‘I have no idea,’ Michael admitted, and he didn’t. ‘I’ll think it over, OK, and then get back to you. Do you have a cell?’
‘I do. I called my brother on it a couple of days ago, but now it’s on the fritz for some reason.’
‘All right. I’ll just come round here and knock on the door.’
The snow had stopped falling but the wind persisted, making swirling patterns of snow on the driveway where Jack had cleared it.
Jack said, ‘You know something, Greg? I can’t explain it, but I never felt so fucking lonely in my whole life.’
Michael didn’t answer, but he understood exactly what Jack meant, because he felt the same.
As he walked back to Isobel’s house, he saw to his surprise that her Jeep was no longer in the driveway, and that there were tire tracks on the sidewalk to show that she had taken it out. However he was less than fifty yards away when the Jeep appeared around the curve, with Isobel driving, and she blew her horn and flashed her headlights.
She parked and climbed out. ‘Hi, baby!’ she greeted him, as he approached. She kissed him, and then she said, ‘How was your walk?’
‘Cold. Boring. Where have you been?’
‘I had to go to the market, that’s all. You want to help me carry my stuff in?’
‘Sure.’ He opened up the Jeep’s tailgate and found four sacks of groceries and a box of cleaning materials. He passed two of the sacks to Isobel and picked up the other two himself.
‘Where’s the market from here?’ he asked her, as they crossed the snow-covered front yard to the house.
‘Weed. Ray’s Food Place. It’s a really great store. You should come with me next time I go.’
Michael stamped the snow off his feet on the doormat, and then carried the sacks of groceries through to the kitchen. Ray’s Food Place? What had he heard his mother saying on the phone? ‘Oh, shoot, George! Look at that snow! I wanted to go to Ray’s Food Place this afternoon!’
He stood and watched Isobel take off her Peruvian beanie and shake her hair loose, and then start to unbutton her coat. He had that flickering feeling again, that voice saying you shouldn’t. Then Isobel turned and smiled at him and said, ‘Can you fetch in the rest of it?’
‘Oh. Yes. For sure.’
He went back outside. The day was still gray but a watery yellow sunlight was beginning to break through, and as the air warmed up, a fog was beginning to rise. The white peaks of Mount Shasta looked as if they were floating unsupported in the sky.
As he walked back across the front yard, he saw the footprints that had been left in the snow when he and Isobel had carried the groceries from the back of the Jeep. He stopped, and stared at them, and then he turned around and looked back at the house. The front door was open and he could see Isobel in the hallway, hanging up her long black coat. She waved at him, and then disappeared into the living room.
He looked back down at the footprints. His footprints, anyhow – but there were none of hers. She had crossed the front yard slightly ahead of him, on his left, but she had left no impression at all.
Michael stood there for a long time, biting his lip. What the hell was he going to do now? Stalk back to the house and demand to know why Isobel hadn’t left any footprints? What good would that do – even if she could explain it?
Maybe Jack had been right, and he was asleep, and dreaming all of this. Maybe he was still in a coma after his accident. But it was all too real. The gradually brightening sky was real. The frost-bitten trees were real.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree.
‘Greg? Did you get that box yet? I need to close the front door!’
‘OK!’ he called back. ‘Just coming!’
NINE
That evening, Isobel made them a supper of pork, potato and leek stew, with crusty fresh bread.
‘You’re quiet,’ she said, as she watched Michael chasing a potato around his bowl with his fork. ‘Don’t you like that? I can always make you a sandwich.’
‘I guess I’m not too hungry,’ he said, putting down his fork. ‘I have so much spinning around in my head.’
‘Are you beginning to remember things?’
‘I get flashes, but nothing really clear. I keep hearing this woman’s voice saying “you shouldn’t”, and I see some bright lights, and shadows, and I smell this flowery perfume for a second, but that’s about it.’
Isobel looked at him for a while without saying anything. She had her hair tied up in a peacock-blue scarf because she had been cooking, but with her fringe off her face her high forehead and her wide brown eyes were even more striking than usual.
‘You don’t know if this is real, do you?’ she asked him.
He said nothing, but he could tell that his eyes had given him away.
‘I felt exactly the same,’ she said. ‘In the first few weeks that I was here, I wasn’t even sure that I was me. Sometimes I thought that I was dreaming. If it hadn’t been for Emilio, I don’t know what I would have done. Emilio always kept me grounded.’
‘So who was he, Emilio?’
Isobel pushed her bowl away. ‘He was my companion, the same way that you are.’
‘Were you lovers?’
‘I don’t know whether you have the right to ask me that.’
There was a very long pause between them, but then she said, ‘Emilio was much older than you. Seventy-one. But – yes, we were lovers. In a different way than you and me. More … how can I put it? More like floating down a stream together, on a summer afternoon.’
She stood up, and came around the kitchen table, and stood behind him. She took hold of his shoulders and gently began to massage his neck muscles with her thumbs.
‘You’re so tense,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should come to bed.’
Michael said, ‘I still have no idea who I am. How can I come to bed with you when I don’t even know who I am?’
‘You’re Greg. You have an apartment in San Francisco and a sister called Sue and a mother who cares about you and you probably have more friends than you can count. What else do you need to know?’
‘I need to know if all of this is true. Just like you said, I need to know if all of this is real. I’m beginning to suspect that amnesia is the least of my problems. I’m beginning to see things that aren’t possible. People keep saying things to me which I can’t understand.’
He twisted around in his chair and looked up at her.
‘Do I feel real to you?’ she asked him.
She took hold of his hand and gently pulled him out of his chair. Then she put her arms around him and kissed him, her tongue sliding into his mouth. Michael closed his eyes while they kissed, and all he could hear was Isobel’s breathing, and the hesitant ticking of the electric clock over the range, and the soft clicking of their own lips.
When she had finished kissing him, Isobel brushed back his hair with her fingertips and smiled at him possessively, as if she had won the right to have him. Taking hold of his hand again, she led him through to her bedroom. It was decorated plainly, with magnolia-painted walls and a built-in closet with mirrored doors. The king-size bed was covered with a silky pink quilt, and silky pink cushions were heaped up over the pillows.
Propped up against the cushions was a skinny rag doll, with disproportionately long legs and arms, and a mass of silvery-gray ringlets. Her face was dead white and her eyes were made of black buttons, like a shark’s eyes. Her mouth was nothing but a sewn-up slit. She wore a long striped dress in black and gray, trimmed with black ribbons.
‘That is one scary-looking dolly,’ said Michael.
‘Isn’t she just? She came with the house, when they moved me in here. I call her Belle, because of all her ringlets. Like, “Belle” as in “bell ringer”. But here …’
Isobel picked up the doll, opened the closet door, and pushed her inside.
‘That’s where she goes at night, because I don’t like the idea of her staring at me when I’m asleep, especially with those shiny
black eyes.’
She came back over to Michael, and started to unbutton his dark blue shirt.
‘You can remember yesterday evening, can’t you?’ she asked him.
‘Of course I can. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it so long as I live.’
‘There you are, then. You may have lost your old memories but already you’re making fresh ones. Even if your previous life is only names and photographs, your new life is real.’
She took off his shirt, and then she pulled his T-shirt over his head, so that his hair stuck up. She ruffled it, and kissed him, and said, ‘You look about sixteen years old with your hair like that.’
‘Oh, thanks.’ He nodded toward the bed and said, ‘I hope that doesn’t mean I’m too young to … you know.’
She unbuckled his belt and pulled down his jeans. Then she raised her arms so that he could lift off her light gray cable-knit sweater. Underneath she was wearing a lacy white bra through which her nipples showed like two pink rose-petals. He slid the catch apart and her breasts swung free, heavy and soft. He cupped her right breast in his hand, and rotated the ball of his thumb around her crinkling nipple, but even though she was so aroused, she felt surprisingly cold.
‘You’re freezing,’ he said. ‘Let’s get under the covers.’
‘Unh-hunh, I’m fine. And this is my bed, so we’re going to do what I want to do.’
She pushed him so that he fell backward on to the quilt. Then she quickly dropped her short black skirt and stepped out of her tiny white-lace thong.
Naked, she climbed on to the bed and climbed on top of him, until she was sitting astride him. He reached down to push off his shorts, but she gripped his wrist to stop him and said, ‘No, not yet.’
She leaned forward, staring into his eyes, until their noses were almost touching. She kissed him again and again, just lightly, and then she said, ‘Greg – it doesn’t matter if some things seem to be impossible. János Arany said, “In dreams and love, nothing is impossible.”’
‘János Who? Never heard of him. Or if I have, I’ve forgotten.’
Isobel kissed him again. ‘Arany. Famous Hungarian poet, 1817 to 1882.’
‘I never had a history lesson in bed before.’
‘How do you know? You have amnesia.’
With that, she maneuvered herself up the bed until she was kneeling astride his face, her shins pinning his shoulders against the mattress. She reached down with both hands and opened the lips of her vulva, so that her clitoris protruded and he could see that she was brimming with clear juice. She looked down at him between her breasts as if she were a goddess on a mountain top and he were a mere mortal on the ground below.
‘Go on, Greg,’ she coaxed him. ‘Taste me.’
Tentatively, he licked her clitoris with the tip of his tongue. He licked it again and this time she shuddered.
‘Ohhhhh,’ she breathed.
He licked her faster and faster. Her clitoris stiffened, almost like the beak of a little bird. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, and pulled herself open even wider. He pushed his tongue inside her as deeply as he could, and sucked, so that he could taste her. She tasted unusually sweet, but she was still quite cold, even inside.
‘Don’t stop,’ she panted. She was holding on to the bedhead now, and she was so tense that she was hurting his shoulders. But he kept on flicking at her clitoris with the tip of his tongue, and her juice was running down his chin.
There was a moment when he thought he would have to go on licking for hours. His shoulders were beginning to seize up and his jaw was aching from keeping his mouth open for so long. But then Isobel let out a high-pitched cry, and then a snort, and her whole body quaked and shook.
She was still for a few seconds, and then she quaked again, and again. At last, however, she lifted herself off him and rolled over and nestled herself up close, with her shoulder in his armpit. She kissed him, licking her own juice off his face, and panted, ‘You’re wonderful. You’re absolutely wonderful. If only you knew what you do for me.’
She reached down and slid her hand into his shorts. He felt desperately that he wanted to climb on top of her and penetrate her, but she started to rub him, very hard, so hard that it hurt, and he was already so aroused that it took only a few seconds before he climaxed, and filled his shorts with warm semen. Isobel kept her hand inside there, massaging his softening penis and rolling his slippery testicles between her fingers.
He kissed her forehead. ‘Don’t you want me inside you?’ he asked.
‘Of course I do. But we need to be careful, don’t we?’
‘So you’re not on the pill?’
She took her hand out of his shorts and then she sat up, sharply shaking her head so that her hair flew from side to side. ‘I’m not allowed any medication. Only my regular shots.’
‘Oh, yes. And what are they for?’
‘Just to keep me stable, I suppose. Doctor Connor diagnosed me bipolar. I used to have mood swings like you can’t believe.’
‘Don’t they sell condoms at Ray’s Food Place?’
Isobel kissed him and laughed. ‘I guess Doctor Connor would supply you with some if you asked her.’
She swung her legs off the bed and walked over to the door, where her bathrobe was hanging. Michael watched her as she turned around and put it on, her breasts swaying underneath it as she tied the sash. He thought her figure was amazing. He hadn’t found a woman so irresistible since … You shouldn’t …
‘What’s the matter?’ Isobel asked him, sitting back down on the edge of the bed.
He pressed his fingertips to his forehead. ‘I don’t know. Another flash, I guess.’
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘Maybe I have. Or heard one, anyhow. It’s like somebody’s trying to get through to me on a shortwave radio, only there’s too much interference.’
‘It could be some memory coming back.’
He looked at her. Then he looked across at the closet, with its mirrored doors, and saw the two of them, sitting like two strangers in another room. Isobel had her back to the mirrors and he looked so tired and puffy-eyed that he barely recognized himself.
There was a faint click, and one of the closet doors opened a little way. Obviously Isobel hadn’t closed it properly when she had put away her doll, Belle. And there, peering out of the darkness with her black shark’s eyes, was Belle herself, as if she were watching him, just to make sure that he behaved himself.
When Michael walked to the clinic the next morning for his therapy session, the sky was clear blue and there were only a few fragmented clouds, although it was still bitterly cold.
He walked in the roadway, because it was only thinly covered with snow from yesterday’s snowfall, while the sidewalks were still very slippery. He had always thought that residents had a duty to clear the snow from the sidewalks outside their own homes, but apparently that didn’t apply to Trinity.
He was less than halfway to the clinic when the little girl on the bicycle appeared, Jemima, with her frizzy brown hair and her pink windbreaker. She rang her bell as she cycled past him, and then she circled around and came back again.
‘Are you staying with Mrs Weston?’ she asked, with one eye scrunched up against the sunshine.
‘That’s right. I am. Only for a while, though, while I get better.’
‘My mom says that Mrs Weston is a hoo-ha.’
‘A hoo-ha? Is that right?’
Jemima nodded emphatically. ‘She goes for anything in pants, that’s what my mom says.’
‘Well, I think your mom is being a little unfair. Mrs Weston is a very nice person, and she certainly isn’t a hoo-ha.’
Jemima continued to stare at Michael, one-eyed, and then she said, ‘What is a hoo-ha?’
‘Your mom didn’t tell you? A hoo-ha is a person who always kicks up a lot of fuss about everything, that’s all.’
‘Oh.’
Michael carried on walking but Jemima followed him
, circling around and around him all the time. Michael thought that the zigzag scar on her forehead looked even more pink and livid in the sunlight.
‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’ he asked her.
‘I don’t go to school. They don’t have a school in Trinity, anyhow.’
‘There must be a school in Weed.’
‘My mom teaches me. And Mister Bauman comes in from next door to give me math lessons.’
‘Don’t you miss playing with other kids? You know – what about sport and drama and that kind of stuff?’
‘Me and Angela, we play together.’
‘Angela – she was the girl walking the dog, right?’
Jemima nodded. ‘We do skipping and hopscotch. And we play “What It Was Like”.’
‘“What It Was Like”? What’s that?’
‘That’s when we play What It Was Like.’
‘I don’t understand you. What It Was Like when?’
‘Before, stupid!’
‘Hey, watch who you’re calling names, OK? Don’t forget what Doctor Connor said – I’ll be able to catch up with you soon and give you a pasting!’
‘Like to see you try!’
Jemima circled around one more time, well out of Michael’s reach. For some reason he remembered a story about somebody stopping a thief by throwing a walking stick through the spokes of his bicycle wheel, but he decided it wouldn’t be very wise to try that with Jemima. He watched her pedal off around the curve, provocatively jingling her bell and looking back over her shoulder to stick out her tongue.
Kids. But what had she meant, ‘What It Was Like Before’? Before what? Before her parents had moved here? Before she had sustained that lightning-flash scar on her forehead? Like everybody else in Trinity, she spoke in riddles.
He carried on making his way to the clinic, leaning on his stick. He was walking between the tire tracks of Isobel’s Jeep, which were the only tire tracks that had been made since yesterday’s snow. The residents of Trinity certainly didn’t get out much.
He reached the clinic, with its white wall around it, and it was here that the road divided – the right-hand fork going directly into the clinic’s main entrance. The tilting sign next to the left-hand fork pointed to Route 97, and Weed, and Interstate 5.
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