Retrograde

  “That won’t be necessary,” the doctor tells her. “Our time is just about up. Ms. Bachlein, your husband has indicated to me that your decision to separate was largely based on your unfounded suspicions that he was cheating. I want you to spend at least an hour discussing this difficult but potentially rewarding subject this evening. An emotional event like that leaves its marks on the structure of our brains. In general, spending about an hour a day going over the facts can be very helpful. Try to come up with a time line of major events first, and then fill in the more minor ones. You can finish filling out that form and bring it with you to your next appointment for a guided discussion. In the meantime, I’ll review the results of your scan.”

  Joachim starts to say something, but when the doctor stops to listen, he finds he has nothing at all to say, not now and maybe never again.

  “I don’t want to give you false hopes,” Dr. Meier says, turning to Helena now, “but many patients with retrograde amnesia do spontaneously recover most of their memories after a certain point. There’s no medical proof that talking about the past will help that process, but it will certainly help you to get along in the meantime.”

  She nods but doesn’t say anything.

  False hopes, the doctor said. And that’s what Joachim has had all this time. Thinking it was just a matter of saying a few words to Helena and she’d be healed. When the whole thing is just a ticking time bomb, no way of knowing whether she’ll snap out of it on the way home or this time next year.

  The doctor turns to Sister Anne. “Give Ms. Bachlein and Mr. Schmidt an appointment two weeks from now.”

  Sister Anne takes Helena’s arm again to guide her out to the reception area, and Joachim follows slowly behind. A time line of the events, the big ones and the little ones filled in, the whole space of the last few years jammed with fine print until there are no more blank spaces, nowhere left to hide. And yet the doctor told Helena her suspicions were unfounded. Was he trying to help Joachim, or spark Helena’s interest so she’d insist on a discussion?

  He doesn’t notice that the nurse has already given them a new appointment until he feels the weight of Helena’s grip being transferred from Sister Anne’s arm to his. Not that she’s a burden, he thinks, walking her to the elevator. She’s just the weight he needs to keep from floating away. Something to keep him grounded. The talking treatment will help him as much as her, maybe more.

  HELENA

  Neither of them speaks until they’ve left the building and crossed the street away from it. There’s a thin gray cast over the sky that makes it seem later than it is.

  “So that was the big expert on amnesia,” Helena says, trying to keep the relief out of her voice. For a while there, she really thought she was going to get caught. But of course no expert could see into her thoughts, and it would be hard to prove she was faking such a tricky condition. “Talk for an hour a day. I could’ve thought of that.”

  “Still…” Joachim says, but doesn’t continue.

  She doesn’t ask what he wanted to say. She doesn’t really want to know.

  “Should we catch a cab?” he asks after a while. “I would’ve called one but I didn’t know what time we’d be out.”

  “That’s okay.”

  They stand for another moment without moving. But it’s okay; it really is. No matter where they go from here, for the moment, everything’s okay.

  “Are you able to walk a bit?” he asks.

  “Sure,” she says.

  They start in the general direction of the apartment. It doesn’t make sense because there’s no way they can walk the whole way, and he was supposed to go to work after, but for some reason, it’s the only thing they can do.

  They’re far out in the West in a residential area interrupted only by businesses that don’t rely on foot traffic: an architect’s office, a divorce lawyer, the doctor they just left. Most of the windows on the ground floor have flower boxes on the sills. Geranium, impatiens, geranium, geranium, pansy, and then an empty one. A convenience store next to a jack-of-all-trades cobbler whose sign features pictures of all the things he can repair: high heels, boots, belts, locks, keys, knives, razors.

  “Just a minute.” Joachim deposits Helena against the brick wall of the shop and steps inside.

  His absence startles her, as if he’d vanished while they were walking side by side. She knows he didn’t drop her roughly against the wall, but when she replays the scene to herself, it seems like he did. The whirr of machinery inside the shop cuts through the songs of invisible birds. And they’re supposed to talk for an hour this evening. About that other girl, or how there wasn’t one.

  His reappearance startles her as much as his disappearance. She shifts her weight back onto her crutch and they walk another few steps without speaking.

  “It was something I was meaning to do,” he says when they reach the end of the block. “You know, since yours got lost in the accident.” He hands her a set of keys.

  “Thank you.” She has the terrible feeling that this gesture means more than it seems to, that something incredibly important is happening now, but she can’t grasp it. When they happen across a taxi letting someone out, Joachim waves to keep the driver from pulling away. He has the cab drop him at his office before taking Helena home.

  JOACHIM

  The hours of the afternoon fly by. Joachim can’t remember the last time he worked with such concentration, the whole ad campaign coming together perfectly. It’s for a hip new line of organic sodas, and he balances the aggressively neon color scheme of the packaging with brilliant photographs of natural wonders: the Great Barrier Reef for Peach Passion, the Grand Canyon for the cola flavor. He takes a break from that project to update the cutesy pick-up lines for a series of billboards advertising a new hotel reservation site, and even the trite wordplay seems to flow straight from his brain to the keyboard. He’s so focused he nearly jumps out of his seat every time one of his colleagues speaks to him, but then everyone knows he’s having a rough time.

  As the sky begins to lighten in advance of sunset, he puts off going home half an hour at a time: he’ll stay ’til six, ’til six-thirty, ’til seven. He knows Helena will be annoyed that he’s still at the office after seven, and he’s surprised she hasn’t texted to ask when he’ll be back. It’s not his fault he has to stay this late, though. If he hadn’t spent the morning taking her to the doctor’s office, he would’ve left ages ago. Maybe she understands and that’s why she hasn’t said anything.

  But as the time on his monitor approaches eight and the office empties out, he has to admit that nothing he’s doing is urgent. The only thing due tomorrow was the billboards and he had them finished by five. He can’t finalize the soda campaign until the graphics artist gets in tomorrow, so there’s nothing much to keep him here. He tells himself he’s taking advantage of a rare burst of inspiration, of energy he hasn’t had in weeks. That it would be a waste not to get in the hours today rather than cramming them in later when his mind’s all over the place again. Still, even after he’s shut down his computer, he hesitates, drags his feet as he takes old coffee cups to the kitchen and stops by the bathroom to wash his face, which suddenly feels unnaturally warm. Maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t really want to go home.

  It isn’t just that Helena will be angry at him for coming home so late, and it isn’t even that he should’ve told her he was going to. In fact, it isn’t that at all. In his current state, her anger would wash right over him without soaking in. As he clocks out and walks slowly to the U-Bahn, he admits to himself that he still doesn’t know what to say to her about the affair, their separation, his appearance at the hospital… in short, about anything. And that’ll be the first thing she wants when he comes in, the big therapeutic discussion about things she didn’t even want to talk about at the time.

  Telling the truth has lost its appeal now that he has to. He was going to make this big, noble sacrifice, admit to terrible mistakes she has no recollection of him making, and
officially change his ways. Now he has a homework assignment from some specialist who just finished college, an endless hour to fill by helping Helena make accusations. When all he wants is a couple glasses of wine and to fall into bed. They’ll probably have to talk about it over dinner. She’ll time it to make sure she’s getting the exact right amount, not getting shorted by five minutes of memories. And it’s not just tonight, is it? They’re starting off with the worst topic but this is going to be every evening for the foreseeable future: hour after hour of a conversation he doesn’t want to have.

  The train pulls in, leaving him stranded exactly between two doors. He pushes into the crowded entryway and stretches his arm painfully to catch hold of a yellow rail.

  The worst part is that he’ll have to lead the discussion. Helena barely knows what they’re supposed to be talking about. She won’t even know what questions to ask. At least if this were a fight, if she were furious with him about something she could remember, she’d get the ball rolling. She’d accuse him and he’d defend himself or admit wrongdoing, draw in a couple mitigating factors. The talk would hardly fit in the single hour allotted to it as she explained just why she was so upset and how what he’d done was particularly hurtful. As it is, he’ll have to chip away at the long silence one word at a time.

  When he reaches the apartment, he stops and listens for the TV or the radio, or Helena still typing if her day’s been as long as his. But he can’t hear a thing. He remembers the day he came home to find her sitting on the sofa, so blank, watching for him, and a shudder runs from the arches of his feet to the roots of his hair. It shouldn’t be like this. It shouldn’t, but it is. He plasters a broad smile on his face and opens the door. All you can do is make the best of it.

  The living room and the kitchen are silent and empty. The only light is above the kitchen table, where a covered dish of food is pinning down a sheet of paper.

  “Going to the appointment made me so tired,” she’s written, and then an arrow toward the bowl: “It’s a salad so you don’t have to warm it up. Love you.”

  No mention of the discussion they were supposed to have. He turns over the note, reads it again, and pours himself a tall glass of red wine. Well that’s all right, then. Is it possible that she forgot? He doesn’t see how she could have. It was pretty much the only thing that came of the whole appointment. Maybe she just wasn’t up for it. If she was really exhausted and didn’t even know when he’d get in? He should’ve contacted her by seven at the latest. The note doesn’t sound angry, though.

  He drinks the glass of wine and pours another while he picks at the salad, only sitting down halfway through his meal. What if she wakes up when he comes in? Or if she’s not asleep at all? There’s no way of knowing when she wrote this note. She might just have gotten into bed the second he opened the door, and be waiting there for him, ready to start talking after all.

  If she is, then so be it. He’ll tell her he’s too tired and they can do it tomorrow. If she really cared, she would’ve stayed up to have it in the first place. He needs his rest. There’s nothing worse than an argument in bed for keeping you up all night.

  He moves as slowly washing the dishes and getting ready for bed as he did leaving work, putting off the potential discussion one minute at a time, but when he opens the door to the bedroom, Helena’s so sound asleep she doesn’t even flinch. She’s sleeping on her left side and breathing so gently he can hardly hear her. Poor thing, he thinks, and is startled by the dizzying tenderness that rushes through him. Drifting off beside her, he wonders why the feeling came as such a surprise.

  HELENA

  On Monday, Helena wakes to the low, brilliant sunlight of early fall. As usual, it takes a moment for her thoughts to settle into place. Joachim’s gone now, the weekend passed without discussion, the start of another week. She picks up her phone. Still just the three numbers. She texts Doro and asks for the number of their office, then gets up and dresses.

  By the time she’s ready, Doro’s answer is there, with a little “You okay?” tacked on to the end. Is she?

  “Sure,” she writes back. “Will explain later.” Then she calls her office to say she won’t be able to complete any assignments today. The woman on the other end asks how things have been.

  “All right, but it’s a slow process,” Helena says, trying to put together the pieces of this woman’s face. Her voice sounds familiar. A harsh, efficient voice, its gentleness ill-fitting now, like a tutu on a bodybuilder. She misses the woman’s next remark but says she’s probably going to get her casts off soon, and then she’ll be able to come back to the office. The woman says she’s glad to hear it. Helena murmurs something and hangs up.

  She saves the number of her office and goes out into the living room, moving between one crutch and the wall. She can’t tell whether she’s getting stronger or just used to her injuries. The air is cool and her skin feels chilled as she follows the tangle of cords from the phone to the modem. The wires coming out of the back of the modem lead behind a bookshelf, and she’s careful not to put any weight onto her right side as she bends to put her left hand behind it, feel for the outlet until she can tell that nothing’s plugged in. She fishes out the power adapter from the modem with her crutch and passes it to her left hand. When she plugs it in, the green lights on the little black box come on and the cordless phone chirps a few times. Slowly, she gets up again.

  What a stupid, obvious trick. He didn’t even disable the modem or cut the cord or anything, just unplugged it. And this is the first time, even after realizing it was all a big hoax, that she thought to check. It bothers her that he made so little effort.

  She takes the phone to the table with her and starts up the laptop. Google tells her the nearest ten orthopedists and the third one she calls can see her. It’s strange to be able to call someone this easily, to reach for the world that was at such a far remove, and find herself touching it. She calls a cab and then searches through her old emails for her parent’s phone number.

  She saves it in her phone and dials.

  “Long time no see,” her mom says when she answers the phone.

  Helena explains that she lost her old phone and couldn’t find the number, that the Internet was cut off. She doesn’t say where. Last time they talked, the call was so short she can’t remember what she managed to say. Does her mother even know about the accident?

  “I didn’t want you to worry,” she says, “but I wasn’t doing so well for a while after I got hit by a car. I’m doing a lot better now,” she adds in the same breath, because she still doesn’t want anyone to worry.

  “Why didn’t you tell us? We would’ve come and picked you up. Dad and I could’ve looked after you. What was the matter with you? We would’ve driven up and gotten you.”

  Before her mother can go on telling Helena everything they would’ve done if they’d known, she interrupts with a catalogue of her physical injuries. After a pause she adds, “And I was having trouble remembering some things. I hit my head when I fell. But it’s not that unusual and now I remember pretty much everything except right before the accident.” Everything except the areas of the past she’s too afraid to delve into, could only remember if she wanted to. But that’s not the same as amnesia. The things she doesn’t want to remember are still there in her head, a shelf of books she chooses to keep closed. She could open them at any time.

  “But how have you been getting on?” her mother says. “You don’t even have an elevator in your building! And you live all by yourself.” She starts to tell Helena all over again how much better they would’ve taken care of her, and that makes it easier to say what she has to say now, easier than if she had to toss the words into a glaring silence where they’d stand exposed and alone.

  “The hospital called Joachim. I didn’t tell them to. I was unconscious and the police came up with him as my next of kin. He offered to take care of me until—”

  “Joachim?” Her mother sounds more surprised to hear Joachim’s na
me than she was about any of Helena’s injuries.

  “Yes.”

  “Joachim?” her mother asks again. “Your—”

  “Yes,” says Helena. “I guess he felt like it was the right thing to do.”

  “But Joachim—” her mother starts to say, then doesn’t seem to know where to go from there. The name has an uncanny effect; each time Helena hears it, she feels a little more estranged from him, a little more shocked to have spent all this time in his care. It seems almost possible that she didn’t really, that it was all merely a strange thought that crossed her mind in half-sleep, and later came to seem like the memory of something real.

  “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you more about it later, but I’ve got a cab coming to take me to the doctor. How are you guys, anyway?”

  Before she hangs up, she gives her mother her new number. She sits still for a long time after, exhausted by the prospect of the day ahead of her, of all the days to come. She felt this way last Friday night waiting for Joachim, totally exhausted by the talk they were going to have before she’d heard a word of it, until she came up with her brilliant escape plan. If only you could always pretend to fall asleep before the difficult moments came; if only you could always say, It’s a long story, or I’ll explain later. But even lying next to Joachim with her eyes closed that night, even helping him fill another weekend with irrelevant outings to parks, restaurants, and a movie, she knew she hadn’t really escaped, that nothing could be put off forever.

  In the cab, she tells the driver the address of the doctor’s office and carefully straightens herself up, fixing the clothing that got mussed in her slow, clumsy struggle down the stairs, smoothing her hair and dabbing the sweat from her forehead with a tissue. She considers asking him to come back for her, but she doesn’t know how long she’ll be. Maybe the doctor will just tell her to go home and keep taking it easy.