Memory Lapse

by Kathleen O’Brien

  Laura had met them all, though they didn’t remember her. The older ones, fair-haired boys who looked disarmingly like Drew, were now seven and six years old, cocky second and first graders, but they’d been just toddlers when Laura left Winterwalk. And the two little girls, Cindy and Nina, were only four and five, respectively, and thus they hadn’t been much more than infants when Laura last saw their mother.

  Suddenly Nina tripped, clutching at Laura’s hand for support. “Whoa,” Laura said, balancing herself as she tugged the little girl into a fully upright position. “Careful!”

  Nina smiled at her, her tiny features miraculously, perfectly Townsend already. Especially her smile. Laura’s heart thumped once, hard. Is this what it would have been like to have Drew’s daughter? “I'm not very good yet,” Nina confided, as if Laura couldn’t possibly have guessed it on her own. “Mommy says I'm getting better every day, but Brett says I stink.”

  Brett, who at that moment was barreling by them as if he was in an Olympic competition, would have said that, Laura thought. He was a born athlete and clearly already a gold medalist in his mind. But, though both boys teased their sisters mercilessly, Laura had watched them helping the girls lace their skates, and she knew there was a lot of love among them all.

  “Cindy stinks even worse than I do,” Nina said proudly, pointing to her little sister, who was stumbling along at Drew’s side. “Pee-yew!”

  As they watched, Drew seemed to decide the little girl had struggled enough. He scooped her up and hoisted her onto his shoulders. Cindy squealed with delight and immediately began issuing orders from her lofty perch. “Faster!” she cried. “Over there. No, go over there. Over there!“

  Drew skated smoothly, his long legs easily gliding across the ice, obeying his niece’s queenly edicts without hesitation. Nina made a small, discontented sound, as if she suddenly realized there might be advantages to being the youngest, even if you did stink. Laura made a small sound herself, though she hoped Nina didn’t hear it. It held an unmistakable note of longing. How lucky these children were to belong to Drew, to have a forever claim on his love and attention, not to be, as she was, counting out their time with him in stolen afternoons and midnight madness.

  But then, as if he could sense that Laura was feeling odd man out, he deposited Cindy on the bench at the end of the pond and skated over to them.

  “Time out, half-pint,” he said with a smile. “Go take a break with your sister.”

  Nina began to whine, but silenced herself immediately when Drew lowered his brows. Dispiritedly but without further comment, she hobbled off toward the bench, her short, choppy steps much less graceful now that she had no adult to cling to.

  Laura smiled, acknowledging the deft juggling act he’d been doing all afternoon, how cleverly he’d rotated his attention from one child to the next, giving them each their time to bask in the spotlight of his affection. How like him not to leave her out, either. “My turn, Uncle Drew?”

  His answering smile was blinding. “On the contrary.” He tucked her hand warmly in his. “It’s my turn.”

  They didn’t talk much as, hand in hand, they swept across the pond, their strides matching well. Of course, she reminded herself carefully, his stride had matched Brett’s, too, and then Cindy’s. It was his gift.

  But still, they felt so right together. Gradually the warmth of his hand seeped through the leather of their gloves, and she tightened her grip, seeking it blindly.

  Their breath misted in the cold, mingled and then blew across their faces. It was such a beautiful day. A blue light sparkled through the white-limbed trees, which bent protectively over the small round pond. A few airy flakes of new snow drifted around their shoulders. They went all the way around the pond, then began the circle once more. Again, Laura had the sensation of being deep inside her snow globe, twirling safely in a universe of their own. How did he do that, she wondered? How did he manage to create the sensation of being protected, shielded from the rest of the world? He hadn’t even said a word.

  Suddenly she realized that he had shifted the pattern of their rotation and was steering them toward the empty bench on the far side of the pond, away from where the children were absorbed in some game that involved twigs and snowballs.

  One ancient oak, nearly bent double with age, hid the corner of the bench from view, and Drew brought her to a smooth stop right there, behind the snow-laden branches. They sat side by side on the bench, thigh to thigh and shoulder to shoulder, their breath puffing in gentle, rapid clouds as they recovered from their exertions. She hadn’t realized how fast they had been skating until now, when the swirling world finally came to a halt, like a merry-go-round whose ride is over.

  “Just about time to head home, I think,” Drew said, and Laura tried to interpret the tone in his voice. Was he relieved? Disappointed? But he simply sounded factual, and she couldn’t honestly read anything further into it.

  “Stephanie’s getting ready for her birthday party,” he added conversationally. “That’s why I've got the kids—to keep them out of her hair. She’s always crazy the day before a party.”

  Stephanie’s birthday. Laura searched her memory and found the date. Of course it was. “I’d forgotten,” she said slowly. “It’s amazing, but I’d actually forgotten what day her birthday was.”

  He didn’t seem disturbed by the admission. “Well, she’s hoping you'll come to the party,” he said. He looked at Laura. “She’s eager to see you.”

  “She is?” Laura couldn’t help sounding dubious. Though Stephanie was five years older than Laura, the two women had once been good friends. But that was before Laura broke off her engagement to Drew. She had received only one letter from Stephanie after that, and it had been harsh and unforgiving.

  “Very. I told her you were here, and she made me promise to bring you.” He frowned, finally seeming to notice her unsettled expression. “That’s okay, isn’t it? I actually thought you’d be glad. It'll give you and Stephanie time to talk about things. About Damian.”

  Laura still didn’t answer. It would seem so strange to dress up in fancy clothes and go to a party, just as if she was still part of this world. “I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “I'm not sure I'm up to it just now....”

  “Nonsense.” Drew seemed impatient. “You want to get to the bottom of all this, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you need to talk to Stephanie. We don’t have to stay all night if you don’t want to.” He reached over and patted her hand, just as if she was another sister. “You'll do fine.”

  “All right,” she said reluctantly, looking at his strong hand over hers. “I guess it'll be all right.”

  He took her capitulation in stride. Releasing her hand, he looked at the children, still on the bench, still absorbed in their strange game.

  “We really had better go,” he said again, but he made no move to get up.

  “The kids will be tired,” she agreed, trying to match the impersonal quality he seemed to find so easily. “This is a lot of exercise.”

  “Especially for the little ones,” he added. Laura felt a sense of keen frustration. Here they were, alone together in this haven created by the snow and the oaks and the pond, and they were saying nothing more meaningful than the idle chitchat they might have offered a stranger.

  She wanted more. She wanted to connect. But she laced her gloved fingers together in her lap and stared at them, unable to think of anything to say.

  “I'm a little tired myself,” he said, and running his hands through his hair, he yawned broadly.

  Of course he was. Laura squeezed her fingers together so hard they hurt. Of course he was tired—he’d been up all night, following her through the house, trying to make sure she didn’t do anything stupid, anything dangerous. And she hadn’t even thanked him for it.

  “I'm sorry,” she said quietly. “That’s my fault, I know.”

  “God, Laura, it’s not anyone’s fault,” he said quickl
y, turning toward her.

  Laura’s gaze dropped, her cheeks burning against the cold snowflakes.

  “Hey.” Drew nudged her with his elbow. “It’s okay, Laura. Really, it’s okay.”

  She shook her head, not contradicting him, exactly, but not quite believing.

  “I haven’t thanked you,” she said awkwardly, unable to continue the charade of holiday high spirits. She wasn’t here for a holiday—how could she have allowed herself to forget that? “For last night. I know it can’t have been pleasant.”

  To her relief, he didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. “No need to thank me,” he said in low tones. “I was glad I could help.”

  She could feel his gaze on her, serious now, but she couldn’t look at him. Instead she looked out across the grounds where, just beyond the farthest treetops, the chimneys of Springfields could be glimpsed. What must he, who had grown up around such easy normalcy, such ordered restraint, think of the macabre chaos of her life now?

  Suddenly she felt strangely frantic for him to tell her about it, as if she couldn’t stand to go on without knowing what it had been like. Exactly. With all the details her mother had never been willing to tell her.

  “Drew,” she said, compelled to pursue it, though she suspected, from his manner today, that he’d rather not. Just like her mother, really, who had always tacitly communicated that Laura’s aberrant behavior ought never to be mentioned in the morning. She had pulled a veil of silence over it, the way she might have hung a picture over a stain on the wall, preserving the illusion that everything was fine. But somehow the pretense had only made Laura feel worse, giving her imagination full scope to invent horrors for herself. If her actions were so disgusting they couldn’t be discussed in polite society, she had deduced, then they must be terrible indeed.

  “Drew, was it awful?” She hardly knew how to ask it, but she had to. That was what she was here for, after all. “Do I look... Do I act...” She turned to him, her inner turmoil rising sharply, dangerously. She felt almost as if she was choking. “Is it just too horrible, as if I'm a madwoman? When I'm naked...is it...vulgar?”

  For a long moment Drew stared at her, silent. His eyes narrowed against a quick flurry of snowflakes, and it gave his face a look of sudden intensity, almost of anger. Then he took her hand and held it fast in his. He gripped her so hard she could feel the strong bones of his fingers even through the leather.

  “It’s very sad,” he said finally, his voice low and husky, vibrating with an unsettling emotion. “And it’s very beautiful.”

  He frowned, and his face tightened, as if he was in pain. “I think,” he said, “that you're perhaps the most breathtaking, heartbreaking woman I've ever seen.”

  6

  THE NEXT DAY, Laura almost changed her mind a dozen times about going to Stephanie’s birthday party. When, sometime around eight o'clock, she found herself actually in the car, driving toward Springfields, she hardly knew how she had ended up there. She’d meant to tell Drew she had a headache, a fever, a dizzy spell—anything—but he’d spent most of the day in town, and somehow she just hadn’t found the right time or the right words to do it.

  Now here she was, pulling up the drive, dressed in a slinky silver gown she’d found in the attic, and it was too late to back out. Springfields lay before her, and she caught her breath, as entranced as ever. The neoclassical mansion rose out of the crest of a snowy hill, its Doric columns white and resplendent—an ice temple fired by torches and starlight.

  She glanced at Drew, suddenly attacked anew by insecurity. Why had he invited her? She didn’t belong here anymore, didn’t have any right to let her emotional darkness cast a shadow on all this gleaming perfection.

  “Drew...” she began hesitantly.

  “There’s probably going to be a big crowd,” Drew said, as if she had asked him a question. Perhaps she had, with her nervous glance and restive hands, which she kept twisting in her lap. He knew her well enough to interpret those clues correctly. “Huge. You know how Stephanie is.”

  Laura nodded. Stephanie loved people—all kinds, all ages—and had an intense, sympathetic curiosity about them. “Oh, he’s had such an interesting life,” she’d say about anyone she met, from a U.S. senator to the kid who delivered her groceries. It always took her hours to complete even the simplest errands, because she’d “get talking,” as she apologetically put it, and lose track of time. But she’d come home knowing absolutely everything about the postman who weighed her package, the cashier who rang up her new purse, the stylist who cut her hair.

  “Drew,” Laura began again, but they had pulled up to the front entrance, and Drew was still talking amiably, whisking off his seat belt. She didn’t touch hers.

  “The Milfords will be there, and the Brightons—” He stopped as the uniformed valets, well choreographed, opened both doors at once, and suddenly there was nothing for Laura to do but climb out as gracefully as possible. Drew handed the keys to the valet and quickly joined Laura at the foot of the steps.

  The Milfords and the Brightons. Laura looked up the tall flight of stairs, wondering how she’d find the courage to do this. Once she had believed that Springfields would be her home, that she and Drew would live here and raise their family in this, the Townsend family estate. She had expected to be the one hosting parties here, standing next to her handsome, adoring husband and greeting silly Mildred Milford and quiet Dolly Brighton and all the rest of the well-bred, well-to-do people she’d grown up with.

  Three years ago she’d given up that dream, and now the names came to her with a queer sense of sadness, as if someone was reading her a list of the dead. But they weren’t dead. She could hear them now, laughing and murmuring and clinking ice in their favorite cocktails. She could see, through the wide, undraped windows, the shadows of their faces, the sparkle of their diamonds, the swirling dabs of color as their beautiful dresses danced by. They were very much alive, going on with their lives the way they always had.

  Actually, she thought as she numbly let Drew lead her up the stairs, it would be more accurate to say that she was the one who had died. The Laura Nolan they knew was gone. In her place was this obsessively normal young woman, who lived in a neat little Boston town house that looked just like everyone else’s, who worked day after day as the recreation coordinator for a chain of nursing homes just as if she needed the money. She wondered if they would even recognize her.

  “Laura!” A soft cry broke into her thoughts, and Laura suddenly felt herself enveloped in Stephanie’s eager embrace. “Laura, it’s so good to see you!” Stephanie drew back to study her face. “Oh, kiddo, you look wonderful!”

  Overwhelmed, Laura simply shook her head and smiled, relieved. Other hurdles might still lie ahead, but the most important question was answered. Apparently Stephanie had decided to forgive Laura for running away from her beloved brother. Perhaps, Laura thought suddenly, wondering why it had never occurred to her before, perhaps Stephanie had finally realized that Laura had done Drew a favor by setting him free.

  Still, she was glad Drew hadn’t taken his hand away from her elbow. It was a steady warmth, reassuring and strong.

  “You look pretty marvelous yourself,” Laura said, returning the hug. It was true. Stephanie was immensely pregnant, but radiant in a honey silk ball gown that was exactly the same color as her hair. Laura had almost forgotten how much lighter Stephanie’s hair was than Drew’s.

  “Hey, everyone—Laura’s here!” Stephanie called in her inimitable, breezy style, as if the whole party had been waiting for her arrival. And suddenly Laura was in the center of a small storm of welcoming faces—Stephanie’s husband, Mark, all the children, the children’s nanny, and then dozens of guests, from Mildred Milford and Dolly Brighton, with husbands in tow, to people Laura hadn’t thought about in three years. Everyone professed to be thrilled to see her, and most of them even sounded sincere. If, among the faces, there were one or two who seemed sharp with curiosity, Laura didn’t have time to dwel
l on it. There were too many hands to shake, kisses to accept, questions to ask and answer.

  She couldn’t have done it without Drew. At first it was just the security of his presence that kept her going. Then, as the more casual acquaintances came up for their turns, he jogged her memory with a perfectly placed sentence. “Oh, Mrs. Blankenship, come tell Laura about Betty’s scholarship to Harvard. Back when she used to baby-sit for you she’d always tell me how smart Betty was!” And Mrs. Blankenship would never realize that Laura had nearly forgotten her.

  Soon, though, Laura was making the connections herself. It was as if, now that she had relaxed a bit, her memories could flow freely. The librarian, the school principal, the widow from the estate on the far side of Springfields—they all paraded before her, sweeping her back into their world as if she’d never been gone.

  Very strange, she thought, listening to Reverend Mosier complain about the rotted wood in the steeple—the same crisis he’d been collecting money for three years ago. Had so little changed, then? She’d felt as if she’d been gone a lifetime, but obviously to everyone else it had been only three short, rather uneventful years. No one thought much of her absence, really. She’d been gone longer than this when she went off to college.

  Suddenly Laura felt a rush of affection for them all, for the way they had innocently held a place for her, perhaps believing she’d be back. In their minds, it seemed, this was her world, no matter how far away she ran. How very sweet. How very strange.

  She turned to say something about it to Drew, but to her surprise he was no longer at her side. Her spirits sank suddenly. When did he leave? Was it during Mildred’s long-winded litany of the travails of being married to a doctor, or perhaps during Dolly’s account of her two-year-old son, who seemed to be a musical prodigy? She checked the room as subtly as she could, hoping not to hurt the reverend’s feelings. But Drew was nowhere in sight.