by A. J. Banner
“I’m afraid you and I don’t know each other.”
“But can we talk, at least?”
“We could if you like . . . I live up off Windswept Bluff.”
“Where is that?” I say.
“Road’s not marked. Four miles up, turn left at the twisty madrone.”
“That’s not far.”
“Everything’s close to everything else here.” He’s already unwinding the rope from the dock, pushing off in his boat.
“When will you be back?”
“Not sure exactly when. Soon.”
“What’s your name?”
He mouths his name, but I can’t hear the words above the roar of the motor. By the haunted look in his eyes, I can see that he did recognize me—or someone he thought I was. But he’s pulling out into the bay now.
I watch him go, unbidden tears in my eyes. I feel silly, about to cry for no discernible reason. Maybe it’s my feeling of déjà vu, with no way to recapture its source. The universe carved out chunks of my memory and threw them away, out of reach. Who is this strange man, and what did our encounter mean?
I’m bound to run into him again. Next time I see him, I’ll explain my situation. But the last thing I want to do is reveal to every stranger that I’m deficient in the memory department. How do I know he isn’t suffering from hallucinations or dementia? Maybe he goes up to everyone he meets and says, You’re back . . . Oh, I thought you were someone else.
I want to shout at the top of my lungs, Why me? Why? But the self-pitying moment quickly passes, and I cross the street and go inside Mystic Thyme.
The scents of eucalyptus and lavender fill my nose, and I know I’ve been in here before. I was drawn to the window display, to the rows of soaps and lotions arranged on wooden shelves among sprigs of dried lavender, beneath a purple, hand-painted sign reading Mystic Thyme.
You and your sense of smell, Jacob joked, following me inside.
You know I can’t resist lavender, I said. I see him like an apparition, picking up a bottle of aromatherapy massage oil. It was late summer, not the first time we’d been in the shop. He wore a T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, his sunglasses perched on top of his head. I was in a sleeveless summer dress and sandals. The dress, made of raw silk, shone in cobalt and swished as I walked. I loved that dress—brilliant blue has always been my favorite color. I collected cobalt bits of sea glass from the beach, cobalt ceramic pots for my plants, cobalt jewelry.
Where is the blue dress now? Is it hidden in a drawer, in a box of summer clothing in the closet? Maybe my memory is flawed, and I wasn’t in a blue dress. Maybe I wore a different color. I could have been in shorts and a T-shirt.
Now all we need are candles and the Kama Sutra, Jacob said. A young woman turned to look at him. My face nearly boiled from embarrassment. I needed to tell him something, urgently, but he had been putting me off, saying we could talk later, that we should just enjoy ourselves now.
“Everything’s organic, grown on our farm,” a soft voice says, breaking into my reverie. A woman stands close to me, her wavy, bleached blond hair tied back. She’s wiry, athletic, no part of her body wasted.
“The scents are wonderful,” I say, smiling.
“I thought I recognized you!” She breaks into a wide grin, her lips pulling back to reveal her gums. “Welcome back!”
“Thank you. It’s good to be back.” The familiar panic crashes into me. I don’t know who she is. I don’t want to have to explain. These social pressures were the very reason we decided to recuperate here, with fewer well-meaning acquaintances to pretend I remember. I smile and hope she won’t ask any personal questions.
“How long are you here?” she says.
“We might be here permanently.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” she says. “I’m tickled. How are you? It’s been, what, a year?”
“A little over a year, yes. We were here last June through September.”
“How has your year been?” she says, pushing back her ponytail. “You had a lot of plans, as I recall.”
“Plans, yes. To come back here! And here we are!” I force a smile. Can she see how fake it is? How fake I feel?
“Here you are!” she says, but her smile falters. “You made it work after all.”
“Made it work?” Did I discuss my personal life with her? Our marital problems? Did I come in here without Jacob?
“The move,” she says, clasping her hands together, then opening them in an expansive gesture. “You said it would take a lot of finagling to be able to move to an island. Finagling and maneuvering.”
“We did a lot of finagling and maneuvering, yes,” I say. “It all worked out.”
“I bet you’re looking for this.” She hands me a small bottle labeled Mystic Thyme Oil for Spiritual Healing. “A housewarming gift. Your favorite.”
I read the ingredients. Arnica montana, St. John’s wort, lavender, essential oils. “I needed spiritual healing.”
“I could tell,” she says. “How are you doing now?”
“Much better, thanks.”
“I hope you’ll forgive me for saying so, but your aura was tightly closed in around you last time you were here.”
“My aura.”
“I see auras, remember? I see black auras when people are sick or dying—”
“But I wasn’t sick or dying.”
“No, but you said you were worried your life was out of your control.”
“What about now?”
Her brow wrinkles as she assesses me. “Your aura is fuzzy and gray now.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re here but part of you is not here.”
“That sounds almost poetic,” I say.
“If you want a reading, I can give you a more detailed analysis.” She hands me a business card reading, Eliza Penny, Owner, Mystic Thyme. “Call me anytime. Or just come in.”
“Thanks. I will. But right now I’m looking for the therapist’s office. I’m going to be late in a minute.”
She points back through the store. “You’ll see the stairs to the second floor.”
* * *
Sylvia opens her office door before I can even knock. She reminds me of Audrey Hepburn, clad in soft black slacks and beige cashmere sweater, her black hair tied back. Her office is all cushions, tissue boxes, and tall windows.
“Thank you for seeing me so soon,” I say.
“Serendipity. I had a last-minute cancellation.” She hangs up my raincoat on a hook by the door. “Would you like a cup of chamomile tea?”
“I could use some water. Thanks.”
“Coming right up.” She brings me a tall glass of ice water. An antique table clock ticks away the hour. “Have a seat anywhere you like.”
I see only comfortable armchairs. “You mean I don’t lie down on a couch?”
“Would you like to lie down on a couch?”
“No, it’s just . . . I pictured you sitting behind me, taking notes while I lie on a couch and talk about my thoughts and dreams.”
“That sounds very Freudian,” she says.
“Freudian, yes. I talk while you analyze what I say.”
She laughs. “Is that what you would like me to do?”
“Not really,” I say truthfully.
“I’m glad. I practice a different form of therapy. More interactive. More . . . twenty-first century.”
“So I can sit there.” I point to a plush armchair.
“You most certainly may.”
I sink into the comfortable cushion. There is something safe about the room—its simple furnishings, the throw pillows, the leafy plants.
She sits in the armchair directly in front of me, a wooden coffee table between us. She crosses her legs, revealing black pumps with one-inch heels. I never liked high heels, but I owned pumps in a few different colors, for special outings. But in the last four years, I traded in the bold colors for muted browns and black.
“What brings you to see me today?” she says, cla
sping her hands in her lap.
I look out the window and focus on the distant horizon. “You have a great view from here. The vistas on this island take my breath away.”
I expect her to say, You came here for a therapy session, and you’re avoiding the subject. Let’s get to the point. But instead she says, “It is soothing.” She follows my gaze. Her expression is open, receptive.
“Must be different from where you were before. Nancy said you worked for Pierce County.”
“In Tacoma, yes,” she says, turning back to face me.
“She said you’re semiretired. Why did you move out here?”
“I was trying to simplify my life.” She rests a notebook on her lap, pencil in hand.
“Me, too,” I say.
“Why don’t you tell me more about yourself? Whatever you feel comfortable sharing.”
“I’m not sure how much you know about me.”
“Nancy told me a little about your accident. But I don’t know the details.”
“I don’t really know them, either,” I say, looking at my hands in my lap.
“What do you mean by that?”
I shift in the chair, unable to get comfortable, despite the softness of the cushions. “I don’t actually remember the accident.”
“Do you know what happened?” Her brows rise.
“We were diving and we were caught in the current out at Deception Pass and we were kind of . . . thrown around. There were driftwood logs and rocks hurtling through the water . . .”
“How frightening,” she says, her eyes widening.
“I suppose it was, but I don’t remember any of it. Something hit me in the head, probably a rock. I don’t know exactly when, or where I was in the water. But Jacob, my husband, got me to shore and the Coast Guard picked us up.” My words come out feathery and breathless.
“It sounds like there was incredible violence in the accident, a real assault on your physical being,” she says.
“Yes, you’re right,” I say, nodding slowly. “I could have died.”
“You could have,” she says. “People have died in the pass.”
“You know about the pass?”
“Deception Pass? Sure. The waters are violent there.”
“I guess I’m lucky to be alive, but everything feels out of whack. As if I’m someone else and I got dropped here, but I don’t know who I am anymore.”
“How difficult and scary.” I detect no trace of condescension in her tone.
“I wake up scared. I have nightmares. I forget things. The changes to my life in these last few years are subtle and dramatic at the same time, like a fast-forward fifteen minutes in a movie.”
“Not like jumping from the beginning to the end,” she says.
“Exactly. But I can’t remember many experiences and conversations. The days and nights, birthdays, dinners, my thoughts moment by moment. My walks, the city, research, classes. Meeting my husband and getting to know him. If I think too hard about all of it, I can’t breathe. I wonder if it’s even possible . . .”
“If what’s even possible?”
“To fall in love with him again. I can’t tap into my emotions. Except . . .”
“Except?”
“I had a vivid memory of being in the soap shop with him just now. The smells.”
“Smells can evoke memories in powerful ways. The smell goes to the olfactory bulb, which is directly connected to the parts of the brain involved in emotions and memory.”
“I remembered wanting to stay here but knowing I had other obligations. But it’s only a piece of the past. Like I’m looking through a tunnel and seeing a circle of reality.” For a brief moment, I wonder why it’s so easy to spill my thoughts to this sympathetic stranger, when I can hardly speak to my husband. Something about her manner, so calm and open, accepting, makes me trust her. Or maybe I’ve simply longed for a confidante, someone disconnected from my former life.
She leans toward me, her expression kind and caring. “Sounds like you feel disoriented and alone.”
“I do,” I say, blinking away tears. “I feel damaged, dependent on my husband. But I want to remember my own memories and not just what he tells me.”
“We’ll piece it all together as we go along—”
“But how? Other people have suffered from head injuries and lost their memory. How do they go on? I need a map or instructions.”
“There isn’t any map for recovery, except the one you create for yourself. With time, we’ll get a handle on this. You’re not alone.”
“Thank you,” I say. I find myself talking, the words tumbling out in a heap—about the accident, my nightmares, my dizziness and headaches. The years I’ve lost. Everything. I don’t know how long I’ve been talking. She nods and offers encouraging sounds now and then.
“How overwhelming for you,” she says, when I stop to catch my breath. “Of course you’re feeling vulnerable and disoriented. Anyone would.”
“Thank you for saying so.” Somehow, I pictured a therapist as distant, assessing and analyzing me, but Sylvia LaCrosse is not like that at all.
“I’m glad it helps. But you’ve helped yourself by seeking me out. By not trying to carry this burden alone.”
I nod, wondering about her, and about the client who canceled, leaving an appointment open for me. Maybe troubled souls sail in from other islands, drawn by the sign on the building, shining out at them like a lighthouse beacon. Is Sylvia married? She wears a plethora of rings on her fingers, but I can’t tell if the white-gold one on her ring finger is a wedding band or merely decorative. Does she have children? Why did she choose to retire in the middle of nowhere? But I’m not supposed to ask her these questions. I’m supposed to focus inward, so I say, “I do feel really alone. I mean, I have my husband, but he remembers everything. He doesn’t get dizzy or forget entire conversations. The gaps frighten me.”
“Of course they do,” she says gently. “They would frighten me, too. It might take us a while to figure this out, but we’ll figure it out, okay?”
“I hope so,” I say, feeling somewhat reassured. “I know the doctors told me why this is happening . . . but then I couldn’t even remember what they said. I don’t understand my own brain and what’s going on with my head.”
“I don’t have a lot of experience in this arena, but I do know that people who suffer from a head injury might forget the accident itself and have difficulty retaining new memories afterward. This is called anterograde amnesia. Or they can’t retrieve memories from before the accident—this is called retrograde amnesia. They might forget many years or only a few months, possibly only a few hours. Generally, the pivotal moment is the accident itself. But in your case, you’ve forgotten four years before the accident, the accident itself, and you had trouble forming new memories afterward, transferring them from short-term to long-term storage.”
“Two kinds of amnesia.”
“Both anterograde and retrograde. But it seems you’re beginning to retrieve memories from before the accident, in pieces, and you can form new memories fairly well now, with some gaps.”
“I seemed to start remembering new things all of a sudden. On the boat ride here, to the island, I woke up, almost as if I had been asleep for years. But at the same time, I knew I’d been here before.”
“Sometimes it can feel sudden, when memories come back to you. This happens, even when the memories might be coming back gradually.”
A stress headache pushes at my temples. “There are so many strange things. I felt like I knew Van Phelps. I was attracted to my husband’s friend in a photograph. It’s all a jumble. Frustrating.”
She looked thoughtful. “It does sound frustrating.”
“I have a recurring dream. I’m diving in murky water. I’m swimming against a current. I’m wearing a scuba suit and a mask. But I don’t remember learning how to put on all that equipment. I don’t remember the dive in Deception Pass or getting rescued. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever remember.”<
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“It’s possible,” she says. “Generally speaking, in the case of traumatic head injury, the event itself rarely returns. But memories from before or after could keep coming back.”
“You’re saying I might never remember hitting my head?”
“When you jar your brain, all the neurons and synapses get shaken up pretty hard. Quite often, the trauma itself and events close to that time are lost forever.”
I look out at the roiling sea, the whitecaps hurtling toward shore. “I’m not sure what happened out in the pass. I’m not sure what happened before. I’m not sure of anything. I don’t remember what Jacob tells me about our plans. For a family. Children. I’m impatient to get back to what I wanted.”
“What’s important is what you’re going through right now.”
“I suppose I’ve wanted it all to come back all at once. I want to know everything, and it frustrates me that I can’t. But maybe I don’t need to know everything so fast. I don’t need to be so impatient.”
She gives me a reassuring smile. “Sounds like you put a lot of pressure on yourself.”
“I’ve always been this way,” I say. I tell her about my childhood, my high-achieving parents expecting perfection from me. Then my parents were gone, and their expectations no longer mattered. I was grieving, bereft, and adrift with only my Uncle Theo to console me. He helped me, supported me. “Now he’s sinking into dementia. He’s in a nursing home in Oregon. The only other person I’m still close with, who still knows me well, is in Russia. Her name is Linny.”
“Are you in touch with her?”
“We email each other.”
“Brothers and sisters?”
“None, and no cousins or aunts or uncles anywhere near here. No close friends that I can remember from the last few years. I was always a bit of a loner. Linny and I—we’re similar that way.”
“And what about your husband? Did you say his name is Jacob?”
“We’ve been married about three years. We dated for six months. Whirlwind courtship, apparently.”
“Sometimes it happens that way.”
“So we could’ve known right away.”
“Sure.”
“From what I understand, last summer, we visited the island for a few months, and we made a plan to move here. After that, we went back to the mainland. Then the accident happened. I was in the hospital and rehabilitation center for almost ten weeks. Then Jacob brought me here two weeks ago.”