Coincidence

by David Ambrose

  Rather to my surprise, he was perfectly happy, anxious even, to go out and meet people. He said it could only help all the pieces to come together. So we went to a couple of dinner parties, a reception or two, an opening at the Met—a social whirl that he seemed to be enjoying, curiously enough, more than he usually did. Despite the oddness of his appearance (it would be weeks before his hair grew back and covered the scars), he was poised and pleasant, a good listener, which had always been his greatest strength in conversation, but it was extraordinary to see how he sometimes totally failed to recognize old friends, people he’d known for years who had to reintroduce themselves all over again, tell him all about their lives and what they did and who their kids were, until a glimmer of recollection appeared in his eyes. Sometimes, as I watched him, I got the impression that he was only pretending to remember, like someone suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s; later on he might turn to me discreetly for a potted biography of somebody he’d just been chatting with as though he knew them well. He would listen carefully to the details I filled in for him, nodding thoughtfully as he memorized everything.

  It was inevitable at some point that we should run into Steve and Linda.

  Chapter 20

  I had known that Steve and Linda were going to be at this particular gathering. Steve and I had discussed it beforehand, wondering whether a casual meeting between the four of us should be avoided in case it triggered George’s recollection of things that for the time being he had so conveniently forgotten. We decided it would seem strange if we tried to avoid an encounter altogether, trusting either that George would remember nothing, or that even if he did he would behave as well as he had done the last time around.

  Linda gushed concern over George and the ordeal he’d been through, while Steve and I tried to avoid making eye contact. I found myself watching George with a closeness bordering on obsession, looking for any hint of recollection that the lives of these three people around him were entangled with his own in a way that rendered this scene of polite social chitchat so monumentally absurd. But there was not even a glimmer of such awareness. I caught sight of Steve breathing a discreet sigh of relief. I did the same myself.

  Next day Steve and I talked on the phone and wondered what our next move should be. We could wait till George recovered his memory fully and deal with his reaction then. Or we could take the chance of forestalling an ill-timed explosion by telling him the truth now. There was a third possibility—that he might never fully regain his memory at all. In which case we would go through the whole process of confession and facing the music at some point in the future when Steve and I were not in so much danger from discovery.

  Steve’s main concern was that George would get his memory back at some time when he and I were alone together and react badly, perhaps even violently. I tried to reassure him that such behavior was simply not in George’s nature, but he was unconvinced. “In the right circumstances,” he said, “everybody is capable of violence.”

  But I wasn’t worried. I knew George. Then, a week or so later, something happened that made me wonder whether I knew him as well as I thought. For no reason I could see he suddenly got a bee in his bonnet all over again about our sleeping arrangements. “You promised when I came home that we’d talk about it,” he said. “Well, I’ve been patient, but now I want to talk about it.”

  We were going up to Eastways at the weekend and I suggested we leave the matter till then. To be perfectly frank, my main reason for this was that the crucial vote on Steve’s candidacy was to take place on Friday, after which we would be clear of the worst of the potential storm clouds that had been hanging over us.

  But George would have none of it. He insisted the whole issue be thrashed out there and then. It was early Wednesday evening. George had been out all day. He didn’t say where he’d been or what he’d been doing, but he was in a foul mood. He may have been drinking, though he certainly wasn’t drunk.

  “Look,” I said, “I can’t talk now. I have to be somewhere.”

  “You mean some damn art charity committee is more important than—”

  “George, I’m not talking to you about anything while you’re like this.”

  “Like what? What am I like? What is your problem?”

  Suddenly I said it. I hadn’t meant to, but he’d made me angry and it just came out.

  “This memory loss thing. I think you’re doing it on purpose.”

  “I got hit on the head, for God’s sake!”

  I told him what his doctor had said, even throwing in a suggestion that the scratches on his hands and knees could be interpreted as proof that his injuries were self-inflicted. I knew that I was going dangerously far there, and for a terrible moment I thought he was going to hit me. But he got his temper under control and simply dismissed the idea with contempt.

  Then I tried another approach. “You need help, George,” I said. “You’re not well. You’re not yourself.”

  For some reason the suggestion of therapy made him back off altogether. He held up his hands in surrender. “All right, maybe you’re right, I’m nuts. I cracked my own skull open because I wanted to lose my memory. But if I am going to get any help, I’d like it to come from you.”

  “This weekend,” I repeated. “We’ll talk at the weekend.”

  He decided that he would go up to the house a couple of days early. He needed some time to himself, he said, and I encouraged him to take it. I knew he would be well looked after by Martha and Joe, who were very fond of him. And I promised that I would go up on Friday evening to join him, and we would talk about things then.

  My sense of relief when Steve called to say that the vote had gone through without a hitch was indescribable. Only then did I realize quite how much I had been on tenterhooks. I said I was leaving for the Berkshires right away, but he asked me to wait; he said he would be with me in half an hour and insisted on coming along. I tried to protest, but truthfully I was glad to have him. There was still too much about George’s state of mind that I didn’t understand and that made me nervous.

  We got up there just after 7:30 in the evening. I hadn’t said anything to George about Steve being with me. We agreed that Steve would wait in the car while I went in and spoke with George alone. Once I’d broken the ice, and depending on how things were going, I might call Steve in to join us.

  George’s first reaction when I walked in was surprise that I had called Martha and told her not to prepare dinner. “Are we going out?” he asked. “With people? Who? Where?”

  “George,” I began hesitantly, “there’s still something we have to talk about. You remember what you said the other night.”

  “We agreed we’d talk, I know. But we’ve got the whole weekend. Come on, relax, let me pour you a drink.”

  “No thank you. I don’t want anything. We have to talk now, George. Not later. Now.”

  He looked at me, shrugged, and said, “Okay—go ahead.”

  I felt rather like a teacher with a backward pupil who had forgotten everything he had ever learned. As I talked about Steve I watched him closely, waiting for some response, perhaps even a sudden recollection of everything that had until now been hidden behind the curtain of his amnesia. But I saw nothing. He listened with a blankness that was almost unnatural, and into which I read successively shock, anger, disbelief, and heartbreak. In reality he showed none of those emotions. His coldness was the most shocking thing about the whole encounter. He didn’t look at me apart from a swift glance as I began. After that he could have been listening closely or thinking about something else entirely; it was impossible to tell. I felt I didn’t know him any longer. It was a strange and worrying sensation that made me wonder how much we’d ever really known about each other. Here was a man I’d spent seven years of my life with, and suddenly we were strangers.

  When I’d finished he didn’t respond at all for several moments. Then he looked at me in an odd, sidelong way.

  “The night before you went to
Philadelphia? That was when you claim you told me all this?”

  “Yes.”

  He was silent for a moment, then gave a short bark of laughter, as though there was something bitterly ironic in what I had just said.

  “What?” I asked him. “Why d’you laugh like that?”

  “Because it’s something of a coincidence,” he said, then gave another sharp, dry laugh. “In fact it’s quite a coincidence.”

  “Why?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he said, looking at me sharply and, though he tried to hide it, with such a flash of rage that I took an involuntary step away from him.

  “George, tell me,” I said. “Why is it a coincidence?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Please. I want to know.”

  “I said drop it, didn’t I? Christ!”

  He was angry suddenly, shouting. For a moment I thought he was going to hit me. Instead he picked up a vase and flung it across the room, shattering it against the wall. He had never behaved like that before. I suppose, considering the circumstances, it was no great surprise that he should choose this as the first time. All the same, it was so out of character, so strange to see that rage in his eyes, to hear him speak in that tone of voice, that a deep shiver of fear ran through me.

  “George,” I started to say, stumbling over my words, “I want you to promise me something. I want you to promise me that you’ll get help. I’m going to call one of the doctors who examined you in the hospital, because he can suggest somebody you could talk—”

  He cut me off by grabbing my wrist and starting to pull me across the room. “Forget it,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

  I pulled back, but he was too strong for me and I was dragged after him, protesting.

  “Let go of my wrist. George, you’re hurting me—let go!”

  “I’ll let go when we get to where we’re going.”

  I struggled, but his grip tightened. He was beginning to really scare me now.

  “Stop it! Stop it, George!”

  He turned back to say something, then froze, looking over my shoulder. I felt his grip on my wrist slacken, and I looked back. Steve was standing in the door.

  Steve was a big man and he’d been an athlete in college, and he was still in shape. George was no weakling, but he would certainly think twice before picking a fight with Steve.

  “Okay, I see—so that’s how it is,” George said with a sneer in his voice, looking from one of us to the other. “You two lovebirds are figuring on taking the master bedroom and putting me in the spare room again—right?”

  Steve stayed where he was in the open door and said simply, “We’ve made other arrangements. We can meet tomorrow and decide what we’re going to do.”

  George had let go of my wrist now. I rubbed it where it still hurt. It would be bruised.

  “What were you so keen to show me?” I asked him.

  He looked at me. Something was going through his mind, but I couldn’t guess what. It was strange to feel myself so totally on the outside of him. In the end he shrugged and said, “It doesn’t matter now.”

  Suddenly, just like the other night in the apartment, all the anger seemed to have drained out of him as though somebody had pulled the plug. He turned away and ran a hand over his face.

  “I think it’s best if we leave,” Steve said.

  George made a vague gesture, still without turning to look at us. “Sure, whatever, I… I guess I’ll have to find somewhere to live…”

  Suddenly he was once again the George I knew—quiet, vulnerable, at a loss. “There’s no hurry,” I said. “Stay here as long as you like—till you’re ready to look around.”

  Finally he looked at me. “Thanks,” he said, with the hint of a sad smile playing over his face. “That’s thoughtful of you, but I won’t stay long. This place holds nothing but happy memories now—mostly of what might have been.”

  He looked around the room as though taking his farewell of it, then said, “That’s an oxymoron, isn’t it? ‘Memories of what might have been’?”

  The mixture of emotions I’d been growing so accustomed to these past few weeks threatened to overwhelm me. Guilt, sorrow, regret, and pity—including, I’m ashamed to admit, more than a trace of self-pity—made it hard for me to speak. I managed only, “Goodnight, George. I’ll call you in the morning.”

  He didn’t answer me, just nodded, looking down at his hands, fingers pressed together on his chest. Almost, I thought, like a monk in prayer.

  Then I turned and followed Steve out to his waiting car.

  Chapter 21

  By the time I called next morning, George had left. Joe said he’d driven him to the station just after eight. He’d left a note saying he was going to the apartment to clear out his things. When I got back to Manhattan on Sunday evening, it was as though he’d never lived there.

  It wasn’t until forty-eight hours later that he called to let me know that he’d taken a one-bedroom apartment in the East Forties between Second and Third. He said he’d told his lawyer to get in touch with mine and do whatever had to be done. It was the same lawyer who’d represented him on the prenuptial agreement, so he didn’t foresee any problems or delays.

  I asked him if he needed anything. He said no, he was fine. I told him if there was anything I could do for him, ever, anything at all, he only had to ask. He thanked me and said he knew that.

  Later, much later, when I thought back on everything that had happened, I realized that a less scrupulous man than George, quite apart from causing trouble for Steve, might well have tried to profit financially from the situation. But it had always been at George’s own insistence that our prenuptial agreement specify a relatively modest financial settlement for him in the event of divorce. At the time it was drawn up he’d said with a laugh that he wanted me to know how much he wanted the marriage to work, and how sure he wanted me to be that he’d never given a damn about my money.

  I know he meant it at the time he said it, though I have to say that I’d wondered, in view of his recent behavior, whether he still meant it. It was reassuring to see that he did, and that he had remained the same man I had married.

  In a way it would have been easier for me if those glimpses I’d been having this last week or two of another, very different George had turned out to be the truth, and he really had become the bitter, angry man I’d seen. That way I could have walked away from our marriage feeling like the injured party. This way, however, there was no question that he was the one who had been badly treated. I would have to live with that.

  And live with it I would. I loved Steve, and if we hadn’t been too young and stupid last time around, we’d have been husband and wife for many years by now. We were only putting right our initial mistake.

  Poor George. I still hoped he would need my help at some point, whether in terms of money or moral support. I wanted to be his friend, maybe not his best friend any longer, but the most solid and reliable one he could ever want.

  That ambition was largely the product of guilt, of course. But of a real and deep affection too.

  * * *

  As for Steve and myself, we were already practiced in keeping things hidden even from our closest friends. He now began to work out a timetable for his divorce from Linda. Assuming that she was going to make things as difficult as possible, he reckoned that about six months from now would be the optimum time. By then it would be effectively too late to replace him as candidate, and there would still be time to get over whatever scandal Linda created and win the seat.

  Anyway, we began secretly, dreamers that we were, to plan our marriage and even a honeymoon trip to Italy after a quiet ceremony in Manhattan.

  Then the sky fell in on me.

  That’s the phrase I’ve always heard people use when they want you to understand how utterly and irreparably their world fell apart. Either that or the earth opened up beneath them.

  In my case I think it was both. The sky fell in, and
the earth opened up. It was total and unqualified annihilation.

  I had been waiting for a call from Steve. Normally he was pretty good about calling when he said he would, but for once he was late. I tried his mobile, but it was switched off. We had an agreement that I wouldn’t call him at home or his office for obvious reasons, so I had no choice but to wait till I heard from him.

  As the hours went by, I grew anxious. Eventually, when I glanced at my watch and saw it was already almost seven, I switched on the evening news to occupy my mind.

  The second story was about Steve. He had been arrested on a charge of murder. The victim was someone I’d never heard of.

  A woman called Nadia Shelley.

  Chapter 22

  George called from London. In my state of shock I recalled only vaguely that a few days earlier he’d told me he was going on a trip. It was midnight over there, and he was watching a satellite channel that carried the U.S. news.

  If it hadn’t been for his voice at that moment, obviously shocked but concerned and supportive, I don’t know what I would have done. Fallen apart, I suppose, but in exactly what way and with what consequences I don’t even want to think about.

  I’m pretty sure that one thing I would have done was call the police, and maybe Steve’s lawyer, thereby unthinkingly blowing the cover we had so painstakingly established for ourselves. I would not have stopped to think how the exposure of our relationship could hurt Steve in the struggle he would now face to prove his innocence of this crazy charge. It would not have occurred to me that a married man accused of murdering one woman would look all the guiltier to a jury if it was known that he was having an affair with yet another. I shall always be grateful to George for his steadying influence in that moment, as well as in its aftermath.