Chapter Twelve
Forty minutes later I was off the subway and walking to the cubbyhole of an apartment Georgia and Dave lived in. They’d moved into it a little over a year ago when he got a job in the city. I think both were still suffering from urban culture shock.
I knew neither would be home from work for a few more hours, but sitting on the floor right outside their door didn’t seem so bad. True, it did look like no one had cleaned the hallway in a year, but I was wearing my jeans. They were sacrificial.
“Maddy?” Georgia’s voice said.
It seemed like I’d only been sitting there for a few minutes. “What are you doing home from work so early?”
She balanced a grocery bag in one hand and put the other on her hip. “Maddy, it’s Saturday.”
“It is? That’s why I’m getting so many voice mails.”
Georgia huffed. “Get up off the floor.”
She unlocked the door and shooed me in like a mother hen. I sighed and sat down on their love seat. The apartment didn’t have room for a full sized sofa.
“Is that you?” Dave’s voice called out from the bedroom.
“Yeah,” Georgia called back as she headed for the refrigerator. “Did you get the faucet working yet?”
“Define working.”
“Water comes out.”
“Then no.”
Georgia shook her head and began shoving her groceries into her already over packed refrigerator. It was the approximately the size of my dishwasher.
That finished, she turned and looked at me. Her eyes narrowed. “Maddy, you’re shaking.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
She came over and sat down beside me, taking both of my hands in hers. Only when she tried to hold me still did I realize that I was shaking hard. I held my eyes down and tried to will my hands quiet.
“Okay, what happened?”
I couldn’t stop shaking. No matter how hard I tried. Without a word, I jumped up and started pacing, hoping that would hide my uncontrolled nerves. It might have worked better if their apartment had been a little wider than the closet in my place.
“He’s awake?” I finally said, still avoiding her eyes.
“That’s great,” Georgia gasped. I could hear the smile in her voice.
“No, it’s not.”
“It’s not?”
I bit my lip and tried to find the words. Honestly, a part of me didn’t want to say anything, as if keeping silent might make the problem go away all together.
“Maddy,” Georgia prodded.
I stopped, but didn’t look up. “He’s forgotten me, Georgia.” The words made me feel like the air had been knocked out of me.
“What-what do you mean?”
I started to pace again. “He’s lost his memory. Fifteen years of it. The last thing he remembers is being a twenty-two year old first year law student.”
She gasped again, but there was no smile that time. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” My voice was a whole lot louder than it needed to be. “I just talked to him. He’s completely freaking out over it and I am completely freaking out about it too.” I finally stopped and looked at her. “Nothing, Georgia. He doesn’t remember a thing about his career or his life or me. It’s all gone.”
Georgia started to shake.
“Oh, hey, Maddy,” Dave’s said as he came out of the bedroom. He was wiping his greasy hands on one of the spa towels I’d given Georgia for her birthday. I could have cared less.
He stopped in his tracks as we both looked at him. “Whoa,” he said slowly. “What happened?”
“Max has amnesia,” Georgia replied and stood up.
That was the word I’d been searching for. I knew there was official term for what he was experiencing. I just didn’t know if that made it treatable or terminal.
“Amnesia?” It was his turn to gasp. “You’re kidding me. You mean, he can’t remember who he is?”
“No, he can remember who he is, just not what has happened for the past fifteen years.”
Dave’s jaw dropped.
“Yeah, exactly,” I added.
I didn’t even see Georgia move, but a second later her arms were around me, holding me tight like my mother use to do. I wanted to submit to the embrace, but I couldn’t. It felt like there was so much excess energy pent up in my bones I was going to explode if I didn’t keep moving.
“There’s more,” I said as I pushed away and started to pace again. She was blocking my route, so I started rounding the love seat.
“More?”
I nodded quickly, but hesitated as the words started to come out. How could I possibly explain what had just happened? What words could convey the scene that played out in that hospital room?
“He thinks he’s a loser?” I cried. That wasn’t what I expected.
Both Georgia and Dave cocked their heads.
“What?”
“A loser! Apparently the life he wanted when he was twenty-two years old is completely different from the one he has now and he’s decided he’s a total failure. I mean, you’d think a man in his situation would be a little more worried about the gap in his memory, but no!” I threw my back against their cardboard thin walls and ran my hands through my hair. “No, Peter Maxwell is freaking out because he’s not living in the suburbs.”
“I-I don’t understand,” Georgia said. I think the volume of my voice was starting to worry her.
“He wanted to know if I was his wife. And when I said no he wanted to know where his wife was because certainly a man his age should have a wife and family by now.”
Worry for me melted. Georgia might have only met Max once, but she knew him well through me and she knew how crazy the idea of Max insisting he wanted a family was.
“Max?” she replied. “Max wanted a family?”
“He even wanted a dog!” My grip on my scalp tightened.
“A dog? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“Whoa!” Dave called out and tried to wave us quiet. “Calm down. Why is the thought of Max wanting a suburban lifestyle freaking you out?”
“Because it’s Max,” Georgia and I cried in unison.
I shoved off the wall and advanced on him, failing to see the mini-side table in my path until it was cutting in to my shin. The contact dumped me right on the floor with a thud. I heard Georgia scream and run to my side, but all I could do was lay there and rub my shin, trying to calculate how big of a bruise I was going to have.
“Are you going to get up?” Georgia asked.
I looked up at her. “I think I like it better down here.”
“I haven’t vacuumed in a week and you’re making me feel guilty about it.”
I allowed her to help me up and set me on the sofa, all while holding on to my screaming leg. If it looked as bad as it felt I wasn’t going to be able wear a skirt suit for a month. Of course that wasn’t taking into account that at the moment there was no reason for me to wear a skirt suit.
After I refused the offer of medical attention, Georgia sat down next to me and began petting my head like I was an abused puppy.
“I still think we’re all overreacting,” Dave said and sat down carefully on the coffee table. “This could be completely temporary.”
I took a sharp breath. “I certainly hope so. Do you realize what will happen if it is long term? If Max really only remembers the first few months of law school, I know more about practicing law than he does.”
Georgia gasped once more. “He’ll lose his practice, won’t he?”
“We’ll lose everything. Who would hire a lawyer with this kind of head injury?” Just admitting the possibilities made my head start throbbing.
“Oh, good, Lord,” Georgia whispered.
The statement made me bristle from head toe. As guilty as it made me feel, I wasn’t sure I w
ould apply the word “good” to the Lord. I couldn’t think of anything Max or I did that would deserve this sort of devastation. At least that’s what my head was rattling off at God while my heart ran through a list of mistakes I made that day. What if I hadn’t been so nice to Jim? What if I’d had Max bring the police instead of coming over alone?
“I don’t know why,” I continued without thinking. “But it’s bothering me just as much that the Max who just woke up is so different than the Max I knew. I-I just can’t understand.”
“There’s got to be something wrong there,” Georgia said with a wrinkled forehead. “Maybe…Maybe the night before this all happened Max watched some sappy family movie and he’s just confusing that with his memories.”
As much as I would have liked to have grabbed onto an explanation, that idea immediately made me shake head. “I don’t think Max even knows what a sappy family movie is. In fact, I’m not sure he knows what sappy means. It’s questionable if he even remembers what a movie is.” I would have gone on about Max, if Dave hadn’t leaned forward, making the coffee table creak loudly.
“Well,” he began. “Maybe it’s not a movie, but Georgia might have a good point. He might be confusing something outside of his life with the minimal memories he has left.”
I thought about that for a while. “I don’t know. He kept talking about his father and how similar they were.” I looked up at them. “Max never told me much about his father. I just thought that was because he’d died when Max was pretty young. Do you think it was really because he didn’t like his father?”
“How old was he?”
“About fourteen. Heart attack.” I finally let go of my throbbing leg and ran my hands over my face. “I just wish I had someone who knew him back then. Who could tell me about what he was like.”
“He doesn’t have any family left?”
I started to shake my head then it struck me. “Chuck!” I cried and stood up. Pain shot through my leg, but I hobbled over to where I’d dumped my purse.
“Chuck?” Georgia called after me.
“Yeah.” I sat down on the floor, turned my purse over, and spilled the contents onto the four linoleum squares that were supposed to represent the entrance to the apartment. “Max’s stepfather. Max kept talking about him today.”
I snatched up my Blackberry as it skidded across the floor. Most of the applications were ignored, but I did use it to keep my address book. Scrolling through furiously, I finally found my Christmas list and began searching for a Chuck, while repeating, “Please let me have a phone number. Please let me have a phone number.”
“Yes!” I cried and waved the phone around in triumph. “Got it!”
“What are you going to do?”
“Call him,” I replied as I pushed the button.
“And say what?”
“I don’t know.” I heard the ringing start. “I’m not even sure if the number is right or if he’s still alive.”
“Hello,” a deep, soft voice said across the line.
I froze.
“Hello,” he repeated.
“Hi,” I replied quickly then cleared my throat. “I-is this Chuck Rolland.”
“Yes.”
“Peter Maxwell’s stepfather?”
He let out a long breath. “Wow, it’s been a long time since anyone has said that.”
“But that is you, right?”
“Yes.”
I sighed in relief. One hurdle cleared.
“Who is this?” he asked before I could come up with the second hurdle.
“My name is Madeline McKenzie. I’m Max’s secretary.” Identifying myself as Max’s secretary always involved touch of pride for me, but in this circumstance it felt awkward and, well, a little empty.
“Is Max all right?” Chuck continued, suddenly sounding concerned.
“He’s…” My throat ran dry of words, unsure of what exactly to say. “He’s had an accident.”
“What?” The concern level rose. “How bad?”
“He…” It seemed like I was starting to shake again. “He’s okay…but he’s having some, um, memory problems.”
“You mean, like amnesia?”
“Yeah, something like that.” Well, it was exactly like that, but I couldn’t quite get it out. “It seems he can’t remember much beyond when he was twenty-two.”
A low, long whistle crossed the line. “You’re kidding me. Not a thing after that? He must have been hit bad.”
For some reason I breathed a laugh. “Buick.”
“Oh, man.” He took a deep breath. “Well, um, is there anything I can do?”
“Yeah…well...You’re really all he’s got.”
“What?”
I wasn’t exactly sure what I was trying to say, but I had to come up with something. “Chuck, considering he can only remember things that happened fifteen years ago…um…you’re pretty much the only person left he remembers.”
There was prolonged silence followed by a deep, shaky breath. “This is terrible. I mean, he’s forgotten everyone else?”
“Yes.”
“I…It…This is so strange. Does-does he have a family?”
I winced. “No.”
Again, a pause. “But…his Christmas cards…they always seemed to be made out by a woman’s hand.”
“That was me.”
“His secretary sends out his cards?” There was mixture of disapproval and shock in his voice that made me cower.
“Yes.”
Another pause. “Oh. I’m sorry. I guess I should have known that. I just always sort of hoped that things turned out better.”
“Better?”
“Well, you know. A nice sort of life. Better than he had.”
And that’s when I lost all the decorum Max had built up in me over the years. “Okay, this is what’s weirding me out at the moment. The Max I’ve always known was a very professional, career oriented man. One who is very successful. And yet, all he’s raving about right now is a lack of a personal life. I-I just…don’t know this Max.” It had to be said.
There was yet another pause. I was about to ask the man to stop doing that when he said, “Listen, I married Cheryl when Max was about seventeen, so I can’t claim to have known him like a real father, but we got along all right. It always sort of struck me that he wanted something better than the life he had. I mean, what kid who grows up in the concrete jungle of a New York apartment lined neighborhood with a broken family doesn’t want the Leave It To Beaver sort of ideal life? He wanted better.”
It was my turn to pause as I processed the information. “What do you mean by, ‘a broken family’?”
There was a bit of a, “Hmmm” before he got to, “It’s not really my place to talk down about Max’s dad. I only know what Cheryl told me.”
My stomach lurched. “Please tell me. I’m trying to piece Max back together.”
“Ah…well…” The discomfort was obvious, but I couldn’t let go. “The marriage wasn’t great from what she told me. She started calling herself a single parent by the time Max was three years old. From what I gathered Pete was a control freak, at least when it came to work. When it came to his personal life he was just sort of absent.”
There was that term again. “Control freak.” I’d never thought of Max as a control freak. Just a dedicated man. Could his decisions to remain away from partnerships really be based on an inability to relinquish control? Everything I knew about him suddenly started to appear in a new light.
I mean, he was insistent about the type of clothes I wore, where I lived, and how I furnished my house. But then I told him how to wear his clothes and bossed him around about his eating and sleeping habits. We got into each other’s lives like we were…married.
With a long, ragged breath I said, “I appreciate your help. I-I’m still a little confused, but…”
“Would i
t help if I came up and visited it him?” Chuck’s voice was eager and that honestly made me feel warm. Someone else cared about Max.
“Yeah, I think that would be good.”
“Okay, sure. I’ve been having blood pressure problems, so I can’t fly anymore. Um, give me a couple of days and I’ll see if I can find someone to drive me up.”
“Good. I’ll tell Max. That will probably make him feel better.” I hesitated for a second, but there was one last question I knew I had to ask. “Chuck, why did you and Max stop talking? What happened?”
“Nothing.” He laughed wearily. “That’s best way to describe it. Nothing happened. He got involved in law school then building his practice. I moved down here and started my life over. We just lost touch after a few years. Trust me, it’s something I’ve felt guilty about often. I’m sure Cheryl wanted better for both of us.” The guilt was indeed audible in his voice.
So that was it? Life just progressed and everyone lost themselves? How could it possibly be that, well, for lack of a better term, lame?
I gave him my cell phone number and asked him to call me as soon as he knew when he could come up. He told me it would be soon and he really was looking forward to seeing Max. I didn’t have the heart to tell him Max wasn’t looking so good.