The name of the teacher came instantly to mind: Mrs. Hendricks.
What did Mrs. Hendricks look like?
No image.
He began reading the notes. At the end of the notebook there was a theorem, but he’d never finished the proof of it. He sat down at the desk and picked up a pencil. Writing slowly, his handwriting still shaky, he began entering a series of premises and corollaries in the notebook. Two minutes later, he’d proved the theorem.
But he still couldn’t remember what Mrs. Hendricks looked like.
He began scanning the books on the shelf above the desk, his eyes finally coming to rest on a large volume bound in red Leatherette. When he looked at the cover, he saw that it was emblazoned with a cartoon figure of a bird, and the title:
It was his high-school annual from last year. Taking the book with him, he went to his bed, stretched out, and began paging slowly through it.
An hour later, when his mother tapped softly at the door, then stuck her head inside to ask him if he wanted anything, he knew what Mrs. Hendricks looked like, and Mr. Landry. If he saw them, he would recognize them.
He would recognize all his friends, all the people Lisa Cochran had told him about each day when she came to visit him at the Institute.
He would recognize them, and be able to match their names to their faces.
But he wouldn’t know anything about them.
All of it was still a blank.
He would have to start all over again. He put the book aside and looked up at his mother.
“I don’t remember any of it,” he said at last. “I thought I recognized the house, and even this room, but I couldn’t have, could I?”
“Why not?” Ellen asked.
“Because I thought I remembered the garden wall without vines. But the vines have always been there, haven’t they?”
“Why do you say that?”
“I looked at the roots and the branches. They look like they’ve been there forever.”
Ellen nodded. “They have. The wall’s been covered with morning glory as long as I can remember. That’s one of the reasons I always wanted this house — I love the vines.”
Alex nodded. “So I couldn’t have remembered. And this room seemed sort of familiar, but it’s just a room. And I don’t remember any of my things. None of them at all.”
Ellen sat on the bed next to him, and put her arms around him. “I know,” she said. “We were all hoping you’d remember, but Raymond told us you probably wouldn’t. And you mustn’t worry about it.”
“I won’t,” Alex said. “I’ll just start over, that’s all.”
“Yes,” Ellen replied. “We’ll start over. And you’ll remember. It will be slow, but it’ll come back.”
It won’t, Alex thought. It won’t ever come back. I’ll just have to act like it does.
One thing he had learned in the last three months was that when he pretended to remember things, people seemed to be happy with him.
As he followed his mother out to the family room a few minutes later, he wondered what happiness felt like — or if he’d ever feel it himself.
CHAPTER NINE
The Monday after Labor Day was the kind of California September morning that belies any hint of a coming change of season. The morning fog had burned off by seven, and as Marsh Lonsdale dropped Alex off in front of the Cochrans’ house, the heat was already building.
“Sure you don’t want me to take you both to school?”
“I want to walk,” Alex replied. “Dr. Torres says I should walk as much as I can.”
“Dr. Torres says a lot about everything,” Marsh commented. “That doesn’t mean you have to do everything he says.”
Alex opened the car door and got out, then put his cane in the back seat. When he looked up, his father was watching him with disapproval. “Did Dr. Torres tell you not to use the cane anymore?”
Alex shook his head. “No. I just think it would be better if I stopped using it, that’s all.”
His father’s hard expression dissolved into a smile. “Good for you,” he said. Then: “You okay with going back to school?”
Alex nodded. “I think so.”
“It’s not too late to change your mind. If you want, we can get a tutor up from Stanford, at least for the first semester …”
“No,” Alex said. “I want to go to school. I might remember a lot, once I’m there.”
“You’re already remembering a lot,” Marsh replied. “I just don’t think you should push yourself too hard. You … well, you don’t have to remember everything that happened before the accident.”
“But I do,” Alex replied. “If I’m going to get really well, I have to remember everything.” He slammed the car door and started toward the Cochrans’ front porch, then turned to wave to his father, who waved back, then pulled away from the curb. Only when the car had disappeared around the corner did Alex start once again toward the house, idly wondering if his father knew he’d lied to him.
Since he’d come home, Alex had learned to lie a lot.
He pressed the doorbell, waited, then pressed it again. Even though the Cochrans had told him over and over again that he should simply let himself into their house as he used to, he hadn’t yet done it.
Nor did he have any memory of ever having let himself into their house.
Their house, like the one next door where he knew he’d spent most of his life, had rung no bells in his head, elicited no memories whatsoever. But he’d been careful not to say so. Instead, when he’d walked into the Cochrans’ house for the first time after leaving the Institute, he’d scanned the rooms carefully, trying to memorize everything in them. Then, when he was sure he had it all firmly fixed in his mind, he’d said that he thought he remembered a picture upstairs — one of himself and Lisa, when they were five or six years old.
Everyone had been pleased. And since then, after he’d relearned something he was sure he’d known before, and discovered as much as he could about its past, he would experiment with “remembering.”
It worked well. Last week, while looking for a pen in his parents’ desk, he had found a repair bill for the car. He’d studied it carefully, then, as they were driving to the Cochrans’ that evening, and passed the shop where the car had been fixed, he’d turned to his father.
“Didn’t they work on the car last year?” he’d asked.
“They sure did,” his father had replied. Then: “Do you remember what they did to it?”
Alex pretended to ponder the question. “Transmission?” he asked.
His father had sighed, then smiled at him in the rearview mirror. “Right. It’s coming back, isn’t it?”
“A little bit,” Alex had said. “Maybe a little bit.”
But, of course, it wasn’t.
The front door opened, and Lisa was smiling at him. He carefully returned the smile. “Ready?”
“Who’s ever ready for the first day of school?” Lisa replied. “Do I look all right?”
Alex took in her jeans and white blouse, and nodded gravely. “Did you always wear clothes like that to school?”
“Everybody does.” She called a good-bye over her shoulder, and a moment later the two of them set out toward La Paloma High.
As they walked through the town, Alex kept asking Lisa an endless series of questions about who lived in which house, the stores they passed, and the people who spoke to them. Lisa patiently answered his questions, then began testing his memory, even though she knew that Alex never seemed to forget anything she told him.
