“No,” I say. My voice sounds small. I take a breath and better express it. “No, I didn’t forget.”
Paul gradually softens his penetrating stare. After a moment, he’s gazing out the windshield. More cars pass, the slipstream pushing against the pickup, rocking it on its worn-out shocks. “We even went to one of her shows, Em. In the city.”
The sentence triggers a domino effect in my brain. I’m suddenly just like Michael, experiencing an onrush of memory, filling a vacuum: faces, voices, places, moments.
Laura Bishop, a gallery in SOHO. Paul and I going in. He’s in a suit, I’m wearing a dress. We’re given flutes of champagne. Laura Bishop works the room. She’s very pretty in her black dress, dark earrings, like leaves, dangling from her perfect little ears. A far cry from the woman with frizzy hair and glassy eyes staring out from her mugshot.
We knew them . . .
“I’m surprised no one looked harder in the first place,” Paul now says. “We all lived in Bronxville together. It’s not a big town. One of their friends knew one of our friends, and that was it. When we all met for the first time, you were pregnant with Sean.”
Paul suddenly nears me again and takes my hand. “Emily, listen to me. So, you took a case and it was someone you knew. So what? No big deal. But what’s not going to fly is thinking you can navigate this anymore. This kid’s mother is out, and they’re obviously up to something. He hurt Sean and doesn’t want us to know. And now he’s, what? Begging you not to go? Why? He thinks I’m lying? Why would I lie? This is all just his way of implicating me. This is him coming after us, trying to fuck us over. Don’t you see that?”
I don’t answer.
Paul sighs and retreats from me. He puts the truck in drive and starts pulling out onto the road.
A vehicle blares its horn and swerves around us. It causes a car coming in the other direction to veer over to the shoulder. Everyone is blowing horns and screeching tires.
“Paul!”
He hits the gas and drives on. I watch in the mirrors as a vehicle gets back on the road. The people who passed us are just ahead; the driver flings a hand out the window, as if to say, what the hell?
“Paul, you gotta ease up.”
He doesn’t respond. We ride in silence. When we reach a stop sign, he makes a left. Now we’re on the main road between Lake Placid and Saranac Lake. Ten minutes from the hospital.
Have I lost my mind? Is Paul right? Am I doomed in all of my efforts because we knew the Bishops? Why didn’t I consider that sooner?
The phone vibrates. I check if Paul noticed, but he’s fixed on the road.
It’s Mena calling.
I let the voicemail pick it up. I’m so distraught right now I can’t imagine talking to her, or anyone. I don’t even know what I’d say. Maybe:
I think I’m having a nervous breakdown.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
We arrive at the hospital. Paul stops at the main entrance. The pickup truck is idling — rattling, really, like it’s about to collapse. Paul only looks straight ahead.
“Paul. I’m sorry.”
“Uh-huh.” He’s unmoved. “Go on in. I’ll park and be right there.”
“Can you look at me?”
“No.”
Paul accelerates, engine grumbling, and I jump back from the vehicle as the door swings closed. A nurse helping an elderly man along sees and gives me a look. I flash her a smile, but inside, I’m in knots.
The doors slide open and I hurry into the hospital, trying not to run. I’m just sort of trotting along, but already realize I don’t have my bearings. Someone at the front desk is able to point me in the right direction. I get moving again, realizing it’s been all day since I’ve eaten. Realizing that I must look like hell.
But it’s coming to an end. My son is coming back to me. That’s all that matters.
How long will he have to stay in the hospital, I wonder. What was he doing that he might be eager to get back to? He told me stories, but I forget if he has a job to return to. That’s the funny thing with memory: we accept misremembering things, because it’s so common. One neuroscientist estimated that we forget 99.9% of everything that happens to us.
It’s all stored somewhere, though. We just don’t have the means to access everything.
Everybody expects to remember the big things. Only, that’s not the case, either. You don’t remember but one or two of your birthdays. Or one or two holidays. And that’s only if you keep thinking of them again, for some reason. Between short-term memory and long-term memory is a kind of bottle neck. In order to squeeze something through, you need to revisit it many times.
So we assume that profound experiences — especially things we did wrong — will get stored in long-term memory. And for the most part, we’re right.
Except for when something is so troubling that we seek to block it out. Like Michael, perhaps, having witnessed his father’s murder. Making him malleable, susceptible to outside influence, planting a false memory. Such as seeing his mother do it. Why not? She was acting strangely that night and had been for weeks. Even young Tom himself said it was like she was an imposter at times.
I want my mommy back . . .
I push through a set of double doors and round a bend. Now I’m running, and I don’t care how it looks. A doctor sees me and opens his mouth as if to warn me to slow down, but I run right past. One more turn and I’m in familiar territory. This is the hall Sean is on.
I see his door, the number on it — 312 — and push open.
“Ma’am,” someone says behind me. “Did you sign in?”
I step into the room. My son is in the bed. The lighting is dim. The machines are breathing, whirring, making their noise.
His eyes are closed.
I step beside him, trembling, letting the tears fall.
“Sean?”
“Ma’am.” The doctor is in the doorway.
Someone else joins him. “That’s the mother,” she says.
“Seanie?” I squeeze my son’s hand. I pat it. “Sean, honey. Mommy’s here.”
Sean makes no response.
I look up. The doctor and nurse are watching me. “When did he . . . Is he just sleeping?”
They trade concerned glances. “Mrs. Lindman . . .” The nurse walks closer. “Your son is in a coma.”
“I know. He was. But he woke up.” His hand feels limp in my grip. “Didn’t he?”
Another look passes between them. The nurse mouths something silently to the doctor, who nods and leaves. The nurse then turns to me, her face filled with compassion. “Mrs. Lindman, this is a difficult time. But Sean is stable. His condition is stable. Okay? We’re doing all that we can.”
“He didn’t wake up?”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but no.”
I give Sean one last look. The tears dry in my face as deep, hot fear winds through my nervous system. My head tingles, like a mild electric current. I kiss Sean’s hand. I whisper into his ear: “Mommy loves you.”
The nurse reaches for me as I hurry past. She’s calling me as I run down the corridor.
“Mrs. Lindman!”
But I can’t stop. I think my husband is about to kill someone.