Remember Me

by Mary Higgins Clark

  “She has a point, but it still is mighty handy.” Elaine hesitated. “All of a sudden you seem worried. Is she really okay now?”

  “She seems to be fine,” Adam said slowly. “But when those anxiety attacks come, they’re hell. She’s practically a basket case when she relives the accident. I’ll try her again in a minute, but in the meantime, did I show you a picture of the baby?”

  “Have you got a picture with you?”

  “Is the Pope Catholic?” He reached in his pocket. “Here’s the most recent. Her name is Hannah. She was three months old last week. Isn’t she a knockout?”

  Elaine studied the picture carefully. “She’s absolutely beautiful,” she said sincerely.

  “She looks like Menley, so she’s going to stay gorgeous,” Adam said decisively. He returned the snapshot to his wallet and pushed back his chair. “If the line’s still busy I’m going to ask the operator to interrupt.”

  Elaine watched him wend his way through the room. He’s nervous about her being alone with the baby, she thought.

  “Elaine.”

  She looked up. It was Carolyn March, a fiftyish New York advertising executive to whom she’d sold a house. March did not wait to be greeted. “Have you heard how much Vivian Carpenter’s trust fund was? Five million dollars! The Carpenters never talk money, but one of the cousins’ wives let that slip. And Viv told people that she’d left everything to her husband. Don’t you think that much money should dry Scott Covey’s tears?”

  3

  That must be Adam. He said he’d call around now. Menley juggled the baby on her shoulder as she reached for the phone. “Come on, Hannah,” she murmured. “You’ve finished half the second bottle. At this rate you’ll be the only three-month-old in Weight Watchers.”

  She held the receiver between her ear and shoulder as she patted the baby’s back. Instead of Adam, it was Jane Pierce, editor-in-chief of Travel Times magazine. As usual, Jane did not waste words. “Menley, you are going to the Cape in August, aren’t you?”

  “Keep your fingers crossed about that,” Menley said. “We heard last night that the house we were supposed to rent has major plumbing problems. I never thought chamber pots were cute, so Adam drove up this morning to see what else we could get.”

  “It’s pretty late to get anything, isn’t it?” Jane asked.

  “We have one ace in the hole. An old friend of Adam’s owns a real estate agency. Elaine found the first place for us and swears she has a terrific replacement. Let’s hope Adam agrees.”

  “In that case, if you do go up . . .”

  “Jane, if we do go up I’m going to research another book for the David series. I’ve heard so much about the Cape from Adam that I may want to set the next one there.” David was the ten-year-old continuing character in a series of novels that had made Menley a well-known children’s book author.

  “I know this is begging a favor, Menley, but it’s that special way you weave in historical background that I need for this piece,” the editor pleaded.

  When Menley hung up the phone fifteen minutes later, she had been talked into doing an article about Cape Cod for Travel Times.

  “Oh well, Hannah,” she said as she gave one final pat to the baby’s back, “Jane did give me my first break ten years ago. Right? It’s the least I can do.”

  But Hannah was contentedly asleep on her shoulder. Menley strolled over to the window. The twenty-eighth-floor apartment on East End Avenue afforded a stunning view of the East River and the bridges that spanned it.

  Moving back to Manhattan from Rye after they lost Bobby had saved her sanity. But it would be good to get away for August. After the first terrible anxiety attack, her obstetrician had encouraged her to see a psychiatrist. “You’re having what is called delayed post-traumatic stress disorder, which is not uncommon after a frightful experience, but there is treatment available, and I’d recommend it.”

  She’d been seeing the psychiatrist, Dr. Kaufman, weekly, and Kaufman wholeheartedly endorsed the idea of a vacation. “The episodes are understandable and in the long run beneficial,” she said. “For nearly two years after Bobby’s death, you were in denial. Now that you have Hannah, you’re finally dealing with it. Take this vacation. Get away. Enjoy yourself. Just take your medication. And, of course, call me at any time if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll see you in September.”

  We will enjoy ourselves, Menley thought. She carried the sleeping baby into the nursery, laid her down and quickly changed and covered her. “Now be a love and take a nice long nap,” she whispered, looking down into the crib.

  Her shoulders and neck felt tight, and she stretched out her arms and rotated her head. The brown hair that Adam described as being the color of maple syrup bounced around the collar of her sweat suit. For as long as she could remember, Menley had wished to grow taller. But at thirty-one she’d reconciled herself to a permanent height of five feet four. At least I can be strong, she’d consoled herself, and her sturdy, slender body was testimony to her daily trips to the exercise room on the second floor of the building.

  Before she turned out the light she studied the baby. Miracle, miracle, she thought. She’d been raised with an older brother who had turned her into a tomboy. As a result she’d always scorned dolls and preferred tossing a football to playing house. She was always comfortable with boys and in her teens became the favorite confidante and willing baby-sitter of her two nephews.

  But nothing had prepared her for the torrents of love she’d felt when Bobby was born and that were evoked now by this perfectly formed, roundfaced, sometimes cranky infant girl.

  The phone rang as she reached the living room. I bet it’s Adam and he was trying to get me while I was talking to Jane, she thought as she rushed to answer.

  It was Adam. “Hi, love,” she said joyously. “Have you found us a house?”

  He ignored the question. “Hi, sweetheart. How do you feel? How’s the baby?”

  Menley paused for a moment. She knew she really couldn’t blame him for worrying, still she couldn’t resist taking a little jab. “I’m fine, but I really haven’t checked on Hannah since you left this morning,” she told him. “Wait a minute and I’ll give a look.”

  “Menley!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but Adam, it’s the way you ask; it’s as though you’re expecting bad news.”

  “Mea culpa,” he said contritely. “I just love you both so much. I want everything to be right. I’m with Elaine. We’ve got a terrific place. A nearly three-hundred-year-old captain’s house on Morris Island in Chatham. The location is magnificent, a bluff over-looking the ocean. You’ll be crazy about it. It even has a name, Remember House. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home. I’ll start back after dinner.”

  “That’s a five-hour drive,” Menley protested, “and you’ve already done it once today. Why don’t you stay over and get an early start in the morning?”

  “I don’t care how late it is. I want to be with you and Hannah tonight. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” Menley said fervently.

  After they said good-bye, she replaced the receiver and whispered to herself, “I only hope the real reason for rushing home isn’t that you’re afraid to trust me alone with the baby.”

  July 31st

  4

  Henry Sprague held his wife’s hand as they walked along the beach. The late afternoon sun was slipping in and out of clouds, and he was glad he had fastened the warm scarf around Phoebe’s head. He mused that the approaching evening brought a different look to the landscape. Without the bathers, the vistas of sand and cooling ocean waters seemed to return to a primal harmony with nature.

  He watched as seagulls hopped about at the edge of the waves. Clam shells in subtle tones of gray and pink and white were clustered on the damp sand. An occasional piece of flotsam caught his eye. Years ago he had spotted a life preserver from the Andrea Doria that had washed ashore here.

  It was the time of day he and Phoebe
had always enjoyed most. It was on this beach four years ago that Henry had first noticed the signs of forgetfulness in her. Now, with a heavy heart, he acknowledged that he wouldn’t be able to keep her at home much longer. The drug tacrine had been prescribed, and sometimes she seemed to be making genuine improvement, but several times recently she had slipped out of the house while his back was turned. Just the other day at dusk he’d found her on this beach, waist-deep in the ocean. Even as he ran toward her, a wave had knocked her over. Totally disoriented, she’d been within seconds of drowning.

  We’ve had forty-six good years, he told himself. I can visit her at the home every day. It will be for the best. He knew all this was true, still it was so difficult. She was trudging along at his side, quiet, lost in a world of her own. Dr. Phoebe Cummings Sprague, full professor of history at Harvard, who no longer remembered how to tie a scarf or whether she’d just had breakfast.

  He realized where they were and looked up. Beyond the dune, on the high ground, the house was silhouetted against the horizon. It had always reminded him of an eagle, perched as it was on the embankment, aloof and watchful. “Phoebe,” he said.

  She turned and stared at him, frowning. The frown had become automatic. It had begun when she still was trying desperately not to give the appearance of being forgetful.

  He pointed to the house above them. “I told you that Adam Nichols is renting there for August, with his wife, Menley, and their new baby. I’ll ask them to visit us soon. You always liked Adam.”

  Adam Nichols. For an instant the murky fog that had invaded Phoebe’s mind, forcing her to grope for understanding, parted. That house, she thought. Its original name was Nickquenum.

  Nickquenum, the solemn Indian word that meant “I am going home.” I was walking around, Phoebe told herself. I was in that house. Someone I know—who was it?—doing something strange . . . Adam’s wife must not live there . . . the fog rushed back into her brain and enveloped it. She looked at her husband. “Adam Nichols,” she murmured slowly. “Who is that?”

  August 1st

  5

  Scott Covey had not gone to bed until midnight. Even so he was still awake when the first hints of dawn began to cast shadows through the bedroom. After that he fell into an uneasy doze and woke up with a sensation of tightness in his forehead, the beginning of a headache.

  Grimacing, he threw back the covers. The night had turned sharply cooler, but he knew the drop in temperature was temporary. By noon it would be a fine Cape day, sunny with the midsummer heat tempered by salt-filled ocean breezes. But it was still cool now, and if Vivian were here he’d have closed the windows before she got out of bed.

  Today Vivian was being buried.

  As he got up, Scott glanced down at the bed and thought of how often in the three months they’d been married he’d brought coffee to her when she woke up. Then they would snuggle in bed and drink it together.

  He could see her still, her scrunched up knees supporting the saucer, her back against a pile of pillows, remember her joking about the brass headboard.

  “Mother redecorated my room when I was sixteen,” she’d told him in that breathy voice she had. “I wanted one of these so much, but Mother said I didn’t have any flair for interior decoration and brass beds were getting too common. The first thing I did when I got my hands on my own money was to buy the most ornate one I could find.” Then she’d laughed. “I have to admit that an upholstered headboard is a lot more comfortable to lean against.”

  He’d taken the cup and saucer from her hand that morning and placed it on the floor. “Lean against me,” he’d suggested.

  Funny that particular memory hitting him now. Scott went into the kitchen, made coffee and toast, and sat at the counter. The front of the house faced the street, the back overlooked Oyster Pond. From the side window through the foliage he could see the corner of the Spragues’ place.

  Vivian had told him that Mrs. Sprague would be put in a nursing home soon. “Henry doesn’t like me to visit her anymore, but we’ll have to invite him over to dinner when he’s alone,” she had said.

  “It’s fun to have company when we do it together,” she’d added. Then she had wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him fiercely. “You do really love me, don’t you, Scott?”

  How many times had he reassured her, held her, stroked her hair, comforted her until, once again cheerful, she’d switched to listing reasons why she loved him. “I always hoped my husband would be over six feet tall, and you are. I always hoped he’d be blond and handsome so that everyone would envy me. Well, you are, and they do. But most important of all, I wanted him to be crazy about me.”

  “And I am.” Over and over again he had told her that.

  Scott stared out the window, thinking over the last two weeks, reminding himself that some of the Carpenter family cousins, and many of Viv’s friends, had rushed to console him from the minute she was reported missing. But a significant number of people had not. Her parents had been especially aloof. He knew that in the eyes of many he was nothing more than a fortune hunter, an opportunist. Some of the news accounts in the Boston and Cape papers had printed interviews with people who were openly skeptical of the circumstances of the accident.

  The Carpenter family had been prominent in Massachusetts for generations. Along the way they had produced senators and governors. Anything that happened to them was news.

  He got up and crossed to the stove for more coffee. Suddenly the thought of the hours ahead, of the memorial service and the burial, of the inevitable presence of the media was overwhelming. Everyone would be watching him.

  “Damn you all, we were in love!” he said fiercely, slamming the percolator down on the stove.

  He took a quick gulp of coffee. It was boiling hot. His mouth burning, he rushed to the sink and spat it out.

  6

  They stopped in Buzzards Bay long enough to pick up coffee, rolls and a copy of the Boston Globe. As they drove over the Sagamore Bridge in the packed station wagon, Menley sighed, “Do you think there’s coffee in heaven?”

  “There’d better be. Otherwise you won’t stay awake long enough to enjoy your eternal reward.” Adam glanced over at her, a smile in his eyes.

  They’d gotten an early start, on the road by seven. Now at eleven-thirty they were crossing Cape Cod Canal. After howling for the first fifteen minutes, an unusually cooperative Hannah had slept the rest of the trip.

  The late morning sun gave a silvery sheen to the metal structure of the bridge. In the canal below, a cargo ship was slowly steaming through the gently lapping water. Then they were on Route 6.

  “It was at this point every summer that my dad used to shout, ‘We’re back on the Cape!’ ” Adam said. “It was always his real home.”

  “Do you think your mother regrets selling?”

  “No. The Cape wasn’t the same for her after Dad died. She’s happier in North Carolina near her sisters. But I’m like Dad. This place is in my blood; our family has summered here for three centuries.”

  Menley shifted slightly so that she could watch her husband. She was happy to finally be here with him. They had planned to come up the summer Bobby was born, but the doctor hadn’t wanted her to be so far away in late pregnancy. The next year they’d just bought the house in Rye and were settling in, so it didn’t make sense to come to the Cape.

  The next summer they’d lost Bobby. And after that, Menley thought, all I knew was the awful numbness, the feeling of being detached from every other human being, the inability to respond to Adam.

  Last year, Adam had come up here alone. She had asked him for a trial separation. Resigned, he had agreed. “We certainly can’t go on like this, Men,” he had admitted, “going through the motions of being married.”

  He had been gone for three weeks when she realized she was pregnant. In all that time he hadn’t called her. For days she had agonized about telling him, wondering what his reaction would be. Finally she had phoned. His impersonal greet
ing had made her heart sink, but when she said, “Adam, maybe this isn’t the news you want to hear but I’m pregnant and I’m very happy about it,” his whoop of joy had thrilled her.

  “I’m on my way home,” he had said without a pause.

  Now she felt Adam’s hand in hers. “I wonder if we’re thinking the same thing,” he said. “I was up here when I heard her nibs was on the way.”

  For a moment they were silent; then Menley blinked back tears and began to laugh. “And remember how after she was born Phyllis carried on about naming her Menley Hannah.” She mimicked the strident tone of her sister-in-law. “I think it’s very nice to keep the family tradition of naming the first daughter Menley, but please don’t call her Hannah. That’s so old-fashioned. Why not name her Menley Kimberly and then she can be Kim? Wouldn’t that be cute?”

  Her voice resumed its normal pitch. “Honestly!”

  “Don’t ever get mad at me, honey,” Adam chuckled. “I hope Phyllis doesn’t wear out your mother.” Menley’s mother was traveling in Ireland with her son and daughter-in-law.

  “Phyl is determined to research both sides of the family tree. It’s a safe bet that if she finds horse thieves among her ancestors we’ll never hear about it.”

  From the backseat they heard a stirring. Menley looked over her shoulder. “Well, it looks like her ladyship is going to be joining us soon, and I bet she’ll be one hungry character.” Leaning over, she popped the pacifier into Hannah’s mouth. “Say a prayer that holds her until we get to the house.”

  She put the empty coffee container in a bag and reached for the newspaper. “Adam, look. There’s a picture of the couple you told me about. She’s the one who drowned when they were scuba diving. The funeral is today. The poor guy. What a tragic accident.”

  Tragic accident. How many times had she heard those words. They triggered such terrible memories. They flooded over her. Driving on that unfamiliar country road, Bobby in the backseat. A glorious sunny day. Feeling so great. Singing to Bobby at the top of her lungs. Bobby joining in. The unguarded railroad crossing. And then feeling the vibrations. Looking out the window. The conductor’s frantic face. The roar and the screech of metal as the braking train bore down on them. Bobby screaming, “Mommy, Mommy.” Flooring the accelerator. The crash as the train hit the back door next to Bobby. The train dragging the car. Bobby sobbing, “Mommy, Mommy.” Then his eyes closing. Knowing he was dead. Rocking him in her arms. Screaming and screaming, “Bobby, I want Bobby. Bobbbbyyyyyyyy.”