The Memory of Us: A Novel

by Camille Di Maio

  People were still streaming in, trying to identify loved ones, and it was especially difficult with the ones that had died in the fires.

  I had been found unconscious and was rescued. The trauma had brought on early labor, though, and they delivered the baby by cesarean section. She was tiny at first, but she had grown to a healthy weight under the care of the nurses and was thriving.

  It was so much to take in, though I’d been dreaming things on and off that correlated with what she was telling me.

  “I’m thirsty” was all that I could say.

  Jane helped me sip some juice through a straw. I could barely feel it in my mouth, but I appreciated the soothing texture as it ran down my throat. She explained that the medication was numbing me so that I wouldn’t feel much pain. It was also helping me with what would have been excruciating engorgement. My breasts were full, rock-hard, with the milk that had been collecting, aching to nurture the baby that I had not yet seen.

  “Now, dear. Are you from Liverpool? You must have family looking for you.” She lifted the clipboard from its peg and pulled a pen from behind her ear. “Let’s get some information about you. Why don’t we start with your name?”

  I closed my eyes and turned my head. I wouldn’t tell her my name, or that I was a nurse, or anything else about me. Part of me refused to believe that I was here and that this had happened. Surely this was just part of the nightmares, and I would wake up. Speaking my name to her would somehow have made it all seem real.

  “Well, I’m not going to press you right now. Lord knows, you’ve been through enough, and you have your reasons. Why don’t you take a little nap now, and maybe we can talk later.”

  I started to pull the pillows from my back so that I could lie down more properly, but she stopped me.

  “Oh no, honey. You don’t want to do that. We’re trying to keep the swelling down, and that’s going to work much better if you keep yourself like we had you.”

  Jane patted my bound hands again and left the room, pointing to a bell that I could ring if I needed her. As soon as she shut the door, I adjusted the pillows into something that had to be a reasonable compromise.

  I lay back and tried to forget all that I had just been told, but it was useless. I kept seeing the fires, the broken beams, the bodies, all of the hellishness. And Lucille.

  Poor Lucille. I couldn’t think of her without crying, and the salty tears scorched my raw skin. I pitied her father. She had been his only daughter, the oldest above three sons. He must be devastated. I took a little comfort in the fact that they would have been able to identify her, and at least didn’t have to experience the ache that came with not knowing.

  But that only made me think of my own parents.

  Were they looking for me? They must be. I had told them that I would be staying the first night with Lucille, and as Edge Hill was her school, it would be easy to surmise that we had stayed the night there.

  But it was unlikely that they could find me. My parents would not be looking in the hospitals for a pregnant woman because I hadn’t yet told them about the baby. When their searches proved fruitless, they would reasonably surmise that I had died in the attack and that my body was among the many unidentifiable remains.

  I thought about sending them a message. To tell them that I was alive, that I was here. But what would my mother say? She had already abandoned one child who didn’t turn out to her liking. What would she say to this one? I wasn’t sure that I wanted to find out just yet. I needed to know more about my prognosis before taking that step.

  Jane bustled in around suppertime with a tray containing soup and applesauce. She set them down and fluffed my pillows back into a sitting position. “I know it’s not comfortable, dear, but we have our rules.” She looked around and lowered her voice. “I’ll tell you what. When my shift ends, I’ll let you do whatever you want with them, and maybe you can get a few hours of good rest before anyone notices.”

  Then she pulled up a chair and sat beside me.

  “Now, let’s take a good look underneath these.” She took one of my hands and started unrolling the gauze. I felt almost nothing, as the medicine was strong. I thought back to another time, so long ago now, where I’d unrolled my stocking after the day of the festival. I inched it down over the scrape on my leg, and I could remember how much it hurt. I could remember, too, how Kyle watched me there in that old barn, and how I knew for the first time what he felt for me. I winced from the pain of that memory. But, as to my current state, I remained numb.

  Jane continued. “We’ve been changing these every day to keep them clean. Then we wash you down with cold water. You had a lot of blisters in the beginning, so we left those alone, and they’re starting to look better now.”

  She kept my attention on her face until she was finished.

  “All right. Now your right hand got the worst of it, so I thought I’d start there. Because after that, everything else will be better.”

  I looked down and shook involuntarily when I saw myself. My arm was covered with red-and-white splotches, and in some small areas, a layer of skin had been removed altogether. You could see the outlines of where the blisters had been, but like she said, they’d done well with those. There would be permanent scarring, no doubt, but not like there might have been.

  When I had taken in the reality of the first one, she unwrapped the second one. It had more mobility and all of the same markings but was somewhat lighter.

  “You see what I mean? This one isn’t so bad.”

  I looked down at my formerly graceful hand and saw a void where my wedding ring had been. “Where is my ring?” My goodness, my voice sounded different. Scratchy. A few notes lower on a musical scale.

  “We have a safe downstairs with everyone’s valuables, and I put it in there. It’s yours whenever you want it.”

  “Why do I sound this way?”

  She put her head down a bit and shook it. “We think that you inhaled too much smoke before they got to you, and it scalded your vocal cords a bit. Truthfully, I don’t know if that will improve. Time will tell. But there’s nothing we can do for that.”

  I nodded in understanding. I suppose there were many things that I had to get used to now.

  “Are you ready for the last bit?” She pointed to my face.

  I shook my head. “Not yet. Please, let’s wait.” My voice was going to take some getting used to.

  “Whatever you prefer. I do need to replace the gauze, though.” She unwrapped it slowly. The air felt refreshing on my skin.

  “How much longer before it heals?”

  “Well, we’re nearly all there. I’d say another week before we can keep the gauze off for good, and then a couple more just to keep an eye on it.”

  “Is it bad?”

  She tilted her head sideways as she looked at me, as though she was trying to decide what to say. “I won’t lie to you. It’s not going to be like what it must have been before. But with some more care, no, it won’t be so bad.”

  I decided to get the inevitable behind me after all. “Maybe I could take just a quick look, then.”

  “Are you sure, dear?”

  “Mm-hmm.” There was a hand mirror on the bedside table. I reached my right hand out for it, only to find that I couldn’t grip it.

  “Don’t you worry, I’ll hold it up for you.”

  I closed my eyes as she lifted it to my face. Then I opened them carefully, as if a slow revelation would make less of an impact. But my eyes couldn’t help but take in the whole image at once.

  My face looked much like my hands, with red-and-white markings that left large patches all around. The area under my eyes was particularly raw, where the skin was thinner. Some blisters still remained, but they were healing as she’d promised. Remarkably, my features were intact. In school, I’d seen photographs of burn victims who’d lost ears or noses. Maybe they always show you the worst cases in class.

  But I was unrecognizable as myself, and I wondered aloud if I w
ould ever be. Jane heard me and answered.

  “That’s hard to say, dear, but if I’m honest, and I think you want me to be, I would say no.”

  I took a deep breath and held back tears, lest they burn my tender skin. I could never have imagined something like this happening, and it was too much to take in. At last I spoke. “What’s going to happen?”

  “The markings will settle in over time and won’t be so vivid, but they’ll definitely still be there. Your skin will heal to the point that it doesn’t hurt anymore, but it will scar into a leathery texture. We have some moisturizers for that, but they are more for your comfort than anything.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”

  I knew it could have been much, much worse. I knew that I was one of the lucky ones. But I was definitely mortified at my reflection. I didn’t see myself in there. The face of a stranger looked back at me, the face of someone who looked like she’d been beaten. This wasn’t Beatrice Westcott’s daughter, who had been the most celebrated debutante in Liverpool only a few years ago. This wasn’t the winner of the auction. This wasn’t the wife of a man like Kyle, the wife he called gorgeous every morning.

  And this certainly wasn’t the face of a new mother, the face that a baby would look upon with adoration. Fear might be more like it. Fear and, later, embarrassment.

  I tried not to cry. I already knew what that felt like. If I doubted before that I deserved such a wonderful man, that doubt had now been replaced by certainty. How could he love me like this? How could I even think of asking him to try? He had given up everything for me—his mother’s dream, his vocation. This was not what he bargained for. Not anything close to what he deserved.

  Once I had been in paradise, being married to Kyle. But now it was just the opposite. This was hell. If I’d ever harbored any doubt about God’s existence, that doubt had now been swept away. There was a God, and he was punishing me for having stolen Kyle away from the priesthood. Lucille had been right. Upstanding, righteous, precious Lucille. The memory of her pained me more than my wounds.

  So no, I would not contact my parents. I wouldn’t write to Kyle. It would be better if they all thought that I was dead. Then all would be as it should have been. He would not be bound to a damaged wife. He would not be tainted by my crime against God. And perhaps God would see fit to spare him and allow him to return to the life he’d been meant to have all along. The despair that gripped me robbed me of the possibility of any future happiness, but I could see no other way than this one.

  As the days passed, the medicine was lessened and I gradually felt the sting of my injuries. I felt, too, the pain as my milk ducts dried, a dismal reminder that I had never seen my child. Jane was often there, and even came in when she was off duty. I learned that she was originally from Birkenhead and had moved to Liverpool with her husband after they married just over twenty years ago. Shortly after, he was shipped out with the army and died in the Second Battle of the Somme in 1918. She had never remarried, and they had not had a chance to have children.

  Why did these things happen? What little exposure I’d had to church had been so formal, as if God was an unreachable deity and we his obedient subjects. Kyle introduced me to a God that was kind, and for a while I believed it. But this God, who would take Jane’s husband so violently and rip Lucille from her family, punished me for having pursued love. I wanted nothing to do with this incarnation nor any other.

  And yet people like Jane still believed.

  I could tell that Jane loved children. When she wasn’t at my side, she could be found in the nursery, and she brought me stories of my daughter’s progress. I had, of course, refused every attempt she made to bring me the baby, which was baffling to Jane. What she didn’t understand was that if I held this little girl, this child I’d made with Kyle, I’d fall in love with her and could never let her go. And what kind of life could I give her? I loved her too much to see her.

  My bandages came off with time, and I grew accustomed to my new look. Small patches of my scalp were burned, and it was unlikely that my blond hair would regrow in those areas. My hands looked like my face, the right much worse than the left. I had lost all feeling in that one. Jane worked with me every day to exercise the stressed muscles so that they would relearn their functions. My legs were relatively unscathed, and walking was difficult only because I had convalesced for so long. When I was able, Jane would help me stand, bearing my weight on her shoulders and walking me up and down the hall to strengthen them. She knew that I did not want to walk near the nursery.

  “That’s a girl. One foot forward. Now the other. Oh, watch that table. Good now. You’re getting the hang of it.”

  Every day it was like that until I didn’t lean on her anymore, and then I could walk quite well on my own.

  After bringing my breakfast one morning and congratulating me on my increased mobility and appetite, Jane took a deep breath, ready to tell me something.

  “Dearheart,” she called me, as I had still not told her my name, “I hope you don’t mind, but I can’t just keep calling the baby ‘Baby.’ Even at her little age, she is growing and becoming alert and developing a little personality. I’ve started to call her ‘Lily.’ She is so beautiful and so innocent, and she reminds me of an Easter flower.”

  I hung my head, ashamed that I was the kind of mother who would not look at her baby, let alone name her. Even my mother, for all her faults, had named Charles. But I had to believe that this was for her own good.

  “Of course,” she said hastily, “you can rename her whatever you like. It’s not as if she’ll remember. But for now, everyone in the nursery has taken to calling her Lily as well.”

  “Lily is a beautiful name. I cannot think of a better one.”

  Jane lit up like the Christmas tree candles from my childhood. “Does that mean that I can order her birth certificate now?”

  I shook my head emphatically. “Not yet.” And I wouldn’t say more.

  I hadn’t thought about a birth certificate, but it was a reminder that I needed to make some plans soon, as I could not stay in the cocoon of the hospital or Jane’s care forever. I was suddenly aware that she had to be keeping the hospital administrators at bay, putting off the inevitable reckoning for my care.

  I still didn’t know what I was going to do next.

  On Christmas Eve, Jane brought me a package—and, without knowing it, my answer.

  “I’ve bought something for you. Merry Christmas.” And she placed the large parcel on my bed.

  “You didn’t have to get me anything. I have nothing for you.”

  “Well, your recovery is all the gift that I need. You have done so well, and the doctor has cleared you to leave on Saturday.”

  I opened the present delicately. My hands functioned better now, although my right one still had little feeling. The left was very sensitive, and the coarse textures of the twill binding made it throb. I concealed my pain, though. Jane was looking at me eagerly, and I didn’t want to disappoint her.

  The package contained everything I would need for my first day out. New leather shoes, stockings, undergarments, a skirt, a blouse, a coat, hat and gloves. They were plain and functional, a far cry from what I might have once worn. But they must have cost her plenty, and I felt unworthy of her generosity.

  I choked back my emotions, more grateful to her than she could have imagined. “You shouldn’t have done this.”

  “Well,” she answered, practical as ever, “we couldn’t very well let you run around in a hospital gown. Vogue would never approve. Not that these are much better . . .”

  “Jane.” I put my hand on her arm to stop her before she could say more. “They are perfect. Thank you.”

  I slid my hands up and down the gifts. The stockings were deliciously soft and smooth. But I avoided the rough fibers of the coat, as they would surely irritate my delicate skin.

  A plan started to form in my head.

  “And that’s
not all,” she said. “The nursery girls have a gift, too.”

  Taking out another parcel, she placed it next to the first one. It was a little smaller, and I couldn’t imagine what else Jane could possibly give me.

  I felt my heart leap to my throat when I opened this one. Inside were clothes for Lily, nappies, and a rattle. All of the nurses who came to see me as well as the ones in the nursery had signed a card saying, “Merry Christmas, Little Lily.”

  “They’re going to miss her, you know. I do hope that you’ll bring her by to visit once in a while.”

  “I will,” I promised vaguely.

  I had avoided the anguish of seeing this perfect baby, and now she was more of a reality than she had been since I’d felt her kick inside of me. Displayed all around me was pastel clothing, chosen by those who nurtured her when I had refused to. Everything was so little—I couldn’t imagine a person being so small as to fit into these. How fragile she must be. She needed the care of someone strong and stable.

  Jane put the packages on the chair next to me and put one more in my hand, a tiny one wrapped in tissue paper.

  It was my wedding ring. She had brought it up from the vault. I tried to slide it on to my finger, but it didn’t fit, so I put it in my pocket. Maybe it was a sign, a confirmation of sorts.

  During that sleepless midnight, I came to some conclusions. I was no longer Julianne Westcott, nor was I Julianne McCarthy. I was a nameless, faceless ghost, and my future was uncertain. Lily did not deserve to be brought into this. In my own way, I loved her too much for that. The embodiment of my love with Kyle, I couldn’t bring her into my curse. Maybe I was no better than my own mother, although I would have liked to believe that my reasons for leaving my child were more altruistic.

  I wrote a note, barely legible with my shaky handwriting, stating my intentions. I remembered the words that Father had spoken just a few years ago to me: “Julianne, wait until you have a daughter. Wanting what you think is best for her sometimes means making tough decisions.”