Small Forgotten Moments

by Annalisa Crawford

  “The first time? I genuinely thought it would help you move on. It seemed no more drastic than the counseling you’d had before. When I spoke to Doctor Wheeler, he pushed the counseling side of it.” She pauses and frowns, watching her own private film playing in front of her. “I didn’t fully understand the implications—I just wanted to make you better.”

  She flicks ash, takes one last drag, and stamps the cigarette into the pavement.

  “Your delusions have been getting stronger over time. This is the worst I’ve seen you, though—you’ve never ended up in hospital, this is new.” There’s so much she’s trying to say, bunching it up inside her. The torment is gouged into her face.

  “What if she’s real? You say delusion like it’s all in my head. But?”

  She shakes her head adamantly. “Ghosts aren’t real.” She stares up at the stars. “Not my Selena.”

  I follow her gaze. “How does it work?”

  I’ve asked before; I’ve gone through it. But the details never stick. Zenna wheedles into my head, burrowing into me, discarding the memories she doesn’t want me to retain.

  “We call the clinic … whenever you’re ready.”

  We stand side-by-side, listening to the waves. When I look closely, Zenna’s turning cartwheels on the sand.

  THIRTY

  When I wake, I’m in yesterday’s clothes—a faint odor of sea-salt hangs from them. I long for my own bed, for its comfort and the way it sags in just the right spot, for Nathan in the kitchen calling through to tell me the coffee’s ready. I wish I’d never come here. Although, having the truth—again—is a relief. A relief, really? Perhaps not. Is there any difference between losing my mind and having it stolen from me?

  Four canvases are stacked against the chest of drawers, the canvases I’ve used this past week. They’ll be waiting for my return, too. Mum will take them from the cupboard under the stairs and offer them to me as though they’re her own. And I’ll paint over them, again.

  My bags are half-packed; my clothes shoved into them last night in a rage, before I fell, exhausted, onto the bed. Mum hasn’t phoned the clinic yet, but I think I’m ready.

  Zenna’s beside me and in front of me and all around me and inside me. Our hearts beat in unison; my hand is her hand as we fumble for my mobile to video call Nathan.

  “Jo? How’s it going?”

  His face on screen freezes briefly before lurching and pixelating as he moves.

  My words fail. I have so much to say, I’m not sure I’ll fit them all in. Once I start, they’ll be a deluge of indiscernible noise.

  “You knew,” I say at last. “All this time, you knew.”

  His bright smile turns into a frown, with a deep crevice between his brows. His shoulders sag, with comprehension. “Yes.”

  How long has he been expecting this call? Has he stayed home day after day, just in case? Or been out enjoying himself with his girlfriend, the one whose name I can never remember? A stupid question—he’s allowed to go out and do whatever he likes. We don’t owe each other anything.

  And yet, I find myself saying, “You lied to me.”

  “No, I never lied.”

  “Three times, Nathan!” Exasperation rather than rage. What’s the point of anger? I’ve been angry before—it’s never made any difference. We still end up back here.

  I was incensed the first time, at Nathan, at my mother. I hated they’d united to create this bizarre illusion of my life. Lying to me, hiding my own past from me. They had no idea how it felt to discover everyone around me knew more about me than I did. My perception of myself was ripped away. Everything I believed was fake. Now, it’s simply surreal; I shrug off the inevitability.

  “Twice, for me,” he says. “I met you after you had your first treatment. You were sitting beneath a tree, sketching people. You were … enigmatic.”

  He stood over me, and I was irritated because he created a shadow across my page. When I looked up to confront him, his face was a silhouette—it took a second for my eyes to adjust. He was cute, but cocky, wearing a Guns N’ Roses t-shirt and torn jeans.

  “You were different from anyone else I’d ever met,” he continues, while I’m lost in my reverie. “Aloof and cool—in a compelling way, of course. I asked you out for a drink.”

  I said he wasn’t my type. But we were on the same art course and we became friends despite my first impression.

  “Because of it, surely,” he says, with a goofy grin.

  I shrug off the nostalgia. “You can skip to the part where you colluded with my mother.”

  “That’s not fair—you’ve heard it before. You know this.”

  “I want you to tell me again.” I need to know if the stories have changed over time.

  He blows out a long breath, whistling without the sound. “You were having nightmares, horrible ones. You woke up screaming in the night, inconsolable. Your painting style became dark and hostile. You were painting Zenna over and over—you said you had to get her out of your head. You stopped eating, struggled with your coursework. But you wouldn’t talk about it.

  “I called your mother. I found her number, through a bit of trial and error, and …” he stops, glancing to his left, out of his window I imagine. Perhaps someone’s talking loudly, or a car alarm is bleating out.

  “And she told you a lot more than you bargained for,” I say, to remind him he’s only part way through. It’s no longer shocking he snooped around behind my back.

  “Sorry, yes, she did. I’d wondered if you had some health stuff going on, not taking your medication or … It wouldn’t have mattered, but wow—I wasn’t expecting …”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “When?”

  “The first time.”

  “Your mum begged me not to, said the treatment was supposed to be permanent. It had only been four years by then, but it was starting to wear off. She was worried too much info would set off some kind of mental spiral. That’s what the clinic told her.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I had no reason not to. The nightmares got worse. You went home, looking for answers.” He makes quote marks with his fingers.

  “I always come back here, don’t I?”

  “You decided to undergo the treatment again. We’d been together three years. I visited you before you went to the clinic—you were so pale and thin, I barely recognized you. Your mum explained what would happen, and that you probably wouldn’t know me afterwards.”

  I remember loving him. I remember having no memory of him. Both realities are nestled side-by-side.

  “Are you coming down this time?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “There’s no point, is there? You’ll let me do it anyway.”

  “That’s not fair.” His voice cracks, and he coughs to recover himself. “When you came back to London, you were you again, the woman I saw beneath the tree. The one before she fell in love with me. Some of your hypnotherapy sessions had placed the notion we were flatmates, and I felt I had to go along with it. What would you have done? I wanted you to be safe, to look after you. You were so disorientated and vulnerable, naturally—you’d never have survived by yourself.”

  I recall the ring, tucked away in the box beneath my bed. “We were engaged. You gave me the ring.”

  He’s down on one knee. We’re in the walled garden at Lyme Park, away for the weekend. It’s raining, but it doesn’t deter him. He’s been planning this for weeks, he’ll tell me later—he’s not going to let the weather interfere.

  He’s somber and forlorn, lost in the memory.

  I’d said yes when he proposed, and it knotted me into his sense of obligation.

  It’s selfish; I’m selfish for even considering it. Around me, people suffer a lot more than I do—awaiting the return of someone who doesn’t exist anymore. Nathan should have moved on years ago. He shouldn’t be babysitting an ex-girlfriend who doesn’t even know she’s an ex. If
he were anyone else, he’d be long gone.

  And Mum … my poor grief-stricken mother, stuck here, because she can never predict when I might turn up on her doorstep and start this whole thing off again.

  Zenna sits beside me and laughs, with cruelty and mockery. I catch our reflection in the mirror—my face veiled by hers, our features mutating.

  “Jo? I love you. I always will.”

  “But you shouldn’t. How can you live like this?” Inside, I’m screaming, but I don’t have the energy. Why can’t they see it? What’s wrong with them? “I’m going to forget you again. You can’t go on like this.”

  I’ve said it all before. The previous versions of me are converging—perched on the chair in the corner of the room, or half-way up the stairs. We’re telling Nathan we can’t love him.

  “Someone needs to look after you when you leave the clinic, someone who understands.”

  “You’re a freak,” I say harshly and cover my mouth, shocked something so horrible could tumble out.

  He presses his palms together, in primary school prayer, and chews his index fingers. “Is that what you think?”

  “I don’t know … No, of course it isn’t.”

  Zenna squeals and claps her hands together. Yes, oh yes, a freak, a weirdo. Go on, tell him again, tell him he makes your skin crawl …

  “I’m scared, Nathe. What should I do?”

  He takes his time. “Zenna consumes you. She absorbs you until you’re just a shadow and have no choice.”

  “So, I can’t fight her?”

  Can’t fight, can’t run from the ghost burrowing into me. Can’t do anything.

  “Talk to me.”

  “We are talking.”

  “Not about this. Just talk.”

  I curl myself around my pillow as he chats self-consciously about his work, and the band he saw last night with friends. He says my paintings have almost all sold. The gallery is interested in more. And then he pauses because there won’t be more.

  And I remember how much I love him, and how I’ll never have the life with him we both deserve. Because once I reach this stage, there’s nothing left of me. I’m Zenna, and I will be again.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I’m on the pitch-black beach and have no idea how I got here.

  The blue-tinged moon catches on the tips of waves, and the houses clinging to the hill around me are Christmas-lit. In London, the Oxford Street lights would have been switched on weeks ago. Nathan and I would have wandered around the shops, wrapped up against the cold winds, stopping for hot chocolate and roasted chestnuts.

  I didn’t say goodbye when I was on the phone to him. This version of myself should have said goodbye, before the new one says hello. All the discussion, all the debate and tears and guilt, meant nothing—it was inevitable, as if I were at the summit of an icy slope and letting myself slowly slide to the bottom.

  It’s stormy; the edge of a hurricane is stirring up the surf. I keep to the edges, close to the cliff where the lights from the high road shine onto the sand. As I walk further into darkness, I use the torch on my phone, stumbling as the sand turns to pebbles. Spray hits my face, and I jolt.

  “We loved to play here, didn’t we?” Zenna asks, solid and unflinching beside me. “Long after the last tourists had packed up and gone home. Hats and coats and boots, splashing in the rockpools.” She nudges my arm, amiably. “I know you remember.”

  “Please leave me alone.” My words are futile. There’s no longer any distinction between us—our symbiosis is complete.

  “Why can’t we share our childhood? We’re the only two people who truly appreciate how much fun we had.”

  I slump through the shingle to sit on a heavy square rock at the base of the cliff. I’d run, if I could, but she’d find me.

  “After all,” she continues, light and singsong, “if I was alive, we’d be meeting for coffee, and shopping, and going away for weekend breaks together. Wouldn’t we?”

  Nathan goes fishing with his brother. Lily meets hers for dinner once a month or so.

  “I guess.”

  “It’s what I want for us—you and me together, always.”

  “This isn’t fair. You shouldn’t be doing this to me. It’s time for you to rest.”

  “I understand,” she says forlornly, resentfully. “I don’t matter. My life means nothing to you.”

  “No, that’s not …”

  But she’s gone.

  “… what I meant,” I yell into the wind, and my words are hurled around by the ferocious gusts.

  I’m wrenched from her, a searing pain. Ahead, there’s nothing but darkness and a gaping hole where my sister should be. A girl with whom I should have grown into womanhood—an ally, a best friend, an occasional adversary. Someone who I’d always be able to depend on.

  Just an accident, Mum continues to say. And sometimes, I believe her.

  And sometimes I speculate if—on that terrifying day—Zenna had annoyed me so much I wanted to shut her up, just for a moment. My touch really was a shove, delivered in rage. My rush to help her masked by my unconscious desire to push her under.

  I was the elder sibling. I was supposed to take care of her.

  It was just an accident.

  Horrid thoughts run around my head, circling themselves, forming realities and narratives out of half-remembered scraps. They mingle with Zenna’s, altering history based on my guilt and regret.

  “Watch me!”

  Oh, her voice, her eagerness. She was always up to something. I remember Mum rolling her eyes and her what now expression. What now, is Zenna’s high up the cliff, almost at the fence of the garden which backs onto the edge. What now, is she’s gripping with all her might as soil and stones crumble and sprinkle over me.

  “Zenna, come down. Mum says we’ve got to be home before the tide turns.”

  “Don’t wanna. Ooh, they’ve got chickens.” She clucks like a chicken. “Come and look, Jo-Jo.”

  This never happened. This is brand new tonight.

  I scramble up after her. Wind blusters around me, buffeting me against the sharp shale.

  It was dark when I was on the beach, but now it’s midday, midsummer. I’m nine and my sister is six, and she isn’t dead yet.

  She monkey-climbs sideways and hangs from the wooden fence which is rickety and at an angle due to erosion. I cling to the edge, to the loose rock crumbling beneath my fingers.

  “Take my hand,” Zenna says, stretching down to me. “I want to show you something.”

  I don’t trust her. But she’s no longer the maleficent adult of my nightmares. She’s every sweet, blonde-haired photo Mum has of her. Her cheeks are full and reddened with the effort of her ascent. I hesitate and peer down at the ragged rocks and sheer drop.

  “You’ll fall. Take my hand, Jo-Jo, please.”

  And I do. She lifts me far easier than she ought to, and I thump onto the grassy tuft beside her—my heart palpitating, my breathing erratic.

  Beyond the headland, a flash of lightning illuminates the distant clouds and a low grumble ricochets off the hills. Above us, the sun is still bright and hot. Our faces glow with joy, and Zenna’s contented as she gazes out over the ocean.

  “I’ve never been this high before,” she says.

  I have. Afterwards. After she died. While everyone stood unblinking in somber funeral clothes, I slipped from the house and climbed. I ignored the ache in my stomach and tears I couldn’t control, concentrating on my hands and feet moving in unison, one after the other after the other. So focused I didn’t notice how high I was getting. The cliff hadn’t eroded so much, back then, there was a choice of gardens to aim for. At the top, I flopped onto my back and reached out to the clouds zipping past, as though they might dip down and scoop me up. Zenna was above them, in Heaven, and I wanted to be with her.

  She points out the boat crossing the bay, lurching on the waves, its white sail billowing.

  “I’m going to sail around the world when I grow up,�
� she says. And after a moment, “I’m going to be a famous swimmer.”

  She could be, could have been. A little fish, more confident in the water than me.

  “Look at the waves.” She stares straight down. “Look at the water. Isn’t it beautiful? We should dive.”

  There’s no water. The sea doesn’t come this far up the beach. It’s just sand and pebbles, assuming we dived with an arc rather than dropping feet first onto the rocks.

  “See how blue it is, like … the necklace Mummy wears.”

  Sapphire. Mum wears a sapphire pendant on a silver chain. She bought it in memory of Zenna on what would have been her eighteenth birthday.

  “There’s no water—”

  “Look, really look,” she demands. “It’s so clear, I can see right to the bottom. It’s so deep, we wouldn’t even touch the bottom.” She leans forward with her arms held out to balance herself.

  There’s no water this far up the beach, but I see it. Bright and clear on this midsummer day. Splashing and swirling around the rockpools, serenading us.

  Zenna holds my hand and helps me to my feet. “Are you scared?”

  Side-by-side, my sister and me, the way it should have been. Her hand is so soft and small in mine. She looks up at me with bright amber eyes. It’s not right; it’s not her. It’s never been her.

  I step forward, my foot slipping a little. I stare down. There’s no water. “Yes,” I say with a smirk. “Aren’t you?”

  “I don’t get scared.” The adult Zenna’s voice in the child’s body.

  “You should be. Without me, there’ll be no you.” I squeeze her hand tightly and resist her pulling away from me—the adult Zenna trying to take control again. Not this time, not again.

  I inch forward, lining myself up. I take a breath, a last appraisal of the horizon. Without me, there’ll be no Zenna. More than anything, I want her to leave me alone. This is better than losing myself again, better than finding out all over again.

  “Jo-Jo …” Her voice quivers.

  For once, I’m in control.

  And I jump. I dive. I drag Zenna with me.

  For one brief moment, we’re perfectly synchronized. Our bodies arc and our limbs twist and reach into the air.