Trust No One

by Paul Cleave

  And his name is Jerry Grey. He is fifty years old and an Alzheimer’s patient. He is an author and not a bank robber. Vault is one of his books. This is a nursing home. This is his life.

  The news is so sudden he has to sit back down on the bed. There is no farmhouse. No cash. No security guards. Just madness. He looks to the bedside table, but his journal isn’t there, nor is it on the bookshelf where there are other copies of his books. He moves to the chair by the window and looks out at the gardens and watches the sun turn shade into light one degree at a time. He can remember pieces of this morning, just small snippets. He was in Crazy Jerry Mode, which is what he sometimes calls it. He finishes getting dressed then heads out to the dining room, desperate for some lunch. Eric sees him and comes over, a big smile on his face.

  “How are you feeling?” Eric asks.

  “I feel . . .” Jerry says, then thinks of the best way to sum it up. With the truth, he decides. “I feel embarrassed.”

  “That’s the last thing you need to feel,” Eric says.

  There are people everywhere, murmuring voices, clinking cutlery. A guy with a chunk of his skull caved in is being wheeled towards a window. He thinks the wheelchair guy’s name is Glen and he used to be a prison guard until his own private destiny landed him in here with the rest of them.

  “Then why do I feel it?”

  Eric tells him he has a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, and he had forgotten—it’s the kind of thing he’d have forgotten even before he picked up his hitchhiker, a guy by the name of Dementia with a big fat capital D.

  “I’ve remembered,” Jerry says.

  Eric smiles at him, an all-knowing smile, and if Eric can read his mind then he’s forgotten all about it. “Do you remember sneaking out yesterday?”

  “What about yesterday?”

  “You wandered into town.”

  Jerry laughs. Then he stops laughing, because it’s no joke. It’s coming back to him.

  “It’s the third time over the last few months,” Eric says.

  “The third time?”

  “Yes,” Eric says.

  Jerry shakes his head. “I’m not sure about the other times, but I remember yesterday. Not all of it. Not the wandering, but I remember meeting Eva at the police station. I remember walking along the beach before being brought back here. I wanted to go home. I still want to go home.”

  “I’m sorry, Jerry, but this is your home now.”

  “Until I get better,” Jerry says.

  “Until then,” Eric says, and smiles. “Let’s get some lunch into you.”

  Jerry eats his lunch by the window, where he can look out at the trees bordering the ground. They go for miles in most directions. There are lots of roses and daffodils everywhere, and some of the folks who wander the corridors of the nursing home are pulling weeds and soaking up the spring sun. When he’s finished eating, he goes back to his room. He picks up A Christmas Murder. He knows it’s his first book, but it’s been so long since he’s read it that he can’t remember the details. He sits in the chair with his feet up on the chair opposite and starts reading, and realizes it’s not just the details he’s forgotten, but most of the entire story. He’s thirty pages in when Eric comes and gets him, telling him his doctor has arrived, then leads him to an examination room.

  He recognizes the doctor but can’t remember his name. The doctor is a good ten years older than him with teeth so perfect Jerry suspects he may actually be a dentist, then realizes it’d make more sense that the doctor trades medical services with a dentist, swapping the painkillers and the occasional backyard surgery for fillings and root canals. The doctor asks how he’s doing, and Jerry isn’t sure what the doctor is really expecting to hear, so he tells him he’s doing fine.

  “Do you remember who I am?”

  “My doctor,” Jerry says.

  “Can you remember my name?”

  “No.”

  “It’s Doctor Goodstory.”

  “Why couldn’t it be Doctor Goodnews?” Jerry asks.

  Doctor Goodstory smiles, then goes about taking Jerry’s blood pressure before running some memory tests with him, some things Jerry can answer and some things he can’t, then Goodstory asks him some logic questions, and again he can answer some and not others.

  Finally Goodstory packs his things, sits back down and crosses his legs. “I hear you had quite the adventure yesterday,” he says.

  “I can remember bits and pieces,” Jerry says. “I remember Eva took me to the beach.”

  “We’ve been charting the progression of the disease, Jerry,” Goodstory says. “It can vary from day to day, some days you are extremely lucid, other days you’re never fully aware of where you are, or even who you are. Like I say, things vary, but there are consistent themes to your overall state. One of those themes is that often, when you wake up, you wake up believing you’re back in your old life. The sense that everything is as it used to be stays with you sometimes only for a few minutes, sometimes for a few hours. It’s as though you regress to a certain time in your life. This morning, for example, I’m told you woke up believing you were on tour. Mostly you revert back to a time over the last few years, though on occasion back to when you were much younger. There are days where you have absolutely no idea what is going on, where you can’t even feed yourself. These days are rare, but they do happen and, sadly, will begin to happen even more.”

  Jerry looks at his hands as Goodstory talks to him. He feels so silly.

  “Even at your best now there are still so many things you’ve forgotten,” Goodstory says. “There are memories you’ve repressed.”

  “What kind of memories?”

  “Just memories. We’ll ask you something that you’ll have no idea about. Some things will come back to you, but there are things that refuse to. Mornings are the hardest. Once you become aware, then often you become very lucid, very aware, just like now. I’ve had conversations where I’m talking to you and I can see the words just falling off you, and I’ve had conversations where you’re almost like the man you used to be. The theme of struggling in the morning after waking up also extends to naps. Often you’ll take an afternoon nap, and when you wake up you’ll be confused, yet that tends to only last a few minutes. Sometimes much less than that, fifteen minutes at the most, then you become alert again.”

  “Am I able to function in these other states?”

  “Sometimes quite well. You just don’t seem to develop the memories. You don’t remember any of this morning, do you, about believing you were on tour.”

  “Little bits and pieces, but not really,” Jerry says.

  “But you can remember being on tour years ago?”

  “Yes,” Jerry says. “Sometimes quite clearly. Other times hardly at all.”

  “Well, you’re definitely functioning when you’re making your way into town. It’s almost twenty miles between here and the library, and that’s a lot of ground to cover. You could have walked, or you could have hitchhiked, but the mere fact you were able to means on some level you’re very much aware of what’s going on.”

  “But I don’t keep the memories. It’s almost as though I’m sleepwalking.”

  “That’s as good an analogy as any,” Goodstory says. “It’s what Alzheimer’s does, Jerry. It erases things, it creates, it rewrites.”

  “Will I remember this conversation?”

  “I imagine you will, right up until the moment you won’t. That could be twenty-four hours. It could be a week. You might not think about it for twenty years, then it will just seem like yesterday.”

  “Is there a crueler disease, Doctor?”

  “Sometimes I’m not so sure there is. They really should be keeping a better eye on you here,” Goodstory adds. “It’s one of the conditions.”

  When he’s gone Jerry heads out into the sun with A Christmas Murder. For the next few hours all he does is read, caught up in the momentum of a killer and a cop. The book has a theme running through it that he recalls
being in some of the others—a theme about balance. The world in his books is out of balance, it’s out of whack, and sometimes his characters—the good guys at least—try to fix that. He has the feeling that theme carries over into his life as well. He must have done something terrible for the Universe to treat him this way.

  He is a third of the way through when he starts to have a very uncomfortable feeling that whatever that something is, it’s to do with Suzan, the woman in this book. She is somebody he used to know. An actual person. He can’t remember her real name, but she was a neighbor when he was a teenager, until she was no longer his neighbor because her ex-boyfriend killed her. He used to have a huge crush on her—she was ten years older than him, but he fell in love with her that summer—fell in love from the opposite side of the street, too young and too nervous to ever talk to her. He based this book on what happened to her. He used her story to write one of his own, a story he then went on to sell, a story that helped pay his mortgage, that helped give Eva a good education, a story that gave them the chance to travel the world—all things that couldn’t have been any further from Suzan’s mind when her ex-boyfriend’s hands were around her throat. Jerry remembers coming home from university that day, the police cars on his street, his parents telling him what had happened. Suzan was gone and it didn’t make sense how life could end so easily.

  That’s the balance, he realizes. He took advantage of the bad thing that happened to her. This is why he is being punished.

  He decides he doesn’t want to finish reading the book.

  He decides he doesn’t ever want to read any of his books ever again, because there’s something more than just the memory of coming home and finding the police cars. There’s something else hidden in the darkness—best he stops looking. Best he heads back inside and lets the dementia carry on doing its work.

  DAY FIFTEEN

  A lot has been happening, and there’s a lot to catch up on, the most pressing of which is another fight with Sandra. You always feel sick to your stomach when you and Sandra have fought, and today is no different. Strike that—today you actually feel worse. It was a real doozy. Things are a little more stressful now that the wedding has been bumped up—that was something decided a few days ago, but first you need to be updated on today. This is, remember, a journal—it maps the journey. It’s not a diary—you’re not going to add something every day just because it’s another day. Otherwise it’d be Day fourteen, ate breakfast, went for a walk, and read the newspaper at the kitchen table. The long gap (would that make a good book title? The Long Gap? No, probably not) happened because you’ve been so busy, and because—now this is supposedly so, because Sandra read the journal. She asked for it, and you said sure, honey, knock yourself out. Or something along those lines. Here’s your memory of it. . . .

  That’s right—that blank page and a half represent exactly what you remember, which is to say none of it. But Sandra says you had the conversation, and how can a man losing his mind and his memory argue with that? It turns out quite easily, because you’re adamant that the discussion just never happened. If somebody tells you two plus two equals five, you’re going to argue it’s not true because you know, you absolutely know the truth. That’s how this feels. If Sandra had asked to read the journal, you’d have said no. Absolutely. However, she says you said yes, and you love her and trust her, and the truth is, buddy, you’re going to have to start trusting her more than you can trust yourself. You can no doubt imagine what happened after you found out she was reading it, and don’t need it explained to you—but here to explain it to you is Henry Cutter, author of novels such as Dead Man Stalking and Dying Made Easy. But before Henry takes over the reins, here’s a little history on who exactly Henry is.

  Henry Cutter is your pseudonym. Only it’s a little more intimate than that. Henry Cutter isn’t just the name you put on the cover of your books, he’s the person you try to become when you’re writing. All those things going on in your head, all those dark things, you try to keep those in Henry Cutter’s head and not yours. When you’re in your office and some guy is having his arms torn off by gangsters, that’s Henry Cutter’s world. When you’re having dinner with Sandra or watching a movie with Eva, that’s Jerry Grey’s world. You keep the two worlds separate. Don’t worry—you’re not suffering from any kind of delusion where you really think you’re a different person, and the distinction may be subtle, but when you switch your computer off at the end of the day, you also need to be able to switch yourself off too. It didn’t used to be that way. In fact, the reason you do it is for your family. Sandra would often say you were distant, that often you weren’t there because your mind was chasing down loose ends, and she was right. You were always trying to figure out how Character A was going to survive what Character B had planned, and that made it very easy to slip out of the real world to pursue what was happening in the imaginary, made it easy to tune out of a conversation you were having with Sandra to make some mental notes. When you got published, Sandra helped come up with the pseudonym, and it was shortly after that she said, I just wish Henry could live his life in your office and we could have Jerry the rest of the time. That was when she explained to you what you were like. You can still remember that day, that hug you gave her when you promised her you were going to try what she just suggested, and guess what, F.J.? It’s worked. Henry Cutter is who you become when you’re wearing your “author hat.” There aren’t many professions where you spend all day imagining you’re somebody else. And right now you’re going to put that hat on, and let Henry take over.

  Over to you, Henry.

  It was a Tuesday when Sandra borrowed the diary. A Tuesday like any other for most people, but not for Sandra—this was her second Tuesday since learning her husband was leaving her, and she was going to spend it reading his inner thoughts. He was scared, she was pretty sure of that—hell, she was scared. By the end of next year she would be alone, perhaps even by the end of this one. She couldn’t help it, but already she was thinking of what she would do—would she move on? Would there be a mourning period for a man who was still alive but in many ways so far gone? Would she meet somebody else and start a new life? She didn’t know. And what if she did start that new life, and in five years’ time there was a cure and Jerry became Jerry again?

  Coffee and a muffin. That was breakfast—not the healthiest, but she never had been the healthiest when it came to eating, which is why she hit the gym three days a week before work—four, if there was time—and time, she thought, was something she wouldn’t have much of while Jerry was sick. She would have to take time off work, which would be tough, as there were some cases ready to go to trial, but she would do it. She would do anything for Jerry. She was already taking time off to help Eva plan the wedding. She carried the diary and her breakfast outside. She sat at the table on the deck and sipped her coffee and started to read. Day One, the opening words, and there was Jerry talking to himself, Jerry sounding just like . . . well, just like Jerry. The neighbor’s cat had jumped the fence and was sitting on the edge of the deck, pausing from cleaning itself every now and then to stare at her. The coffee was too hot, so she let it cool, and soon it was forgotten. She carried on reading. And as she read, she found herself feeling sad for Jerry. And then she saw something that made her storm into the house. Jerry was still asleep. These last few days he’d been sleeping in every morning.

  “Just what the hell is this?” she asked, waking him up. She was angry. She shouldn’t have been, but she couldn’t help herself.

  Jerry looked tired and confused. “What? What’s going on?” he asked.

  “This,” she said, and she tossed the journal onto the bed next to him, and the eyes, the two puppet eyes glued to the cover rattled in their shells.

  “You’re reading my journal?”

  “You asked me to.”

  “Like hell I did.”

  She paused for a moment, looking for the deception, but no, he wasn’t lying, he had woken with no memo
ry of it. Is this how it was going to be from now on? Lost conversations where Jerry argues everything she says? “You asked me last night,” she says, wanting to get to the real issue here. “But what’s more important is that we have a gun in the house. How could you! And you think that what, one day you may use it on yourself?”

  “You had no right to read any of it!”

  “I have every right because you’re my husband and I love you, and I hate that this thing is happening to you, but it is, and I need to know what’s going on in here so I can help you,” she said, and she tapped the side of her head, but really she should have been tapping the side of his. It made her look like the crazy one. He looked distraught. He looked like a cornered animal. She needed to back down. “I’m worried about you.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it,” he said. “Sounds more like you’re spying on me.”

  “I’m not, and you asked me to read it,” she said.

  “I would have remembered something like that. You’re using the disease against me. Is this what you’re always going to do now to get your way? Lie to me and tell me I said something when I didn’t?”

  “I would never—”

  “Get out,” he yelled, and threw the journal at her. It missed and hit the wall behind her. She had never seen him like that, and it frightened her. It worried her. She knew even before Jerry was diagnosed that no matter what the problem was, she would stay by his side. For always. That journal hitting the wall next to her—in that moment there was a flicker of doubt. She picked it up and ran out of the room.

  By the time she got out to the deck, she was crying. Twenty seconds later Jerry was behind her. She turned towards him, but it wasn’t the Jerry from the bedroom, it was the Jerry she fell in love with, the one she met in university, the one who was in the Star Trek closet, the one whose side she would never leave. Beverly, the grief counselor, had warned them he could get like this. It was all part of the Alzheimer’s package. It was going to take time to adapt, but adapt she would. For him. For herself. For Eva.