Vivien had not expected the sophisticated city of Denver, and she had not expected that she would be one of almost a dozen women who had come to identify the man with amnesia. But she found herself sitting in a waiting room off the lobby of the hospital with other women, all clutching that same newspaper clipping. They had come from Chicago and Wyoming and Ohio. One woman had come all the way from Philadelphia. There was a nervous energy in the room, the woman from Philadelphia’s leg jumping up and down, up and down, and one of the women from Chicago tapping on the table in a rapid pattern. No one spoke. What was there to say? Every one of them wanted that man to be their husband or son or father.
The door opened and a tall, thin older woman walked in, twisting a white handkerchief in her fist.
“He’s not my Simon,” she said. She looked around the room, surprised. “My Simon, he went to the war. And he vanished. The government can’t find him. No one saw him get injured. Or worse. He just vanished.”
The women all looked down at their laps, ashamed to show their relief, their hope. If the man wasn’t her Simon, he could still be Mark or Reginald or Jonathan.
Or David, Vivien thought as she too avoided the woman’s face. She heard the woman collecting her things and shuffling out of the room.
A woman holding a clipboard entered. She wore a honey-colored tweed jacket with a matching skirt and gold wire-rimmed eyeglasses.
In a loud, crisp voice she announced, “Martha Vale.”
From beneath downcast eyes, everyone peeked as the woman from the train station got up, smoothed her skirt and patted her hair into place, straightened her shoulders and walked out the door toward the man who had forgotten who he was.
It seemed that the entire room held its breath after Martha left. The woman from Philadelphia’s leg jumped restlessly. The woman from Chicago tapped, tapped, tapped on the table. The smells of lavender and violet water and lilies choked Vivien. There seemed to be no air in the room, all of it consumed by the hope and fear of the women. Beside Vivien, a woman had started to knit, and the clacking of her needles added to the other nervous sounds.
“This is torture,” the knitter said in a thick Irish brogue. “My Paddy would want me to find him, to bring him home. That’s the only thing keeping me here.”
Vivien glanced up. The knitter had steel gray hair pulled back in a messy bun and the red hands of someone who had worked with them all her life. She was knitting a sweater with thick oatmeal yarn.
“This will be the ninth sweater I’ve knit for him,” she said to Vivien. “I knit them and put them in his drawer with cedar, to protect them, you know?”
“Of course,” Vivien said.
The woman went back to her knitting.
Just when Vivien thought she might lose her mind, the door opened. Martha stood there, not moving until the woman with the clipboard nudged her forward.
Seeing the tears on Martha’s cheeks, Vivien got up and went to her. But when she touched Martha’s shoulder, the woman shrugged her off.
“What was I thinking?” Martha said as she angrily picked up her valise and her coat. “Everyone saw him go under that day. They saw him disappear in that river. Why would I put myself through this?”
“I’m sorry,” Vivien said softly.
Martha spun around.
“No you’re not. You want this to be your man. You hope everyone in this room gets disappointed so that he just might be yours.”
The vehemence with which she spoke forced Vivien backward, away from her.
Martha leveled her gaze on the rest of the women.
“The same goes for all of you,” she said.
They watched her leave, pushing past the woman with the clipboard as she did.
“She’s right, of course,” the woman from Philadelphia said.
“Vivien Lowe,” the woman with the clipboard announced in her clear, crisp voice.
Vivien wished she’d thought to put some color on her lips, to wear her good silver comb, the one David had bought her one Christmas. She wished she looked younger, more beautiful.
“Vivien Lowe?” the woman said.
“I’m Vivien Lowe,” Vivien said, surprised by how tremulous her voice sounded.
The woman held the door open. And Vivien walked through it.
The woman with the clipboard remained cold and efficient as she led Vivien down a corridor, around a corner, down another corridor where she stopped in front of a room with its door closed. There, she hesitated. Her face softened and she touched Vivien’s arm.
“Over one hundred people have come here,” she said. “All women. All hoping this man is the man they’ve lost. Maybe it’s the war that’s done it, made us all so desperate. Maybe it’s the Spanish influenza. So much loss these past years. We’re all walking around brokenhearted, filled with grief. Lost.”