What She Saw

by Sheila Lowe

  Just one more question to add to the mounting catalogue of “what Jenna doesn’t remember.”

  It was after one a.m. when she returned to the computer and opened a browser and Googled “Causes of Amnesia.” Wikipedia came up first, listing a wide spectrum of causes beginning with head injury, “e.g., a fall, a knock on the head.”

  Dissociative amnesia had a psychological cause and resulted from repressed memory about a traumatic, possibly brutal event, such as rape. She read on. There was also something called dissociative fugue caused by psychological trauma, “usually temporary, unresolved and therefore may return.”

  As her eyes travelled over that section, one phrase in particular caught her eye: “one or more episodes of amnesia in which the inability to recall some or all of one’s past and either the loss of one’s identity or the formation of a new identity occur with sudden, unexpected, purposeful travel away from home.” But that condition was rare.

  It might be rare, but here I am, living proof that it happens.

  The Mayo Clinic’s web site had a section on transient global amnesia that gave her hope: “your recall of recent events simply vanishes, so you can’t remember where you are or how you got there. Episodes are usually short-lived, and afterwards your memory is fine.”

  When? When will my memory be fine? How long do I have to wait?

  She Googled herself next and learned that Jenna Marcott shared a name with a junior at a small college in the East. The other Jenna had pages on MySpace, Facebook. She had a gym membership and she played tennis. There were scads of photos of a tall, willowy redhead, but no references to a diminutive blonde Jenna Marcott, either of Ventura or Marina del Rey, California.

  f i v e

  The persistent chiming of the doorbell woke her.

  Still halfway in a bad dream, she blinked at her surroundings, trying to figure out where she was. In nothing flat, the shock and confusion came crashing back. The train, Zach, the apartment, the torn photograph. She was Jenna Marcott and she was lying on top of the bare mattress in her bedroom, legs tangled in a sheet.

  Right away, she knew that her memory for anything prior to waking on the train was the same blank slate it had been when she had fallen asleep, drained, in the early hours. Her dashed hopes of waking up with her life intact were the grim reality. It seemed peculiar when she had lost so much, to feel so intensely grateful that she had managed to at least retain the memories of the intervening time.

  Far from ready to face another day of amnesia, she dragged herself out of bed and went to answer the door, expecting to find her upstairs neighbor looking for the keys to fix the flat tire on the car she had not even known she owned until he told her.

  But when she opened the door a few inches and peeked out, it was not Zach’s goofy grin looking back at her.

  The man on the porch looked about Zach’s age and height, but his watery blue eyes and thin lips, dirty blond hair and scruffy beard ended the resemblance.

  Skinny—maybe twenty pounds thinner than his best weight—he wore a dark green field jacket as if it were midwinter instead of the end of summer.

  Something about him seemed vaguely familiar, but Jenna couldn’t imagine he was someone she might choose as a friend.

  You have no idea who you would choose as a friend.

  No, but...

  A flashback: The pot smoker on the train. Pigpen. The smell still clung to his clothes. He was holding onto the strap of a backpack slung over his shoulder.

  “Hey, you’re here,” he said in an offhand manner, as if this were an afternoon social call.

  Jenna frowned. “How did you know where I live?”

  “Ooh, someone woke up on the wrong side of bed. Chill, would ya.” He swung the backpack off his shoulder and held it up for her inspection. “This is yours, isn’t it? The luggage tag has this address.”

  “Where’d you get it?” A quick pulse of recognition told her that the backpack was indeed hers.

  “Not a good idea to leave something like this on a train these days. You’re lucky they didn’t blow it up,” said Pigpen. “You oughta be glad I picked it up for you.”

  “I am, but why didn’t you say something yesterday?”

  “Thought about it.” He lounged against the porch post as if he planned to stay awhile. “But you weren’t about to give me the time of day, were you? I was gonna just keep it, but then I saw the address, so figured I’d be a Good Samaritan. You know, do a good deed, help us both out.” He let the backpack drop to the ground with a thump and spat into the geraniums.

  She hardly noticed his gross behavior. The backpack would have answers. She could hardly wait to open it up and see what was inside.

  “Thank you so much. I appreciate you bringing it to me.” She leaned down to pick up the canvas bag, but Pigpen nudged it aside with his foot.

  “You can leave that there,” he said, “So, how about some cash?”

  “You’re holding my backpack for ransom?”

  It was not until she heard the squeak of a door slamming above them that Jenna realized how much her voice had risen in indignation. Zach came out and leaned over the low stucco wall of his balcony, peering down at them. “What’s up?”

  Pigpen twisted to look up at him. “Get lost, dude. Fuckin’ butt out.”

  Even from this distance, Jenna could see Zach’s eyes narrow. All of a sudden he was no longer the easygoing neighbor who had given her a ride home the evening before. “Fuck you, too, asshole,” said Zach. He pushed away from the ledge and started for the staircase.

  Pigpen looked as though a strong wind could blow him across the yard. He would be no match for this Zach, who had acquired an unmistakably threatening presence. Jenna, who was not interested in witnessing a pissing contest, waved him back. “It’s okay, he’s just dropping something off. Really, it’s fine.”

  Zach halted at the head of the stairs, but Jenna could see the glint of a threat in his eyes. He was staring at Pigpen but talking to her. “If you say so. Call me when you’re ready.”

  “I will. Thanks, Zach.”

  “Dickwad,” the scruffy pothead muttered under his breath. “Look, lady, I ain’t got all day. You got bank. You know it and I know it, so let’s do this before that motherfucker gets crazy.”

  “Wait a minute,” she told him, snatching up the backpack. Slipping it over her shoulder was as natural as if she’d done it a hundred times before.

  “Hey,” Pigpen called after her as she closed the door in his face. “Anyone else woulda kept it.”

  She carried no illusions about him having helped himself to whatever money or other valuables might have been in the bag, but that was of little consequence. One more piece of her life had returned to her, and that gave her hope for more.

  Getting the backpack was like a birthday gift and ten Christmases rolled into one. Cradling it as tenderly as if it were a baby, she left it on the love seat and, assuming Pigpen had already raided whatever money he had found in the bag, took a twenty from the billfold in the zebra purse. With her small store of resources, that was as generous as she could afford to be.

  Zach had stayed put on his landing, keeping an eye on her visitor. When he saw Jenna come outside, he went into his apartment, the screen door banging shut behind him. She offered the money to Pigpen. “Thank you. I appreciate the good deed.”

  He snorted. “That’s all your shit’s worth? I shoulda just sold it.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  He grabbed the twenty with a shrug of resignation and turned away, Jenna’s eyes following him all the way to the gate. He lifted the latch, then wheeled back around and gave her a small salute.

  “Nice doing business with you, Jessica.”

  s i x

  Jessica?

  She wanted to yell at him to stop, to press him to come back and explain himself, but the words stayed frozen on her tongue.

  My name is Jenna Marcott, not Jessica. Zach said so. My driver’s license says so.

&nb
sp; Jessica? What was he talking about? Jerk.

  Dismissing Pigpen’s parting words in her hurry to check out the backpack, she locked the door behind her and hurried to the loveseat.

  Pressing herself into the cushions as if they could provide protective armor against any new assaults on her psyche, she held the canvas bag in her lap. An unexpected lump caught in her throat as she ran her hands over the pink and green floral stitching on its bulging contours. It was less a recognition than a knowing.

  Just as Pigpen had said, there was a luggage tag attached to the strap—a plastic window with a white card. The name “Jessica Mack” and the Thompson Street address were printed in small handwriting.

  Who is Jessica Mack, and why is her name on my backpack?

  The fact that Jessica Mack and Jenna Marcott shared the same initials was not lost on her.

  The backpack’s outside pocket held a cell phone. That meant stored names, phone numbers, text messages, maybe—vital data for someone with no memory of her own. But when she pressed the power button the phone was dead and there was no charger in the pocket.

  Figures. Note to self: find a Radio Shack ASAP and buy a charger.

  The house key on the J-shaped key ring in the backpack did not fit the apartment’s front door when she tried it. The car key was for a Honda, not a Nissan. There was a mailbox key and a couple of others she could not identify. Nursing a faint hope that she would find something inside to jog her memory loose, Jenna unsnapped the closure.

  Inside was a jumble of clothing: a couple of black T-shirts, skinny-leg black Levi’s, a sleep shirt much like the one she was wearing. Thong undies, a bra, size 34B. Tucked under the clothing was a clear plastic bag containing a travel toothbrush, toothpaste and comb. The thought of Pigpen digging through her stuff repulsed her. Everything would have to be washed before she could put it next to her skin.

  The backpack did not hold a wallet, but she counted out three twenty dollar bills, a five, two ones, and fifty-three cents in change lying loose on the bottom of the backpack. Counting herself lucky Pigpen had left anything for her, she added the cash to the two hundred bucks in the zebra purse. There was enough money to operate for a little while.

  There was plastic in the backpack, too—an ATM card—she wondered how much was in the bank account—and a gasoline credit card. The raised lettering below the account numbers on both cards read Jessica Mack. In lieu of a signature, “See ID” had been hand printed on the signature line, maybe to protect against identity theft. A California driver’s license with her photo in the name of Jessica Mack showed an address in Escondido.

  An image flickered: Amtrak station. Running in the dark. Leaping across the yellow caution line at the curb of the platform. Boarding the train just as the doors were closing.

  Dropping into a seat next to the window as the train began to move. Chugging past a sign on the platform, spotlights pointed at the station name on the sign.

  She could even see it: white lettering on a blue background: Solana Beach. Then, like a puff of smoke, the image was gone. But it was something. She had remembered getting on the train in Solana Beach!

  So what? the voice in her head taunted her. So you got on a train at Solana Beach. How much more do you know now than you did before?

  “If that memory came back, others can, too!” She said it aloud, arguing with the air, then felt foolish.

  Taking the Jenna Marcott license from the zebra purse, she placed it on the table next to the Jessica Mack one and compared them. The vital statistics were identical, and in both pictures her hair was longer. Why did she have two driver’s licenses with two different names and addresses?

  Am I a crook? A drug runner? A spy? What other kind of person might need dual identities unless they were on the wrong side of the law? Remembered fear from yesterday, when the patrolman had showed up under the bridge, sent a fresh ripple of discomfort through her.

  Another possibility: what if the man in the broken picture frame was stalking her and she’d had to change her identity and move away to avoid him?

  Holy shit.

  She worked her way through the scenarios and?reached two solid conclusions: she was running from something or someone, and something had caused her memory to shut down.

  Maybe the two somethings were one thing.

  She was famished. A cursory search of the pantry yielded an unopened box of stone ground crackers, a plastic container half-filled with trail mix and a Trader Joe’s bag of dried apricots.

  In the almost-bare refrigerator she found Greek honey yogurt, a bottle of unfiltered apple juice, a block of plastic-wrapped cheddar cheese, and a bag of apples in the crisper drawer. Health foods.

  Am I a vegetarian?

  Don’t know, don’t care.

  She would have eaten an entire cow if it had been in the fridge. God knew how long since her last meal. She ripped open the cracker box and the wax bag inside, not bothering to leave a neat fold at the top, and attacked it with the appetite of a starving child. Even as she pulled a knife from the wooden block on the counter to hack off a chunk of cheese, she was already cramming a dry cracker into her mouth.

  After she had finished, the kitchen was no longer the immaculate area scrubbed spotless enough to perform surgery. The neat freak had disappeared along with her memory.

  When she ran upstairs to tell Zach she was ready for him to help her with the flat tire, he said nothing about Pigpen and she did not volunteer the reason for the pothead’s early morning visit.

  To explain his return of her backpack would require explaining that she had left it on the train, and since she had no explanation for that, keeping quiet seemed the most sensible route.

  They walked around to the carport together and inspected her car, which was covered in a film of dust. Today was Monday. How long ago had she boarded that train in Solana Beach?

  And for that matter, what had she been doing there? Assuming that flash she’d had was a real memory and not a figment of her imagination.

  “Pop the trunk, chicklet,” said Zach. “Let’s get this baby up and running for you.”

  Jenna stood by the rear fender and watched him work. “I have an appointment in Venice this afternoon,” she said. “I hope the spare isn’t one of those little donut things.”

  The irony hit her afresh. The words about spare tires had come out of her mouth unthinking. How bizarre that she knew how to function in the world, yet know nothing of her own history, her own desires.

  Zach removed the floor mat that covered the spare. “Not to worry,” he said. “It’s full size.” He grasped the tire with both hands and jerked it out, then reached back in for the jack. He turned back to her, one dark eyebrow hiked. “Do you always keep your camera under your spare tire?”

  “What?”

  He held out a small camera. “It was in the wheel well.”

  “I have no idea what it’s doing there,” she said with a little zing of exhilaration. Photos might give her some idea of her existence prior to her sojourn on Amtrak and could provide important clues to who she was. And maybe who Jessica Mack was.

  She reached out to take the camera, but Zach held it out of her reach. “How about letting me borrow it, just for today?” he said. “I’m heading to the mountains after finish here, and you obviously aren’t using it—”

  “Sure, just let me just see what’s in the memory.” Ignoring her outstretched hand, Zach pressed the power button. Jenna could see the digital screen light up. “Hey, give it to me! There might be private stuff in there.”

  “You and Mr. Mystery doing the nasty?”

  “Give it to me!”

  His refusal to hand over the camera irked her. The blank space in her life where “Mr. Mystery” fit in didn’t feel funny, it felt ghastly and empty.

  Seeing that she was upset, Zach’s grin dropped away. He handed over the camera with a shrug. “Okay, whatever.”

  Jenna took it, managing a half-smile. “I’ll go download the pictures to the
computer, then you’re welcome to take it.”

  Inserting the memory card, she plugged the adapter she’d found in the carrying case into an empty USB port on the computer. The drive window came up and she dragged the photo folder onto the desktop, impatient for the thumbnails to open.

  The folder held a scant eight files. The first was a shot of a piece of paper on a desk, but the hand that snapped the photo had been unsteady, the image too blurred for Jenna to read the writing.

  The next file was an image of the same desk, the same document, but clear enough to read once Jenna moved the slider on the magnifier icon to enlarge it. Her stomach clenched when she saw that, like the threatening note she’d found in her purse, the printed notations on the screen were written on graph paper.

  Fetching the original note, she compared it to the one on screen. She was no handwriting expert, but she was pretty sure they had both been written by the same hand.

  The paper in the photograph appeared to be some sort of notes:

  unique vibrations (3.50HZ, 5 milliwatt)–>

  monitor –> alter frequency –>

  stimulation –> spikes –>

  = desired effect

  The next image was a tight close-up of a square object, colored threads protruding from it like spider legs.

  Enlarging the picture, she realized that what she was seeing was not threads, but wires. A microchip, she surmised. In the next image, a penny had been placed beside the microchip as a sizing tool. The penny was at least four times larger than the tiny chip.

  The remaining files contained pictures of an electronic tablet lying on a shiny black surface taken from several different angles. The file dates indicated that the photos had been taken a few weeks earlier. Stymied again. It seemed as if every time she thought she was getting somewhere, she drew a blank.

  Zach was wiping his hands on an old towel when she returned to the carport. The flat tire lay on the ground. He shook an unruly lock of black hair out of his eyes and grinned at her, irrepressible.