Coincidence

by David Ambrose

  But suddenly I couldn’t go on like that any longer. I was sure that George suspected something, and I simply didn’t have it in me to continue deceiving him. He didn’t deserve to be treated so shabbily. For too many nights we had been lying together—in more ways than one—he trying not to disturb me as he watched me in the dark, while I pretended to be asleep. Finally, that night, I knew I had to face him. There was no other way.

  I opened my eyes and looked up at him, meeting his gaze.

  “It’s Steve, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Yes,” I answered simply, unable to attempt any kind of lie or evasion.

  As I say, I had no right to do it. I was putting Steve at risk. Yet it didn’t seem possible to do anything else.

  Nor did it seem possible to undo so much with one word.

  George nodded slowly, absorbing this confirmation of his fears. “What d’you want to do?” His mouth was dry. I saw him make an effort to swallow.

  I began to say, “I’m truly sorry, George,” but he cut me off.

  “Don’t. Please don’t apologize. That makes it worse. Let’s just be practical. What shall we do?”

  “Separate, I suppose,” I said. “We can’t go on living like this, can we?”

  “I’ll move out,” he said. “While you’re away, I’ll arrange it. I’ll find somewhere.”

  “All right,” I whispered, “perhaps that’s best.”

  It seemed unreal to be disposing of our futures as simply as that. Even if he didn’t want me to apologize I felt I had to explain. I wanted him at least to understand my reasons for deceiving him for so long; I wanted him to know that I had done it reluctantly. He listened calmly, not looking at me, then nodded once.

  “You needn’t worry about a scandal. I won’t make any.”

  I didn’t say anything, just acknowledged his words in silence, knowing that I would feel like a hypocrite if I thanked him for them.

  It was his idea that he move into one of the guest rooms that night. I didn’t demur—it was obviously the only thing to do short of one of us going to a hotel. Not surprisingly, I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night; I shouldn’t think George did either. I lay there thinking about how things that seem so simple to begin with can lead to such complications and become the cause of so much pain.

  We went back a long way, Steve and I—to when I was fresh out of college and working as assistant to the deputy features editor of an art magazine. He was an idealistic young lawyer working for the public defender’s office. Back then he had no thought of going into politics. He was brilliant, funny, and handsome, so how could I avoid falling in love with him? We were together more than two years, which is a long time when you’re young. It means you start asking yourself where this relationship is going.

  Maybe I put pressure on him. Did I? I hadn’t meant to. I think the fact that I had money created a certain barrier between us. It was always at the back of his mind, and he didn’t like it. It made him fear for his independence, his self-image as a free man: his manhood, I suppose. I half-respected him for that, and half-wanted to knock his brains out.

  Anyway, there’s little point after all this time in over-analyzing why it happened: The outcome’s the same. We broke up for a “trial period,” which grew longer and longer, and during which he eventually met someone else.

  We stayed friends. I was invited to the wedding, and I was nice to Linda, his wife, though I never liked or trusted her. Ironically, she was exactly the kind of woman he was afraid that all rich girls were beneath the surface: selfish, vain, and socially ambitious. Linda was all of those things—except she wasn’t rich. However, she had every confidence in Steve’s ability to rectify that little problem in short order.

  I suppose I married George on the rebound—at least partly. That makes me sound like a fool, which I don’t think I am, and it’s unfair to him. He was different from Steve, less ambitious to change the world, more curious to understand it. He’d taught at a small university, written a couple of novels, and was actually very interesting to talk to. What I liked was that he always seemed full of ideas and different ways of looking at things. I thought life with him would be civilized and companionable.

  Well, it was both those things. And if eventually I came to feel it wasn’t enough, then, with hindsight, I suppose I had only myself to blame. But the fact is that all the plans and ambitions that George was full of when we met failed to materialize over the years. He’d said he wanted to write more novels but never did, although he started three. He tried writing stories, but abandoned that too. In the end he began compiling anthologies, mostly about science—which was surprising in that he wasn’t a scientist. He’d been teaching law when I met him, though he said he’d never been remotely interested in the subject. His m ain regret was that he hadn’t been taught mathematics better as a child, because if he h ad been he could have become a scientist—a theoretical physicist ideally. He read everything he could on the subject, struggling for hours to absorb complex ideas such as (I remember him saying once) eleven-dimensional space. Then he would regurgitate in his books what he’d understood, but in simpler language and with the addition of, as he put it, a few speculations of his own.

  The problem was that his books weren’t sophisticated enough for the experts or clear enough for the average reader. They didn’t sell very well, nor were they reviewed much better—if they were reviewed at all. It was a classic case of falling between two stools—a region he described, wryly but regretfully, as his natural habitat. I did what I could, through various friends and contacts, to get his books published, even if I had to discreetly sponsor them myself from time to time. I hoped my intervention was never too obvious to George. He was a dear and generous soul, but it was an inescapable fact that he’d become dull. I knew he still loved me, but in my heart, although it hurt me to admit it, I had not been able to say the same about him for some time.

  I had never lost all contact with Steve. We saw each other socially from time to time, but never exchanged more than a few words, and almost always in the company of others. We only became lovers again by chance—though I wonder whether George would have called it chance. He was starting to research a book on coincidence and was beginning to see all kinds of hidden patterns everywhere.

  Steve was still married to Linda—unhappily, despite two children he adored and a thriving law practice. It was because of a client that he’d flown to Chicago. I was there to check out a couple of young artists. I met him in the lobby of the Drake, where we were both staying. We arranged to have dinner that night.

  For the rest of the day I thought about nothing else. He told me later that it had been the same for him. It was like getting to know an old friend all over again, the best kind of old friend, where you can pick up right where you left off—laughing at the punch lines of each other’s jokes before you even get to them. I realized how little I’d ever been in love with George, and how I’d never stopped loving Steve.

  I don’t think either of us to begin with had the slightest intention of spending the night together, but by the time we left the little restaurant we’d found and took a cab back to the hotel, we both knew it was inevitable.

  Then began the tawdry farce of a continuing adulterous love affair. It was something neither of us relished or felt proud of, but we had no choice. We both knew that what we wanted ultimately was to be together. The main problem, at least for Steve, was timing.

  There was little residual affection left between Steve and Linda. Theirs was a marriage in name only now. If they had sex, he told me, it was strictly duty, once a month, and with the lights out. And it was over quickly. But Linda was a woman who didn’t easily let go of what she considered hers. The marriage had already brought her material comfort. Now, with Steve’s nascent career in politics, it offered status. She would put up with his casual affairs (he confessed to me he’d had two brief ones over the years), and she made it clear that she would even tolerate a long-standing mistress rather than gi
ve up the chance of a life inside the magic circles of Georgetown dinner parties. Who could say how far Steve’s talents might take both of them?

  Quite apart from the problem of an ambitious wife, who would certainly do everything in her power to destroy him if he threatened to leave her, he had his children to think about. Whether his relationship with them would survive the kind of divorce that Linda would undoubtedly put him through was an open question. I told him that personally I had never believed that children benefited from parents who stayed in an unhappy marriage for their sake, but I had no children of my own so who was I to talk?

  And who was I, I asked myself, to have had the good fortune to marry a man like George, who had behaved in the face of this betrayal—as he behaved over just about everything—so well that you felt you were taking advantage of him? And probably you were.

  Next morning he was up before I was, and even insisted on coming down with an umbrella to see me off in my taxi. I looked back and saw him standing there in the rain, such a lonely figure. I suddenly had the strongest feeling that I would never see him again. Panic swept over me. Was he going to do something foolish? Was he capable of suicide?

  I was about to tell the cab to turn around when I realized what was happening—that I was projecting my own guilt onto him. It wasn’t in his nature to harm himself. It would be a selfish act, and if there was one thing that George was not it was selfish.

  Chapter 19

  My trip to Philadelphia that weekend had been on legitimate business and nothing to do with Steve, who was staying with Linda at the house of some political bigwig in the Hamptons. I was looking at pictures and talking with artists and gallery owners the whole time, until one of my asistants in New York called me just after four on that Sunday afternoon.

  “Sara, listen, it’s all right, it’s not serious, but George is in the hospital.”

  I felt my chest tighten and my heart started beating hard. “What happened?”

  “He was mugged last night. They found him somewhere off Third.”

  “Last night? Why did nobody call me?”

  “They didn’t know where to find you. The hospital just tracked me down at home.”

  “George knows where I am.”

  “Sara, he’s got head injuries. It’s not life-threatening, but he’s suffering from amnesia. They say it’s almost certainly temporary, but right now he doesn’t even know who he is.”

  I got the first train back. They were expecting me at the hospital and there was a young doctor who was insistent about talking with me before I saw George.

  “I want to emphasize,” he began, “that your husband is in no physical danger.”

  “But there’s something wrong with him mentally?”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about. It’s one of the more unusual cases of amnesia I’ve come across.”

  He explained to me that although George’s bandaged head looked pretty dramatic, his injuries were superficial and not obviously consistent with the degree of his amnesia. He didn’t actually say that such a complete memory loss was impossible, but he seemed to be suggesting that it was highly unlikely. Then he paused a moment, as though there was something else on his mind but he was unsure how to broach it.

  “If there’s something more you think I should know,” I said, “I’d rather you didn’t hold back.”

  He frowned, adopting a more confidential tone. “Mrs. Daly, there is such a thing as a psychological amnesia as distinct from a physical one. It can arise when the victim wants to forget something, and perhaps uses an accidental though not serious blow to the head as an excuse to do so. Sometimes even engineers such a blow.”

  “Are you saying my husband hit himself on the head?”

  “I’m not saying anything of the kind. I’m just asking if he might have had any reason to seek temporary refuge in oblivion. Was there anything that happened in his life prior to this event that he might have wanted to avoid confronting?”

  He was watching me carefully to see what effect his words might have on me. I had an uneasy feeling that he suspected I knew more than I was telling him. He was right, of course, which made me feel worse. Probably I should have told him the truth. Maybe he could have arranged psychological help for George. Maybe, that way, many things that happened later could have been avoided.

  But I held back, mainly because I couldn’t say much without the risk of bringing Steve’s name into it. I know I could have simply said that I had told George I was leaving him, but if they had then confronted him with this as part of his therapy he might have blurted the whole story out—unintentionally perhaps, but resulting in exactly the kind of situation we were trying to avoid. It was only a matter of weeks before the crucial vote on Steve’s candidacy. I had already risked upsetting things once by making my confession to George when I did. I’d gotten away with it then, but I had an odd feeling that I shouldn’t push my luck—and Steve’s—a second time.

  So I shook my head, trying to look puzzled and distressed. “No,” I said, “I can’t think of anything.”

  The doctor was right about George’s appearance being dramatic. With a huge turban of white bandages on his head and bluish yellow bruising down the side of his face, he looked like he’d been in a train wreck. He was in an open ward but in a corner bed with curtains drawn around him, sitting up with some kind of tube in his arm. When I entered his little tentlike area, accompanied by the doctor, he turned to look at me with a kind of vacant curiosity, but not the slightest hint of recognition.

  “George? George, are you all right? Don’t you know me?”

  Instinctively I reached out to touch him, but was inhibited by his unblinking gaze and pulled back.

  “It’s me, George. Sara.”

  The muscles around his eyes tightened as he made an effort to concentrate. I saw a moment of panic as he realized he should know me but couldn’t drag anything out of his memory that made sense of the face in front of him.

  “This is your wife, Mr. Daly,” the doctor said in a professionally calm and reassuring voice, “but don’t worry if you can’t remember her right now. Your memory will return, so don’t be alarmed by anything that happens now. Everything will start to make sense very soon.”

  As though the words had somehow triggered the beginnings of a recovery, a change came over George’s face. He was like a man who hadn’t seen someone in twenty years, running into them unexpectedly in the street or at a party, peeling off the layers of change that time had wrought to find the old familiar features underneath.

  “Sara… ? Oh, God, Sara… !”

  My hand, which a moment ago I had withdrawn, still hovered between us. Now he grasped it in both of his.

  “What’s happening, Sara? For God’s sake, what’s happening to me?”

  George came home two days later. He looked slightly alarming, with a partially shaved head and several iodine-stained stitches that would have to be removed later. His memory had continued to return in a fragmented way, but he could remember absolutely nothing of the attack, though he did vaguely recall setting out to have a drink with Lou. According to Lou he had said he wanted to discuss something, but hadn’t told him on the phone what it was. Now, of course, George had absolutely no idea what it might have been.

  Something else he had no memory of was the painful conversation we’d had the night before I left for Philadelphia. He looked a little surprised when he found all his things moved into the guest room. I debated whether to tell him it had been his own idea, but that would have meant reopening the whole issue, and I was far from sure I wanted to do that. I’d spoken to Steve, and we agreed that a let-sleeping-dogs-lie approach was probably the best way to handle the situation for the time being. I made some excuse to George about it being better for him to have his own room while he was recuperating. He accepted this, and I just hoped he would go on doing so until his memory returned so that we wouldn’t have to go through the same awful confrontation yet again.

  However, th
at wasn’t how things turned out. After a few days he started talking about moving back in with me. When I tried to avoid the issue, he became suspicious. Finally he became physical: not violent, but insistent. One night he came into my room just after I’d gone to bed and tried to get in with me. His hands were all over me and he was quite obviously excited. I pulled away and tried to put him off with more excuses—headache, tired, etc.—but he would have none of it. He kept asking me what was wrong. Finally I knew I had to face it.

  “George, we discussed it all. We agreed.”

  “Discussed what? When?”

  “Last week, before I left for Philadelphia.”

  He looked at me blankly.

  “Are you telling me,” I said, “that you really don’t remember?”

  He said he had no idea what I was talking about. I wondered what to tell him, where to begin. Then I made one last appeal to his fundamentally generous, gentle nature. I don’t recall precisely how I put it. I know I acknowledged that, yes, there was a problem, something we’d had to talk about and deal with. Because of what had happened to him he’d forgotten all about it. I promised him that we would go over it all again, and soon, but for the moment I begged him to be patient.

  His eyes burned into mine, trying to read what lay behind them. Then suddenly he relaxed. It was as though he accepted that there were things he didn’t know about and perhaps wouldn’t for some time, and that all he could do for the moment was let them go. I thought back to what the doctor had said about the possibility of his amnesia being psychologically as much as physically induced. Perhaps somewhere at the back of his subconscious he knew the truth and recalled, however hazily, what had happened between us that night. I don’t know. I felt only a huge sense of relief that he had chosen to behave so reasonably. From that night on he accepted the status quo, sleeping alone and asking no questions, concentrating on recovering more of his still-impaired memory every day.