She's Me (2 page)

She swivelled every which way, still seated because she felt weakened somehow, too weak to stand. And then she spied her dress and screamed. When she’d walked outside, she was wearing white jean capris and a navy-and-white designer top, with a rhinestone-decorated white jean jacket to set off the ensemble.

Now, clutched in her shaking hands, her garb seemed to be a full-skirted, polka-dotted garment that hung down well past her knees, along with—what scared her silly—white gloves over her decidedly plump hands.

“What the hell is going on?” she cried, and then, glancing up, her frantic gaze met the startled eyes of two ladies dressed for church in their flowered Sunday dresses and matching hats, their white-gloved hands carrying what looked like Bibles. They stared at her over the flower-covered stone wall, obviously wondering if they should call for a straight jacket. Across the lane a couple of teenage girls in miniskirts were gawking at her, too, eyes emphasized by lots of dark makeup, white-lipsticked mouths in O shapes. They looked like something out of an old movie. Just passing the gate was a slender man, a bit on the short side, well proportioned but of nondescript looks. He turned in quickly and came rushing to the garden bench, where he knelt in front of her.

“Are you in trouble?” he asked, greenish-grey eyes full of kindness. His straight-cut beige pants and Perry Como sweater looked strangely old-fashioned, and so did his short, side-parted, brown hair.

Jenna’s whole body trembled, shuddering so severely her purse fell from her hands and emptied onto the grass. Distressed, she moaned and covered her shocked eyes. She’d never seen that bag before.

Quickly and efficiently, the stranger gathered her belongings and waited patiently for her to calm herself. In an apparent effort to help, he began to talk.

“My name is John Norman, and I’m the doctor here in town. I have a practise in my house, which is right down the lane if you have need of medical assistance.” He kindly pried her hands from her face and manoeuvred the motion in such a way as to give him access to her wrist so he could check her pulse. “Take a deep breath, my dear, and calm down.”

Jenna looked up, fear swelling within her. “What is wrong with me? I feel so different. You’ll think me crazy, but this dress I’m wearing—I’ve never seen it before in my life, or these ridiculous gloves.” Voice rising, she stared into his wary eyes and notched the shock up one more level. “And these hands aren’t mine.”

She started to cry in great, gulping, pitiful sobs that grew shockingly louder when she heard herself. These noisy gasps—loud, brash and disgustingly honest—were nothing like her normal crocodile tears.

“Where do you live?”

“Here in the vicarage. I’ve rented it with my secretary for a few days.”

“Oh, is that so? Well, I’m surprised the Bowens would rent out their home, but I guess they were planning to be in London for at least a month. I don’t know them well, after all. I only recently moved here to open my practise. Why don’t you come in with me,” coaxed John, “and we’ll go and get you a nice cuppa. You’ll soon calm yourself. By the way, what is your name?”

Jenna was more than ready to get away from the growing crowd of nosy onlookers gathering in hope of some excitement. “Jenna McBride. I’m a freelance model. You’ve probably seen some of my work in
Vogue
or
Chatelaine
magazine. In fact, I’ve been on so many front covers, I’ve forgotten them all.”

John nodded, eyes partially closed as he listened. He helped her to her feet, whereupon she realized he was looking down at her. This brought on another bout of tears because not many men were taller than she was, when she was dressed in killer heels like the ones she’d put on just that morning.

It wasn’t until she stumbled that she noticed her rhinestone-studded, three-inch wedgies had been replaced by plain white pumps. They were decorated with hateful tiny bows perched at the junction where her toes were obviously scrunched together, forced into shoes too small.

Tears fell faster, and she was on the verge of fainting as John guided her to the entrance of the old house while supporting most of her weight, not an easy accomplishment. The unlocked door added validity to her story, and his relief was palpable.

The room they entered felt familiar to some extent. The old damask draperies embracing the windows allowed insufficient light, but nonetheless she was able to peer all around. She let out a shriek when she spotted the oval mirror. It was like an old friend, and Jenna ran to look, gladness in her heart.

She passed out cold, going down like a large, felled tree, and only John’s instinctive awareness and quick action saved her from a frightful fall. He gathered her bulk into his arms and half steered, half carried her to one of the two golden wingback armchairs by the fireplace. He sat her down, whereupon she slid and flopped to one side, legs wantonly spread but covered by her rather long, bulky, polka-dotted skirt. Her small feathered hat slid down over one eyebrow, and her cheeks spread like jowls over her chest, similar to a young baby’s before the neck is fully formed.

Opening her bag, he searched through her belongings for a phone number or address, and his features, thoughtful at first, became concerned and finally puzzled as he held her driver’s permit, dated 1960. He made his way into the sparse kitchen and found all the makings for tea, then searched for a cloth and some cold water.

It took several minutes of bathing her face and calling to her before Jenna came around and opened her big, brown eyes.

“What is your name?” He questioned her slowly.

“I don’t know,” whispered a voice filled with fearful trepidation. “When I looked into the mirror, it wasn’t me looking back. I’ve changed.”

“You’ve changed?” He used the same calmness and gentleness in his tones that reassured his most troublesome patients. “How have you changed?”

“My name is Jenna McBride. I was in this same room only a few minutes ago with my secretary, Marnie Yung. I was dressed in totally different clothes, and I was so—soooo—beautiful.” Her screeching wail had him swiftly patting her hand and shushing her in a patently worried manner.

“It says here in your handbag that your name is Lucy McGillicuddy and that you live a few blocks away on Wilson Street. You have an employment card from the library that names you as the assistant to the head librarian.”

“That’s bullshit!”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s crap, nonsense. I’m a model and was here on assignment with a major makeup manufacturer. I took the last few days as holidays. I’m an American. My home is in Seattle. I’m twenty-five years old. And I’m beautiful. Not like that fat blob I saw in the mirror.” The staccato sentences drilled into him as he sat with his mouth ajar and his eyes bugging out. Jenna jumped to her feet and flew back to check her reflection in the mirror, still disbelieving.

“Dammit, what
is
going on?”

“Do come and sit down, please. You’re wearing me out,” he said, remonstrating, but soothingly. “Your picture is on your library card, and it looks accurately like yourself. You are Lucy McGillicuddy.”

“No, I’m not! This person isn’t me,” she yelled, stabbing her fingers into her overabundant chest. From what she had seen in the mirror, she was a short, frizzy-haired, blotchy-skinned fatty in a ridiculously outdated dress and nasty makeup. “I want to be me again!” she wailed, and the tears collected in her eyes until they all but obliterated the brown before they overloaded and streamed out like waterfalls.

Suddenly, she straightened and the waterworks stopped. “I’ve got it.” She snapped her fingers—or tried to but the gloves impeded the action. “My bedroom. My things must still be in there.” She stormed out and he trailed behind her.

In a few moments they returned to the parlour. Once again Jenna couldn’t explain. Nothing belonged to her in the bedroom, not one item. In fact, she hadn’t recognized the room’s furnishings at all. John began to feel distinctly uncomfortable.

“I think we’d better leave here. I don’t believe we belong. Let’s get you home and see if something in your personal surroundings could be the key to getting your memory back.”

Hours later, after a quickly-thrown-together meal made by John, two cups of tea made by John, and numerous crying bouts made by Jenna, who hated tea and unsurprisingly preferred specialty coffees, they weren’t any closer to figuring out what had happened.

He had taken her to a small house that was old-fashioned in the extreme and most likely had belonged to Lucy’s parents or even grandparents at one time, since Lucy was a young person and the furnishings were the sort elderly people would have found comfortable. The place was downright sad, with a lonely feel to it. The one well-used armchair was dressed in starched doilies, with a plastic-shaded floor lamp aimed for the sitter and a footstool posed close by. The sofa and other chairs were pushed well back. The floor-model television was one Jenna recognized as similar to what she’d seen in her parents’ old photo albums from before she was born. Piled high on the end table by the armchair were numerous romance pocketbooks.
Please
,
Please Me,
the first record album produced by the Beatles, was leaning against a record player.

John asked for the umpteenth time, “You sat on the bench and felt faint?”

“Yes. At the time, my secretary, Marnie, was telling me that my boyfriend Harvey was going to meet me at the airport and take me out for dinner when I arrived stateside.” She sighed loudly. “She was saying he’d told her that he wanted me to look extra nice so he could show me off to some friends we were to have dinner with.”

Distaste settled clearly over John’s features, and Jenna found this offensive.

“He’s a looker, and rich. And he likes being with beautiful women. I was very beautiful.”

“You’re still beautiful.” John stated in a gentlemanly manner, jollying her along.

“I’m huge, and I look like a Cabbage Patch doll.”

“What is a Cabbage Patch doll?”

Something clicked for Jenna. Her memory zoomed back to the strangely dressed people and the old vehicles she’d witnessed after her spell, all of which she had put down vaguely to the fact that she was in a small township in England where everything was slightly old-time compared to Seattle. She grabbed John’s arm and demanded, “What is the date today?”

“Today? It’s August 7
^th
, 1963.”

She swooned. She gasped. Then she threw up in a vase from which John had ripped the flowers in a timely fashion.

“There, there. You’ll be fine. Keep your head down.” He gave her a damp cloth to bathe her face.

“You don’t understand. I woke up this morning on August 7
^th
, 2006.”

“Where is your wallet?” He spread all her documents over the stick-legged coffee table, and they perused them together. Her birth date on one document revealed her to be twenty-five as of three weeks ago, July 17
^th
, 1963.

“It’s the same date as my birthday, except for the year. At least I didn’t change to a man or become old,” she said showing a bit of humour for the first time.

“Write your name and this address. I want to see if your handwriting is the same.”

“How do you spell McGillicuddy?”

“You
are
joking, right?”

“How should I know how to spell her name?”

“Whose name?”

“Lucy’s name, of course. Isn’t that who we’re talking about?”

He looked at her piercingly. Her features were perplexed, even sad, but without an ounce of guilt or duplicity.

John said thoughtfully. “I have a friend, Robert Andrews, who might be able to help sort this problem out. He’s a psychologist. I know it’s a relatively new form of medicine, but I can assure you that it’s an acceptable practise and helpful to many patients.”

“A shrink? Sure, yes—it’s a good idea. Maybe he can hypnotize me, or give me some kind of fancy drugs so I can get my life back.”

“Right. Well, that’s fine, then.” He was openly shocked by her easy acceptance of his suggestion. “You rest tonight. I’ll notify the library so they will be aware that you are under medical care for a short time, and I will be here to introduce you to Dr. Andrews in the morning.”

“He’ll come here? A house call?”

“Yes, I’m sure he’ll be able to fit you in.” The truth was that to the ordinary working person in 1963 psychiatry was an unknown practise, and many people referred to Dr. Andrews and his form of medicine as quackery. A new patient would be a roundabout relief to the scholarly fellow whose nose was, more often than not, happily buried in some large tome. His practise was seldom busy.