by Jack Ketchum
“Okay. Can I have the dolls too?”
“The Barbies?”
The Barbies are collectors’ items by now. I hesitate. She pouts. Hell, they’re hers, not mine.
“Why not.”
I pull all eight of them off the shelf and arrange them sitting along the edge of the living room table for her. When I leave the room she’s smiling.
Back in the kitchen I use the wall phone. I dial her office first. It’s early so I get the machine.
“Miriam? Hi, it’s Patrick Burke. Listen, Sam won’t be in today. Something fluish. I’m calling Doc Richardson. She probably just needs a shot and some antibiotics and she‘ll be fine. But you’ll have to cover for her, okay? Sorry. Thanks, Miriam. Talk to you soon. ‘Bye.”
Next the good doctor. Who we’ve known for years.
“Hi, Doc, it’s Patrick Burke. I know it’s early, but if you could call me back as soon as you get this I’d really appreciate it. Something’s up with Sam and I’d like you to see her right away if it’s at all possible. I’m kind of…I’m really kind of at my wits’ end, Doc. Thanks, Doc. I’d really appreciate it. We’re at 918-131-4489.”
I repeat the number slowly and hang up. My cheeks are hot and my heart’s pounding. It isn’t shame or guilt or even anxiety. It’s fear. I feel like Doc’s my one and only lifeline. What if he has no idea what to do? What then?
I pour myself another cup of coffee. When my hand seems steady enough I take it with me into the living room. Two of the Barbies are undressed -- the 20’s flapper and the one in the 18th century handmade gown, both of which she designed and created herself -- and Sam’s busy swapping clothing.
She looks happy.
I sit and watch her for a while. She pretty much ignores me. She’s humming something but damned if I know what it is. Sam’s not much of a singer but Lily seems to have perfect pitch.
Goddamn.
A half hour later the phone rings.
Doc Richardson says he’ll see us right away. I’ve made up the guest room for her -- since something tells me she’s not going to be wanting to sleep in our bed while she’s still this Lily person -- so I lay out a pair of jeans, an Elton John teeshirt and a pair of panties on the bed. No need for a bra. She never wears one except for work. But it occurs to me to wonder if, as she is now, she’d even know how to put one of the damn things on.
I tell her to go brush her teeth and get herself dressed. But first she’s got to arrange the Barbies and her Teddy just so on the bureau across from her bed. I watch in the bathroom while she brushes. It seems to take her forever and she’s awkward about it. As though the toothbrush were too big for her. It’s very weird.
We’re going on a little trip, I tell her. She wants to know where. To visit an old friend, Doc Richardson, I tell her. Oh, she says.
“You remember him?”
She shakes her head. Very definite about it. No.
She wants to take Teddy along. Fine.
In the car I have to remind her to buckle up and need to help her with the strap. As we’re driving she’s dancing Teddy around on her lap singing Frosty the Snowman in that high clear voice that’s suddenly hers even though Christmas is still seven months away.
The doc’s office is on the corner of Main and Steuben Street, flanked by Bosch’s Hardware and the Sugar Bowl, our local soda shop, on either side. There’s a parking spot three cars down from Bosche’s so I pull in. She flings open the door, forgets she‘s buckled in, lurches against the seatbelt.
“Easy,” I tell her and press the release. She smiles in a way like silly me and flings open the door.
“Uh, leave Teddy, okay?”
She frowns for a moment, but then shrugs and seats him neatly in the passenger side and slams the door. I come around and take her hand.
We look pretty normal, I think. Husband and wife out for a stroll. And Sam, at least, looks happy.
Which is probably why, when Milt Shoemaker exits the hardware store, a bag in each hand, there’s a big grin on his face as he walks toward us.
I try to match it.
“Milt.”
“Patrick. Miz Burke. Fine day, ain’t it?”
“Sure is, Milt.”
He’s a big man carrying too much weight on him. He’s sweating and snorting like a bull.
“Listen, Patrick. I need to apologize to you. I ain’t forgotten about those widow-makers you got up there. It’s just that with those storms last month I been busy as a two-dollar whore in a mining camp. Pardon, Miz Burke.”
I glance at Sam. She’s still smiling. Maybe a bit too much.
I want to get us gone.
Milt runs Shoemaker’s Tree and Stump. It’s six months now since he promised to come out to our place with his crane truck and shear some high dead limbs off our old oak tree -- struck by lightning last year -- about twenty yards from the house. Dead limbs are brittle and dangerous and prone to falling at very inconvenient times. A tourist in New York’s Central Park was killed by a widow-maker last year.
I’d wanted his chain-saws out there as soon as possible. But I think, not now.
“No problem, Milt. Tree’s held up so far.”
“You should call the office and make an appointment, Patrick. That way I’d be sure to get to it pronto.”
“Well, I may just do that.”
“You should. Out of sight, out of mine, y’know?”
Mine?
“I will, Milt. I will call. You take care, now. Best to Elsie. You have a good day.”
He’s looking at Sam strangely. A puzzled look.
So I glance at her too.
Good grief. She’s picking her nose.
I can’t fucking believe it.
“Have a good day…” he mutters as we pass him and walk away.
A doctor’s office should have music, I think, to lighten things up a bit. Doc’s doesn’t. Walking into Doc’s is like walking into a sepulchre. The second we close the door behind us I can feel Sam stiffen. I can tell she doesn’t like it. There are two old stringy ladies seated whispering in a corner, clutching their handbags as though fearful of a city-style mugging. There’s a bald man in suspenders reading a newspaper. When he turns the page it’s the loudest thing in the room.
Thankfully, we know none of them.
We walk past them to the counter. Millie, Doc’s receptionist is typing at her desk. She gets up smiling as we cross the floor.
“Hi, Patrick. Hi, Sam.”
“Not…”
I cut her off. “How’ve you been, Millie?”
“Not half bad, Patrick, for a little old lady. You two have a seat. The doctor will be with you in a minute.”
I’d outlined what the hell was happening on the phone as best I could and Doc assured me he’d see us right away. I hope he keeps his word. The ladies are eyeing us as we sit. And Sam starts fidgeting immediately.
There are magazines on a low table beside us. I’m tempted but I don’t want my own page-turning to add to the din.
Sam’s staring straight ahead at the counter. I wonder what’s so interesting so I follow her gaze. There’s a big three-quart glass jar on the counter and it’s filled to the brim with wrapped hard candy -- what appear to be cinnamon and grape and peppermints, lemon drops and lifesavers and root-beer barrels.
“Patrick?”
And that little-girl voice coming from this big-girl person gets everyone’s attention.
“When we leave, okay?”
She sighs. “Oh, okay.”
Millie opens the door. “Mrs. Burke?”
I get up but Sam doesn’t recognize her name of course so I lift her gently by the arm and walk her to the door and I see she’s confused so I whisper to her that it’s all right, she shouldn’t worry, and we follow Millie’s ample figure to the Doc’s office. We enter and she closes the door.
Doc rises, all six feet five inches of him. I clear my throat.
“Doc, this is Lily.”
He extends a meaty hand. “Lily,” he
says, smiling.
Doc’s about the warmest, friendliest person I know and if he weren’t a giant and had a little more of that snow-white hair on his head and a matching beard he could pass for Santa with the best of them. She takes his hand and shakes it.
“Sit down, Lily. Make yourself at home. Patrick? Can I talk with Lily alone for a little while? Would you mind? Get to know one another a bit?”
There’s a small dish of the same hard candy as on the counter in the waiting room sitting on his desk. He pushes it toward her, selects a root-beer barrel for himself and proceeds to unwrap it.
“Help yourself, Lily,” he says. He pops it into his mouth.
“Call you in a bit, Patrick,” he says around it.
I’m dismissed.
Back in the waiting room the ladies are eyeing me with suspicion. I’ve jumped ahead of them in line, after all. With this strange woman. A story across the clotheslines.
I pick up a copy of Time magazine. Astronomers have found a new planet that orbits three stars. There are articles on last year’s continental freeze in Europe, on what it means to be a Conservative in America. Britain is banning photoshopped ads in which the models look too perfect.
I can’t concentrate.
People magazine? Scientific American? Cosmo’s out of the question with those ladies present.
I solve the problem by doing nothing at all.
And I’m only a bit surprised when I wake up to a hand on my shoulder. Millie’s.
Sam’s standing beside her. She doesn’t look disturbed at all or the least bit unhappy, which is good.
“Ben would like to see you now,” she says. “Lily? Here’s a magazine.”
Sesame Street.
“We won’t be long,” she says.
Sam settles in with the magazine and I follow Millie inside.
Doc’s sitting behind his desk making notes in a folder I can only presume to be Sam’s. I sit across from him and he puts down his pen. He shakes his head.
“Patrick, it’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. Physically she’s just fine, same old Sam as always. The only physical changes I can see are those she’s apparently made by choice, for lack of a better word. The vocal change is all tongue-placement. The jerky movements to the limbs and shoulders, you and I could imitate them pretty easily if we concentrated on it hard enough. So the question is not what she’s doing but why she’s doing it.”
“You mean you think she’s faking?”
“Not at all. Quite the opposite. Talking to her just now, there’s this strange kind of disconnect. It’s as though she remembers selectively. She knows who Lady Gaga is but not her mother’s or her father’s name. “She knew Zoey. Our cat.”
“Did she now. That’s interesting. The only time she got the least bit nervous or upset was when I asked her who you were, who Patrick was. That seemed to confuse her. I didn’t push it. But she can identify everything around her perfectly well. I’d point to a chair or a window or a bookshelf and she’d rattle the word for it right off. I knew when she got bored with it too. You could tell. Her vocabulary, by the way, is at about a five-year-old level. She could identify flowers but not the vase, for instance. Called it a jar. She can add and subtract but not multiply or divide.
“This…transformation. What strikes me most is that it’s uncannily consistent. Sure, you and I could imitate each of these child-aspects of hers if we tried. But I doubt very much if we could imitate them all at once, choreograph them all together -- and do it for hours at a time, as you say she‘s been doing. That would take one hell of an actor.”
He pulls out a prescription pad, picks up the pen and writes.
“Here’s what we need to do. First, eliminate anything physical.”
“You mean, like a tumor?”
“I’ve never heard of a tumor causing these kinds of symptoms but yes, a brain-scan’s definitely in order. I want you to phone this number at Baptist Regional and arrange for it right away. I’ll call ahead and grease the skids for you as soon as you’re out of here, tell them to slip you in ASAP, tomorrow if possible.”
He tears off the paper and hands it to me.
“Go home and make the call. Then try to get some sleep. You look like hell, Patrick.”
I get up and head for the door. He’s right. I’m suddenly exhausted. But one other thing’s bothering me bigtime.
“Doc, what if this isn’t physical?”
“Yeah, I know. Multiple personality disorder. You see any other ‘personalities?’”
“No.”
“Keep a good sharp eye out. If there are any, one should surface soon. My understanding is, these things tend to cluster. She under any particular kind of stress lately?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Work, maybe?”
I want to say hell, she loves cutting up people for a living but I resist that.
“Sam loves puzzles. She sees her work as puzzle-solving. I think she’d want to do it even if they didn’t pay her for it.”
“Marriage okay?”
I want to say it was until last night but I stifle that one too.
“We’re fine, Doc. I just don’t understand this.”
“Well, fact is, me neither,” he says. “Not yet, at least. Listen, try this. Try getting her to remember things. Jog her memory. Maybe, if we’re lucky, you’ll find something to jog her right back again.”
I tell him I will, thank him and walk out the door.
Doc’s as good as his word. I phone and give them my name at the hospital and a moment later I’m speaking with a receptionist in radiology who gives us an MRI appointment for noon tomorrow.
For lunch she wants peanut butter and jelly.
We’ve got strawberry and peach preserves. Not jelly but close enough.
I make myself a fried egg sandwich and we eat in front of the TV set. I don’t know anything about kid’s programming but I figure PBS must have something and they do. It’s called CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG and it’s about…a big red dog. Also a purple poodle named Cleo, a blue hound named Mac and a yellow bulldog named T-Bone.
She giggles occasionally.
There’s a commercial for something called DINOSAUR TRAIN which is coming up next. Friendly dinosaurs. Why not? Consider Casper.
But I’m really bone-tired now.
“You be all right out here for a little while? I’m gonna go have a short nap. Or maybe you want a nap too?”
“Nah. I’ll stay here, Patrick.”
I no sooner hit the bed than I’m asleep.
But I wasn’t kidding. It is a short nap. Half an hour max.
It’s Zoey again. Her toy. That yowl. Rising up from the floor at the foot of the bed.
And Sam’s heard it too because here she comes, her brow knit with concern, tucking Teddy under her arm and stooping down to pet her. Zoey flinches slightly, hunkering her shoulders beneath Sam’s touch. This is an old cat with arthritic bones. She’s stroking too hard.
“Easy,” I tell her. “Go softer.”
She slows her stroke and lightens her touch. Concentrating. Serious. Much better.
For her reward she gets a purr going.
Against all expectations that short nap’s been quite restorative. I feel much better. Maybe I can get a little drawing done.
“How’s your TV?”
“Good. Can I watch some more?”
Exactly what I want to hear.
“Sure you can. If you want me I’ll be in the study.”
“Study?”
“The room with the big table. You know.”
“Oh,” she says, but it’s clear she doesn’t, not really It’s also clear she doesn’t much care. She’s into those cartoons.
I get to work.
Samantha, I find, is resisting me today. A cynic might say, well, what do you expect? You’ve got half of her head blown the hell off. But I’ve dealt with more difficult problems before. Maybe it’s that I’ve introduced a new character, Doctor Gypsum, a Strangel
ovian sort of guy in dark glasses and aviator cap whose task at the moment -- as it will be in the future -- is to put Humpty back together again.
It’s weird, though. I have the sense that I’m drawing both characters just fine. He’s all angles and she, as usual, is all soft lush contours masking the tensile strength within. But somehow I seem not to be getting the distances right between them on the panels. The balance is off composition-wise. Maybe it’s a problem of perspective. They’re either too close together -- even when he’s bending over her apparently dead body he seems too close, almost as though he’s inside her in the frame -- or they’re too far apart. You get the feeling they’re so far away he might be shouting.
This isn’t like me. I know my shit.
I try it a few different ways and finally I get a page layout I like which seems to accommodate the panels as well as open up or close these distances as the case may be.
Time to go on to the next page.
That one comes easier. I’m into the rhythm of it now.
So into it in fact that when the phone rings it barely registers. Work’s like that for me -- everything in the real world goes away. I get into this zone where it’s just me, line, story and characters. Which is why I need total silence when I work. I need to hear it sing.
But the phone does ring and it’s only when I hear Lily’s voice -- not Sam’s -- politely saying no, sorry, there’s no Sam here, guess you got the wrong number, sorry, that’s okay that I panic, realizing I’ve momentarily forgotten just exactly who’s out there to answer and I race out of the room and into the kitchen just in time to see her cradle the receiver.
“Wrong number,” she says.
The phone rings again. She reaches for it but I’m faster.
“Hello?”
“Patrick? Hi.”
It’s Miriam, Sam’s boss. Nice lady.
“I just wanted to check in on Sam,” she says. “How’s she doing?”
How’s she doing? She’s fucking missing is what I want to say. And thinking that brings me close to tears or hysterical laughter or both, I‘m not sure which. I feel like some mad doctor in an old black-and-white horror movie.
She’s gone! It’s alive!
What I do say is, “just as we thought, it’s flu. She’s going to have to rest up for a few days, bring down the fever. In fact she’s dead asleep now.”