Unforgettable

by Caroline B. Cooney

  The green marble of the low table between the sofas looked, on second glance, like an unchiselled tombstone.

  Not a magazine, not a pair of earrings, not a souvenir, not a sculpture, not a half-finished glass of water, touched any surface.

  Perhaps the maids had just finished in here, or perhaps the occupants owned nothing; just as she had stood in that square with nothing at all in her hands or pockets.

  Perhaps when you were as rich as this, when you owned floors in hotels, perhaps you didn’t also own clutter and mess.

  The father lowered himself onto a sofa and regarded her silently. A Rolex watch gleamed on his right wrist and a thick gold wedding band circled his left ring finger.

  He made no suggestions to her. The silence was large and she fought a desire to fill it either with babble or screaming.

  He just looked at her. There was no expression on his face. He seemed comfortable—with her, with The Jayquith, with memory loss.

  She was hideously afraid. It was almost impossible to fill her lungs now. She had not known that breathing could turn into a fight. Fear could make your own lungs the enemy. Her breath came in little shallow grabs for air.

  She needed to sit or she’d topple over. She chose an immense forest-green leather sofa opposite him. The sofa was the most comfortable luxuriant couch on which she’d ever relaxed. It welcomed her like favorite pillows. Like soft night. “I didn’t know leather could be colored,” she said.

  He said nothing.

  What is memory, she wondered, that so much could be disposed of? So little kept? What do I know of memory? But then, what does anybody know of memory? It keeps its own secrets, it has its own rules.

  He’s wearing a ring, so he’s married. To my mother? If he’s my father, I have a mother. Well, of course I have a mother. All human beings have mothers.

  Hope was so confused that it seemed she wasn’t really thinking, but just reading about somebody else’s thoughts.

  “Tell me what happened, Hope.” His voice was calm, and rather sad.

  She was suddenly deeply embarrassed. She had no idea what to do next. To say out loud yet again—I don’t know who you are. I don’t know who I am, either—it was too dumb. She just wanted this to end. He was such a nice man. He was being so kind. The whole thing was so weird. “Look,” she said, and she had to put a hand over her mouth to keep herself from crying, which was odd, because tears didn’t come from the mouth, “look, I’m truly sorry, but I—um—”

  The father shook his head. “I half believe you, Hope,” he said. “But it’s hard to believe more than half. How could you really forget who you are? Now look.” He meant that literally, for he got up, crossed the room, sat beside her, took her face and turned it up to his. His hands were as calm as his voice. His eyes were affectionate and understanding.

  She began to cry.

  “Tell me, Hope.”

  “I can’t stay with you. I don’t know who you are. I know you mean well, but I—” She still had Mitch McKenna’s bandanna. She clung to it. It smelled of nothing, as if it were nothing, as if she too were nothing.

  “Is that yours?” said the father. It was easier thinking of him as the father instead of her father.

  She shook her head. “Mitch gave it to me. The boy who was helping me in the plaza. I was crying then, too.”

  “There is nothing to cry about. You’re home. You’re with me. All we need to do is find out what set this off.” He picked up a telephone and ordered dinner to be sent up from the hotel restaurant.

  Dinnertime? she thought. Where did the day go? Where have I been all day? Through a huge strip of glass on the far wall, she could see the sun going down. I’ve lost the day, she thought.

  The silence in the room was awful. She kept having to fill it. “This is very scary. I mean, I really can’t think very clearly.”

  He simply looked exhausted. “Hope, do you realize what you’re putting me through? What would your mother think of this?”

  What would my mother think of this? she wondered.

  “Hope, no more soap operas. No more stunts.”

  She tried to meet his skeptical gaze but got only as far as his chest. She had to drop her eyes. I’m not pretending, she reminded herself. This is real. “It isn’t a stunt,” she said at last. Her voice shivered over the syllables, and she pressed the bandanna to her face. Mitch had seemed so normal out there in the sun. But what if she had lost normalcy? What if this loss of memory and space never ended? What if she got trapped in this thing?

  The father paced. How neat his steps were. How composed his manner. She liked him. She liked how nice he was being in spite of her.

  His polished shoes on the dark wine and green of the carpeting made no sound. In fact, nothing in this suite made any sound. The absence of noise was complete. No machinery hummed, no appliances clicked, no footsteps rang. The suite felt entirely and forever empty, as if its bare rooms went on and on, its closets and lives as empty as the top of the coffee table.

  She wanted to be back in that outdoor square, among the pointing tourists, smelling salt water and hamburgers, hearing seagulls and boats’ horns. She wanted to flirt with Mitch instead of—

  Okay, but I’m here. And it’s time to go on. “Would you please tell me your name?” she said.

  Now he did glare at her. Not dangerously. It was the glare of a parent who has put up with enough nonsense and is going to get really angry if you push another inch.

  Hope actually blushed, as if she had some nerve asking what his, and presumably her, last name was.

  From a corridor she had not noticed suddenly sprinted a tall and very thin girl. The girl’s arms waved like Dutch windmills. She had the body of a nine-year-old playing tag. Her face, however, was seventeen or eighteen. Her short light hair was cut like overlapping shingles on a roof. A pattern had been carved in the hair. A looping spiral of shaven scalp came to an arrow-tipped point at the top of her head. It was a curled, hissing, snake.

  Hope rather liked the haircut. Incredibly dramatic. It would take such nerve to do that. Hope could not imagine requesting it.

  The girl was not dressed punk. She was dressed like a young Sunday school child: pink lace and white collar. Her head just didn’t match her clothing, any more than her arm-flinging dancing matched her age. She looked like a plastic doll with the wrong head stuck on.

  The girl hurled herself on the father, kissing him and mussing his hair. Then she flung herself on top of Hope, whose cheek she pecked while laughing aloud. It was an odd, hot, breathy kiss.

  She knows me, thought Hope. She knows me very well. But—

  “Darling, tell me all about it. I don’t believe Uncle Ken for a moment. Amnesia! Please. You can do better than that. You always have.” She flopped onto the leather sofa right next to Hope.

  Uncle Ken, thought Hope, saving the new fact.

  But the snake-etched girl wasn’t leaving her much time to contemplate names. “Is it true you saw the shooting, Hopey? How too exciting. Tell me everything.”

  Hope wet her lips and the girl imitated the action perfectly. Hope pressed her lips together and the girl did that also. Hope had to laugh. The girl said, “Hopester, you are sitting on the couch as if you think it’s going to scrape your leg, like barnacles.”

  “I’m kind of nervous,” said Hope.

  “You’re kind of nuts,” said the girl. “I admit, I’m impressed. You’ve never pulled this much off before. But enough’s enough, Hopey.” She scrunched up, tiny pointed chin resting on skinny little fist. Her nine-year-old, scout-getting-a-badge eyes focused unblinking on Hope’s.

  “But who are you?” said Hope.

  “Hope, I don’t put up with you. You know that. I’m not going to cater to your scenes.” The girl turned to her uncle. “Did I hear you order dinner? I want dessert first. I’m sick of always having to have the main course first.”

  “Fine,” said her uncle.

  “I need chocolate before anything else,” the girl
explained to Hope. “Come on, Hope. Fess up. Tell all. What happened? What did you see? No fair not sharing.”

  Hope shook her head slowly. “I have nothing to share,” she said. “I know how dumb I sound. I know how annoyed you must be. But I don’t know you. I don’t know why I even came up here. I should have—”

  “Okay, okay.” The girl tucked her long thin legs up under her dress. “I’ll play along. I’m your cousin Kaytha.” She giggled. “You’re my cousin Hope. Our last name is Senneth.”

  Senneth.

  Hope Senneth. Ken Senneth. Kaytha Senneth.

  Hope ran her mind over Boston names she knew. Paul Revere, John Hancock, Sam Adams, John Quincy Adams. The name Senneth meant absolutely nothing to her.

  “We share tutors, Hopesy. We don’t go to school. We cruise the world, bringing our teachers along. Now and then we go to international schools, if we stay in port long enough. You are a much much much much better student than I am.”

  “Don’t go to school?” repeated Hope. “Cruise the world?” She was beyond thinking. Beyond planning. Beyond anything. “But—you’d have to have—you know—passports, and—I’d have to—you know—”

  “Hopester, cut it out. You’re being truly annoying.”

  Food arrived.

  Splendidly uniformed staff brought immense silver trays, laden with lidded platters. They swooped in gracefully, setting the dining table in a flash. The dining room also faced the harbor, its colors not wine and green like the sitting area, but mauve and silver. It did not feel like a dining room in a house; it felt like a private corner of a magnificent restaurant.

  The napkins were mauve with silver threads, and folded like fleur-de-lis. Flowers and crystal water pitchers appeared, and Hope found herself being escorted to the table, her chair held for her. I’m famished, she thought. She could barely wait for the others to be seated.

  The staff left and Hope tore into her meal.

  “Hopesy,” said Kaytha, “you’re not a sled dog after a race.”

  “Sorry,” she said, and she really was. Where were her manners?

  Then she thought: With all that is going on here, why am I worrying for one tenth of a second about manners? She knotted her fingers together to keep herself from grabbing two forks at once and an hysterical giggle bubbled up in her throat.

  “Has she been like this all afternoon, Uncle Ken?” said Kaytha. Sure enough, Kaytha was having an immense complex chocolate dessert, with layers of cake and sauce and whippings and toppings. Dessert first, thought Hope, and she knew absolutely that she had grown up in a household where dessert was a reward for eating your broccoli.

  Out the great expanse of window, the setting sun turned the harbor to molten gold, and the sails of incoming boats were bejeweled triangles.

  The father ate very slowly and studiedly. “Don’t make it worse for her, Kaytha.”

  “It isn’t worse for her,” said Kaytha, “it’s worse for us. I still say if you’d just swing her against a brick wall somewhere, she’d start behaving.”

  “I think we’ll stay short of that solution,” he said dryly. He turned to Hope. “The problem—if there is one—is that you must have witnessed the woman in the limousine.”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t remember witnessing my entire life, never mind a woman in a limousine,” said Hope.

  “Pass the rolls, please,” said Kaytha, and Hope passed the rolls, which were in a silver, rather than a wicker, basket, lined by a cloth so pretty it might have been a scarf. How normal it all seemed—passing rolls, buttering them.

  “Start by telling me what you did today, Hope,” said her father.

  Normalcy vanished quickly. Hysteria crept back. “I can’t tell you anything. I don’t remember anything. I don’t know what happened today or any other day. I don’t know what’s going on. Please! If you’re really my father, explain what’s going on!”

  “Do you want me to call Dr. Patel?”

  “Who is Dr. Patel?” she said nervously.

  “Your psychiatrist. Whom you have seen twice a week for three years.”

  She tried to haul this into her mind, but her head stayed heavy, and nothing traveled with her. “Why do I go see him?”

  “Her,” corrected Mr. Senneth reproachfully. “Dr. Patel is a woman. As you well know.”

  “I don’t know anything!”

  “Hope. Stop this.” It was a father’s voice. A father who was sick and tired of all this nonsense.

  Kaytha’s eyes glittered like glass and silver. She traced the snake shaved on her skull with a long fingernail.

  “That is the creepiest thing I have ever seen anybody do,” said Hope.

  Mr. Senneth suddenly laughed, shaking his head. “You’re right about that, Hope.”

  Kaytha was defensive. “I like my snake. I like to feel him curling himself up there.”

  “That’s sick,” said Hope. “When did you get the haircut?”

  “Hopesy, you were with me. You chickened out. You kept your old hair.”

  My old hair. My hair that I don’t even know what it looks like. I don’t even know what I look like.

  They actually know me. They are used to me. What is going on?

  She pushed away the plate of food, pressed the bandanna to her face, and wept.

  Kaytha was fascinated.

  An empty head. No past. No facts. No plans for the future either. No anything.

  Do I believe this? she thought. Is there really such a thing as amnesia? But what’s the point in pretending?

  In the midst of cousinly teasing, Kaytha paid extremely close attention to Hope. Assessing, gauging, wondering. It was so very very strange.

  If Kaytha were in that position—couldn’t remember her name, or Uncle Ken, or Cousin Edie, or The Jayquith—and, if on top of that, she had lost all her possessions—what would she do?

  Nothing would make Kaytha approach a policeman.

  She thought about Mitch the T-shirt God, wrapping his arms around Hope. Kaytha suppressed the jealousy that threatened. There was no time for jealousy. Well, actually, she thought, we have till Tuesday. There probably is time for jealousy. But I’m going to be mature. After all, Hope didn’t hug him back. She just stood there. I saw that from the seventh-floor window.

  I’m still going to have Mitch for myself. There is time for that.

  She said, “I have things to do, Hopesy. I’ll see you later. Now listen to me. You know how much you detest Dr. Patel. You know what electric shock feels like. So lighten up and talk to Uncle Ken.”

  “Electric shock?” repeated Hope, mouth dropping and skin whitening.

  “Stop it, Kaytha,” said the father sharply. “She’s just being mean, Hope. You two don’t get along particularly well, in case that’s another thing you’re not remembering.”

  Kaytha needed to get out of the suite fast. She could not keep this up. It was just too, too weird. Kaytha waved at her uncle, drew a snake on Hope’s hair, and left the hotel.

  Hope was not relieved when Kaytha left.

  The empty feeling in the suite and in her heart returned. How large emptiness could be!

  The man sat opposite her, calmly eating his dinner.

  She sat not calmly at all, wrapping and unwrapping the bandanna around her cold fingers. Kaytha had eaten only the dessert. When she left, after the snake tracing, she’d rested her hand on the back of Hope’s neck. Feather light and very cool. As if Hope’s first guess had been right, and Kaytha was a plastic doll.

  But without another girl there, Hope felt immensely more vulnerable. I should have asked if I could go with her, she thought. I wonder what she’s doing tonight.

  I’m sitting at dinner with a man I’ve never seen before in my life, who claims I’m his psycho daughter, and I’m wondering if I should have gone out on the town with a cousin I don’t know, to have a good time in a city I’ve never visited?

  I am psycho.

  The sharp rat-a-tat-tat on the hotel room door startled them both.
/>   They exchanged looks of shock as identical as if they really were father and daughter.

  With some annoyance, Mr. Senneth went to the door. Whatever he saw through the peephole stunned him. Slowly, but unwillingly, he unlocked and opened the door.

  The T-shirt God grinned.

  Even though a good portion of her life seemed to be missing, Hope knew that she had never been so glad to see anybody in all that life. When she beamed at him, tension and fear left.

  “Hey there, Hope,” said Mitch, grinning a quite amazing grin. “Are you okay?”

  I am now, she thought. He’s so handsome! And so normal! How do you get that normal?

  “How did you get up to this floor?” demanded Mr. Senneth.

  Mitch grinned even wider and winked. “Supernatural powers.”

  “I would like a better explanation than that, young man. What employee permitted you entry? I will have them dismissed. You have to have a key to make the elevator stop at this floor.”

  Mitch nodded several times, grinning wider with each nod, as if something in him were wound up. It provoked Mr. Senneth as much as it delighted Hope. “My parents stay here sometimes,” he said, with an offhand little shrug. “I got the key from Mother.”

  “Your parents?” repeated Mr. Senneth.

  “Well, not in this suite, exactly. There are four on this floor, you know. Mother prefers the east corner. She likes sunrise more than sunset.”

  Hope pictured Mother. A stout woman with a large bosom. Mother would be horrifyingly rich and underwrite entire television shows. Probably nature programs about odd little white birds on remote islands off Scotland.

  Hope giggled to herself.

  Mr. Senneth was not amused. “You’re a persistent young man. I have to admire that. Your name was—uh—”

  “Mitch McKenna.”

  “I am unacquainted with your parents.”

  “That’s okay,” said Mitch, walking around Mr. Senneth to go over to Hope.

  “I can only assume,” said Mr. Senneth icily, “that you have ripped off that Harvard logo you wear, and do not actually attend that college, or you would, I hope, display better manners.”