Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See (34 page)

“He’s actually a better shrink than most of the assholes in this place.”

She nods. “That’s good to hear.” She nods again.

Knight passes by and she jumps up and runs over to him. She comes back with a tense smile on her face.

“So, he says I’m supposed to tell you who I am.”

I wait. “Okayyyy …”

“Okay?” She repeats, as if it’s not. “This is so not okay. You don’t even look anything like what I remember.”

“We’ve met before?”

The girl, Willa, laughs but it is joyless. In fact, despite the pacing, nail-biting, and hair-twisting she has employed to try to distract herself, she is having to wipe away tears she’s pretending not to shed.

“It was a long time ago. I wouldn’t expect you to remember.”

“Please don’t take it personally, I don’t remember five minutes ago.” That is my attempt at being charming, and it falls flat. I don’t know what I’ve done to piss this girl off but her contempt is profound. Frankly, I don’t need this shit. I’m about to fabricate an excuse for leaving when she finally speaks.

“So. Wil-la,” she says, stretching the word out and leaning toward me. “The name Willa means nothing to you?”

“Actually,” I say, “when Knight said it, I was thinking how I love that name. I have wonderful memories of that name.”

Her face lightens just the tiniest bit. “You do?”

“I do. I just … I don’t know what they are.”

“Your mother was named Willa,” she says.

“Yes! That’s right,” I say. “How did you know that?”

She rolls her eyes. “And I’m named Willa.”

“That’s quite a coincidence,” I say, “because it’s not a very common name.”

She looks at me, expressionless. “Wow.”

“What?”

“How much of this is permanent? What they did to you?”

Knight comes over and puts a hand on Willa’s shoulder.

“Um, maybe not the most helpful approach.”

“What did you do to him?” she asks Knight.

“I know it can be frightening. That’s why I explained about the anterograde amnesia before you saw him.”

“I wasn’t expecting him to remember,” she says, looking up at Knight. “But I thought if I gave him the numbers, he could do the math. Very basic math. And you know, I could finally have a conversation with him. But he’s not even in there anymore.”

“He is. He’s there. This is temporary. The anterograde issues should be gone in a few weeks.”

“Why didn’t you have me come
then?
” the girl asks Knight.

“Because Greyson is also experiencing some retrograde amnesia—gaps in his past,” Knight says in a low voice. “I don’t think it’s gone, it’s just misplaced. He needs help finding it. And the sooner he starts, the better.”

“Oh Jesus. I don’t think I can do this.” The girl is agitated. I wonder what meds they’ve got her on because they don’t seem to be working. “I don’t know how to—” She stops midsentence and stares at me. Knight’s gaze follows hers. It is the first time I realize this angry, high-strung, overwhelmed but beautiful young woman has come here especially to see me.

Lately I have become more than a little slow on the uptake. Something else I hate about the new me.

“Please,” Knight pleads with her, “just be straight with him. Just … tell him. And see where things go from there.”

“Tell
him
what?” I say, now annoyed and fully tuned in. “I’ve been beaten, degraded, electrocuted, and tranquilized, but I’m not deaf. Yet.”

“Sorry, Greyson.” Knight turns to face me. “His thinking may be a little fuzzy right now, Willa, but Greyson is still sharp as a tack.”

I change positions so I can assess him more closely. Tilt my head from one side to the other looking to see whether he might have had a nip of something before coming to work this morning.

“What?” he asks.

“Sharp. As. A. Tack,” I say, hitting the consonants hard enough to break a tooth. But he doesn’t even flinch. Empathy—it is both his best quality and his Achilles’ heel. He will never survive this place.

“I only meant,” he says, tapping my forehead with his index finger, “that
you
are in there somewhere.” He pokes my chest where my heart would be if I had one. “There too,” he says.

“And so,” he says, pointing at Willa, “is
she
.” He smiles at the girl and walks away, leaving us alone again.

“Well?” I say, with more hostility than I intend.

“I’m your daughter,” she says. Just like that. No preamble. No emotion.

“My daughter.” Suddenly the interior architecture of my brain shifts several degrees. The walls, floors, staircases, and hallways change position. She sits there patiently while I go from room to room, searching my memory.

It is like trying to find a single date buried in a world history textbook somewhere on the shelves of the Library of Congress.

“My mother’s name was Willa,” is all I am able to come up with.

There is a flicker of encouragement on her face before disappointment settles there. Right century, wrong decade.

“You named me after her,” she offers. A clue. Yes. A dog-eared page I can turn to.

I nod again. “She was wonderful, my mother. She died before you were born.” And we’re both surprised. Because that is … something.

Milton comes around announcing the end of visiting hours. The girl is on her feet instantly.

“Well,” she says, “I should go.”

“It was nice to meet you,” I say and awkwardly shake her hand.

She laughs at me. Or maybe in spite of me. “Right. Well, good luck, I guess.”

“Will you come back?” I ask, suddenly anxious I might never get to see this girl again.

“Maybe,” she says, looking at the floor. “I’ll try.”

But when I see her rush to the head of the exit line and bolt for the elevators as soon as she has escaped the double-locked doors, I decide that I should try very hard to remember her face.

“Your daughter is here to see you.”

I look up into the expectant faces. Miriam, Knight, Milton, and a beautiful young blonde girl who must be at least a decade older than Willa.

“I’m sorry, have we met?”

Her face falls. “Yes. You said … you asked me to come back,” the girl says.

“I don’t think so. I have a daughter, but she’s much younger. Just a little girl.”

The girl’s eyes fill with tears. Her mouth contorts in an angry grimace.

“
I am
Willa, you asshole. You don’t have a little girl anymore. I’m all there is, the only Willa left.”

That can’t be. I remember a lot about Willa. The name. But I confuse what I remember. What I know. Because the fundamentals are so similar. Love, loss, guilt, regret, ache, comfort, more loss.

And yet, if I am honest about the details? There aren’t any. Sometimes I think maybe there is a glimmer, a flash. But it is gone before I can get a good look. It is like trying to catch fireflies in broad daylight. With no jar.

Still, even though the memories haven’t come back, the feeling attached to them has. I had a daughter. And I loved her. And I remember how it felt to have a little girl. It is for her that I feel the love, the loss, the regret, the guilt. But she is gone now and cannot be replaced.

I am dopey and out of it the next time she comes. I open my eyes and see her sitting just a few feet away from me. She is reading and tap-tap-tapping her yellow highlighter against the wooden arm of the chair. I recognize her, but I do not have good associations. She is that girl who reminds me how much I dislike myself. I don’t remember why.

“What are you doing here?” My voice is gravelly and not particularly welcoming.

She smiles. “You’re awake. How do you feel?”

“I said, why are you here? What do you want from me?”

She looks frightened. And like she is searching for an answer. “I … I’ve always thought I might be missing something. And I … I just wanted to find out.”

“You … You’re …”

“Willa. Your daughter.”

“Right.” The pieces are beginning to belong to the same puzzle, even if they don’t quite fit.

“I wanted to see if you were worth …”

“Worth what?”

“My time.”

This is very much like a blind date. My daughter is coming, they’ve said. So I have put on pants with a zipper and a shirt with buttons and I am sitting here waiting. Going over the terrible sketch of her I drew after she left the last time. Reading the notes I made about how she speaks and moves and laughs. So I will recognize her when she comes in. Because while my memory of her is frozen—like a picture of a missing child on a milk carton—as this fog clears, I am beginning to believe that she is the real thing. I have no right to the real thing, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting it.

And so, when I hear a girlish laugh that sounds like the tinkling of piano keys, I sit as still as I possibly can and do my damnedest not to move, blink, swallow. I’m afraid if I do she’ll turn out to be a delusion. Or a side effect. The rantings of my fucked-up neurotransmitters. Not the real thing.

“How ’bout you give me that big coat and I’ll hang it up for you, sweetheart?”

I hadn’t realized Miriam was standing behind me.

“Oh, thank you. That would be great. I totally overdressed for the weather,” Willa says, handing over her jacket, scarf, and gloves.

“You get yourself comfortable. I’ll bring you two some coffee.”

“Okay. Thanks,” Willa says quietly. She looks at me warily and extends her hand. “Greyson? Hi, I’m—”

“Willa, I know,” I say, beaming with pride.

“You remembered!”

And all I can do is nod and stare. At my daughter. Or the girl who looks like the sketch I know is my daughter. Close enough. I forget to inhale. I close my eyes and, like a swimmer coming to the surface, gasp for air.

When I open them again, I take a good, long look at the rest of her—long neck, hazel eyes flecked with green and gold, high cheekbones under cheeks still padded with a trace of baby fat, short blonde hair that makes her look just like Jean Seberg in
Breathless
.

“You’re so … beautiful.”

She turns her face to one side and looks down, biting her lip to keep from smiling, but she can’t keep the pink from creeping into her exposed cheek and ear.

“Thanks,” she says. She looks around at the options and sits down tentatively on a little flowered love seat opposite my chair.

I am a terrible host. That is, if one can be considered a host while at the same time undergoing inpatient treatment at a mental institution. And she is nervous. Her left knee is bouncing and she is biting at the cuticle around her thumb. She’s been taking inventory of the room—of the “residents” who, I suddenly realize from her perspective, must look like extras from
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
—but then she sees me still looking and catches herself. She pulls her hand away from her mouth and sits on it. She is looking anywhere but at me.

If I don’t say something now, I’m afraid she will leave.

“Say something,” is what comes out.

“What?”

“I want to hear you talk.”

“Okay, how about you’re creeping me out a little?”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. You don’t have to say anything.”

“It’s alright. I mean, you’re mentally unstable so I’ll cut you some slack.”

I laugh, pleased to discover grown-up Willa has turned out to be a bit of a smart ass. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

A self-satisfied grin crosses her face. Then she laughs nervously. I smile. She looks at the floor, looks back up, smiles uncomfortably, clears her throat.

“So how did you, um … find me? In the first place?” My voice sounds like I haven’t spoken in weeks. I try to clear my throat. Instead, I gurgle.

“Aunt Hannah. She called Mom.”

“Hannah?” I’m confused.

“Yeah. Your sister. Hannah. She called after they found you.”

“Oh.” I nod. “You’ve been … in contact?”

“Well, yeah. She’s my aunt.”

I am overcome with jealousy, fury, and rage at Hannah’s betrayal. How dare she stay after I left? How dare she get to keep what I abandoned? My losses should be her losses. Of course I know this is irrational. And insane. Of course I realize that I cannot customize the destruction and devastation I left behind. And of course I know that what I really feel toward my sister is gratitude.

“Right, right, sure. And so you came from Los Angeles to see me.”

A single guffaw erupts from Willa. The hand she’s been sitting on escapes and flies up to cover her mouth. I smile and try not to look hurt.

“I’m sorry, that’s not funny. I mean, I don’t know why I laughed.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, I mean, not that I wouldn’t have. I mean, come from L.A. Shit, I’m sorry. That was mean.”

“It’s fine. Then where did you come from?”

“School,” she says. And then, as an afterthought, hitchhikes her thumb over one shoulder as if to indicate she’s matriculating at the visitor’s lounge handicapped restroom. We nod. I offer her tea. I am thrilled when she accepts because it gives me something to do while I try to think of a sentence to utter, a question to ask.

“So, you’re a freshman?”

She seems surprised I would know this. That I would know my daughter’s age.

“Right.”

“Where?”

“Princeton.”

Some biological sense of pride takes over and I beam. “Impressive.” I can’t resist asking, “How many schools did you turn down?”

She tilts her chin up and tries to sound cocky despite the bright pink that has flooded her cheeks. Blushing is her tell. I didn’t remember that. “All the others.”

She is alarmed when I laugh, stamp my feet, and even briefly applaud. But I am overwhelmed by joy at her achievements, her diligence and hard work and talent and humor and sensitivity. I am overwhelmed by what a great kid I think this girl, my daughter, probably must be.

Then the adrenaline dissipates and we are silent again. It is awkward again. Willa starts chewing on her thumb.

Once again, I scramble for something to fill the silence. “I’m sorry the first few times you came to visit were so difficult. That I wasn’t at my best.”

“Your best? It was kind of like
Groundhog Day
meets
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
. No offense.”