by Nikki Owen
‘Maria, I’m going to come over to see you, okay?’
I drop my hand. ‘What?’ I sniff. ‘How?’
‘I’ve looked into it. You just need to request a visiting order. Ramon will accompany me. He’s very concerned about you.’
My brother, too? ‘But he has never been concerned about me before.’
Another sigh. ‘Maria, you’re his sister, of course he is concerned about you. We need you to arrange the visiting order. Can you do that?’
Visiting orders. Prison. Iron bars. Loud screams. So much to process, to consider. I feel smothered by it all.
‘Is there anyone that can help you?’ my mother says.
Patricia tilts her head and smiles. ‘Yes,’ I say, after a moment. ‘I have someone who can help me.’
A whoosh of exhalation. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful. Wonderful. Does this mean you are making friends? Actually, no, don’t answer that. Tell me all about it when I see you, okay?’
I nod.
‘Maria? I said, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Good.’ There is a tinkle of silver, the coffee pot being poured. ‘Darling, keep your chin up in there, yes?’
‘My chin?’
‘It means stay positive. As much as you can, anyway. At least being in prison means you can get help now, where no one can be hurt.’ She sniffs, lets out another dainty cry. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Ignore me. It all gets a little much for me at times.’ I hear her breathe in. ‘But no matter. We will fly over to see you.’
Pips sounds. The prison phone. ‘I have to go, Mama.’
There is a stillness. ‘I know,’ she says, after a brief moment. ‘You look after yourself.’
‘Yes.’
She goes quiet. The pips patter again. ‘Maria, you’d better go. Take care. And—’
But she is cut off. For a few seconds, I do not move, just stand, staring at the receiver. Have I remembered everything incorrectly? I have just accused my mother of kissing another man. What sort of person does that make me? Slowly, Patricia reaches forward and prises the phone out of my hand. She returns it to its holder and looks at me. ‘How are you?’
I blink, find a focus. ‘She said they never kissed. That my memory is impaired.’
‘Oh.’
I roll my shoulders, pinch the folds of skin on them to try to get some blood flowing again through my muscles. Maybe everything I have believed is not true. Maybe life has jumbled everything up in my head, mixing memories like the shuffling of a deck of cards, throwing them in the air so they land randomly, out of synch. I drop my head to my hands. All I have are facts. If I stuck with them, if I used the facts I have to piece it all together, would I see the final picture on the puzzle?
We walk away from the phone bank in silence. Only the shuffle of our feet fills the air, the regular prison screams in the distance temporarily suspended.
‘Hey,’ Patricia says as we stop at the next door, ‘you’ve met the Governor, haven’t you?’
I nod.
‘Well,’ she says, rubbing her palms together, ‘listen to the gossip I discovered about him earlier. It’ll take your mind right off the phone call with your ma.’
Kurt is writing notes.
A wind shoots through the window and a shiver runs down my back. Kurt does not flinch.
I scan the edge of the room. Kurt’s talk of memory, of its distortion, is unsettling. Therapy is supposed to help you understand yourself, to feel better. But this? Now? I don’t feel better. I just feel frustrated. And frightened.
‘Maria?’
I turn. Kurt’s file rests on his lap, the Dictaphone lying on the edge of table, red light flashing.
‘I am going to ask you some more questions now.’ He crosses his legs. ‘You said, that when you spoke to Patricia in your cell after the call with your mother, she told you something about the Governor. I want you to tell me what she said.’ He clicks his pen and waits.
I sit up straight. This is not the right question. ‘Why are you discussing this instead of what my mother said about my memory?’
He tilts his head. ‘Do you not want to tell me about the Governor, Maria. Is that it? Is there some reason, perhaps, why you won’t talk about him?’
‘What? What do you mean?’ I press myself back against the lip of my chair. His eyes are suddenly steel, his voice prickles. The urge to flee wells up inside me again.
He leans in to me. ‘I want you to tell me exactly what Patricia said.’
Kurt is so close to me, so near that I can see every sinew of his skin. Not a blemish, not a stain. He has me chained to him. What choice do I have?
‘Patricia…’ I stop. Swallow. ‘Patricia said that the Governor was married to the UK Home Secretary.’
‘And you did not know this already?’
‘No. I…I did not realise.’
‘But everyone knows. It’s news. Are you telling me you didn’t hear about it?’
‘I do not follow such things.’
He sits back. ‘Maria, would it be true to say that when it comes to relationships, when it comes to men, women—or whatever your persuasion—you have difficulty understanding the situation?’
‘I…Yes,’ I say finally.
‘Have you ever had a relationship yourself? A boyfriend? Girlfriend?’
I sit and stare, the question hanging there, hovering like a floating ghost. The loneliness of my life is something I have been able to push to one side, to hide in a box, keep the lid tight shut. Until now.
A gust of wind bursts in and the window slams shut. I jump. Kurt glances over to it but says nothing, does not move. I slap my hand to my chest, slow myself. Something is happening here. Kurt was different just now. He was. I am positive. I have to try to seal it all in my mind, protect it, try to keep learning his contradictive nuances so I can paint the whole picture. So I can always remember.
A knock sounds on the door, breaking the suffocating silence. Kurt looks up. ‘Come in.’
The coffee woman enters, the same one as before. Why is she back? She passes Kurt a message on a square yellow piece of paper.
‘This came for you,’ she says, her voice a punnet of plums, a swollen bunch of black grapes. ‘They need to speak to you for a moment.’
The women then turns, stares at me, her mahogany hair bobbing by her shoulders, skin the colour of buttermilk, jeans black, painted on, her leather jacket studded, worn. She continues her gaze for three seconds then, throwing Kurt a smile, she leaves, clicking the door shut behind her.
‘Who is she?’
Kurt reads the note then stands. ‘She’s my…girlfriend. She helps out here sometimes.’
I look at the door where she exited. He has someone. Someone to hold, to love. I wonder what that must feel like.
Kurt scrunches up the note and drops it into the wastepaper basket. ‘That was a message about a patient. The service need to speak to me straight away,’ he says. ‘I have to leave. I will just be a few minutes.’ He turns to exit then pauses. ‘Maria, I’m sorry if I make you feel uneasy sometimes. I know I must do. It’s just the therapy technique. Let yourself trust it. That’s the best advice I can give to you.’ He applies a quick smile. ‘Well, excuse me.’
After he has left, I breathe out and stand. My legs feel like two dead limbs. I shake them, blood rushing to my feet, and think. What Kurt said about his therapy technique, perhaps he has a point. Perhaps I am fighting it too much, reading too much into it, looking for clues and lies that simply aren’t there.
The air feels woolly, thick, and I remember: the window slammed shut earlier. I walk over to it and thrust it open. Wind rushes in, and I allow myself to savour it for a second, this glimmer of freedom, of the world below. Through the bars, the bustle of the city street rushes past in a blur of watercolour paint. Though the noise is loud, I force myself to scan it all. Because it is here. All this life beyond—it is here. It exists. And I have to picture it exactly as it is. Like taking a photograph.
Soon, Kurt w
ill return, and if I want this therapy to help me this time, I must have a clear head. I walk back towards my seat, spot the wastepaper basket and hesitate. The note about Kurt’s patient is there, the paper yellow, words and colour together in one place just like an encoded memory. Maybe if I read the note, it will settle my mind, help me to see reality in action—real words, real colours. Then, perhaps, I will cease worrying about contexts and hidden meanings and distorted memories.
Without allowing myself a change of mind, I quickly bend down and grab the scrunched note. Returning to my chair, I flatten the paper ready to read it then stop.
I turn the paper over. Then over again. But still, I am right. Because it is blank. The paper is blank. No writing on either side. No message about a patient.
Which means only one thing: Kurt lied.
The door handle rattles and I freeze. He is returning.
Chapter 9
The door is opening. I re-scrunch the note and throw it towards the bin, but it lands on the floor. I scramble up, fling the paper into the wastepaper basket and dart back to my seat. My heart bangs against my chest, violent, crazed. I can’t let him catch me.
Kurt enters and stops. He looks at me then glances to the wastepaper basket. ‘What were you doing?’
My chest heaves up and down. I don’t know what to do. I have a split-second decision to make: truth or lie.
‘I said what were you doing?’
‘I read the note.’
He shuts the door, stands, levitating almost, unreal. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds pass. My pulse pounds in my neck.
‘There were no words on it,’ I say, fearful of how he is going to react. ‘The paper you threw in the bin—it was blank.’
He draws in a long breath then stares straight at me. ‘Are you sure about that, Maria? There was writing on it when it was first given to me.’ He walks to the wastepaper basket, retrieves the note and sits down. He slips the paper into his pocket and picks up the Dictaphone.
I look at the bin, at where the note lay. Writing on it? How can it be?
Kurt brings the Dictaphone to his mouth and presses the record button. ‘The patient appears to be having episodes of confabulation.’ His eyes find me. ‘She is experiencing severe distortion and fabrication of events, all of which are affecting her memory. The subject has retrieved a note written to me, and has convinced herself that it contains no writing when in fact, it does. Furthermore, the level of paranoia…’
And, as Kurt records his notes, I touch my forehead and blink over and over at the criss-cross pattern of the wastepaper basket.
What is happening to me?
I am in the Plaza Mayor, the outdoor living room of Salamanca.
It is summer. The month is August. Heat shimmers from the stonework like a mirage, like a cloaked vision, and I prop my hand on my brow, squint and observe. The square is brimming with summer students, tourists, bronzed locals, their skin glistening in the sun.
I am sitting outside one of the cafés that shore up the square. A plate of tapas rests on my table: soft, succulent croquettes filled with Iberian ham, cubes of fluffy, fried potatoes smothered in spicy tomato sauce. I alternate between eating and sipping Rioja. My breathing is slow, measured. I want to be normal, seem normal.
In between bites, I glance at the notebook that sits on my lap, its ink-soaked pages flapping in the soft afternoon breeze, my bare legs still so as not to spill wine droplets on my new white linen shirt. I take a moment to stop and listen. The birds are sleeping their siesta in the heat, their song replaced with human melodies, with the lullaby, the dance of busking guitars. It all rings loud in my ears like the tremor of a trombone, but, for some reason, it does not bother me.
Every minute, I observe it all, drink it in. I have missed it, missed this place. I never knew someone could want their homeland so much to the point that they would do anything to return. Anything. To anyone that gets in their way. I lean my head backwards, allow the sun to warm my skin and think: I am lucky; the luckiest woman alive.
‘Doc?’
Someone’s voice, I hear it. It pierces my mind; the illusion begins to judder. I try to hang on to it, claw it back, but it does no good. The image of the Plaza Mayor flickers once, twice, then disappears—pop—like a television being switched off.
‘Doc, wake up. Quick!’
‘Hmmm?’
I open my eyes, but cannot hear. I wriggle a finger in my ear. Patricia’s mouth moves and her hand is thrusting something at me. The dream. My mind cannot lose the dream. I don’t want it to go, don’t want it to disappear forever. I wrestle with it as it fades from view in a shroud of static, try to pin it to the end of my bedstead, but it’s no use; it floats from my grasp in a final bubble of doubt.
‘What time is it?’ I sit up and smooth down my hair. I have not yet brushed my teeth or splashed my face with water, and the guards will be here soon.
Patricia looms in front of me again. ‘You awake now? Because you’re going to want to look at these…’
There are newspapers in her hand. And something else. Her socks. All of six pairs of them. ‘Why are they tied together?’ I croak.
‘Huh? Oh, just bored.’ She loops the sock rope over the chair and places a newspaper in my lap. ‘You’re not going to like it.’
She drops the bundle of newspapers on my lap. ‘You need to read these.’
Taking a paper, I scan the page. At first, it makes no sense, and then it registers. On it, there is a face. A face I know too well. And beside it: a name.
Patricia sits down. ‘Speak to me.’
My mind fusses and flurries, hands begin to jitter. I read the words on the page. ‘My mother,’ I say after a while. ‘My mother is in your newspapers. How?’
‘She’s visiting today with your brother, isn’t she?’
‘Yes.’ I grip the periodical, the print transferring to my palms, to the pillowed tips of my fingers. I smear them together, rubbing them, the ink staining my skin, my brain not knowing how I feel about seeing my family again after what has been almost a year.
I spread my fingers over the image of my mother’s face.
‘You don’t think she told them, do you?’ Patricia says. ‘About the visit?’
The morning buzzer sounds. Time to exit our cells. The meeting with my mother and brother is in two hours. I don’t want to disappoint her, don’t want to feel angry at her.
Not again.
I arrive in the visitors’ room and stop. I feel slightly sick, nerves nudging my stomach, its contents threatening to erupt. My face is blank, but my mind is alive with doubt.
Inmates’ feet shuffle on the tiles while voices saturate the air, air that reeks of perspiration, of a waterfall of bodily secretions. It swamps my head. The glare of the strip lights, combined with the ice-cold judgement of the white walls all momentarily freeze me. I lick my lips for moisture. Only when a guard digs my elbow and tells me to shift it do I move on.
I locate the table with my family, walk to it and stall. A lump swells in my throat. My mother. Her hands, hands that were once fleshy and strong, hands that lectured law at university, instructed housemaids, placed Band-Aids on my knees, are now bony and frail. I bite down hard on my lip to restrain the cry that wants to break out from within me. My family is changing before my eyes and I worry that soon they will all alter so much that I won’t recognise them any more. That I won’t have them, won’t know if they are on my side or not. Won’t feel that I fit in, not that I am ever sure I did.
‘Oh, Maria!’ my mother cries to me, her grainy Castellan voice guttural, instinctive. She stretches out her arms, pulls me into her. I go rigid. ‘Oh, my daughter! What has happened to you?’
Tears threaten to spring up, invade my face. Being close to my mother is one step away from my papa, dead or not. I touch my cheeks, surprised at the dampness staining my skin. My mother holds me out at arm’s length.
‘Oh my darling, it’s okay. Sssh. Sssh.’ She reaches forward to wipe my f
ace. I hold my breath; a guard tells her there’s no touching. She apologises in English, sits back, omits a sigh, dabs her forehead. ‘Oh, dear. This is all too much.’
‘Mama, are you okay?’ Ramon, my brother. His crisp green eyes scan our mother, her own eyes, the same apple-fresh hue, blink back, her head tilting slightly, neck smooth, slender. She pats his hands.
‘I am fine, son. I am fine.’
Ramon’s gaze stays on her for two seconds more, his forearm strong like a tree trunk rooted to the table, his body baptised in a shroud of nut brown, stomach muscles taut from years of sport—running, swimming, skiing. Finally, he looks away, directing his attention at me for the briefest of moments before he dusts down his suit and opens up a legal file on his desk.
‘Hello, Maria,’ he says, a small flicker of a smile. My brother, a man of few words, to me at least. To everyone else? An eloquent, accomplished tax lawyer. But he has always been there, by my side—whether I wanted him to or not. When we were young he was like dog dirt on my shoe: impossible to shake off.
‘Now,’ Mother says, after clearing her throat. ‘Let’s have a look at you, my dear.’
She scans my face and her smile wobbles. ‘Oh, you look so tired. Are you eating? Sleeping?’
‘Yes. I have a friend.’
She goes still, her eyes wide. ‘Really?’ She throws a glance to Ramon. ‘Really? My darling, that is wonderful news! Wonderful.’ She takes a sip of water. ‘Who is it?’
‘Pardon?’
She set down her glass. ‘Your friend.’ A small cough. ‘Who is it?’
‘Why?’
‘I…I am just interested. Making conversation.’
I open my mouth to speak, but suddenly check myself. My voice is raised, my fingers still pressed into the table. I soften, lean back, try to stay calm, try to stop searching for inferences that are not there. ‘Her name is Patricia,’ I say finally. ‘My friend’s name is Patricia.’
Ramon jots the name down. ‘Do you know her surname?’ he asks.
‘Do you need to know that?’
‘Ramon,’ my mother says, ‘it’s okay.’ She turns to me. ‘Do you trust her, this friend? Talk to her?’