The Nobodies Album (13 page)

I nod. I don’t know much about posttraumatic stress disorder or alcoholic blackouts, but I did do some research on amnesia when I was writing
The Human Slice
. I wasn’t interested so much in the physiology of it as in its metaphorical possibilities, the way that its exaggerated lines can bring our more ordinary memory losses into sharper focus. Amnesia as we usually think of it, as we see it played out in books and movies—the man who wakes up in a strange city with nothing in his pockets and no idea of his own name—is rare. But we’re forgetting all the time; we forget more than we remember. It’s necessary for our sanity, for our self-preservation, to reduce the noise in our brains. But the haphazard nature of our recall, the idiosyncrasies of which details linger and which ones vanish, has always struck me as sad.

My own powers of memory are robust, strong, and sinewy from constant work, and I can remember the prickle of loneliness, the jolt of something akin to betrayal that I felt whenever I would realize that Mitch had forgotten something I still remembered. It was never anything much—a joke one of us had made, the details of an evening out, a waitress or cabdriver who’d made a vivid impression—but to me, it felt like a chipping away, an erosion of our shared experience. A rehearsal, in retrospect, for the time when my memories would be the only ones left.

Back to the matter at hand: memory loss brought about by physical or psychological trauma. It’s a real phenomenon—whatever happened that night, it was distressing for Milo, and it’s not a surprise that his brain is concealing some details from him, like a mother skipping over the scary parts in a storybook. Memory is not an exact science, for all its attendant terminology of amygdala and hippocampus, and whether or not Milo will regain access to those moments remains to be seen. But for now, his body is doing what it needs to do to protect him. The repression of painful memories is also called “motivated forgetting.” Whatever Milo saw that night, whatever he did, whatever he felt, it was something he had a reason to forget.

“Okay,” I say. “Do you actually remember being at the house and going inside, or do you just remember deciding to go there?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Well, no. I remember trying to go in, but while I was looking for my keys, Kathy opened the door and told me to leave.” He glances up at me absently. “Kathy’s Bettina’s mom.”

“Why was she there?” I ask.

“I guess Bettina must’ve called her. They were really close—she was over all the time. She was always the first one Bettina went to when she was upset.”

“Okay, so …?”

“So I tried to go in, and she wouldn’t let me. She was really pissed off, and she said she wasn’t letting me anywhere near her daughter. And I freaked out and started yelling that it was my house and I had every right to be there, blah blah blah. I said that Bettina was an adult, and that she should tell me herself if she didn’t want to talk to me, instead of sending her mommy to do it.”

“Did you see Bettina at all?”

“No, but she shouted down from upstairs. She told me to go away until I’d calmed down.”

“And did you leave?”

“Eventually. First I yelled some more, and then I picked up a planter we had by the door and smashed it on the stairs. God, I was so mad.” He shakes his head wearily. There’s almost no emotion in his voice. “Then Kathy came out again and said she was going to call the cops if I didn’t leave. I remember yelling that she couldn’t keep me away, that it was my house and I’d be back. But I had enough presence of mind that I didn’t want to get arrested, so I got back in the car.”

“And where did you go?”

“Well, first I just drove a few blocks, to get away from the house, and then I pulled over. I remember suddenly feeling really scared, like maybe it finally occurred to me that this was real and that Bettina might really leave me. I couldn’t stand it; I felt like I couldn’t breathe. So I called Joe and asked him if he could come meet me, because I was really freaked out and didn’t want to be alone. But he couldn’t leave because Lia was asleep, and he was the only one home. He said I could go over there, but I didn’t want to.”

“And then?”

“I took a couple Xanax, and I just started driving. After that, it’s pretty patchy.”

I press my lips together in an almost literal gesture of biting my tongue as I work to keep myself from saying anything about mixing drugs and alcohol or driving under the influence. Or, for that matter, about lying or infidelity or the throwing of ceramic pots in anger.

“What
do
you remember?”

“Well, at some point I got out of the car, because I remember being outside someplace. It was cold and dark and windy—I didn’t have a jacket—and I remember falling down at one point.” He touches one of the scrapes on his face. “Some of the blood they found on me was mine. I hit my head on a big slab of rock—that part I remember pretty clearly. There was a design carved into it, almost like a tombstone or something, so the surface was kind of jagged? It hurt like hell. I’m surprised the pattern didn’t end up, like, embossed on my face.”

“Do you think you were at a cemetery?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a cemetery around here. I wouldn’t know where to find one.”

“Okay. Do you remember anything else?”

“Well, I didn’t until I talked to Sam this afternoon, right before you got here. I mean, when I said I was innocent, I believed it, or mostly I did. I mean … fuck.” He makes a searching gesture with his arms. “I could never do something like that, right? But there was a little part of me that wasn’t sure. I knew I had been there, and I knew I was upset. The next morning, when the cops told me Bettina was dead, it was like it wasn’t a surprise. I already knew what they were going to say.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean much. You wake up and find yourself surrounded by cops, you know they’re not there to give you good news.”

“Yeah, I guess. Maybe. The thing I kept hanging on to was that I was absolutely sure I hadn’t been in the bedroom. I came home, I knew Bettina didn’t want to see me, I passed out on the couch. End of story. And then when they started turning up evidence that I
had
been in the bedroom—the footprints on the stairs and all that—I started to question things.”

I tap my fingers on the arm of my chair. “But what happened
today
, Milo? What did Sam say? You said something about a report?”

“Yeah. He was telling me there were some new wrinkles we were going to have to deal with, new evidence we didn’t know about. And there were two things that kind of freaked me out. One was that they checked my cell phone records, and I called the house at twelve-thirty. Or I got through at twelve-thirty—I’d been calling for hours.”

“So you talked to Bettina?”

He shakes his head. “I have no idea. I don’t remember it at all. But the records show I was on the phone for seven minutes.”

“What was the other thing?”

“They found something on the table by the bed. A little plastic bubble with a toy inside, like you get out of a vending machine? It had my fingerprints on it. They called Kathy in to ask her some more questions, and she told them that it wasn’t there when she left at midnight, because the first thing they packed up was all of Bettina’s stuff from on top of the dresser and bedside table.”

I think about this. “Okay, so you bought her something from a vending machine. You’d had a fight, you wanted to make up with her. I don’t see why that upsets you.”

He’s quiet for a minute. “It wasn’t just the fact of it,” he says. “It was that suddenly I could see how it looked, just for a second. I could remember walking up the stairs in the dark, holding this thing in my hand. I knew what was inside the container before Sam even told me.”

“What was it?”

“Oh, like some fake jewelry. A necklace and a ring with big pink plastic gemstones. I don’t know if I can explain why it freaked me out so much, it was just … suddenly there was evidence of this whole part of the night that I don’t remember. And I just thought, My God. I could have done this.”

I sit with him and look at this picture he’s creating for us. I know what it’s like to construct a scene so vividly that you’re practically there. I also know what it’s like to remember something painful you’ve previously blocked from your mind.

“Have you ever blacked out like that before?” I ask.

“No.”

“And have you ever …” I don’t know how to ask this. “When you and Bettina fought in the past, did it ever get violent?”

He doesn’t answer right away. “Not really,” he says. “But the way I felt when I imagined her leaving … it was pretty intense.”

His face is hard, set. He really believes he might have done this.

Okay. Follow it through: I imagine Milo going up the stairs of his house. I’ve seen the staircase in the
Turf Wars
video: curved wrought-iron railing, wooden steps, risers decorated with a mosaic of colorful ceramic tiles. It’s the middle of the night—are there any lights on? He’s unsteady; he holds on to the banister as he goes. He reaches the top, walks down the hall, opens the door of the bedroom. He finds Bettina sleeping in their bed. And then what? He climbs in beside her? He picks up the exercise weight and kills her while she sleeps? Or she wakes up, and they argue, and he beats her while she begs him to stop? No. Just … no.

“What else did Sam say?” I ask.

“Oh, I don’t know. Stuff about … blood spatter and … the angle of impact … Of course, my fingerprints are all over the place, but you know, it was
my house
, so that doesn’t necessarily prove anything.”

“Right,” I say. I feel tired and heartsick. What happens after this? I’m wondering. He may go to prison, whether he’s guilty or not. He may spend the rest of his life in a cell. I have a sudden impulse to take him away somewhere, to break the law, get him out of the country, hide him away where they won’t find him. And like every wild plot twist that seems full of possibility until I see how implausible it is, the idea shines for an instant and then fades away.

The room fills suddenly with the chorus of a Pareidolia song, “Under the Muddy,” and I realize it’s the sound of Milo’s phone ringing. He takes it out of his pocket and answers it, keeping the conversation to monosyllables, then hangs up.

“It’s Joe,” he says. “They’re all downstairs. They don’t want to interrupt if we’re not finished, but …” He trails off.

“Okay,” I say. I don’t feel as if our conversation is finished, but I don’t know what else to say. I wonder how long it will be before this happens again, me and Milo sitting in a room, talking by ourselves. Am I back in his life for good now? Do I use my return ticket to Boston (four days away and counting), or do I stay in San Francisco until this thing is settled?

We walk out of the room together and follow the curving hallway. We go down the stairs, and Milo leads the way into the kitchen, where Chloe, Roland, and Joe are sitting.

“Oh, hey,” Chloe says to me. “I’ve got to get home and relieve the sitter, and I wondered if you want a ride back to your hotel.”

I wait a fraction of a moment to see if there are any other offers—Roland asking me to stay and have dinner with them, Milo saying he can drive me back later—but none are forthcoming. “Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

Roland retrieves our jackets from a closet in the hallway behind the kitchen and helps us into them. “Lovely to meet you,” he says to me. “I hope we’ll be seeing you again soon.”

“So do I,” I say. I walk over to Milo and give him an awkward hug. “Please call me,” I say. “Let me know what I can do to help.”

“Okay,” he says, in a tone that tells me nothing.

I follow Chloe to the front door. “Joe just got a call from Bettina’s mother,” she says to me in a low voice. “The funeral is tomorrow, and she wanted to make sure we know that she doesn’t want any of us there.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I say, though I don’t really know if it is.

“Ready for the circus?” Chloe says, her hand on the door handle. I look at her blankly. “The photographers, I mean,” she says.

She opens the door, and before I step out, I look back down the hall to the kitchen. Through the frame of the doorway I can see Roland and Joe, but Milo is out of my view.

For a period of several years in my late twenties and early thirties, every wish I made on a birthday candle came true. The wishes were things I had some measure of control over, mostly—babies being born, a house that we loved—though certain details (a
healthy
baby, a house we could
afford
) were out of my hands, and I liked the idea that I had wished them into being. After a while, though, coming up with the right wish became something of a burden. I didn’t want the lucky streak to end, but I knew it couldn’t last forever, and each year I’d think, Is this going to be the one that doesn’t come true? It was magical thinking and I knew it, but it had become a solemn little tradition for me, and I didn’t want to give it up willingly by wishing to win the lottery or live on the moon or something else outside the parameters of wish alchemy.

On my thirty-fourth birthday, when Rosemary was six and Milo was almost nine, we had dinner at home, and when Mitch brought out the cake he’d bought at the bakery, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t given any thought to what I would wish for. The candles were burning, the children’s fingers were inching toward the frosting, and I had to come up with something. What did I want most? I’d been working on a novel called
Hamelin
for years and years at that point, and it still wasn’t coming together. In my more honest moments, I knew that it probably never would. But that was the dream, that was what I’d have told you I wanted if you’d asked me when I was twelve: a husband, children, books with my name on them sitting in the window of a bookstore. Mitch and the kids finished singing; I drew in my breath and blew. In the space of an inhalation I imagined
Hamelin
finished, sold, published. And I wished for something I knew I wasn’t going to get.

Milo, as I’ve said, was almost nine that year, and we’d been having a hard time of it, he and I. From very early on, there was something about my personality that clashed with his, and we’d just recently come into an unpleasant pattern of pushing and pushing back; sometimes it seemed like we spent all our time not getting along. That night we ate our cake, Milo and I squabbled over bedtime, and I went downstairs, exhausted by the conflict, to watch a movie with Mitch. Then, just before midnight, as I was turning out the lights to go to bed, I started to panic. Knowing my time was almost up, I went into the dark kitchen and cut myself a slice of leftover cake. I stuck a candle in the hardened crust of the icing, lit the wick, and blew. I wished for what I should have wished for earlier—peace for me and my child, patience and generosity on my part, overflowing love. I took a bite of the cake—the cut edge was already growing stale—and I went to bed, hoping I’d done the right thing.