The Memory of All That (6 page)

Chapter 11

At first, the meaning of his words floated by her.
Surely, he didn’t mean what it
sounded like,
she thought. His smirk and his stare revealed the cold, hard truth.
Yes, he meant it all right. But I couldn’t have. I just couldn’t have. No way am I the woman he is implying.

Ever since Ruth had faced her on the stairs that first day and told her she was going to jail, Marnie had worried about what she could have done, what kind of person she was. This morning she had faced the fact she was a bad mother, and Ruth had said she was an unfaithful wife. Now she was being told she was promiscuous. David didn’t have to spell it out. What he meant was plain.

She closed her eyes to steady herself against the spinning sensation.

I will not pass out. I will not pass out
, she repeated as she gripped the edge of the table tightly.

“Marnie? What’s the matter?” His voice was suddenly concerned.

He got up and moved to her side of the booth and put his arm around her.

“Hang on. Don’t faint. Here, take a sip of your drink.” He held the glass to her lips.

She took a sip. After a minute, she opened her eyes. The room had stopped spinning.

“Are you OK? You turned so white and were holding on so tightly I thought you were going to pass out.”

“I’ll be OK in a minute. What you said . . . it shook me, that’s all. I don’t like what I’m finding out about myself.”

At that point, Jolene appeared with their order.

“Marnie, you all right? You’re as white as a sheet.”

“She’ll be OK. This is the first time she’s been out of the house since she was ill. She’ll feel better when she eats something.”

Marnie drank some more of her Coke and ate a French fry. “I feel better.” As David withdrew his arm, she couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

She sat up and reached for her hamburger. Taking a big bite, she made a face as she chewed it and swallowed. Pulling the top off, she looked on the table where the catsup was sitting.

“Is everything good? Do you need anything else?” Jolene asked.

“Yes, I need some mustard,” Marnie said.

“Well, my mistake. I thought you took mayo on your burger,” Jolene said. She returned quickly with a yellow squeeze bottle.

David watched Marnie take her hamburger apart and use her knife to scrape the mayonnaise off the bun and the meat. “Since when did you change from mayo to mustard?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered sharply. “I evidently don’t know anything at all about myself. I would have said I like children and would be a good mother. Wrong. I would have said I was a faithful wife. Wrong. I would say I’ve always liked mustard on my hamburger. Wrong. I can’t imagine what’s next.” She sighed heavily as she reassembled the now-acceptable burger. “I only hope it’s more like the last thing instead of the first two. I can’t take many more surprises like those.”

They ate in silence for a while and then Marnie spoke. “So, I worked here. Is this where we met?”

“Yes, but I think I’d rather talk about that when we get home. I’d like more privacy when we discuss it.”

“Why? Are you afraid I’m going to throw another crying fit like I did this morning?”

“Maybe. Mostly I just don’t want anyone overhearing us.”

“I’m finished and ready to go any time you are,” she told him.

He took out his wallet and tossed a few bills on the table. “Let’s go.”

They took a different route back. She thought he was testing her memory, trying to show her places she might remember, or that he was trying to get her to blurt out something that would prove she was faking her amnesia. After a few minutes, she saw they were on the street by the park where her memories started.

“Wait, David.” She placed her hand on his arm. “I remember this. Right there,” she pointed at a small copse of leafless trees. “I was standing there. The rain stung my cheeks. That’s the first thing I remember.” He pulled over to the curb. “I crossed the street here and walked down to the next corner.”

“Think hard. Can you remember anything before that? Where you were? Where had you been? It’s important, Marnie. You took something when you left, and it’s important that I get it back, if it’s not too late. Where were you before this park?”

“I don’t know. I’ve tried and tried to remember, but I can’t. Believe me, David, this is not fun, not fun at all. I would remember if I could.”

He turned off the engine. “Let’s walk up on the slope to where you were standing. Maybe your billfold and iPod are buried under the leaves, or maybe being there again will jog your memory.”

They searched through the snow-covered leaves to no avail. There was no sign Marnie had been there before. The snow was still covering a good portion of the ground, and although some of it had melted, objects might still be hidden from sight.

“I remember how I felt when I discovered I didn’t know who I was. It felt like someone had punched me in the stomach . . . hard. Everything was spinning, and I had to hold onto a tree to stay standing.” He put his arm around her and pulled her closer, as if he thought she might have the same reaction now.

“Let’s go back to the car,” he suggested. “We need to come back and look again when all the snow is gone.”

When they were in the car being warmed by the heater, he asked, “Where did you go next?”

“I walked down to that corner”—she pointed—“and I turned left.”

He put the car in gear and followed her directions.

“I looked in that café and thought about going in, but I had looked in my purse by then and knew I didn’t even have enough money for a cup of coffee. I thought about going in and asking if anyone knew me or knew where I lived, but I was too embarrassed to do that.”

David’s face was serious, but his look was different than before. She thought maybe he was beginning to believe her.

“What then?”

“I put my hands in my coat pockets and found the receipt from Nicole’s. It had the address on it, and when I walked a bit farther”—she waved her hand to the front and David inched the car on down the street—“I saw that street sign, so I walked until I came to 1532. I couldn’t have gone another step.”

“Alice said she was vacuuming by the window in my bedroom when she saw you coming up the drive and rushed out to meet you.”

“If she hadn’t, I probably would have passed out right there in the drive.”

“Well, she did, and you’re home safe and sound.”

“I guess I’m safe enough, but sound is another matter. Mentally I don’t feel so sound,” she said. “David, am I going crazy?”

Chapter 12

“I don’t think you’re crazy, Marnie. I will admit I thought you were pretending to have amnesia.”

“Why would I do that?”

“To get out of trouble. To avoid your involvement in a theft of property. To pretend you didn’t know what had happened. To get me to forgive you, once again. Who knows?”

“Do you still think I’m pretending?”

“Let’s say I still have doubts about your truthfulness, but if you’re acting, you’re doing a darn good job of it.”

“I’m not pretending. I really don’t remember anything before waking up in that park.”

“I want to believe you. The question now is what happened to cause you to lose your memory? It must have been pretty traumatic.”

“I wish I knew. If I knew what happened, maybe the rest of it would come back.”

She thought about all she had discovered so far that day. It was more than she had learned the whole prior week. From David, she found out Jonathan was her son and she had ignored him for much of his life. From Ruth, she had learned she had gotten pregnant in order to get David to marry her, that she had stolen something from the family company, and that she was promiscuous before and after marriage. David confirmed that fact when he described her behavior at the Roadhouse.

Besides all these revelations, she had explored the house where she lived and found several rooms where she felt at home, and found books she liked and had probably read.

She had experienced an emotional breakdown when told she was Jonathan’s neglectful mother, but when she recovered from that crying spell, she felt better and more clear-headed than at any other time since she found herself in the park. She finally felt like she was stronger and ready to solve the mystery of what had happened to her.

“The worst thing—the very worst—isn’t the fact I can’t remember anything, nor even the possibility I may never get those memories back. The worst thing is knowing I’m a bad person.”

“I don’t know that I would say you’re a bad person. I would say you behave badly . . . very badly.”

“Only a bad person would neglect her son and cheat on her husband. And evidently, from what you’ve said, I was what? Promiscuous?”

“All that and more,” came his terse reply.

“I don’t want to be that person. If recalling my past means going back to that life, I’ll do without it.”

“I keep thinking about a guy I knew in college,” David said. “Between our sophomore and junior years he was in a horrific car wreck. He was in a coma for a month. When he woke up, he said he had died and gone to heaven. He said he had looked down on his body in the emergency room and then went toward a beautiful light. He saw his grandparents who had died earlier and a friend from his childhood who had drowned. They told him it wasn’t his time to die, but he had to straighten out his life and be a better person. Sometime after that, he woke up in the hospital bed.”

“Really? I think I’ve read about cases like that, but I never knew if they were true or not.”

“Up until then, he had been a real goof-off. He got drunk a lot. He cut classes, paid people to write his papers for him, slept around.”

“Did he change?”

“Yeah, he sure did. He turned into a fine man. He stopped drinking and pulled his grades up all on his own. He graduated, not with honors, but with decent grades.”

“So, there’s hope for me. Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying he was different when he came back to school. You’re different, too. That is, you’re you, but you’re not. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Not really.”

“Well, you’re still Marnie, but you haven’t groused one time about being stuck in the house, and you hate that house. You seem to really like Jonathan—”

“I do. I do like Jonathan,” she interrupted, “but I still don’t like the house.”

“You spend time with him, which you never did before.”

Marnie turned her head and looked out the car window, vowing not to cry.

“I’m concerned that when your memory returns you’ll go back to ignoring him, and he will be hurt even more by your indifference, after having had your attention.”

She wanted to promise she wouldn’t return to her old self but hesitated to make that pledge. She had no assurance of what she would be like if and when the amnesia was gone.

“You haven’t said anything about money or wanting to buy anything in the days you’ve been back. That’s unusual for you. And you’re dressing differently.”

“Dressing differently? But I’m wearing the clothes I found in my closet.”

“Yes, but you’re putting them together in a different way. Take what you’re wearing, for example. You might wear those tight jeans, but you’d put a skin-tight tee shirt with them, one short enough to show your belly button. And you might leave your bra off.”

Marnie took a deep breath and put her hands over her navel, even though it was covered with layers of cloth. “Oh,” she said.

“So now I’m wondering what could have happened to you to change you so much, like it changed the guy I knew in college. Doctor Means says you don’t seem to have been in an accident of any kind. At least you don’t have any broken bones or bruises to show for it, but I keep thinking you must have had some sort of life-altering event to be acting so differently.”

They pulled into the circle drive in front of the house, pulling up behind a black Mercedes. David sighed.

“Whose car is that?” she asked.

“It’s Celeste’s.”

“The woman who was taking care of Jonathan?”

“In a way. When Mrs. Tucker had to leave unexpectedly, Celeste volunteered to help, said it was too much for my mother to handle. I don’t know how much taking care of Jonathan Celeste actually did. Probably Alice, Mary, and Mrs. Gravy did most of it.”

They had gotten out of the car and started up the front steps when the door opened and the attractive blonde exited the house.

“Hello, darling,” she said, taking David by the arm and kissing him on the cheek. She smiled warmly as she took her finger and wiped off the lipstick she had left on his skin. “Hello, Marnie,” she said, her eyes never leaving David’s face.

“Hello, Celeste,” David answered. “Just leaving?”

“Yes. I do so enjoy spending time with your mother, but I think she needs to rest a while. We’ve been making a day of it. She’s invited me for supper, but I don’t know whether to come back or not. Should I?”

She’s making a blatant play for my husband!
Marnie thought.
Even if I don’t remember he’s my husband, that’s not a nice thing to do, and I don’t like it!

“Marnie and I just finished a late lunch, Celeste, so I don’t imagine we’ll want much supper. Feel free to join Mother at the table if you want to, but if she’s tired, she may want to eat in her room.” He took Marnie by the arm and started through the open door.

Celeste gave a tight smile. “Fine. Another time, perhaps,” she said and continued down the steps to her car.

When they were inside with the door closed, Marnie turned to David and asked, “Who is Celeste to you?”

“She’s who I was engaged to when I married you.”