The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 61

They gave me a new passport.

A lift to the airport.

At every step, Byron, recording, someone, recording.

Byron had a notebook, maintained in impeccable handwriting. On every page a new line of thought was developed in perfect cursive script, black ink from a silver fountain pen.

“One of my little indulgences,” she explained, rolling it between her fingers.

I flicked through the book, following the passage of her thoughts as we sat in the car heading for Incheon International Airport.

Is _why following me?

How did _why get this number?

Why am I on this ferry?

How did I decide to come to this hotel?

“All this before we had dinner?” I asked her.

“Yes. It was the hotel that alarmed me. I remembered walking up the hill with a great sense of purpose, checking in with purpose, but when the door closed on my bedroom I realised that I had no idea why I’d chosen to go there, to that place, that room. There was no message on my phone, my computer, nothing to justify these decisions, this time or place.”

“I’m impressed — most people make something up.”

“When one lives alone, one must develop strict critical processes.”

I didn’t meet her eye, looked back at the notebook. “And then you got my invite for dinner.”

“Yes.”

I turned the page, and there it was, notes entering sudden emphatic capital letters, terror seeping through the script.

WHY HAVE I RECORDED 59 MINS OF A CONVERSATION I DO NOT REMEMBER HAVING?

“I thought you’d just move on,” I sighed. “Most people do.”

“And you would come looking for your payments — your treatments — later?”

“That was the plan.”

Byron nodded, took the notebook back from me, carefully wrote:

Why believes that the treatments can make her memorable.

“That is right, isn’t it?” she mused, glancing up at me. “Have I asked that already? Every time I speak to you, I’m worried that I’m repeating myself.”

“Everyone repeats themselves,” I said. “I don’t mind.”

A plane to San Francisco. We sat together, but at some point, even Byron slept, and so did I. When we woke, she stared at her napkin in surprise. On it she’d written,

You are travelling to America with Why. She is the woman sitting next to you. Her name is Hope.

“Is your name Hope?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“We have of course had this conversation a dozen times.”

“Fewer than you’d think, but I’m sure there are more to come.”

“Astonishing. I can remember that I am travelling with someone I forget, but I can’t remember it’s you.”

“People remember things about themselves, and you’ve been writing down the important things. That’s how you remember why you’re travelling. You forget me, my face. It’s impressive that your methods let you remember as much as you do.”

“You are astonishing,” she breathed, and her hand reached up, and brushed my cheek, feeling the reality of my skin, a mother soothing a child perhaps. Or perhaps another thought — a master comforting a much-loved pet. “You are incredible.”

We were separated at customs, but Byron held her phone tight, followed the photograph and the note which read, You will meet this woman in baggage reclaim. Do not leave without her.

She had difficulty seeing me in the crowd, so I approached her.

“Incredible,” she breathed. “It’s as if you are invisible, one moment to the next. You exist only in this moment, and then your face is eaten by memory.”

“Shall we go?” I replied.

San Francisco. Once Spanish, then Mexican, then for a brief period its own little state, before finally integrating with the USA. It was a city flanked by other cities flanked by the sea. Most of the city had been destroyed in 1906 by the earthquake, but that still made what remained a historical treasure in American eyes, and the taxi driver as he carried us across the bridge to Oakland lamented that the little house he owned down in San Ramon — he couldn’t afford San Francisco prices — had been built in the ancient times of 1949.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” I asked, as blue waters rolled beneath us.

“Ma’am,” he retorted, “it’s a nightmare. Local ordnance says if you own a house built before the 50s, you gotta keep it in its historical modality.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you gotta strip all the paint back to what it used to be back when the house was first built, to make it conform to the historical aesthetic. Well, we did that — and it cost a damn fortune, I mean, it’s there’s like one guy who can do it and he’s got the market in a bind — and you know what colour the place was in 1949?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Baby peach. Can you fucking believe it? I was in the Marines for eight years, I teach baseball on Sundays, kids they look up to me, like, an example, and every night I go home to this house and baby fucking peach, damn me.”

I nodded and smiled.

“I don’t know much about politics,” he mused, “but when I saw what colour the house was meant to be, that’s when I knew the country’s gone crazy.”

We stayed in a hotel in Oakland, looking down towards the water from the top of the hill. Cypress trees swayed gently around the empty swimming pool, leaves brown and stiff. The owner’s wife, dressed in bikini and sunglasses, spread herself across the recliner by the dirty tiles and said, “Sweetie, I’m sorry, but there’s a drought on at the moment.” A pair of children, seven and five apiece, looked up miserably from the edge of the place where water should be. “It’s Ruthie’s birthday today, but she’s sulking because the party’s at her gran’s house this evening, and she wanted her friends to come here, but they couldn’t come here, could they Ruthie, not while Mama and Papa are working.”

So saying, she returned to her sprawl across the lounger, a reflective foil sheet resting below her chin to bounce light up her carefully pruned nostrils.

Her husband, all moustache and capillary-shattered red nose, said, “Twin or two singles?”

“Twin,” said Byron quickly. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

“You two related?”

“Hope here is such a dear,” replied Byron, putting one arm across my shoulders. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

In the face of the old woman’s smiling ambiguity, what was a man to do except smile back, and hand her the keys?

Byron said, “If I take a shower—”

“You’ll forget me, but I’ll still be here.”

“I’m beginning to find that quite an exciting prospect. I could learn to enjoy being perpetually surprised to discover your presence.”

I smiled and said nothing, and she left the door to the bathroom slightly ajar as she went to wash, as if that might make a difference.

A few minutes of local news was all I could stomach.

“I don’t need Washington to tell me what my children should learn, I don’t need the fat-cats in DC to spend my money, to tell me what’s right and wrong for my family, what I carry in my back pocket, like a knife or a gun, how to look after my health! It’s my life, what the hell are they doing interfering in it?”

“Ma’am, can I ask, do you believe in abortion?”

“I believe that every life is sacred.”

“Do you believe that the government has the right to legislate on what a woman can do with her body?”

“Now hold on there because you’re doing a thing here, you’re doing a thing…”

“Ma’am, I’m just trying—”

“… and I’m talking to you honestly, I’m having an honest debate about things that matter and you’re trying to make it something it’s not…”

“… should women choose—”

“This government has spent my money on teaching children I’ve never even met about stuff I don’t even know about…”

I changed channels, flicking through an array of cop dramas and soaps, until stumbling on a current-affairs/gadget programme in which two men and a cosmetically gleaming woman went through the technological toys of the day and of course, but of course, there was,

“… Perfection — now, Clarice, you’ve been trying this, haven’t you?”

“Well, Jerry, yes, yes I have, and it’s been absolutely sensational! Not only do I feel positive about leading a more goal-orientated existence, really trying to achieve who I want to be, but the rewards it gives for consistent effort are just fantastic. It’s not just a reinvention of a lifestyle app, it’s a reinvention of me…”

I turned the TV off and lay, face-down, on the single bed. The duvet cover was thin, layers above, layers below, ready for a hot, sunny California day, a cold California night when the breeze from the sea and the chill from the mountains combined. An embroidered sampler above the bed read “There’s No Place Like Home”. A copy of the Bible lay beneath the green-glass lamp on the bedside table. Someone had left a receipt for barbecued ribs and a bottle of Coca-Cola in it. Hear diligently my speech, and my declaration with your ears. Behold now, I have ordered my cause; I know I shall be justified.

I stood in front of the bedroom mirror, studied my face, my eyes, ran my fingers over my skin, stared at my reflection, and wondered why I could remember it.

Why was I here?

The sound of water stopped in the bathroom.

I counted packets of sugar standing up in the jar by the kettle.

Buttons on the TV remote.

Lights appearing in the city as the sun went down.

Byron gasped as she saw me, drew her towels tight, shook her head, said, “Wait,” went into the bathroom, came back out in a dressing gown, added, “Maybe we should have got singles.”

“Nervous of being caught walking around naked?” I suggested.

“Dignity and old age are difficult to reconcile, especially when you forget the company you’re keeping.”

“You wanted a twin so you could watch me,” I sighed. “You’re afraid that when you can’t see me, I’m not real.”

She didn’t answer, and I turned away from the mirror, and lay down to sleep.