Trust No One

by Paul Cleave

  She leads him down to the dining room. They walk past people and Jerry looks at them, these people with other problems, and the way they’ve all been left here by their families makes him think of them as the rejected and the unwanted, and then he thinks of himself as their king, then he thinks he’s being too harsh in thinking that, that everybody here has a story and he doesn’t know what it is, but then he thinks that maybe he does know those stories but has forgotten them. He sits at a table by himself and puts his appetite to good use. Jerry is the youngest person in here except for one other guy whose skull is caved in on one side. A nurse is feeding him.

  When dinner is over he heads back to his room. It’s the same size as the bedroom he shared with Sandra. There’s a single bed with a striped duvet cover, alternating blacks and whites, the same goes for the pillow, and he finds it a bit of an eyesore. There’s a small flat-screen TV on the wall, a small stereo, and a small fridge that he’s hoping contains alcohol, but when he opens it he sees only bottles of water and cans of diet soda. On one wall is a small bookcase stacked with copies of his books, probably to remind him of who he is. The whole room is miniaturized, a reflection on just how scaled back his life has become. There’s a small private bathroom off to the side, and there’s the window that looks out over the garden that is now getting the last of the sun, the flowers closing up for the day. There are framed photos of Eva and Sandra, one of the three of them taken in London, the bright lights of the city behind them, a double-decker bus coming into view, a telephone box on the side of the street—all very quintessentially British. Eva is only a teenager in the picture. He picks it up, and suddenly he can remember that trip, can remember the flight there, the turbulence twenty minutes short of Heathrow that made Sandra throw up. He can remember the taxi ride into the city, but he can’t remember what book he was promoting, where they went after London, how long they were away. He still has the photograph Eva gave him earlier. He places it on the dresser next to the London photo.

  He moves to the bed where there’s a copy of A Christmas Murder on the pillow. He must have been reading it last night, and that’s where his confusion started. He remembers the way he looked at his daughter in the police station, the way he pictured her naked, and the feeling of disgust sends him rushing to the bathroom where he throws up into the toilet. He feels like a creepy old man who drills holes into school fences so he can add kids to his mental spank bank. What kind of man looks at his own daughter that way?

  The answer, of course, is obvious. A sick one. One who doesn’t know who his daughter is, one who even forgets who he is. He can feel them coming now, the dark thoughts, an army of them marching in his direction and, like always, he wonders how he got here. What he did in life to deserve this.

  He cleans himself up. He goes back into the room. He puts A Christmas Murder back into the bookcase. He starts to undress. When he slips his hands into his pockets to empty them, his finger presses against something buried near the bottom. He pulls it out. It’s a gold chain with a gold four-leaf clover hanging from it. He turns it over and studies it from different angles, but no amount of studying makes it familiar or suggests who it might belong to. Then he thinks that he wouldn’t be much of a crime writer if he weren’t able to connect the dots—he’s stolen it from either one of the staff, or from one of the other residents. Great, so now he’s going to be labeled not just the crazy man, but the crazy thief too. Just one more thing to add to the growing list of bad things he’s done in his life but can’t remember. Tomorrow he’ll drop it somewhere on the grounds for somebody else to find, but for tonight he needs to put it somewhere safe. And hidden. Last thing he needs is a nurse to walk in and see it on his bedside table.

  He opens the sock drawer and reaches into the back to hide it, but there’s something already back there—an envelope the size of a greeting card. It’s thin near the ends and a little bulky in the middle. There’s nothing written on it. He doesn’t recognize it. He sits on the bed and opens it.

  Inside is a necklace. And a pair of earrings. And a locket.

  You know what that is, don’t you?

  The words aren’t his, but those of Henry Cutter, and Henry is the real deal. Jerry might be able to connect the dots, but Henry’s the guy who makes the puzzles.

  “No,” he says.

  Yes you do.

  Jerry shakes his head.

  They’re mementos, Henry says.

  “I’ve been stealing from people?”

  That’s not all you’ve been doing.

  “Then what?”

  But Henry has gone and Jerry is left sitting on the edge of the bed alone, confused, frightened, sitting with an envelope full of memories he can’t remember.

  DAY FIVE

  “My name is Jerry Grey and it’s been five days since I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”

  “Hi, Jerry.”

  “And it’s been two days since I last forgot something.”

  “Well done, Jerry.”

  That’s how Henry would write about the support group that Sandra wants you to go to, if he were writing this journal. You still need updating on Henry, and on support groups, and that will happen soon. Support groups are for other people, the same way car accidents are for other people. Sandra thinks it will be good for you. You fought about it, actually—though fought is probably too strong a word—but before you read all about the fight, or about Henry, here’s what you need to know about Sandra. You love Sandra. Of course you do. Everybody does. She is the absolute best thing that has ever happened to you. She’s beautiful, smart, caring, she always knows the right thing to say. When things are going badly, she is there to talk some sense into you. When the reviews are bad, she’s there to tell you the reviewers don’t know what they’re talking about; when the reviews are good, she’s there to tell you that reviewer is the smartest guy in the world. You bounce ideas off her, sometimes you go to the gym with her, you run with her, you used to hike when you were younger, you’d go camping and skiing and once you went skydiving together because you wanted to be able to write what you know. Your wife can’t walk past a cat without wanting to give it a cuddle, she can’t walk past a dog without a Howzzit going boy, can’t watch a chick flick without crying at the end, can’t walk into a mall without buying a pair of shoes, and she can’t imagine what you’re going through even though she gets you, and you can’t imagine a life without her.

  You’ve been married for twenty-four years and, if you do the math, you’ll see that Eva is twenty-five years old. You dated for five years before the wedding, which included three years of living together. You met back in university. You were getting yourself one of those fandangled English degrees that were popular back in the day, and you were doing a psych class too—psych 101. And why were you doing these things? Because you wanted to be a writer. Ever since you were a kid, telling stories is what you wanted to do. An English degree would help you tell those stories, and a psych degree would help you understand the characters. That’s where you met Sandra—in a room of people all wanting to learn what makes the mind tick. Your opening line to her was We need crazy people to make a living doing this. She laughed, it was a warm wonderful laugh that made you feel warm and wonderful inside, it was a smile that made the world melt away except for her. You can even remember what she was wearing—tight blue jeans with in-fashion holes in the legs and hems that looked like hedgehogs had fooled around on them, a sleeveless red top that matched the shade of her lipstick, and her blond hair was flowing down to her shoulders the way you’ve always liked it. But for the last ten years or so it’s always been in a ponytail, even at the dinner party where you said This is my wife—please fill in the blank. You went to the cinema that Friday night. Seeing a film may be a cliché for a first date, but it’s a good cliché. You went to see a Star Trek movie. She was a fan, and you told her you were a closet Trekkie, and she asked what else you were keeping in the closet. You told her your last girlfriend.

  Back then, of cours
e, in your university days, you weren’t really a writer. You always suspected that the university education you were getting is what you would fall back on as your house filled up with rejection slips from the publishers. You wanted to be a writer from day one, but it was your mother who encouraged you to continue your education, her scoring point being what an English degree would do for your creativity. By the time you met Sandra, you had written a couple dozen short stories, but you didn’t dare show Sandra any of them until you’d been dating for a few months—and even then it was only after she assured you that she knew they were going to be just great, because you were just great. You were convinced if she read any of your stuff she would tell you it was good in a very vague Oh yeah, it’s good, I mean, sure . . . I’m sure people will like this, and by the way I can’t see you Friday night as I have to wash my hair / pick up a cousin from the airport / I’m getting a cold, don’t call me I’ll call you kind of way. What she did tell you was that your stories needed work. She told you that every character had to be perfectly flawed. She was the one who over the years convinced you to write a novel. THE novel. And that’s what you did. You wrote THE novel, and THE novel was awful and Sandra was kind enough to tell you. So then you wrote THE NEXT novel, and that was awful too—but not as awful, she told you, and you tried again. And again. It would be years later you finally put that university degree to good use and got it right, but during those years of study Sandra was tiring of psychology and was thinking of switching to law when she found out she was pregnant.

  Life changed then. A few days later you asked her to marry you, and at first she said no, that she didn’t want to marry you just because she was pregnant, but you convinced her that wasn’t why you were asking. Having her in your life was the most amazing thing, and any day without her would be full of heartache and despair. She said yes. You didn’t get married until after Eva was born—Eva was eighteen months old when you walked down the aisle. By then you were also no longer studying, but were renovating houses. Sandra was a stay-at-home mother until Eva started school, at which time she then went back to university and got her law degree, focusing on civil rights. By then you had written A Christmas Murder, which a year later would go on to become a bestseller and open up the world for you. Sandra got a job at a law firm, and then all these years later you got Alzheimer’s and had a big fight with her.

  Sandra is concerned, of course, because you spent yesterday moping around in your office, but you told her you weren’t moping, but working on next year’s book that your editor has just sent the notes for. Of course there were no notes—but you did call your editor this morning and she made the mistake of saying Nice to hear from you, Jerry. I trust you are well? which was like trusting politicians to have your best interests at heart. So you laid it out for her. Not like the journal, mind you—just the CliffsNotes. Actually, Mandy, no, you weren’t all right—you were five days into becoming somebody else, and your current project was a madness journal. She was very upset when you told her, and you were upset too, and why not? It’s something worth being upset about.

  That would explain all the mistakes in the manuscript, Mandy said, and you pretended that didn’t hit a nerve. I should’ve known. . . . I should have.

  Instead you just thought I’d become a horrible writer, you told her, and you laughed to let her know it was a joke, and she laughed too, but it wasn’t very funny.

  Day five and Sandra is mad at you. The truth is if you were counting the days she had ever been mad at you, you’d be up somewhere around five thousand by now (that’s a joke, Jerry—I hope you’re laughing!). The truth is you never fight. Never, ever! Of course you argue a little, but what couple doesn’t?

  So here’s the thing—you just can’t face a support group. Meeting all these folks who are going to forget you at the same rate you forget them—the rate of forgetting twice as fast in reality, like two trains speeding in opposite directions. You’re actually scared that any new fact is going to push out an old one to make room. What if you meet these people and forget your family? This is Blair—now who is Sandra again?

  You didn’t explain it like that to Sandra because she wouldn’t get it even though she gets you. Nobody gets it, unless they’re like you, but it’s not as if you can just go and find a bunch of people who . . .

  Ha—looks like you may have to apologize to Sandra after all! But whether you go along is another matter. You’ve never been a social person at the best of times, and this is not the best of times. Hell, it’s not even the worst—that’s on its way. This is somewhere near the beginning. A certain kind of limbo with a touch of hope and a touch of madness, all balanced just so.

  You’re still trying to get used to the idea of what’s happening. You have another appointment later in the week, not with Doctor Goodstory, but with a counselor who is going to give you an idea of what to expect. They’ll no doubt tell you about the seven stages of grief—wait, no, it’s seven deadly sins, seven dwarfs, seven reindeer—grief only has five stages. Denial, Anger, Blitzen, Dopey, and Bargaining. The last few days you’ve mostly been in shock, to tell you the truth. You still can’t believe any of this is happening. Shock, plus some good old-fashioned anger. And . . . some pretty strong gin and tonics. If nothing else, mixing the G&Ts is one skill you have to hang on to, Future Jerry. That’s probably why you fought with Sandra. Not the G&Ts, but the rest of it, the nitty-gritty-shitty as your grandfather used to say, back when . . .

  Ah, hell. Back when he was navigating his way into Batshit County.

  Your grandfather was old school—he took the sickness and twisted it into something cruel and bitter. He’d mutter things like how women shouldn’t be allowed to work and those who did were stealing all the men’s jobs, or how “the gays” were the reason for earthquakes and floods in this world. Alzheimer’s gave him the freedom to become an uncensored version of himself. He would pat the nurses on the ass in the nursing home and ask them to fix him a sandwich. He seemed like the kind of guy to pour himself a neat glass of scotch, sit in a leather chair, adjust his tie, and blow out his brains with a pistol rather than die slowly, but ultimately he rode the Alzheimer’s train too long, passing the station where that option had been available to him.

  The same option is available to you.

  Sandra doesn’t know about the gun. You knew she would never approve. You bought it for research. Writers are always saying write what you know, and now you know what to expect when you pull a trigger. You know the sound that will tear into your eardrums if you’re not wearing ear protection. You know the weight and the feel, and the smell. You fired it at a range years ago, and since then it’s been under a floorboard under the desk, waiting in the dark maybe just for this very thing. You bought it illegally from Hans. You remember Hans? You’ll get the update on him later when I tell you about Henry, but if a guy covered in tattoos comes to see you saying you owe him money, that’ll be Hans. You don’t really owe him money, but it’d be such a Hans thing to try. You’ll know that if you remember him.

  Eva still hasn’t been told about the Big A. She was over again this morning. She’s taking a couple of days off work, and Sandra is taking a few weeks off for me, and today they spent their time talking nonstop about the wedding. Dancing, cakes, flowers, dresses, bridesmaids—that’s the future. But for you it may now all be in the past. Eva is marrying a guy called Rick. You like him. You fired up the barbecue when Eva was over and the three of you had a nice lunch together and you’re glad you didn’t tell her. Soon, though.

  Let me tell you about Eva. She is, without a doubt, the best thing that has ever happened in your life. The day you found out Sandra was pregnant, you almost collapsed. In fact, you didn’t ask Sandra immediately to marry you because you spent two days on the couch barely able to function. You were going to be a dad, and that scared the hell out of you. You used to think children didn’t come with manuals, but the fact is they do. There are a million books out there, and Sandra would buy them then hardly read
them. The bookcase would be stacked full of parenting books that didn’t even have the spine cracked because you didn’t read them either, you didn’t need to, because everything just happened naturally. Everything you’ve done in your life, nothing comes close to those days when you would spend hours putting together a brand-new toy for Eva. That look on her face when she would see it, that smile, Jesus, that smile and those big blue eyes of her mother’s . . . that sense of wonder at something new . . . if the Big A left you with one memory, pray that it’s one of those. You kept thinking the magic would disappear as she got older, but no, it only got better. The day she broke her arm . . . she was seven years old. She used to love watching reruns of the shows you grew up with, and she ran up to the car and tried to slide across the hood like they do in The Dukes of Hazzard, and slid right off the other side into the driveway and twisted her arm beneath her. You were calm and collected and got her to the hospital, but that night neither you nor Sandra could sleep, and you knew, each of you knew, if anything bad ever happened, if you ever lost Eva, the world would end. You still feel that way. But this . . . this is telling you more about you, not about her. How to sum up Eva? She’s warm. She’s empathetic. She’s intelligent. At school she was a straight-A student, she excelled in volleyball, on the track, in the pool. By the time she was nine she could sing along to any Rolling Stones song you had playing on the stereo. When she was ten she dressed up for Halloween as a police officer from the TV show CHiPs because she knew you used to watch it when you were a kid. When she was eleven she would visit your mother and read to her during those final few months. She used to chase after the neighbor’s cat every time she saw it catch a bird, free the bird, and bring it home to try and nurse it back to health. Sometimes it’d work, sometimes it wouldn’t, and when it wouldn’t she’d make you dig a hole and stand with her as she held a small funeral. She begged you to buy her a guitar for her thirteenth birthday, then taught herself to play. She lived at home when she started university. She studied art, and politics, and law. But it was travel . . . there was something about travel that pulled her away from her studies. At nineteen she went to Europe by herself for a year. She learned French. She lived in Paris for a while. One year turned into two. She learned Spanish. She backpacked her way across a dozen countries. She was gone almost three years, but you’d see her when you were in Europe promoting the books. Travel made her want to show the world to people. When she came home she became a travel consultant. She met Rick. She’s in love, Future Jerry. She’s happy. That’s Eva. Your daughter. And if the Big A is the balance for this amazing life, then so be it. It might take away your memories, but it cannot take away the fact that you have an amazing daughter. A daughter, who at this moment, has no idea her father is sick.