Bonkers

by Michelle Holman

She suddenly thrust out a hand, stopping him in his tracks, and cried in a ragged voice, ‘Go away!’ Her eyes were glued to Lisa, who was clinging to Dan like a limpet. She pointed a shaking finger at her. ‘You leave me and my family alone!’ She fled across the car park, her long legs flying across the asphalt, and disappeared up the main street of Browns Bay.

  ‘Sherry!’ Lisa screamed. ‘Tia Maria!’

  Sherry stumbled and almost fell, but kept on going.

  Lisa struggled against Dan. ‘Don’t let her go!’

  He gave her a shake and shouted. ‘Stop it! What do you think you’re going to do? Run after her?’

  She kicked him half-heartedly with her good foot before collapsing against him, sobbing. Dan was surprised to realize his forearms were wet from her tears.

  A tall Maori man approached them carrying Lisa’s crutches. ‘You OK, mate?’

  Dan nodded. ‘Yeah.’ He lifted an unresisting Lisa into his arms, feeling obliged to explain. ‘She just got out of hospital yesterday. She had a bad car accident.’

  The guy looked at Lisa’s bright-blue cast poking from the bottom of her trousers and nodded. ‘Where’s your car? I’ll carry these for you.’

  Lisa said nothing in the car. She seemed to have shrunk in size, hunched over with misery. Her teeth were chattering.

  Despite the sunshine, Dan switched on the heater. He felt totally drained. He was so anxious to get her home that, without thinking, he took the fastest route, through the roundabout where the accident had occurred.

  Lisa sat bolt upright in her seat as they approached it, her body suddenly strung tight as a bow. Dan began to apologize until he realized her attention was focussed on the brown wooden house with beautiful gardens opposite the video shop. Dan, like many others, had often admired the gardens as he drove past.

  Lisa’s mouth opened wide and she gave a howl of pain much like the one Sherry had made as she ran away. She slapped her palms against the car window like a child, crying brokenly, ‘I want to go home! I want to go home!’ She would have opened the door if Dan hadn’t quickly snapped the auto-locking device on his side. Lisa turned on him like a virago, blue eyes flashing. ‘Let me out!’ she shrieked. ‘I want to get out!’

  Suddenly she bore a striking resemblance to the Linda of old. Somehow Dan managed to steer the car around the roundabout and hold Lisa back against her seat. ‘Stop it!’ he roared. ‘Enough!’

  Lisa froze; her eyes rounded with shock at the sound of his big, deep voice filling the car and the fury in his narrowed eyes. Putting her face in her hands she began to weep desperately.

  Dan put her to bed when they arrived home and spent the rest of the afternoon watching television in the lounge so he’d hear her if she called, or, worse, walked in her sleep. He was heartsick and deeply worried. She desperately needed to see Craig Fergusson. This was something far more than a case of amnesia, although for the life of him Dan couldn’t have explained it. His mind shied away from what Lisa kept trying to tell him. It was just too fantastic.

  Who the hell was Sherry? The woman had seemed disturbed by the things Lisa had shouted at her, as if the bizarre comments had made some sort of sense.

  Dan was mystified by the significance of the scarf comments, until he recalled that several of the blue movies he’d seen in his med-student days had featured women wearing nothing but a scarf knotted around their neck. Under other circumstances, he would have laughed.

  Lisa had still not emerged when darkness fell, so Dan tapped on the door to ask if she was hungry and to reassure himself that she was OK.

  ‘Thanks, Dan, but I’m not hungry,’ she said politely, clutching the edge of the bedroom door, her eyes downcast. Behind her, the room was lit by a single bedside lamp and the bed covers were tangled as if she had slept poorly.

  ‘You haven’t had anything since lunchtime,’ he chided gently, resting his forearm on the doorframe above his head.

  She shook her head, still not meeting his gaze. ‘Really, I’m fine. I was more tired than I realized.’

  Dan watched her helplessly. Was this gentle, funny woman sicker than he had originally thought? He was still shaken by the glimpse he’d had of something like the old Linda in the car when she was fighting to get out. ‘I got you those books you picked out,’ he said at last, holding up the plastic bag with the bookstore’s logo printed on the front.

  Lisa’s eyes flew to the bag in surprise. Dan saw that, as he’d suspected, she’d been crying.

  ‘Aw, Lisa…’ he said on a sigh.

  She ignored him, instead exclaiming in a clogged voice, ‘Thank you. That was really nice of you.’ She reached out for the plastic bag, clutching at the door for support.

  Reluctantly, Dan handed it over to her. ‘Want to talk about it?’

  Her mouth twisted and she shook her head. ‘You’d never believe me.’

  Leaning his brow on his forearm, Dan watched her, a sombre expression on his face. ‘Try me.’

  She was silent for so long that Dan thought she wasn’t going to reply. Eventually she looked up at him and said simply, ‘Sherry is my sister.’

  Dan closed his eyes briefly, gripping the doorframe hard to keep from exploding in sheer frustration. It was an effort to keep his voice even when he replied. ‘Linda, you don’t have any brothers or sisters.’

  She looked as if she felt sorry for him. ‘Linda might not have, Dan. But I have a sister and a brother. Sherry and Ben.’ Her voice broke when she said their names.

  They regarded one another helplessly. It was Dan who looked away first. He shook his head. ‘This can’t go on.’

  ‘No. I know it can’t.’ Lisa agreed in a low voice. ‘It’s too painful—for everybody concerned.’ She bent sideways to awkwardly hook the bag of books from the floor where she’d dropped them. ‘I think I’ll go to bed and read. Or try to read.’ Turning, she hopped across to the bed.

  Dan continued to lean in the doorway, a brooding expression on his face. ‘Do me a favour, will you?’ he said at last, quite prepared for her to tell him to take a hike.

  She looked back at him questioningly.

  ‘Leave the bedroom door open before you go to sleep so I can at least check you’re still in bed during the night.’ She blushed and nodded. ‘Alright.’

  ‘Night.’ Dan said quietly, still watching her in the shadowed light.

  ‘Night,’ she replied softly and turned back to her books.

  13

  On Monday morning, Dan was so anxious about leaving Lisa alone that she had to shake herself out of her misery and put on a show of cheerfulness just to get him out of the house.

  ‘You’re sure you’ll be alright?’ he asked for what must have been the twentieth time as he hung about the kitchen, postponing the moment he had to leave. He was wearing a dark navy-blue suit, a crisp white shirt with a fine blue stripe, and a Shrek tie. In one hand he held a battered, black briefcase. His other hand was tucked into his trouser pocket, pulling the material taut across his thigh.

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ Lisa joked nervously while thinking for the thousandth time that Dan Brogan was a fox.

  He reluctantly smiled at her flippant response. ‘You have the mobile phone I gave you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she responded dutifully, but didn’t add that despite his patient explanation of how the little silver machine worked she doubted she’d actually be able to use it. She didn’t get along with anything technical, which was why she’d never owned a mobile phone.

  ‘My mobile number is in the Names Menu,’ Dan told her patiently.

  ‘So you said.’

  He might just as well have said my mobile number is in the Franz Josef Glacier for all the sense it made to Lisa, although on second thoughts at least she knew where the South Island was and how to read a map—or at least, she used to.

  ‘If you go out, make sure you call a cab.’

  She nodded obediently. ‘Yes, Da—Dan.’

  He insisted on leaving her a hundred dollars in cash when it became obvious
that Lisa couldn’t use Linda’s bank or credit cards because she didn’t know the PIN number.

  ‘And I can’t do her signature,’ she told Dan and watched him flinch. ‘I’ve tried to forge it, but I’m afraid my criminal tendencies would only ever lend themselves to driving the getaway car.’

  ‘That isn’t funny,’ he said.

  ‘You’re telling me,’ Lisa replied glumly. She’d given up trying to spare his feelings when it came to his insistence that she was Linda. After the fiasco in the car park the other day, Lisa didn’t see much point. ‘Linda was right-handed, wasn’t she?’ she asked.

  Dan ignored her and began to search for his car keys. He seemed to have a real problem keeping track of them.

  ‘Wasn’t she?’ Lisa persisted.

  ‘Yes!’ he growled, pulling the fruit bowl apart.

  Gripping the edge of the kitchen counter, Lisa hopped towards him, the keys in her hand. ‘I knew she was because her signature slopes to the right. I’m left-handed and mine slopes to the left.’ An orange rolled off the counter. Lisa dangled the key ring from a finger and gave it a shake. ‘Yoo hoo? Hello?’

  Dan gave up examining the bananas. He scowled at the keys in her hand and muttered something not fit for children’s ears.

  ‘That’s a physical impossibility,’ Lisa told him.

  He glowered at her. ‘I’m a surgeon, I’ll make it possible.’

  She laughed and was relieved to see a smile tug at the side of his mouth. The man was way too serious.

  Dan continued to loiter, a troubled expression on his face. ‘Lisa?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Promise me you won’t go to sleep.’

  She sighed. ‘Dan, I only sleepwalk at night. I never do it during the day.’

  The night before, Dan had heard a crash and found Lisa sprawled on the floor in the laundry after she’d fallen over the ironing board. Waking up disorientated and in some pain had terrified her and frightened the life out of Dan. Somehow she’d made it past his open bedroom door without him hearing her. He still had visions of her walking out into the garden, climbing the fence and falling off the cliff.

  ‘What the hell am I going to do with you?’ he’d muttered blearily as he helped her back to bed.

  ‘I dunno,’ she had laughed shakily. ‘Sew bells on my slippers?’

  ‘I won’t go to sleep,’ Lisa promised him now when he continued to look worried by the prospect of leaving her. She wasn’t sure if she could hold out all day from falling asleep. Dan had said he wouldn’t be home until around seven or eight that night, and hopping about on crutches for hours on end made her really tired.

  ‘I’ll get home as soon as I can,’ he reassured her, his grey eyes anxious.

  ‘I’ll be alright, Dan.’ Lisa glanced at the clock. ‘Hadn’t you better get going? You have to get over the Harbour Bridge.’

  With a reluctant nod, he picked up his briefcase.

  ‘What are you doing this morning?’ she asked curiously. She’d never lived with a surgeon before.

  ‘I’m in theatre,’ Dan replied distractedly.

  ‘Really? Doing what?’

  ‘Hamlet.’

  She pulled a face. ‘Ha ha.’

  ‘I have three children to operate on.’

  ‘Oh.’ Lisa felt quite useless by comparison. ‘Hope it all goes well.’

  He nodded and walked past her to head towards the laundry and the garage beyond. As he passed by, Lisa reached out a hand and touched his sleeve, feeling suddenly bereft at the thought of him going. He immediately stopped and peered down at the top of her glossy, dark head. ‘You’ll be OK?’

  She nodded and summoned up a smile.

  Dan thought she looked incredibly sweet, dressed in a pink silk robe decorated with deeper pink flowers and with her black hair in braids on either side of her face. She startled him by reaching up and giving the knot of his tie a tweak to straighten it.

  ‘Shrek,’ she said. ‘Is there a cartoon character you don’t have on a tie?’

  Dan’s breath hitched in his chest. ‘Yeah,’ he said huskily, watching her soft pink mouth. ‘I don’t have the donkey out of Shrek.’

  Lisa’s hand lingered. Beneath the heel of her hand she could feel the solid warmth of his chest. He smelled of soap from his shower and the subtle, spicy aftershave he wore. She wished she had the guts to lean up and kiss him, but he was so tall that she’d never reach his mouth unless he chose to cooperate.

  Something quivered between them. Something they were both leery of acknowledging.

  ‘I have to go,’ Dan said awkwardly.

  Lisa dropped her hand and backed clumsily away. ‘Have a good day.’

  He stared at her, his expression tense and unreadable for several moments before he turned away towards the laundry door. ‘Yeah, you too.’

  Lisa spent the morning rearranging the bedrooms and exploring the rest of the house. There were two more bedrooms, one of which had been turned into a study for Dan and held his computer, more books, a weight bench and some hand weights lying on the floor beside it. His desk was untidy, but Lisa didn’t even contemplate trying to straighten things up. She smiled at the crayon and felt-tip drawings pinned onto a big cork board above the desk, many of which had messages from children to Dr Dan. On one of them a childish hand had written I bruk my leg. Duckta Dan made me a new 1. The drawings reminded Lisa of the ones she used to do for Mr Wrigley, the surgeon who had operated on her club foot when she was little.

  There was a guitar propped in a corner, but Lisa was disappointed to find it was for a right-handed player. She had a guitar of her own back at her old house which had once been Ben’s—he had given it to her when they were teenagers. Lisa had been going through a Janis Joplin phase and had tried to carve a rose on the back of it, but the rest of the family insisted it looked more like a turtle. All of the Jackson kids played musical instruments; before Ben had met Brenda, he had been in a band and had written music, but Brenda had put a stop to that. Both Brian and Jill were musical, and their children had been raised in an environment of music and singing. Lisa could play the guitar and the piano.

  She wondered who owned the guitar. She also wondered just what Dan and Linda had had in common. There was no sign of Linda Brogan having had any hobbies. Her appearance and shopping for clothes seemed to have taken up most of her time. This was the total opposite of Dan Brogan; he was the most unassuming, modest man Lisa had ever met. It was pretty obvious clothes weren’t at the top of his list. She found his mismatched clothing endearing.

  His stubborn refusal to change bedrooms wasn’t so endearing. It was stupid for Dan to be sleeping in the smallest bed while she felt lost in the master bedroom. She knew he would be annoyed at her for changing things around, but she decided she’d use the excuse that sleeping in the smaller bed would make her feel more secure and hopefully less likely to walk in her sleep.

  He’d been so good to her, so incredibly patient. Without Dan, Lisa would have been completely alone. He was doing his utmost to make the best of an extremely difficult situation. Lisa wasn’t sure exactly what the state of his and Linda’s marriage had been, but she felt pangs of guilt whenever she thought about Dan’s ignorance that he was a widower. She wondered how he would react when, if, she could ever convince him his wife was dead. As for herself, she’d been devastated by the confrontation with Sherry on the weekend but, being Lisa, she’d found something positive in the meeting. She’d seen her sister. Her mother and father were only a few kilometres away down the hill. Somehow she would see them. Somehow she would make them believe she was still alive.

  Lisa fed the mountain of laundry in Dan’s room into the washing machine and managed to get it outside to the line using one of her crutches to push the basket along the path in the back garden. It was while she was in the garden, her mouth full of pegs, balancing on one of her crutches and struggling to throw wet clothes onto the line that Lisa suddenly realized she was being watched. She paused and looked about. There
was nobody in sight, but the feeling persisted. She nearly choked on the clothes pegs in her mouth when a voice called tentatively, ‘Do you need a hand, Mrs Brogan?’

  Lisa gasped and snatched the pegs from her mouth. Slapping a hand to her galloping heart, she peered through the fence into the garden next door. A fair-headed boy of about seventeen was looking at her, almost obscured from sight behind a large, pink camellia bush. ‘Don’t do that!’ she cried.

  ‘Sorry,’ he muttered and began to retreat from view.

  ‘No!’ Lisa said hastily. ‘Don’t go! I’m sorry I yelled, but you gave me such a fright.’

  His narrow, anxious face reappeared between the glossy dark-green leaves. He blinked at her owlishly from behind silver-framed glasses. ‘Sorry,’ he repeated.

  ‘That’s OK.’ Lisa smiled, delighted to have somebody to talk to. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Um…Slade. Slade Cruickshank,’ he replied, stepping through a gap in the fence into Dan’s garden. ‘I’m one of your neighbours.’ He cringed and blushed when he realized he’d just stated the obvious.

  Lisa tried not to stare. He was wearing a pair of shiny, black leather trousers and pointed black boots with silver buckles. A pale-pink paisley shirt was buttoned to the neck, the tails hanging over his trousers. He had gorgeous silvery-blonde hair and up-tilted hazel eyes. His legs were so thin that the leather trousers made them look like sticks of liquorice. He reminded Lisa of a pixie.

  ‘I’ve said hello before, but I don’t suppose you remember,’ Slade mumbled.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Lisa agreed. ‘I’ve lost my memory. Or at least some of my memory.’

  The pixie eyes widened. ‘Coo-ool.’

  She grimaced. ‘You reckon?’

  Slade came further into the garden. ‘Mr Brogan said you’d had a bad accident,’ he continued, looking at Lisa’s cast. ‘But he didn’t say you’d lost your memory.’

  ‘No, well it’s not the sort of thing you chat about over the fence, is it?’

  He opened his mouth, closed it again and settled for shrugging one shoulder.

  Lisa began to giggle.