Blackfly Season

14

RED WAS LOUNGING IN THE sunroom in her hospital pyjamas and gown, iPod blasting in her ears. She had asked the cop guarding her door not to follow her to the sunroom, but he did anyway. She could see the bulky outline of his shoulder in the doorway.

Dr. Paley had lent her the iPod, which was crammed with music he’d downloaded from the Web. He was a kind man, Dr. Paley. You could see it in his round face and his white hair and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. Dr. Paley was a creature who seemed to think only of others.

Red knew that his visits were attempts to coax her memory back. But the doctor was skilful enough, and friendly enough, that their times together did not seem at all clinical. It was as if a cheerful uncle had just stopped in to say hi. And the music was good. A band called Rocket Science belted out their hit “Run, Run, Run,” and Red couldn’t resist singing along.

Still, it was deadly being on a floor practically crawling with failed suicides. There were three teenage girls (two overdoses, one wrist-slasher), a phalanx of the pierced and pouting, who were constantly demanding to go outside and smoke, which was a real pain for everybody else because they had to have a staff member with them. The rest of the time they lay in their beds reading Teen People and looking homicidally bored.

There was a boy, too, younger than the girls, and he just cried all the time. A nurse would trundle in with sympathy and medication, and the boy would conk out for a few hours only to wake up in the middle of the night and start crying again. Red had awoken the previous night at 3 a.m., and the night before at 2, the boy’s sobs and wails wafting along the corridors like some disembodied misery out of Edgar Allan Poe. Now, why would I remember Edgar Allan Poe, Red said to herself, and not my own name?

Boredom, restlessness, concern about the future—Red’s re-entry into an emotional life was proving to be rocky. Sometimes she yearned for the return of bland indifference the way a nervous person might yearn for Valium. And what about happiness? Amusement? Love? When would she get to feel some positive emotions?

Her memory still eluded her, though she had experienced some near moments. Twice, now, she had sensed the heat of familiar identity hovering beside her the way a blind person might sense the proximity of another human being. It was like a world-changing truth one “discovers” in a dream, only to have it vanish upon waking.

The first of these near-self experiences had occurred when a nurse brought in a bouquet of flowers. The card was from your new friend, Dr. Paley. She felt a blip of elation when she realized that she remembered who Dr. Paley was. She was no longer forgetting people the moment they left the room. And then Red had wondered, very briefly, if the doctor was sweet on her. But, of course, he was just trying to jog her memory. The fragrance of the lilies was an undertow pulling her into the depths of some old memory. She knew it reminded her of something. But the memory would not form: no sound, no image, just that anxious tugging at her heart.

The last time Dr. Paley had come by, he had waved hello in his offhand way and plopped down in the chair beside the bed. Right away he started chatting, but his conversation was overpowered by his aftershave. A pillar of absolute certainty formed in Red’s mind: She knew she had smelled it before. The aromas of citrus and wood, faintly mossy, were deeply familiar, but where had she smelled them? She must have looked electrified, because Dr. Paley broke off in mid-sentence.

“Try to relax,” he said softly. “Don’t try to force it. It’ll come.”

That lemony scent, that trace of oak and leather, where had she smelled it before? Who did it remind her of?

“It’s right there,” she wailed. “It’s right in front of me and I can’t see it. It’s right there!”

“It will come,” Dr. Paley said again. “Probably sooner rather than later.”

Red started yelling at him, couldn’t stop herself.

“I don’t want to remember a month from now. Or a year from now. Or even tomorrow, Dr. Paley.”

“Look, you’re getting better already. Two days ago you wouldn’t have felt this emotion.”

“I don’t want to feel like this! Do you know what it’s like to not know who you are? Do you have any idea?”

“No,” he said. “You’re right. I can’t know that.”

“I don’t know where I’m from or who I am or where I belong. Maybe I’m the type of person who hates hospitals. Maybe I live in some huge city like London or New York. I don’t have a ring on my hand, but I don’t even know if I’m married.” She slapped her hands on the bed. “And this place. I don’t belong here. I’m not sick. I’m half-alive; I’m a ghost, not a person. A person has a past, a history, an identity. Well, I’m as lost as you can possibly be. I’m just a lump of flesh, and nobody cares if I live or die.”

“That’s not true,” Dr. Paley said. “I have no doubt whatsoever that when you get your memory back we will discover people who love you and will thank God you’re safe and sound.”

“You don’t know that. You’re just trying to shut me up.”

“Not at all. I have no doubt about this. And in the meantime there are people here who care about you: the doctors and nurses. Me. Detective Cardinal. The first thing he did was order police protection for you.”

“Everyone you mention is paid to care.”

“That doesn’t mean they don’t really care.” He pointed to the iPod on her nightstand. “You enjoy music. Lots of different kinds of music. Those musicians were paid to perform, paid to record. Do you think that means they didn’t care?”

“Of course they cared. But who wants to be someone else’s work?”

The doctor touched her forearm, and it calmed her.

“Your emotions are coming back—that’s a very good sign. Your memory will come back, too. But try not to force it. Next time you feel a memory stirring, take a few slow, deep breaths. Try to relax and just let it come in its own time.”

But the song was really getting to her. At first she thought it was just the song itself, the yearning chorus. But then that undertow began to tug at her once more. Her instinct was to sit up and stop everything, but she remembered Dr. Paley’s advice. She was trying not to get too worked up.

It was stuffy in the sunroom. Red got up and went back to her room, the heavy step of the guard cop thudding behind her. She closed the door and flopped down on the bed. She turned on her side and closed her eyes, iPod clasped to her chest. She breathed deeply, slowly, and told her body to relax. She hit stop and then repeat.

The song started again. The first memory to come was neither image nor sound, just a sensation of weight on her chest. Just pressure on her chest, and a blur. A blur of grey and green. “Run, Run, Run” was playing. Gradually, the blur swirled into form: a highway, a highway out west and trees flashing by.

She was being driven somewhere. Somewhere sad. That pressure on her chest was a deep sorrow. She knew this was a memory, not a dream, but she could not yet say of what.

Other images crowded in. A middle-aged couple on the beach, sitting in deck chairs beside an open cooler with a Coke bottle sticking out of it. Small lake, water so deep it was almost black. Her mother sitting up and squinting into the sun, scanning the water for her children. Then the deep green of a hedgerow, the smell of burdock, a “tree-house” she had built in a giant hedge behind the house. How old had she been then—eight? Nine?

The skating rink in the backyard that her father made with the garden hose. How her feet burned and tingled when she came into the kitchen and pulled off her skates. Snow weighing down the trees, and a wild sky above the hills.

Her bicycle, her dog, her First Communion. Piano lessons with the nuns. Ballet. Girl Guides. Running away from home at the age of twelve, a fit of preadolescent pique that lasted about three hours past suppertime. The memories flashed before her, unstoppable.

“Oh, Terri,” her mother had cried when she came back after running away. “Oh, Terri, thank God you’re home.”

And now she remembered that home. Looking out the window, now—the railroad tracks, the school, the cathedral spire glinting like platinum and the blue lake in the distance. She had been here before, lived here in Algonquin Bay; she was not just a visitor, not just a ghost. She didn’t live here now, but she had lived here in the past. With her mom and dad and brother. Then in Vancouver.

Terri. My name is Terri Tait, I come from Vancouver, British Columbia, and I’m twenty-seven years old.

That highway again, the flashing trees and the pressure on her chest. She had been crying her heart out. She had just been to visit someone. Her brother. Her younger brother had been taken away to prison, and she had visited him for the first time.

“Kevin,” she said aloud. “Your name is Kevin.”

She remembered him, now. They were close, even though they hadn’t lived in the same house for quite a while.

Oh, Kevin. You’re an arrow in my heart and I’m always telling you what to do, but I love you to pieces and I can’t let you destroy your life like this. I’ll drag you kicking and screaming back to Vancouver if it’s the last thing I do, Kevin. Kevin Tait.

And Terri Tait. My name is Terri Tait.

Tears were rolling in hot rivulets down her cheeks, but they were tears of happiness.

She pulled Dr. Paley’s business card from the drawer in the nightstand and dialled his number. His voice mail answered; he was probably teaching.

“I know who I am,” she blurted out. “I know who I am! I remember everything! Oh, why aren’t you there when I need you? Come and see me and I’ll tell you everything.”

She hung up, her heart pounding. It reminded her of being onstage. Another memory: the sweet rainfall of applause gusting over her. She had played Miss Julie in the graduate production at Simon Fraser. Other parts, too. Smaller parts, after that.

A restaurant kitchen. Slamming plates, the clash of silverware and the chef shouting at everyone: “Pick up! Pick up! Pick up!”

“I know who I am,” she said aloud. She wanted to tell someone, but there was no one there. The other bed in her room was empty. She got up and opened the closet. Why shouldn’t she be dressed like everybody else? It wasn’t as if she had cancer or something.

She slipped into the jeans and the green T-shirt she had been wearing the night she had been brought to hospital. The green of the shirt really picked up the green of her eyes. At least I had good taste, she thought, and realized that she still thought of the person she had been before the blank days as a separate being. Those days—or was it just hours?—were still blank.

Out in the hall she made a beeline for the nurses’ station.

“Hey, hey,” a voice called from behind. “Hold up, there.”

She turned and saw the guard cop catching up to her.

“Where you off to?”

“The nurses’ station. I just got my memory back.”

“You did? Hey, sweetheart, that’s fantastic. What’s your name?”

“Terri,” she said. “My name is Terri! I know who I am,” she said to the nurse behind the counter. “I know my name and where I’m from and everything.”

“Well, that’s wonderful,” the nurse said, and her face lit up. “That’s just great—I probably shouldn’t call you Red any more.”

“My name’s Terri,” she said. “Terri. It sounds kind of funny to me at the moment. I know it’s right, but it still sounds funny.”

She called to the black man who was dry-mopping the corridor. “I know who I am! I just got my memory back!”

“That’s good,” he said. “Hope they’re good memories.”

She looked around for someone else to tell. The cop was talking into his radio.