I saw more of the woman, the one person I had to track down, who'd hopefully be the catalyst for the rest to fall into place. She was in a lot of the memories, eating ice cream with me in a mall, making out in the movie theater, digging hard in the garden. But no name or blinding flash of revelation.
I wandered further from the town center, out to the suburbs. I walked without thinking, following routes my feet remembered even though my mind had forgotten them. The further I went, the more familiar I felt. This was where I'd spent most of my time, beyond the hub, climbing giant trees, playing football in the open fields, growing, loving, living.
On the far outskirts, where the trees outnumbered the houses and streams cut wet paths across the land, where birds and squirrels reared their young, I found my home. It was a small white house, tucked away behind a plethora of bushes, shrubs and draping vines. A bungalow built from rough stones, capped by a newly tiled roof which jarred my memories. The windows were round. The path to the house was sentried by tall hedges, as green as those on the path to Oz. The short wooden gate was topped with a floral arch. One might think it was the mouth of a tunnel similar to the one Alice fell down. How fitting-at the end of my bizarre journey, I'd come to a cottage from the pages of a fairy tale.
I lifted the latch and moved closer to the truth.
The brass knocker on the front door was oiled and it swung smoothly. I tapped gently, too softly to be heard. Drew back and knocked again, louder this time. It occurred to me only then that the occupant might be asleep. I checked my watch. Not yet a quarter to eight. Maybe I should…
I heard rustling. Moments later the door opened. A woman stood there, dressed casually, arms crossed, smiling curiously, not afraid of this early morning stranger. There was little to fear in Sonas.
It was the woman. I recognized her immediately. The sight of her in the flesh sent a shock wave through me, a blow worth any ten of The Cardinal's.
"Can I help you?" she asked brightly.
I raised a quaking hand and removed my hat and glasses.
Her mouth dropped and her eyes widened. She backed away from me, gasping, mouthing the word "No!" and shielding her face with a hand, like Macbeth trembling at the sight of Banquo's ghost.
I followed and reached out to touch and calm her. She jerked away from my fingers and sank into a rocking chair by a huge iron stove. Her eyes were burning question marks. Her lips shook from the force of a thousand unaskable questions. I closed the door. Walked over. Crouched and touched her knee. She gasped again, shied away, then brought one of her own hands forward and carefully, fearfully, touched mine, like someone stroking a rattlesnake.
"I'm not going to hurt you," I said kindly. "I didn't want to startle you. But you know me, don't you? You know who I am?"
"Muh-Muh-Martin? " Her voice was a wheeze. "Is it yuh-you?"
I thought about it. "Martin." Tossed the word around, testing, liking the sound, feeling it fit. "Yes, I'm…" And then there was a surname to go with it and I knew that much about myself at least, at last. "Martin… Robbins? No. Martin Robinson. I'm Martin Robinson. And this is my house. I remember it now. And you…" I stared.
The woman stared back. She touched me again, firmer this time, moving up my arm, my elbow, biceps, shoulder, finally running the tips of her fingers over my face, brushing my lips, my nose, my eyelashes. Shesmiled hesitantly, starting to believe this might be real and not a dream.
"Martin? It's really you? But I thought… all this time… oh my God. Martin! " She threw herself on me, dragging me to the ground much as Ama Situwa had on the stairs of Party Central, but this woman wasn't interested in sex. She only wanted to feel me and make sure I was real, half-expecting me to vanish.
"Martin. Martin. Martin." She repeated my name over and over. It became a mantra. She said it as she touched me, pinched me, felt my legs, my arms, my chest and back. As she caressed my face, gazing into my eyes through a veil of tears, trembling, crying, laughing. As she hugged and kissed my neck, pulling me to her, holding me in a grip as if she never planned to let go of me again. "Martin. Martin. Martin."
"And you," I whispered, trembling as the memories flooded back. "You're my wife," I said wonderingly, and for a long time I could say nothing more.
The stove was the only source of heat. We'd used it for everything, cooking, boiling water, keeping the place warm on cold winter nights. We'd argued about it occasionally, especially on frosty nights when the roof was leaking and gusts of wind were having their chilly way wherever they wished. Dee wanted to tear it out and get a modern oven and heaters, but I loved it. My grandparents and parents had relied on that old stove and it gave me a strong link to the past. I'd agreed, reluctantly, to upgrade when we had kids, but as long as it was just the two of us, the house would stay the way it had been for the last seventy years.
Some nights, curled up in front of the range, Dee and I would pretend we were animals and lie there for hours, saying nothing, touching, kissing, feeling, being.
Dee. Short for Deborah. She had to tell me. I couldn't recall it myself.
I raised the lid of the kettle, checked the bubbling water, moved it to a cooler corner of the stove. Dee loved a brew first thing in the morning. It had always been my job to make the tea, often bringing it in on a tray, breakfast in bed, a spot of quick loving if we had the time.
Dee was still in the rocking chair, hands in her lap, eyes fixed on my every movement. She'd always been a pale creature and now, so early in the morning, not yet recovered from the shock, she was white enough to put Casper to shame.
I walked around the room, studying the ornaments, the hangings, imitation paintings, a Gary Larson calendar. Dee loved Larson. The house had never been named by my grandparents, their children or me. Dee soon put that matter right. The Far Side, she called it, loving the name, the house, me.
I poured the tea. She sipped, peering at me over the rim of the cup. Grimaced. "You forgot the sugar," she reprimanded me.
"You take sugar?" I frowned.
"Oh. That's right. I only began after you… left." She hesitated on the word. "Life was bitter enough. I needed something sweet. These days I can't touch a cup without a couple of spoonfuls." She glanced down into the mug, swirled its dark contents, looked up and smiled. "I thought you'd disappear. I thought you were a dream and I had to keep my eyes on you, like with a leprechaun. I used to dream of you so much. Sometimes they'd be nice dreams, memories of you as you were. Other times you'd be a monster-you'd creep out of the shadows and maul me."
"Which do you think I am now?"
"I don't know." Her eyes betrayed her fears and hopes. "When I saw you, so real, so vivid, I thought you must be a nightmare. You were always more substantial in the dark dreams. Now, seeing you walking, whistling, brewing the tea… Martin, what happened? Where have you been? Why stay away for so long? Why come back now, without a-"
"Dee. Stop." I knelt and tipped two spoons of sugar into her cup. "No questions. Later, yes. Not now. I've got to hear your story first. Ican't remember all this. A lot has come back but much is still dark. You told me your name is Dee but I have no memory of that. If you'd said Sandra, Lynda or Mary, I wouldn't have known any different. I know we were married but I don't know when. I know we loved each other but I don't know why or how it ended. I want you to tell me who I am, who I was, what I did, what I was like, how I lived. How I disappeared."
"OK. But not until you tell me where you've been. I don't have to know any more right now. But that much I need."
I thought about it. "A year ago, I got off a train in a city and went to live with a man who said he was my uncle. I joined his business." I chose my words carefully. She might know more than she was letting on, but I didn't think so. And if she didn't know about The Cardinal and my education in the ways of crime and death, so much the better. "I've been there ever since. I can remember everything from that day but nothing before. Little," I amended. "For a long while, I didn't know anything was wrong. When I realized I was missing a past, I found an old train ticket and followed it here. That's all I can tell you. For now."
"Amnesia?" she asked.
"I think so. Delusion too. I'm not sure who I was here, but I'm pretty certain Martin Robinson bore little in common with Capac Raimi, the man I was in the city. Was I a bad man, Dee? Was I involved in shady deals?"
"No!" She was startled. "God, no. Nothing like that."
"You're sure?"
"Certain." She began rocking gently, composing herself. It always helped her think better if she was rocking. "You weren't born in this house but you grew up here. This was the family home, the Robinson castle. Your parents treated you like a young prince, but they reared you to be polite and compassionate. You were a cute kid.
"You're eight months older than me but we were in the same classes at school and our parents were good friends. You used to make fun of my hair and clothes-my mother had terrible taste, buying outfits you wouldn't put on a doll-while I'd mock your buckteeth."
"I had buckteeth?" Not remembering my childhood, I had assumed I'd always looked this way. It hadn't crossed my mind that I must have changed dramatically over the years, like anybody else.
"Not really," she said. "A bit protuberant, but you were very self-conscious. A few Bugs Bunny jokes usually had you in tears. We went through that preteen phase where we wanted nothing to do with each other. I hung out with the girls, you with the boys. We hardly saw each other for three or four years. At fourteen we discovered each other again and were soon going steady. We got engaged when we were seventeen."
She shrugged and rocked a little faster. "Crazy, I guess, but we were in love and wanted to prove it would last forever. At least we didn't rush off and marry. We agreed to wait until after college. We were going to different colleges and you told me years later that you expected us to split within a couple of months. That's why you proposed-you didn't think you'd actually have to go through with it."
"No," I laughed. "I couldn't have been that shallow."
"Oh, you were." She laughed too. "But we didn't split. We dated a couple of other people on the sly but neither of us felt comfortable doing that, and every time we met we fell in love again. So, figuring it really was true love and there was no cure for it, we tied the knot a couple of months after graduation and became Mr. and Mrs.Robinson." She made a face. "That was the only bad bit, being Mrs. Robinson. They even noted it in the paper when they printed our wedding picture, saying you'd better be careful if you ever saw Dustin Hoffman hanging around."
I tried to recall our wedding day, picturing Dee in her dress, imagining a sunny sky and the joy I must have felt. But nothing came back to me. "I bet our parents were happy," I said.
She sighed and I knew it was bad news. "Your father died when you were eleven." It should have been a huge blow, but since I could remember nothing of him, it meant little. "That was when you began taking tennis seriously."
"Tennis?" I said eagerly.
"You were great. Your father taught you while he was alive. When he died, you threw yourself into it. He used to say you'd be bigger than Borg and you were determined to prove him right. You considered going pro but in the end you chose to concentrate on your studies. You didn't want to bank on a career where the best peaked by their early twenties. You kept playing, but for fun. You won a lot of amateur contests over the years."
That explained my performance back in the city. "And my mother?" I asked.
"She died when you were at college. During your second year. Her heart. She'd had problems for years. That's one of the reasons we married so soon-you had a house for us to move into and you were all alone in the world. Can't you remember any thing about them?"