Forgotten: A Novel

by Catherine McKenzie

  “Sure, why the hell not?”

  I take a seat at the table, trying to decide whether his flat tone implies acceptance or sarcasm. I don’t know him well enough to tell. I decide to take it as acceptance, thank him, and change the subject.

  “You never said—how come you were looking for an apartment at Christmas?”

  His hand clenches the knife he’s holding, his knuckles turning white.

  “Dominic, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “No, I know.”

  “It’s just, you know all these details of my life, and you’re—”

  He puts the knife down. “Still anonymous?”

  “Yeah.”

  He picks up the bottle and pours some wine into his glass. He takes a large swallow. “This is really good.”

  “I can’t believe Pedro missed it.”

  His lips smile, but it doesn’t travel to his eyes. He takes a deep breath. “A couple of weeks ago, I came home early from a business trip and found my fiancée in bed with my best friend.”

  “I’m sorry, Dominic. I had no idea.”

  “Me neither.” A cruel look crosses his face. “And you know what’s funny? Getting married was her idea. ‘People get married,’ she said. So I spent more money than I could afford on a ring, and I took her to this little inn up north. I even got down on one knee next to a lake at sunset, for Chrissakes.”

  “That sounds really nice, sweet even.”

  “That’s what she said. But she was already sleeping with Chris when she said yes. Turns out it’s been going on for months. Maybe longer.” He drains his glass in one long swallow, then refills it nearly to the rim. “And that’s what I don’t get. Why get me to propose to her if she didn’t really want to be with me?”

  “Maybe you’re the guy she thinks she should be with.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Anyway, most of my friends, they’re ‘our’ friends, and while I’m pretty sure they’re taking my side, I just can’t face the whole pity party. When I remembered Tara saying something about the apartment downstairs being for rent, it seemed like the perfect solution. And that’s how I ended up here.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well, fuck it, you know? Fuck her.” He half empties his glass. “Fuck the both of them, come to think of it.”

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  “Sure. You want to eat?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He fills two soup bowls with large helpings of stew. It tastes as good as it smells.

  “You know, this is far and away the best Irish stew I’ve ever had.”

  “Thanks, but I’m guessing your taste buds have been good-taste-deprived recently.”

  “You may have a point, but it’s still really good.”

  “How was the police station?” he asks.

  “Only slightly less painful than work.”

  “Maybe tomorrow will be better?”

  I raise my glass in a mock toast. “Here’s hoping.”

  Chapter 7: Imagine the Possibilities

  Africa again. Same dream, same smells, same wide-open sky.

  Only this time? When my mother appears? She doesn’t warn me that the coughing, flushed guide who’s serving dinner is sick. Instead, she tells me to eat everything on my plate like a good little girl. There are starving kids in Africa.

  And in that moment I know. My mother knows I’m going to get sick.

  My mother wants me to get sick.

  Emma? You awake?”

  My eyes fly open. I expect to see Karen’s face poking through the tent flap, but it’s only Dominic, standing in the doorway in his striped pajamas holding a cell phone in the palm of his right hand.

  “I think so.”

  “Your phone keeps ringing.”

  I sit up. My throat feels dusty, and my skin feels like it’s spent too much time in the sun. “Sorry, did it wake you?”

  “I needed to get up anyway. Here, catch.” He tosses me the phone. It flies through the air in a perfect arc, landing in the blankets in my lap.

  I look at the blinking message light and my heart starts to race. Please, please, please let it be Stephanie. I flip it open and look at the number. It’s local and familiar. A little too familiar. I dial into my voice mail, ready to be disappointed.

  “Hi, Emma, it’s Matt. I’ve spoken to the Management Committee, and it’s looking good, but there are a few things I wanted to discuss with you. Call me at the office when you get this message.”

  I close the phone and slump down.

  “Bad news?” Dominic says.

  “Good news, I think. About work.”

  “Are you sure that’s good news?”

  “I like my job.”

  He gives me a skeptical look.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I’ve just never met a lawyer who actually liked what she did.”

  I throw back the covers and stand up. The cold seeps through my naked feet. “Well, now you have.”

  “Who’d you want the call to be from?”

  “My best friend, Stephanie. She’s gone looking for me.”

  “Ah.”

  I nod. “That about sums it up.”

  “Coffee?”

  “That’d be great.”

  I stare at the phone in my hand. I never called Stephanie’s mother back like I promised I would. And maybe, just maybe, they’ve heard from her. I punch the buttons and get Lucy on the first ring. I’m not the only one anxious for news. She’s glad to hear from me, but she doesn’t know any more than I do. Of course they’ll call me the minute they know anything. I hang up with a hollow feeling in my heart. When I thought of coming home, all those months, I never thought I’d feel more alone here than when I was halfway around the world.

  “Do you want eggs?” Dominic asks from the kitchen.

  “Yes, please,” I yell back. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  I return Matt’s call, my heart fluttering. The rational part of my brain knows they must be willing to take me back, but its connection to the fears-and-irrational-thoughts part of my brain seems to be broken.

  “Emma, thanks for returning my call,” Matt says in a cheery tone.

  “Of course.”

  “I’ve spoken to the Management Committee, and everything’s all set.”

  “That’s great, Matt. Thank you.”

  Did I just thank him for giving me an opportunity to make them hundreds of thousands of dollars every year? My pleaser complex must be in overdrive.

  “We thought with it being Christmas, it would be best if you started in January.”

  “Sure, I understand.”

  “And we’d appreciate it if you’d do a bit of press in the interim.”

  “Press?”

  “We’ve had a request for you to appear on Cathy Keeler’s show.”

  “You want me to go on In Progress?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But millions of people watch that show. Why does she want to interview me?”

  “It’s a great story, isn’t it? Everyone thinking you were dead, you being on the ground during the earthquake, your triumphant return to work.”

  I can hear the deep baritone voice-over already. When Emma Tupper set out on her fateful journey, burdened by grief, she hoped Africa’s beauty would heal her heart. She wasn’t expecting to fall afoul of illness and destruction . . .

  I hate those goddamn shows.

  “You really want me to do this?”

  “It would be great publicity for you.”

  Great publicity for TPC, more like it.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Trust me, Emma, the benefits could be enormous.”

  Which means, of course, that I don’t really have any choice in the matter. Not
if I want to start things off on the right foot.

  “Right, I understand. I’ll do it.”

  “Excellent. Her people will be calling you to set up the details for tomorrow.”

  My stomach flips. “Tomorrow? Isn’t that a little soon?”

  “There’s no time like the present.”

  Sure there is. There’s the future, when I’ve had time to get some decent clothes and my hair cut, and I’m not quite so fragile.

  I try to inject some confidence into my voice. “Sounds good.”

  “Good luck. I know you’ll be great.”

  We hang up, and I take a long look at myself in the mirror. My wheat-colored hair is six months past a haircut. My eyes have always been a little too round and far apart for my liking, and my face is thinner than it should be. My ordinary lips are still cracked from the sun, and the bridge of my nose is peeling. I look older than the last time I saw myself this clearly. As I stare and stare, I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly. My mother? Myself? The self before I became introspective and brittle? Well, she may have looked a lot like the girl in the mirror, but the person inside? The woman I was?

  She’s missing, presumed dead.

  I walk to the kitchen, needing caffeine but no longer hungry. I sip my coffee as I watch Dominic make scrambled eggs with chopped-up bacon and cheese mixed in like a professional. I can tell by the blue patch of sky out the window that it’s freezing outside.

  He serves me a large helping along with the newspaper. “Look who made the front page.”

  I look at it with trepidation. The headline reads MISSING LAWYER RETURNS UNSCATHED. There’s a TPC publicity shot of me staring at the camera with my arms crossed over my chest, a small smile playing on my lips. I look . . . ferocious.

  “You’re famous,” Dominic says.

  “I see that.”

  I put the newspaper down and start eating my eggs. They taste great, but my mind is preoccupied with the lingering disorientation the Dream always leaves, and seeing my life become front-page news.

  “What’s on the agenda today?” Dominic asks as he uses a piece of toast to shovel eggs into his mouth. “Christmas shopping? Skating on the canal? Making snow angels?”

  I nearly choke on a piece of bacon. “Making snow angels? Do I look like I’m seven?”

  He looks me up and down.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to guess your age.”

  “This should be interesting.”

  He squints at me. “Thirty-four and three-quarters.”

  “What? That’s impossible.”

  “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I’m psychic.”

  “No way I’m falling for that.”

  He taps the paper. “It says how old you are in the article.”

  I glance down at my serious face. It really wouldn’t hurt me to smile once in a while. Show a little teeth. “It says I’m thirty-four and three-quarters?”

  “I just added the three-quarters part for kicks.”

  “You get your kicks in some strange places.”

  “Sue me.”

  “Seriously? You know I’m a lawyer, right?”

  “I’ve been trying to block that out.”

  “Ha, ha. Anyway, you asked about my agenda?”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes. A few minutes ago, yes.”

  “Well, then, I must’ve wanted to know.”

  “You ready for this? My office just signed me up for a session with Cathy Keeler.”

  His eyebrows rise toward his hairline. “You’re going to be on TV with her?”

  “Tomorrow, apparently.”

  “Jesus.”

  “You think He can help me find the right outfit?”

  He points his fork at me. “See, I knew shopping was in there somewhere.”

  Really, Dominic, you don’t have to come with me,” I say as we walk down the frosty street toward my bank. I’m wearing Dominic’s old fisherman’s sweater and his ski jacket. It’s keeping out most of the wind that’s swirling a fine mist of snow around us, glinting in the sun. The sun seems to have seeped into Dominic too. He almost has a spring in his step.

  “I don’t mind.”

  “You must have something else to do. Photographs to take? Stew to make? Other damsels in distress to save?”

  “No, no, and . . . no.”

  “It’s becoming clear to me that you really had no life before I came along.”

  He wags his index finger at me. “Watch it, honey. Watch it.”

  We walk past a familiar store. That last time I shopped there, it was with Steph. We tried on every dress in the store, from too expensive to too-ugly-to-imagine-what-anyone-was-thinking. We mocked and exclaimed, and I bought three of them. I wore one to my mother’s funeral, a plain-black number that I’m actually glad I’ll never see again.

  What the hell has happened to my life? One minute Steph is teasing me about not having enough room in my closet, and the next I can’t even reach her and I’m wearing a strange man’s clothing. I start to shiver, my teeth clacking loudly as tears spring from my eyes. They feel cold against my cheeks.

  “What’s the matter?” Dominic asks.

  What’s the matter seems so obvious to me, like I’m carrying it around outside my body, visible to everyone, that I almost laugh.

  “It’s everything. Steph being where she is, and my career in the toilet, and not even having a picture of my mother, and . . . I have nothing. Nothing.”

  Dominic reaches into his pocket and pulls out a Kleenex. I take it from him gratefully and wipe my eyes and nose. Given the amount of crying I’m doing lately, I really should start carrying a handkerchief, but that feels like admitting something about myself that I don’t want to. Weakness, maybe.

  I bunch up the Kleenex and shove it angrily into my pocket. “Goddamnit! I wasn’t going to cry today.”

  Dominic gives me a kind smile. “I think it’s a normal reaction, Emma.”

  “Not for me. You don’t really know me, but this is not how I normally react to things.”

  “How do you normally react?”

  “I don’t know. Fiercely, I guess.”

  “Well, you were pretty fierce with Pedro.”

  “I was, wasn’t I?”

  “I would’ve been scared if I were him.”

  “Thanks.”

  We walk in silence for a few moments. The snow crunches beneath our feet.

  “You know,” Dominic says, “if everything in your life is fucked up, you can change whatever you want.”

  “I guess.”

  He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, ever since, well, you know. And the thing that keeps occurring to me, the only positive thing, is that I can start over. How many people have a chance to change something major in their lives without having to suffer the consequences?”

  I give him a look. “You think I’m not suffering the consequences?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant, and maybe this sounds silly, but, I don’t know, just imagine the possibilities.”

  “Like what?”

  He thinks about it. “You could change your job.”

  “But I love my job.”

  He smiles ruefully. “Will you work with me here?”

  “Okay, okay. I get it. I don’t have to be me anymore, if I don’t want to be.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I guess that could be a good thing.”

  “Trust me, it will be. Now . . .” He rubs his hands together. “You need some of that over-the-hip grandma underwear, right?”

  A laugh bubbles out of me. “How’d you guess?”

  Dominic sees me through the Catch-22 ordeal I hav
e to go through at the bank to get access to my life savings, despite the papers Detective Nield gave me. (Sample exchange: “We need proof that you’re alive in order to reactivate your account.” “What are you talking about? I’m standing right in front of you.” “Our files indicate that you’re likely deceased.” “You’ve got to be kidding me.”) I consider going postal, but instead I go to my Zen place and explain my situation to the floor manager, branch manager, and finally regional manager, who, thankfully, read that morning’s paper. After several apologies, I’m issued brand-spanking-new credit and bank cards, and I feel oddly rich. Maybe it’s because I haven’t spent any money in over six months, but the comfortable number of zeros in my bank account puts me in the mood to shop.

  I get rid of Dominic 1.5 stores later, partly because it feels weird to be picking outfits with a man I hardly know, but mostly because he has some pretty definitive opinions on fashion.

  “Leggings are for schoolgirls,” he says as I eye a pair from Lindsay Lohan’s collection.

  “Who made you the boss of my wardrobe?”

  “Just looking out for you, honey.”

  “I thought guys didn’t care what girls wore, unless it involved schoolgirl uniforms.”

  “Mmm.”

  “What?”

  “Now I’m imagining you in a schoolgirl uniform.”

  I take a whack at his arm. “Quit it.”

  Dominic laughs and directs me toward Banana Republic, telling me that it seems more like my kind of store. He’s right, of course (my pre-Africa wardrobe was 85 percent Banana), but I act affronted. Didn’t he just tell me I could change anything about myself I didn’t like?

  “But you like this store.”

  “Did it say that about me in the paper too?”

  “Nah, I can just tell.”

  “You know what? I think I can take it from here.”

  “You want me to go?”

  “I think it would be best.”

  “All right, but don’t come crying to me if you buy a bunch of things you’re never going to wear. And stay away from scoop necks. They make you look like a soccer mom.”

  “Out,” I order.

  I get home after dinnertime, full of food-court burrito and poorer, but with a good start on rebuilding my wardrobe. And not a scoop neck in sight.