“I’m at Forget-Me-Not.”
There was a pause on the other end. “Oh. So this is Dr. Star’s phone? Is she with you?”
Rose looked at the lady. “Are you Dr. Star?”
The lady turned the nameplate around. It said DR. .
“Yes,” Rose said into the phone.
“Stay right there. I’m on my way.” Evelyn hung up.
“She’s on her way, Dr. Star,” Rose said.
Dr. Star started swiveling again. “You might as well know, it’s not my real name—everyone who works at Forget-Me-Not is Dr. Star. We’re affiliated with the practice at the mall in Spruce Hills, called Memory Lane. Everyone there is Dr. Star, too.”
“Isn’t that kinda awkward? Everyone who comes here meets Dr. Star, so if they tell someone about it later—”
“But that’s the point. People don’t remember coming here—at least they’re not supposed to.” She gave Rose a wary glance. “And nobody else knows about what’s happened, either, not husbands or wives or children or friends or coworkers. It was different with your stepmother—she had to know because by law you’re a child.”
“So you met her. . . .”
“Last Saturday.”
“While I was at the zoo,” Rose said with some force. “I mean, the Bronx Global Conservation Center.”
Dr. Star was shaking her head. “We should wait for your stepmother, but . . . Rose, you were right here with me. Evelyn was in the hall, reading a book. You said your dad had taken you to the zoo when you were a child, so a visit to the zoo was, shall we say, arranged. We’re very thorough; we give plenty of visual and auditory cues, animal images and videos, and the brain fills in all the rest—the smell of the animals, maybe the silky feel of alpaca hair at the petting zoo, or the taste of an ice-cream sandwich.”
“There was no weather.”
“It was a cool fall day with late-afternoon sun. That should’ve registered.”
“The zoo was all wrong today.”
“Oh, you actually went to the zoo? That’s not good.” She tsked.
“I don’t understand.” Rose felt dizzy. The chair tightened its grip even more. “What memories were erased? And why would my stepmother force me to do this? I’m happy, finally happy, bursting with happiness.”
“Rose—”
“She’s always dragging me to doctors and therapists and treatments. They don’t work. They’re not for me. This couldn’t have been my idea.”
Dr. Star considered her for a moment. “Well, it was and it wasn’t.”
The intercom buzzed.
“Goodness, Rose, you only called her five minutes ago! What did she do, fly here?” Dr. Star got up to answer the buzzer, leaving the door wide open behind her.
“I’m here for my daughter,” Evelyn said over the intercom, breathlessly.
CHAPTER 23
Rose got up, took a couple of steps, and caught a glimpse of Evelyn out in the hall. Evelyn didn’t look well. Her skin was splotchy and raw; her hair, unbelievably, unkempt. And she’d forgotten a book.
Rose, with all her compassion, should’ve hurried to her stepmother and said a few words, but she couldn’t move any closer. Evelyn knew about Forget-Me-Not, about the obliteration of memories. How could Evelyn have done this to her, something so sweeping, so invasive, so . . . what was the word her dad had used about Evelyn?
Everlasting.
Dr. Star came back and closed the door, leaving Evelyn in the hall. “Please sit, Rose. We need to sort you out, help you remember everything. Company policy, should someone find his or her way back to the facility.”
Rose still stood there. “Can I sit somewhere else?”
“Everyone loves that chair!” Dr. Star said, sitting in her swivel chair and swiveling. “They want to order one and get frustrated when I tell them they’ll never remember even sitting in it.”
Rose sank into the chair, which molded itself to her body like a marshmallow with muscle.
“First,” Dr. Star said, “you need to be reminded . . . that is, you need to be told what it is we do and don’t do here. ME—that’s what we call Memory Enhancement—is not memory alteration, or erasure, or anything like that. All of your memories, every single one of them, have been and always will be yours.”