False Memory Part 37

Already scanned, rayed, scoped, graphed, and bled, Martie was required only to pee in a small plastic cup before she could leave the hospital with all tests completed and samples given. Thanks to the Valium, she was sufficiently calm to risk going into the bathroom alone, without the mortified and mortifying presence of Dusty, though he offered to be her "urine-sample sentinel."

She was still not herself. Her irrational anxiety had not been drenched by the drug, merely dampened; hot coals smoldered sullenly in the darker corners of her mind, capable of flaring again into an all-consuming fire.

As she washed her hands at the sink, she dared to look into the mirror. Mistake. Within the reflection of her eyes, she glimpsed the Other Martie, pent-up and full of rage, chafing at this chemical restraint.

As she finished was.h.i.+ng her hands, she kept her eyes downcast.

By the time that she and Dusty were leaving the hospital, those embers of anxiety were glowing bright.

Only three hours had pa.s.sed since she'd taken the first Valium, not an ideal s.p.a.cing of doses. Nevertheless, Dusty tore open the sample package and gave her the second tablet, which she washed down at a drinking fountain in the lobby.

A greater number of people than earlier were going to and fro in the quadrangle. A quiet voice in Martie, as soft as a sinister spirit speaking at a seance, kept up a running commentary regarding the comparative vulnerability of the other pedestrians. Here was a man in a leg cast, walking with the aid of crutches, so easy to topple, defenseless when down, vulnerable to the toe of a boot in the throat. And here, now, rolling along with a smile, was a woman in a battery-powered wheelchair, left arm withered and slack in her lap, right hand operating the controls, as defenseless a target as might pa.s.s this way all day.

Martie lowered her attention to the pavement ahead of her and tried to block out all awareness of the people she pa.s.sed, which might also silence the hateful inner voice that so terrified her. She held fast to Dusty's arm, relying on Valium and her husband to get her to the car.

As they reached the parking lot, the January breeze quickened and brought a slight chill out of the northwest. The big carrotwoods whispered conspiratorially. The busy flickers and flashes of suns.h.i.+ne and shadow off scores of automobile winds.h.i.+elds were like semaph.o.r.ed warnings in a code she could not read.

They had time for lunch before the appointment with Dr. Ahriman. Even though the second Valium would soon be kicking in, Martie didn't trust herself to spend forty-five minutes in even the coziest cafe without making a scene, so Dusty went in search of a drive-through, fast-food restaurant.

He had driven little more than a mile before Martie asked him to pull over in front of a sprawling, three-story, garden-apartment complex. The development stood behind a lawn as green as a golf course, shaded by graceful California pepper trees, lacy melaleucas, and a few tall jacarandas with early purple flowers. Pale yellow stucco walls. Red tile roofs. It looked like a clean, safe, comfortable place.

"They had to rebuild half of it after the fire," Martie said. "Sixty apartments burned down."

"How long ago was that?"

"Fifteen years. And they replaced the roofs on the buildings that weren't destroyed, because it was the old cedar s.h.i.+ngles that allowed the blaze to spread so fast."

"Doesn't look haunted, does it?"

"Ought to be. Nine died, three of them small children. Seems funny...how it looks so nice now, you know, like that night must've been just a dream."

"Would've been worse without your dad."

Although Dusty knew all the details, Martie wanted to talk about the fire. All she had of her father now were memories, and by talking about them, she kept them fresh. "It was already an inferno when the pumpers got here. They couldn't hope to knock it down fast. Smilin' Bob went in there four times, four times into the fiery smoky h.e.l.lish heart of it, and each time he came out. He was the worse for it, but he always came out with people who wouldn't have survived otherwise, carrying some of them, leading others. One whole family of five, they were disoriented, blinded by smoke, trapped, encircled by fire, but out he came with them, all five safe. There were other heroes there, every man on every crew called to the scene, but none of them could keep at it the way he could, eating the smoke as though it was tasty, all but reveling in the heat like he would a sauna, just going at it and going at it-but that's how he always was. Always was. Sixteen people saved because of him, before he collapsed and they packed him out of here in an ambulance."

That night, rus.h.i.+ng with her mother to the hospital, and then at Smilin' Bob's bedside, Martie had been in the grip of a fear she had thought would crush her. His face red with a first-degree burn. And streaked with black: particles of soot pounded so deep into his pores by the concussive force of an explosion that they could not be easily washed out. Eyes bloodshot, one swollen half-shut. Eyebrows and most of his hair singed away, and a mean second-degree burn on the back of his neck. Left hand and forearm cut by gla.s.s, st.i.tched and bandaged. And his voice so scary-scratchy, raw, weak as it had never been before. Words wheezing out of him and with them the sour odor of smoke, the scent of smoke still on his breath, the stink of it coming out of his lungs. lungs. Martie, thirteen, had only that morning felt grown-up and had been impatient for the world to admit that she was an adult. But there in the hospital, with Smilin' Bob brought down so hard, she suddenly felt insignificant and vulnerable, as helpless as a four-year-old kid. Martie, thirteen, had only that morning felt grown-up and had been impatient for the world to admit that she was an adult. But there in the hospital, with Smilin' Bob brought down so hard, she suddenly felt insignificant and vulnerable, as helpless as a four-year-old kid.

"He reached for my hand with his good one, the right, and he was so exhausted he could hardly hold on to me. And in that awful voice, that smoky voice, he says, 'Hey, Miss M.,' and I say, 'Hey.' He tried to smile, but his face hurt pretty bad, so it was a weird smile that didn't do anything to cheer me up. He says, 'I want you to promise me something,' and I just nod, because, G.o.d, I would promise to cut off my arm for him, anything, and he must know that. He wheezes and coughs a lot, but he says, 'When you go to school tomorrow, don't you brag about your dad did this, your dad did that. They'll be asking you, and they'll be repeating things said on the news about me, but don't you bask in it. Don't you bask. You tell 'em I'm here...eating ice cream, tormenting nurses, having a high old time, collecting as much sick pay as I can get before they figure out I'm goldbricking.'"

Dusty had not heard this part of the story before. "Why'd he make you promise that?"

"I asked why, too. He said all the other kids at school had fathers, and they all thought their fathers were heroes, or they badly wanted to think so. And most of them were were heroes, according to Daddy, or would be if given a chance. But they were accountants and salesmen and mechanics and data processors, and they just weren't lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, like my dad was lucky because of his job. He says, 'If some kid goes home and looks at his father with disappointment, because of you bragging on me, then you've done a dishonorable thing, Miss M. And I know you're not dishonorable. Not you, ever. You're a peach, Miss M. You're a perfect peach.'" heroes, according to Daddy, or would be if given a chance. But they were accountants and salesmen and mechanics and data processors, and they just weren't lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, like my dad was lucky because of his job. He says, 'If some kid goes home and looks at his father with disappointment, because of you bragging on me, then you've done a dishonorable thing, Miss M. And I know you're not dishonorable. Not you, ever. You're a peach, Miss M. You're a perfect peach.'"

"Lucky," Dusty said wonderingly, and shook his head.

"He was something, huh?"

"Something."

The commendation her father received from the fire department for his bravery that night had not been his first and would not be his last. Before cancer did to him what flames could not, he had become the most-decorated fireman in the history of the state.

He insisted on receiving every commendation in private, without ceremony and without a press release. To his way of thinking, he was only doing what he was paid to do. Besides, all the risks and all the injuries were evidently insignificant compared to what he'd been through in the war.

"I don't know what happened to him in Vietnam," Martie said. "He never talked about it. When I was eleven, I found his medals in a box in the attic. He told me he'd won them because he'd been the fastest typist in the division commander's secretarial pool, and when that didn't wash, he said they used to have Bake-Offs a lot in Nam, and he made a fabulous bundt cake. But even at eleven, I knew they don't give you multiple Bronze Stars for bundt cakes. I don't know if he was as fine a man when he went to Nam as when he came out, but for some reason I think that maybe he was better for what he suffered, that it made him very humble, so gentle and so generous-so full of love for life, for people."

The willowy pepper trees and the melaleucas swayed in the breeze, and the jacarandas s.h.i.+mmered purple against graying sky.

"I miss him so d.a.m.n much," she said.

"I know."

"And what I'm so afraid...about this crazy thing that's happening to me..."

"You'll beat it, Martie."

"No, I mean, I'm afraid that because of it...I'll do something to dishonor him."

"Not possible."

"You don't know," she said with a shudder.

"I do do know. Not possible. You know. Not possible. You are are your father's daughter." your father's daughter."

Martie was surprised to be able to manage even a frail smile. Dusty blurred before her, and though she pressed her trembling lips tightly together, the taste of salt seeped in at the corner of her mouth.

[image]

They took lunch in the car, in the parking lot behind a drive-through restaurant.

"No tablecloth, no candle, no vase of flowers," Dusty said, enjoying a fish sandwich and french fries, "but you must admit we've got a lovely view of that Dumpster."

Although she had skipped breakfast, Martie ordered only a small vanilla milk shake, sipping it slowly. She didn't fancy having a full stomach of greasy food if she were stricken again by that devastating spook show of death images that had flashed through her mind in the car between Skeet's apartment and Dr. Closterman's office.

With the cell phone, she called Susan. She waited through twenty rings before she pressed end end.

"Something's wrong," she said.

"Let's not jump to conclusions."

"Can't jump. All the spring's out of my legs," she said, which was true, thanks to the double Valium. Indeed, her worry was soft and fuzzy around the edges, but it was worry nonetheless.

"If we can't reach her after seeing Dr. Ahriman, we'll swing by her place, check up on her," Dusty promised.

Tormented by this bizarre affliction of her own, Martie hadn't found an opportunity to tell Dusty about Susan's incredible claim that she was being victimized by a night visitor who came and went at will, leaving her with no memory of his intrusion.

This wasn't the moment, either. She had achieved a precarious balance; she was concerned that recounting her emotional conversation with Susan would make her wobbly again. Besides, they were due at Dr. Ahriman's office in a few minutes, and she didn't have time to report the conversation to Dusty in appropriate detail. Later.

"Something's wrong," she repeated, but she said no more.

[image]

Odd, to be here in this stylish, black-and-honey-toned waiting room without Susan.

Crossing the threshold, setting foot on the black granite floor, Martie felt her burden of anxiety lift significantly. A new lightness in body and mind. A welcome hope in the heart.

This, too, struck her as odd, and quite different from the effect of the Valium. The drug covered her anxiety, repressed it, yet she was still aware of it squirming under the chemical blanket. In this place, however, she felt a measure of her apprehension float up and away from her, not merely repressed any longer, but dissipated.

Twice a week for the past year, without exception, Susan, too, had brightened noticeably upon reaching this office. The heavy hand of agoraphobia never lifted from her in other enclosed s.p.a.ces beyond the walls of her own apartment, but past this threshold, she found surcease.

An instant after Jennifer, the secretary, looked up and saw them enter from the corridor, the door to Dr. Ahriman's office opened, and the psychiatrist came out into the lounge to greet them.

He was tall and handsome. His posture, carriage, and impeccable attire reminded Martie of elegant leading men in movies of another era: William Powell, Cary Grant.

Martie didn't know how the doctor was able to project such a rea.s.suring air of quiet authority and competence, but she didn't try to a.n.a.lyze it because the very sight of him, even more than stepping through the doorway into this room, put her at peace, and she was just grateful to feel a surge of hope.

47.

Ominous, this darkness that came into the sea hours before twilight, as though some primal malevolence were rising from deep oceanic trenches and spreading to every sh.o.r.e.

The sky had completely shrouded itself in the gray clouds that it had been steadily knitting since morning, leaving no blue to give the water color by reflection, no sun to glitter off the teeth of the waves. Nevertheless, to Dusty, the lead-gray Pacific was far darker than it should have been at this hour, marbled with veins of black.

Somber, too, was the long coastline-the shadowed beaches, the slump of hills to the south, and the peopled plains to the west and north-seen from this fourteenth floor. Nature's green appeared to be thinly painted over a mold-gray base coat, and all the works of man were rubble unrealized, waiting for the thousand-year quake or thermonuclear war.

When he looked away from the view beyond the huge wall of gla.s.s, Dusty's peculiar uneasiness left him as completely and suddenly as if a switch had been thrown. The mahogany-paneled office, the bookshelves with neatly ordered tomes, the array of degrees from the nation's most prestigious universities, the warm multicolored light from three Tiffany-style lamps-genuine Tiffany?-and the tasteful furnis.h.i.+ngs exerted a calming influence. He had been surprised to feel relieved when he'd stepped with Martie into Ahriman's waiting room; but here, his relief gave way to an almost Zen-like serenity.

His chair stood near the immense window, but Martie and Dr. Ahriman sat apart from him, in two armchairs that faced each other across a low table. With more self-possession than she'd shown since Dusty had encountered her in the garage the previous evening, Martie spoke of her panic attacks. The psychiatrist listened attentively and with an evident compa.s.sion that was comforting.

In fact, so comforted was Dusty that he found himself smiling.

This was a safe place. Dr. Ahriman was a great psychiatrist. Everything would be all right now that Martie was in Dr. Ahriman's care. Dr. Ahriman was deeply committed to his patients. Dr. Ahriman would make this trouble go away.

Then Dusty turned his attention to the view again, and the ocean appeared to be a vast slough, as though its waters were so thick with clouds of mud and tangles of seaweed that only low viscous waves were able to form. And in this peculiar light, the serried whitecaps were not white, but mottled-gray and chrome yellow.

On winter days, under overcast skies, the sea had often looked like this, and never before had he found it so disquieting. Indeed, in the past, he had seen a rare, stark beauty in such scenes.

A small voice of reason told him that he was projecting feelings onto this view that were not actually a response to it, feelings that had another source. The sea was just the sea, as it had always been, and the true cause of this uneasiness lay elsewhere.

That thought was puzzling, because there was nothing in in this room to account for his disquiet. This was a safe place. Dr. Ahriman was a great psychiatrist. Everything would be all right now that Martie was in Dr. Ahriman's care. Dr. Ahriman was deeply committed- this room to account for his disquiet. This was a safe place. Dr. Ahriman was a great psychiatrist. Everything would be all right now that Martie was in Dr. Ahriman's care. Dr. Ahriman was deeply committed- "We must have additional dialogue," Dr. Ahriman said, "further discovery, before I can make a diagnosis with full confidence. But I'll risk putting a name to what you've been experiencing, Martie."

Martie leaned forward slightly in her chair, and Dusty saw that she was antic.i.p.ating the psychiatrist's preliminary diagnosis with a half smile, no apparent trepidation visible in her face.

"It's an intriguing and rare condition," said the psychiatrist. "Autophobia, fear of oneself. I've never encountered a case of it, but I'm familiar with the literature on the disorder. It manifests in astonis.h.i.+ng ways-as you are now unfortunately well aware."

"Autophobia," Martie marveled, with more fascination and less angst than seemed appropriate, as though the psychiatrist had cured her simply by putting a name to the affliction.

Maybe the Valium accounted for it.

Even as Dusty wondered at Martie's response, he realized that he, too, was smiling and nodding.

Dr. Ahriman would make this trouble go away.

"Statistically speaking," Ahriman said, "it's incredible that your best friend and and you would acquire profound phobic conditions. Phobias as powerfully affecting as yours and Susan's are not common, so I suspect there's a connection." you would acquire profound phobic conditions. Phobias as powerfully affecting as yours and Susan's are not common, so I suspect there's a connection."

"Connection? How so, Doctor?" Dusty asked, and that small inner voice of reason couldn't resist remarking on his tone of voice, which was not unlike that of a twelve-year-old boy posing a question to Mr. Wizard, on the now-canceled children's television program that had once endeavored to find the fun in science.

Ahriman steepled his fingers under his chin, looked thoughtful, and said, "Martie, you've been bringing Susan here for a year now-"

"Since she and Eric separated."

"Yes. And you've been Susan's lifeline, doing her shopping, other errands. Because she's shown such little apparent progress, you've become ever more worried. As your worry grows, you begin to blame yourself for her failure to respond quickly to therapy."

Surprised, Martie said, "I do? Blame myself?"

"As much as I know about you, it appears to be in your nature to have a strong sense of responsibility for others. Perhaps even an excessive sense of responsibility."

Dusty said, "The Smilin' Bob gene."

"My father," Martie explained to Ahriman. "Robert Woodhouse."

"Ah. Well, what I think's happened is that you've been feeling as though you've somehow failed Susan, and this sense of failure has metastasized into guilt. From the guilt comes this autophobia. If you have failed your friend, whom you love so much, then...well, you begin telling yourself that you evidently aren't the good person you thought you were, possibly even a bad person, but certainly a bad friend, certainly that at least, and not to be trusted."

Dusty thought the explanation seemed too simple to be true-and yet it rang with a convincing note.

When Martie met his eyes, he saw that her reaction was much the same as his.

Could such a weird, complex affliction befall someone overnight, someone previously as stable as the Rocky Mountains?

"Only yesterday," Ahriman reminded Martie, "when you brought Susan for her appointment, you took me aside to tell me how worried you were about her."

"Well, yes."

"And do you recall what else you said?" When Martie hesitated, Ahriman reminded her: "You told me that you felt you had failed her."

"But I didn't mean-"