I'm Not Sam

by Jack Ketchum

  Lily really can’t stand to watch. So our fishing expedition is a short one. We go home with a perch and two crappies.

  I guess that’ll do.

  When Doc calls I’m unprepared for it.

  It’s past 10:00 a.m. I’ve just gotten up. I’ve slept late again. I’m on my first cup of coffee. Yesterday was our grocery delivery and some of the Frosted Flakes Lily requested are scattered across the kitchen table. Bowl’s in the sink, though, so I suppose that’s something.

  “I just spoke with Trish Cacek,” he says.

  Doctor Cacek. The shrink.

  “She says you haven’t brought her in.”

  “No. I haven’t.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I want to wait and see, Doc. See if she comes back on her own.”

  “I’d advise against that, Patrick. She needs to be in therapy. You seeing any improvement at all?”

  “Sometimes a look, a gesture. She was yelling in her sleep a few nights ago and I could swear the voice was Sam’s. But you know, we don’t sleep in the same room anymore, in our room, and by the time I got there she was asleep again.”

  He sighs. “Take her to Dr. Cacek, Patrick. You can’t do this alone. You’re too close to it. How are you holding up, anyway?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I’m staring at the Frosted Flakes.

  “I’m really just fine. We’re doing stuff together. Things we used to do. We watched SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE night before last. One of her favorite movies.”

  “And?”

  “Well, she paid attention. Smiled at the end.”

  “I’ll say this once again. You’re too close to this. It’s not good for either of you. Get her into therapy.”

  “I’ll think about it, Doc. Honestly I will. I want to try, though, just a little while longer. Thanks for calling. Appreciate it.”

  We hang up. I wipe down the table. Sit and drink my coffee.

  I’m unprepared for the second call too. It’s not a half hour later. I’m just finishing up the dishes.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Patrick.”

  “Oh. Hi, Miriam.”

  “How are you? How’s she doing?”

  “Better. A little better, maybe.”

  “Good. That’s great. Can I say hi? Just a quick hello? And I promise not to talk shop.”

  “I don’t think so, Miriam.”

  For a moment I’m tempted to put Lily on the line. Miriam’s a good lady but she’s being nosy. I can hear it in her voice. Two minutes with Lily would give her plenty to talk about down at the office.

  And now Zoey’s standing in the kitchen doorway, yowling, her toy -- her little stuffed tuxedo-cat -- sprawled at her feet. Thought I’d hid the damn thing.

  “Good god, what’s that?”

  “Our cat, Zoey. She does this sometimes.”

  “Sounds like somebody’s murdering her. So, can I talk to Sam?”

  Insistent. Zoey’s insistent too.

  “Not a good time, Miriam.”

  “Will you have her call me, then? We’re concerned about her.”

  “I know. Wait. What do you mean?

  “We’re…concerned. That’s all.”

  “I’m taking care of her, Miriam. I’m not holding her prisoner or anything.”

  “I didn’t mean…of course you’re not. Just…have her call me when she’s up to it, okay?”

  “Yes. Fine. I will. ‘Bye.”

  I reach down and grab up the toy. Zoey gives one last long yowl as it disappears behind my back and into the pocket of my jeans.

  I don’t know whether it’s Miriam’s call or Doc’s call or Zoey’s whining or all three of them together but right now I’m boiling.

  I take a few deep breaths and sit back down at the kitchen table. Zoey ambles over.

  It’s not her. It’s never her. I stroke her fur.

  I just touch her.

  Lily’s outside playing with her Barbies in the sandbox I built for her, pretending it’s a beach and the girls are out sunbathing drinking piña coladas or whatever Barbies drink these days while I’m at the drafting table trying to figure out what the hell is wrong here. Everything looks wrong to me now, not just Samantha’s look and Doctor Gypsum’s and the various loathsome members of the Abominations’ League but perspective again, the framing of the panels strikes me as flat, dull, something I could have done better twenty years ago. I’m well into the third act and it’s just not working for me.

  I keep thinking of that conversation with Miriam. I’m not holding her prisoner or anything. Where the fuck did that come from? Why did I have to say that?

  Screw this. This isn’t going anywhere.

  I lean out the window.

  “Hey Lily! Want to go for a swim?”

  She looks up, seems unsure at first. Maybe I was a little loud there.

  “Okay, Patrick.”

  “Suit up.”

  Skippy peanut butter and Smucker’s Concord Grape this time. I’ve got them wrapped and packed away in the cooler along with the beer and Pepsi but still no Lily.

  She’s not in her room. She’s not in the bathroom. I peer into mine. Found her.

  “What’s up, Lily?”

  She’s been in the bedroom drawers. Sam’s drawers. She holds an orange and yellow two-piece out to me.

  “Could I wear this one instead of the blue?”

  “Whatever one you want.”

  “This one’s pretty.”

  “Well. You should wear it, then.”

  She opens the closet door. Sam’s closet. Fingers a strapless blue and white silk dress. Sam bought it in New York City.

  “All this stuff,” she says. “It’s really, really pretty. Do you think I could play dress-up later, maybe?”

  There’s a buzzing in my head. A disconnect. I think she says something else to me. I’m not sure.

  “What?”

  “Later maybe, Patrick? After the swim?”

  “I…I guess so. Yeah, if you want. All right. Go put on your suit.”

  She hurries out of the room and I’m left standing there looking at Sam’s clothes hanging neatly in the closet and disheveled where Lily’s been pawing through the open drawers.

  I’ll straighten them out. Only not just now.

  I’m halfway through my first beer when I see the snake.

  The beer hits the deck and I’m up on my feet with the rake in my hands and it’s coming toward her, its body a black undulating streak in the water behind a raised head as it rises over a drifting branch and she doesn’t see it, doesn’t even know it’s there and I’m yelling Sam! Lily! Get out of the water! Get out of the water NOW! and she hears the panic in my voice and looks confused but starts swimming anyway, Sam’s powerful stroke, yet the damn thing’s gaining on her, no more than ten feet away.

  Faster, Lily! I yell and bless her she really pours it on so that she hits the side of the dock and starts to hoist herself up just as it raises its fucking head to strike but I lash it with the steel tines of the rake. It writhes furiously in the roiling water and tries to bite, the snow-white mouth hitting the wooden handle just above the tines and Lily’s out of the water now watching wide-eyed as I flip the rake around and bring it down again and again on its back, on its goddamn head until at last the snake’s had enough and turns and glides away.

  I drop the rake as though it’s poisonous.

  I’m shaking so hard it’s hard to stand so I don’t even try. I drop down beside her on the dock, our feet dangling over the muddy water. Lily pulls hers in as though that thing still might be out there somewhere.

  The look on her face is pure shock. She reaches out for me and I reach out for her and then I’m hugging her wet body tight to mine and we’re both of us trembling in a sudden cold wind of our own devise.

  “Anything I want?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  It’s about two hours later and Lily’s at the bedroom closet. Seems she’s forgotten all about the snake. I sure haven’t.
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  Sam’s got a half dozen conservative suits for work front and center in the closet but she pushes those aside to get at the more interesting stuff in back.

  She turns to the drawers and opens and closes them one at a time, inspecting them.

  “You go ‘way now,” she says. “I’ll come when I’m ready.”

  I grab a beer from the fridge and plant myself on the couch in front of the TV and watch a rerun of BONES and I think how Sam used to enjoy that show, even though it was utter hokum -- the day a medical examiner partnered up with a detective in the field was the day Wall Street worried about ethics.

  But that was part of the fun. That and snappy dialogue and the charisma and chemistry of the two leads. I think about us early on, Sam and I, when we first started dating. How people used to say that when we walked in, we lit up the room.

  My understanding is that mismatched clothing is all the rage with the kids these days but when she comes out grinning with a flourish and a ta-da! I can’t help it, I have to laugh. She’s got on woolen knee-socks, one green with yellow polka dots, one blue and red with alternating wide stripes. She’s teetering on a pair of black brushed leather three-inch heels. The dress is shiny red satin, sleeveless, with a scoop neck, cut to just above the knee. Ralph Lauren. I was with her in Tulsa when she bought it.

  She’s wearing Sam‘s three-strand, nickel and black agate necklace, her turquoise necklace, her red coral necklace and her fossil bead necklace, a brown and yellow camouflage-pattern silk scarf, and a pair of long white gloves with pretty much every ring in Sam’s drawer slipped over them. And to top it all off, Sam’s wide-brimmed floppy straw sunhat.

  “Well?” she says.

  “You look…stunning,” I manage.

  “You like it? You like my shoes? You like my dress? You like my hat?”

  “I like all of it.”

  And I do. Just not necessarily all at the same time.

  She turns around and back again a couple of times just like they do on the TV fashion shows I guess. A kind of awkward pirouette.

  “Wait! I’m gonna do it again.”

  She half-rushes, half-staggers back to our bedroom.

  I think about her put-together, about what she’s selected. At first it makes me smile and then I realize something. Together they’re all wrong. Together they’re the Clash of the Titans.

  But each piece individually is one of Sam’s favorites. Every one.

  I picture her standing with the bedroom door closed gazing into the full-length mirror on the door, choosing her selections. I asked her once, a week or more ago, what she sees when she looks into a mirror. Wondering, did she see a little girl? “Me, silly,” she said and shrugged and wouldn’t say anything further.

  But what’s she seeing now? Bits of Sam? Bits of Sam’s history, her likes and dislikes, her memory?

  It gives me an idea. I go hunting around in our collection of DVDs until I find it. A couple of years ago we converted a box full of VCR tapes, early home movies, to DVD. Since the photo album was such a flop I’d never bothered to play them for her. But what if it were all a matter of timing? What if she simply wasn’t ready then? What if she is now?

  It’s exciting. Definitely worth a shot.

  I key up the DVD player and wait.

  When she comes out I’m floored again. But this time I’m not laughing.

  Her wedding dress. It was in a box on the top shelf in the closet.

  She’s standing in front of me in her wedding dress.

  All the jewelry’s gone except our wedding ring which she’s been wearing all the time throughout all of this and seems to think nothing of, like it‘s part of her. But she’s looking strangely shy. As though the dress has power, as though the dress has tamed her somehow.

  It’s floor-length, lace, with delicate spaghetti straps and a modest train. It’s supposed to hug her body from breasts to hips but it doesn’t quite do that because Lily’s not managed the buttons up top. She’s holding the veil out to me.

  “What’s this for, Patrick?” she says.

  It’s a moment before I can speak. I go to her and take the veil.

  “It goes in your hair. Like this.”

  I arrange the comb in her hair and spread the veil down first over her face which makes her smile and wrinkle her nose and then back over her back and shoulders. I step away.

  “You look…beautiful.”

  “I do?” She’s delighted.

  “Yes, you do. And you don’t know that, do you.”

  “Know what?”

  “That you’re beautiful.”

  “You think?”

  “I think.”

  She looks at me. Her expression serious all of a sudden.

  Then, “You’re silly, Patrick,” she says, and turns to head back to the bedroom.

  “Wait. Come here. Sit down a minute. I want to show you something.”

  I pick up the remote to turn on the DVD player while she sits down next to Zoey curled up on the couch. The dress slides up a bit. I see that she’s barefoot.

  Zoey seems to regard her lap and the dress as a possible nesting place but apparently decides she’s comfortable where she is.

  “You need anything? A Pepsi or anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m gonna go grab a beer. Wait right here, okay?

  “Okay.”

  I do and she does.

  I’ve orchestrated our home videos with old rock and country songs and the occasional show tune. I know exactly where I want to go with this because there she is beside me on the couch, sitting there in her goddamn wedding dress so I fast-forward through our first trip to the Big Apple with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin squeaking their way through New York New York it’s a wonderful town and there’s the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building and Sam eating a huge pastrami sandwich at the Carnegie Deli and gazing out over the city from the second of the doomed Twin Towers and then we hit the fireworks here in Tulsa, our first fourth of July together, and she says wait, stop.

  I hit play. Fireworks bore me to tears now though not as much back then. But Lily’s interested. The music is the Beatles’ FOR THE BENEFIT OF MR. KITE which is something, at least. Still, I want to get on with it. I let her watch for a while and then fast-forward again. And there we are at Yellowstone, “where hell bubbles up,” and Tom Petty’s singing SAVING GRACE sounding like Alvin’s Chipmunks while we’re viewing geysers and waterfalls, pools of emerald water and turquoise water, incredible sunsets -- and from a distance, a herd of grazing bison. There’s Sam in her cutoffs in the foreground, smiling and pointing out at them.

  Next we’re in Kansas City at Worlds of Fun Amusement Park. There she is opposite me on the Ferris Wheel, on her bobbing yellow horse on that merry-go-round where I snagged the ring, screaming bloody murder on the roller coaster and wait wait wait go back! Lily says so I rewind to the roller coaster again, my aim with the video camera jiggly as hell, Willie Nelson doing ON THE ROAD AGAIN while Sam screams silent screams and Lily giggles beside me.

  The giggling unnerves me. I want her to wake up, snap out of it. That’s what this is for. Instead she’s giggling.

  The bumper cars are next. Ooooo she says, and claps her hands, fascinated, so I know there’s no point in fast-forwarding. She’ll only want to go back again.

  She’s pulled the veil down over her face and she’s chewing on it absent-mindedly.

  On the screen Sam’s getting battered from all sides. She’s getting creamed. I remember this. Sam was talking to another woman, a parent, about something or other while we were standing in line waiting to ride. There were a bunch of kids behind me, maybe ten of them, all ages, and I turned and got their attention, waving my arms and then pointing to Sam and mouthing get her! which made them laugh.

  And which they did.

  When the segment’s over Sam and I are at Broken Bow Lake and it’s beautiful and Sam’s in her cobalt blue two-piece but I want to get through this so I fas
t-forward through Roy Orbison’s BLUE BAYOU and finally we’re there.

  At the wedding.

  And I’m wondering, does this have a chance in hell of beating out the bumper cars?

  But it’s uncanny, it’s as though I knew back then when I was putting this video thing together that this was going to be important someday. Because I’ve emphasized it. I’ve left it utterly, completely silent. No scoring. Just us.

  It’s a professional behind the camera so the shots are tight, focused, not jittery like my own. So there we are on this nice sunny July day in front of St. John’s Episcopal, my own limo pulling up first and me getting out in my tux with my best man McPheeters, both of us grinning, the three Johnny Walkers doing their work on us, and even my brother is smiling for a change, saying something that my groomsmen Joe Manotta and Harry Grazier seem to find actually funny.

  It cuts to my mom and Sam’s mom being seated by the ushers and I look to her for some sign of recognition but there isn’t any, none at all. Next thing I’m standing at the altar with McPheeters watching my brother, Joe and Harry escort Miriam and Sam’s two pretty college roommates down the aisle, trailed by our cute little flower girl -- I forget her name -- very serious about the business of tossing her rose petals just so.

  Then the moment I’m waiting for. Sam, arriving in front of the church and stepping out of her limo and then beaming on her father’s arm, in the dress, moving slowly down the aisle.

  It’s hard to look away but I do. I need to watch Lily.

  And I’m rewarded.

  She leans forward, intent. She’s hardly blinking. She lifts the veil.

  I remember this part from the tape. The photographer actually irritated her father slightly by focusing almost entirely on his daughter’s face. Almost nothing of him or the priest or the actual ceremony. Even I got short shrift. But I never could blame the guy. It was no wonder he was captivated. Sam was standing bathed that day in a single streak of gentle flame-red light, glowing through a stained-glass window.