“Well, husband?” Tess, finally, turns and rests her hands on Connor’s chest, and her eyes betray a myriad of heated emotions Connor has trouble believing are real, and meant for him. “We are alone, now.”
“So we are.”
“I bet if you explored a bit, you might find out where I cut that bit of lace from.” She brushes a lock of his hair away. “You’d have to make rather bold in your exploration, however.”
“Should we…” he glances up at the house, “should we go up, first?”
Tess lifts a shoulder in answer. “We could. But it is a beautiful and warm evening, and your coat upon the dock would make a fine cushion, and there is, after all, no one around to see us.”
“Here?” He is surprised.
“Anywhere, Connor. Everywhere.”
“Will I ever cease to be surprised by you?”
She unbuttons the top of his shirt. “I most certainly hope not, my husband.”
His fingers are clumsy, seeking the buttons of her dress, at her back, but she is patient, and allows him to fumble.
She is patient, indeed, as he spends long moments freeing her from her many layers, and eventually, she is clad in only bits of silk and lace, there on the dock, and he discovers that she’d cut the lace from the inside of her most intimate unmentionable, where the lace lay against her skin.
He gazes at her for long moments.
She reaches for his clothing, and removes it item by item, until he is clad as she—that is to say, nearly not at all. And then she smiles up at him. “There is clothing yet to remove, Connor,” she says. “I’ve dreamed of this moment with you more than I dare admit.”
“I didn’t dare dream of this at all.”
“Then touch me, my love, and find out that this is not a dream.”
“You’ll always be my dream, Tess.”
“And you said you weren’t one for pretty words.” She breathes a laugh of delight as he finally, finally, runs a hesitant, questing hand over her skin.
Later, lying tangled together on the dock, she gazes at him, happy, replete, and full of joy. “I don’t think passion is something I’ll need to teach you, Connor. You seem to have quite a firm grasp of that all on your own.”
He laughs with her, and shows her again all the things he feels for her, which he doesn’t have the words for.
He doesn’t need words, he discovers. She is eager and willing to learn in other ways, and shows him her own love, thus.
In the years that follow, the dreams loosen their grip on him. When a nightmare does rack him, Tess never wakes him, only clings to him when he does awaken, screaming, and she is quick to soothe him with kisses and words of comfort and love, and soon even the dreams are as distant a memory as the war itself.
With Tess at his side, the island becomes truly home, somewhere to LIVE, not just subsist.
* * *
[Conakry, Guinea, Africa; date unknown]
That story…it feels familiar somehow. It poured out of me unbidden, spewing from my pen in an unbroken stream of scribbles, from midnight through the dawn, until my hand cramps and my eyes swim. Even as I finish it and set the notebook aside and lie in my cot, the fan swirling slowly overhead, flies and mosquitos buzzing beyond the screen, I think of the story and wonder over and over and over why it feels as if it is a story I have somehow known before.
Is it a story I’ve written before? Is it something from my life before I lost my memories? A book I’ve read or a film I’ve seen? I don’t know. I just know it feels familiar. Certain elements strike me as…not quite déjà vu, but something like it. The lighthouse in the middle of nowhere, the quiet, stern, gruff man, the woman who brings him to life, the ship coming only so frequently…did I invent these elements, or did I bring them over from a hazy, forgotten corner of my past, brought alive and made new? Is it a metaphor?
My mind often works like that, I think, telling stories in an attempt to make sense of my life and my circumstances.
What does it mean?
Am I the island? Am I the man alone upon it, barely surviving day to day, each day a twisted gnarl of sameness and boredom and loneliness?
The woman…she is, clearly, Ava—at least, the Ava I am remembering, assuming she truly exists, and is alive. If my Ava were to have been born in the nineteenth century, she would have been like Tess, forward, lovely, elegant, impatient with nonsense, eager, full of life and love and affection.
I didn’t want to write the rest, I wanted to keep it for myself, hidden and private in my mind—but I saw Connor and Tess together, on that island. He learned to whisper, at least to her, the truths deep in his heart, and she healed him of his pain, and accepted that which could not be healed. She bore him a child, a son. They raised him together on the island, until he became old enough to require school, and then Connor took a position at a lighthouse nearer civilization, where Tess could have friends and their son could be educated, and Connor even formed a friendship with an old barkeep…
Am I Connor? Scarred and haunted, and in need of my own Tess to come and bring me to life?
That feels true; it slices at me, probes deep, stirs dark, shadowy memories in my soul.
There is a cauldron of pain roiling beneath all this, I think.
I am honestly frightened of remembering.
Sleep claims me as I think on all this, and my sleep is haunted by ghosts and dreams and memories—if those are indeed disparate entities.
II
8
[From Ava’s handwritten journal; November 17, 2016]
I feel as if I’ve opened Pandora’s Box. In allowing myself—or forcing myself—to delve into things I’ve long avoided thinking about, I think I am dredging up a lifetime of repression and avoidance. It makes sense, though. Mom and Dad were…flaky, and self-absorbed. They didn’t want to be parents. I think I’ve journaled about this recently, but I don’t care. They had Delta and then me, and got us to the point where we were mostly self-sufficient and that was that. Hands-off. They provided the necessities, but they had their careers and their friends, parties on their friends’ yachts and at their friends’ country clubs, bridge nights and bowling nights and book clubs and poker nights, and Delta and I were left to our own devices. Get our own lunches, get ourselves up and ready for school.
I remember being walked to the bus stop for kindergarten and first grade, and then in second grade I was waved at from the front door, and after that it was a kiss from the kitchen, and as I got older barely even that. It was just life, and I didn’t realize it was even unusual. Maybe it’s not, I don’t know. But…especially as I got into high school and Delta had left home, my parents and I were like roommates more than anything. They didn’t charge me rent or utilities, but I bought my own food because they ate a bunch of shit I didn’t like. They gave me Mom’s old black Civic, which she’d driven for years until they were ready to upgrade it. It was in decent condition, but they’d bought it used themselves from a guy who had smoked in it, so it was thirdhand for me and stank forever of cigarettes. It was mine, though, and I paid insurance on it and put gas in it.
So I grew up in a very odd, in-between place, I think. If the upper end of the spectrum is a fully intact, happy, affectionate, loving nuclear family and the bottom end is pain and abuse and abandonment, I’m somewhere in limbo between the three. I grew up with both parents, and they loved each other—I never doubted that. I grew up always knowing where my next meal would come from—but more often than not, from fifth or sixth grade on, I was the one who prepared it, or Delta when I was younger. I grew up being provided for, I had a roof, clothes, a safe neighborhood, all the safety and security boxes checked. And for that I’m grateful. But…
I raised myself, with some help early on from Delta, until she left to chase her dreams—which I have never and will never harbor any ill will toward her over; it was what she had to do, and I knew it then as well as I do now. I wasn’t abandoned, exactly. But close to it. It was kind of like I was given a house to
live in, with this kindly older couple that lived there too, who I sometimes interacted with. By the time I was in junior high, I was totally independent.
I’ve never explored how I felt about all this. Not really. I mean, clearly I’m a little…disillusioned with my parents, at the least, since I rarely see them. But is that disillusionment? Is that anger? Resentment? Apathy? A mixture of all of it? I don’t know, I’ve never examined it. I just…went on with my life. Graduated high school, moved into the dorms in Miami, met Christian, married him…
God. See? That right there, that last line, it leads me down a whole different path of self-examination.
I was independent, yes, sort of alone, yes, but I never lived totally alone. I never had to completely provide for myself. This is where that in-between space pops up again, because I was putting myself through the paces of day-to-day life and survival from a very young age—the basics were always just…there. I got a job in high school mainly so I could buy groceries I wanted, but if nothing else, the basics were always there. I went from that home to a dorm, where room and board were included in the tuition. I was surrounded by other people my age who didn’t really care where I’d come from or what my background was. They weren’t deep or meaningful relationships, but they were friends I could party with, study with, hang out with; it was wonderful, honestly. It felt like a sort of surrogate family in some ways. And besides, what was there to be deep about? Chemistry class? Boys? The latest sorority party? It was college, and none of us were looking for depth.
I know I wasn’t. Not even when I met Christian. I certainly wasn’t looking for anything serious with him, either. He was just a hot guy I was interested in, at first. He was intriguing, very different from anyone I’d ever met. And it just sort of grew up around us, this love. I don’t think he was expecting it any more than I was. It just…happened. One thing led to another; hanging out led to sleeping together, sleeping together led to sleeping together regularly, which led to spending all of our time together, and then moving in together, and then getting married. It just all flowed from one thing to the next without much of an intervening transition or discussion. We never had a “what are we and where are we going as a couple” conversation. We just went from one thing to the next, and we both wanted it and it was fine and it didn’t matter where we were going as a couple, because we were together and the future was what it was, and would be what it would be.
Is that how we saw it? I don’t know. Like I said, we never really discussed it.
But Christian took care of me. I didn’t expect it, or even want it or understand it at first, but he took care of me.
God, I’m rambling. I know this is a journal, but it’s not like me to ramble with such little focus or direction.
Where am I going with this? What am I trying to discover about myself?
What questions do I have about myself? About my past, and my future?
Something to think about, I suppose, before I put pen to paper next.
All I know is, right now…I’m scared of letting myself grieve for Henry.
I’m scared I’ll never find Christian. And if I never find Christian, what will I do?
Who will I be?
God, there it is. There it is, right there. The $64,000 question. Who will I be?
Which begs a question even more difficult to consider…
If I don’t know who I would be if I never found my husband, then…who am I now?
The question, now that I’ve framed it in so many words, tolls inside me like the throb of a war drum.
God, I never used to be so melodramatic. I used to make fun of Chris for using similes like that, and now look at me, writing all purple prose and shit. Missing him so badly must be making his writing style rub off on me. Writing like him, trying to sound like him as a means of comfort?
That melodramatic prose is kind of fun, though.
Because dammit, I miss him.
And I don’t know who I am.
Have I ever?
9
[Conakry, Guinea, Africa; date unknown]
The days and weeks I’ve been here in this hospital are a blur. They smear together, bleed together. How long have I been here? I don’t know. I haven’t kept track, and there is no way to measure the passage of time. There are no clocks, no calendars. Each day is the same, and today is like all the rest which have gone before: I wake to the hot African sun shining in through the dirty window facing my cot, stare up at the aged, yellowing popcorn ceiling above me, just breathing, watching wicker fan blades spin lazily, stirring the hot morning air around; eventually a nurse comes by.
“Help you into chair, now,” she says, each word thick and carefully pronounced. “Cast come off soon.”
I slide from the bed to the wheelchair. Settle in, and she wheels me to the bathroom, which is nothing but a toilet and a steel sink in a closet. I manage my morning ablutions alone, the little bit of privacy I’m afforded. And then the nurse wheels me down long corridors, popcorn ceiling above, dirty white unpainted drywall to either side, an occasional door on this side or that. A pained moan from behind a door, a snore from behind another, voices speaking low in a dialect I don’t understand from behind a third. There are no windows in this corridor, only the buzz of yellowish fluorescent tube lighting. Into the cafeteria, which is a cavernous room with tall ceilings, exposed rafters covered by a corrugated tin roof. Several picnic tables like you would see at a public park, the benches attached to the table. The food line is short, a single row of trays offering rice and beans and oatmeal, suspicious-looking meat of some kind, and fresh fruit harvested locally, all served by a short, fat old black man with a hair net and not enough teeth. He’s kind, always serving me extra fruit. There are about a dozen other patients in this wing of the hospital, most of them locals, and all of them either terminal or unable to leave for some reason—I’m in the long-term care wing, I’ve deduced. None of the other patients have tried to befriend me, mainly because of the language barrier. I’ve learned a few phrases of Malinké and Susu, the predominant local languages, according to Dr. James, and a little bit of French—enough to be able to make conversation with the nurses who tend to me.
I eat, and then take a Styrofoam cup of weak, burnt coffee out to the veranda, to my spot in the corner. The veranda is my favorite place in the hospital—it’s a screened in porch, facing a stand of palm trees, through which I can see hints of the ocean. It’s hot out here, but it’s quiet and solitary, since few other patients ever spend time here. As I sit facing the screen, to my left is the bulk of the rest of the hospital, low, long, and squat, made of old crumbling brick in some places, with newer additions more hastily built of cheaper materials.
There’s a wicker fan overhead, spinning fast enough to create at least an impression of moving air; it creaks as it rotates, and wobbles. I sit out here for hours, sweating, writing, thinking. Remembering, and trying to remember.
Today, I’m out of sorts. Irritable, sullen, and uncomfortable. I need…something. It’s hotter than usual today, and I feel a strange sort of longing inside me.
No, longing isn’t the right word. I don’t know. I can’t make sense of how I’m feeling, and so I turn again to the one thing that can ever help me make sense of myself and my feelings and my thoughts: my notebooks, and the outpouring of words from my pen:
[From a handwritten journal; date unknown]
I feel…
I don’t know. For once, I don’t know if I have the words.
I feel pregnant with memory. It is THERE. It is WITHIN me. But I just cannot reach it. Cannot get it out. I need desperately to give birth to it. It is painful. I am stretched out with it, weighed down by it, but it will not emerge.
Sometimes, like a lovesick teenager, I write your name over and over and over again. I fill pages with it.
I think the nurses think me mad in truth, although I know deep down this is only temporary. Mad with need. Mad with grief? Mad with desperation. I know not what all. Only tha
t I am mad and cannot stop it.
I write your name, Ava.
Ava.
Ava.
Ava.
Ava.
Ava.
Ava.
Perhaps I hope that by writing your name so many times, I will jog loose another memory.
I simply must know, whether for good or ill, who I am and what I have done and how I came to be here. I must KNOW.
The madness I feel, it is from the not knowing.
From the burgeoning, swollen belly of memory I feel growing in me, through me. Ready to explode, but never quite doing so.
I write like a madman now. Some of it is nearly illegible, hastily scrawled, the penmanship cramped and crabbed and messy from hours of clutching a pen. I write from the moment I awake to the moment I fall asleep, out of desperation to disgorge the monstrous thing lurking inside me.
I can’t take this much longer, or I will very truly careen willingly into full, gibbering, frothing, straitjacketed madness.
* * *
Dr. James finds me on the veranda, dragging a chair over to sit beside me. I set my notebook aside, and use the end of the pen to dig underneath the cast around my wrist, scratching an itch.
“I think we can remove those casts very soon. This week.” Dr. James gestures at the notebook. “Have you remembered anything?”
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