the floor by the walls were statues of men who looked like Greek gods, their bodies muscular, lean.The room itself was carpeted in a plush bloodred rug. All of the cherrywood furniture pieces were oversized, with a long built-in vanity table running nearly the entire length of the wall to his right. There was a wall-length mirror above it as well. The table was crowded with pewter, gold and silver containers,brushes and jeweled combs, perfumes, and skin creams. It was an alter to narcissism.
He was soon overwhelmed by the redolent maple scent so heavy, he could almost see it coming at him in waves.
A movement above him in the ceiling mirror drew his eyes to the four-pillar bed so oversized it looked like a small stage. He saw Megan’s head on one of the large, fluffy pillows, her eyes fixed on her own image above. She was under a light pink comforter.
“Megan?” he called.
Slowly, like someone drugged, she turned to him.
He started toward the bed. Suddenly the harp music from below grew louder. It was being piped into the bedroom through some speakers he couldn’t see.
She held out her hand, and he came around the bed faster to take it, but stopped before their fingers touched.
“It’s all right, Aaron. I’m not going to hurt you. Quite the contrary. You’ve hurt me.”
“How?”
“By refusing to do what I asked, accept the here and the now and stop trying to retrieve the past. I thought we were succeeding, Aaron. I thought we were going to have a good life in Driftwood, but you wouldn’t stop searching, going through pictures, questioning videos, checking bank deposit box documents, hunting yourself down. I suppose I should have spent more time laying a foundation. How was I to know you would jump on something like a badly edited video or find Jason’s picture because he had put it there without telling me?
“Of course, they’ll say I was too arrogant, too much in a rush, and didn’t pay enough attention to detail. That’s what they’ll say. That’s why they’ll criticize me. But even I can’t be expected to know every little thing!”
“Then you are one of them, too, one of her daughters?”
“Of course I am, Aaron. That’s what makes this such a tragedy for you as well as for me. You would have had all the advantages: never, ever suffering serious illness, always successful in your work, always contented. All you had to do was accept the present and forget the past.”
“I couldn’t do that,” he said.
“I know.” She smiled. “No one knows that better than I do, Aaron. However, you know what it makes it seem like? It makes it seem like I couldn’t satisfy you. We’ve got pretty big egos. Just look at Laurie.”
“You’re everything a man could want, Megan. That’s not true.”
“Of course it isn’t.”
She sighed and then she smiled, pulled back her blanket, and moved over in the bed.
“Come, lie with me a while. We have some time. It’s like being granted your last request, your last meal.”
He started to shake his head.
“You won’t be disappointed, Aaron. You’ve been through a terrible time. I’m sure you’re exhausted, tired, and very upset, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I went back to Westport today.”
“Tell me about it,” she said, smirking. “Any otherman, all of them downstairs in fact, would have turned back when the car did what it did as you were trying to leave Driftwood, but not you, not my persistent Aaron Clifford.”
“I couldn’t find our home, and there was no trace of us, and then I went to New York and to Clovis and Associates. All that was a lie, too.”
“It served its purpose, Aaron.”
“So the rest of my past is a giant lie as well, right? And your past, your stories?”
“Most of it, yes. Some of it was simple embellishment or the truth with a little twist, a little variation here and there.”
“So that man was right, that Mr. Moly. I should have stopped taking the medication, the brew, as Mrs. Masters called it. Now I know what Moly meant by he was going back, but I didn’t listen. I didn’t listen.”
“Don’t, Aaron. It doesn’t do any good to relive it all now,” she urged.
“Why? Why was all this done to me?”
“Come on, Aaron. Lie here beside me a while. It’s the best way.”
He gazed at her beautiful body. She smiled softly.
“I do love you, Aaron,” she said.
“Will you tell me everything? Will you tell me who I am, give me back my past?”
“Yes, Aaron. I promise. In fact, it has to be done now, so you need not worry,” she said. “Forget all that about Medea. Laurie did that, not me. You’re just lucky she wasn’t the one who had originally chosen you. Come to me, Aaron. Come.”
Amnesia Page 25
