Charlotte Had A Boyfriend : 7

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

 

---

That's the thing:
Do you recognize the bells of truth
When you hear them ring?
Won't you stop and listen
To the children sing?

— Leon Russell, Stranger In A Strange Land

---

 

"Okay," I drawled, feeling as though I was playing along, "So, tell me this: if I'm engaged to this Barney person, why isn't he here?" The thought expanded like a pool, and I added, "... and the rest of the family... is there a mom and dad? Why isn't everyone here, if I was missing?"

Sheba, a little irritated, but half-joking, huffed, "As if I'm not enough!" I smiled in response.

"Am I simply not that important?" I threw out, teasing. She was so cute, open, and vulnerable, she made it easy to feel at ease with her.

Sheba scolded, reaching one step back in our conversation: "... what do you mean Is there a mom and dad? Mamma! Pappa! You *must* remember them!"

"Sheba, I don't remember anything!"

"Anyway, today is Friday, you ninny. Everybody has to work!" She fussed for a bit. "Jeff's not here because he drove all night and has to sleep." (Jeff, as it turned out, is Sheba's boyfriend.) "Also, he doesn't like hospitals. He's downstairs, sleeping in the car." She took a sip from her water bottle, then turned on me, saying, "You can't expect everyone to drop everything every time you pull one of your stunts. Besides, it took us a couple days to start worrying, and then when we heard about your amnesia, of course none of us took it seriously!"

"Wh— what?" I stammered. There was a lot to unpack there! I paused for a puzzled moment, then tried to parse out what she'd said. "Okay, so no one in your family believes I have amnesia? Is that what you're saying?"

"My family?" her voice rose in pitch. "It's your family, too, you know!" She frowned, full of disapproval. "Just stop it, will you?"

"Why did it take several days before anyone even *started* to be concerned about me? What's that about?"

"You really have to ask?"

"Yes, Sheba. I really have to ask. How many times do I have to tell you? I don't remember anything."

She glared at me for a few moments, then her expression softened slightly. "Okay," she conceded. "I shouldn't have to tell you this, but you're a flake. And a drama queen. It's a well-known fact, so don't try to deny it: You're a flake."

She watched me closely, cautiously, as though she'd just tossed a psychological hand grenade into an emotional mine field. She expected explosion on top of explosion. Instead, I only nodded and said, "Okay. Tell me more."

Surprised by my lack of response, she went on: "This isn't the first time you've up and ran off for no good reason. We all figured that you and Barney had a fight, even though he said you didn't."

 

---

 

Everything she told me sounded so strange... so very disconnected from me, from anything I felt or could feel. I was interested, very interested in every word she said, but I didn't experience a single flash of recognition. Sheba fed me anecdotes; she told me things I'd done. She meant to shock me, surprise me, make me laugh — and she did do all those things, but not in the way she expected. My amnesia gave me a distance. A phrase came to mind: Anything is funny as long as it happens to someone else. Sheba's intention was to remind me, embarrass me — and to humble me, as far as she was able. She was never unkind, but at times I had a feeling... a response inside... that I nearly said aloud a few times: I'm glad she's not talking about me!

Of course, she was talking about me. The entire time.

I had no reason to disbelieve anything she said. I took it all as gospel. Sheba was utterly guileless. She didn't have an ounce of trickery or deceit in her. She laid out simple truths from her family's lore about me, about them, about her.

Oddly enough — yesterday or the day before I would have given ANYTHING for this kind of information. Now that the information had arrived... my reaction was very ho-hum. Anticlimactic. None of the stories sparked any light in me. No echoes of memory. They didn't help me recover anything.

Sheba showed me photographs, which I found immensely interesting. I wish she could have left them with me, but they were on her phone. The pictures spanned years and years, and yes, there was Mom and Dad — or Mamma and Pappa, as Sheba called them.

Here were "the four of us": Cameron, me, Sheba, and Nate. Cameron's wedding to Andre. Their two little girls, whose names flew from my head the moment I heard them. Nate and his girlfriend (whose name I also promptly forgot). Me and Barney.

Barney?

"I can't see myself with this guy," I confessed to Sheba. "I don't get it."

"Yeah," she agreed. "I told you many times that he's the wrong guy for you, but you never listen."

"And I've run off before? To get away from him?"

"What?" Sheba asked, her face coming up all puzzled. "Where did you get that from?"

"I thought that's what *you* said!" I protested.

She scoffed and shook her head.

It took me a moment, but I recovered what she'd said: "You told me that — on the night I disappeared—" I had to stop there for a moment, it sounded so strange to say it— "that Barney claimed we didn't have a fight, but no one believed him. Right?" I could see Sheba was about to protest, so I cut her off: "You said that. I know you did."

"Whatever *I* said, it didn't happen like... it wasn't like what *you* just said," she explained, backtracking, a little perturbed. "See, look, uh — Cameron — Cameron's very direct. When we talked about who saw you last, it turns out that it was Barney. The two of you went out back, by the dumpster, behind the VFW Hall—"

"Why the dumpster?" I blurted out the question. "And what's the VFW?"

Sheba scoffed impatiently. "The VFW!" she exclaimed, as if saying it again somehow clarified the concept. "It was a party for Mamma and Pappa's 30th Anniversary. Come on!"

"Okay," I conceded. "So, why the dumpster?"

"How in the world would I know?" she protested. "Barney said it was your idea. One of you, or both of you — or one of you — wanted to talk in private. Next to the dumpster is about as private as you can get, when it gets going down at the VFW." Sheba saw I was about to launch some more queries in her direction, so put up her hand and said, "Wait. Let me tell you. Anyway, Barney came back inside by himself and went straight to the bar for a shot of whiskey. You didn't come back. At all. Nobody saw you again after that. Until now."

I put my hand to my forehead, processing what I'd heard. "Then—"

"Oh!" Sheba exclaimed, picking up the thread again. "I forgot what I was telling you! Barney drank his whiskey and grabbed a beer and went over to talk to Nate and Andre. They have this stupid 'bro' thing, you know. I don't know how Nate and Andre can stand him! Of course, Cameron was nearby and she came in hot. She noticed that you and Barney — well, the two of you went out together, but he came back alone, so she pointed her long, bony finger at Barney and asked him, Did you have another fight with my little sister? I wasn't there to see, but she said Barney's face went all funny, but he shook his head and said No."

"Okay," I acknowledged. It was a lot to take in.

"Okay?" she repeated, blinking several times. "Is that all you can say?"

I held up my hands in mute surrender, then I told her, "Sheba, I—"

What I wanted to say was, Sheba, I don't know ANY of these people! You might as well tell me stories from a random TV show.

I'm glad I didn't say it. Turns out I didn't need to say anything. Sheba was tired. Tired from her long-night drive, tired emotionally. She expected our interchange would be a sisterly give-and-take. She arrived convinced that I was faking and that sooner or later I'd trip up or fess up. When at last she saw I wasn't faking, she expected to be able turn my memory back on. When *that* didn't happen, she came up empty. Sheba had nothing more to give.

Sheba expected an emotional feast for herself.

Instead, she got nothing.

All the energy, all the fun, all the sisterly scheming and secrets — all fell flat. They simply weren't there to be had.

She kept tossing her emotions like a ball to me, and never, not even once, did I catch the ball and toss it back. I couldn't. I had too many questions.

She stood up and gathered her things. "I need some breakfast," she declared, as a prelude to making her exit.

I had the presence of mind to ask for her phone number (she protested that I *knew* it — then remembered that oh! I didn't).

After putting the number into my phone, I asked her another question:

"Near that dumpster, behind the V—"

"VFW Hall," she supplied.

"Right. Do they have any cameras back there? Any CCTV?"

"Oh, aren't you the little detective, all of a sudden!" She thought for a moment. "I'll ask Cameron."

 

---

 

The rest of my morning was a series of visits: the morning nurse, who took my blood pressure; the skinny blonde girl from food service, who brought my breakfast, and the pair of policewomen, who'd been notified of my impending release.

In between the breakfast and the police, I got a call on my phone. Unknown number.

"Hi, Deeny, it's me."

"Sorry, I uh— I don't know who you are. Sorry."

"You're really going to stick with this amnesia bit?" It was a woman's voice, strong, challenging.

"Look," I said in a firm voice, "If you don't tell me who you are, I'm hanging up."

A moment of silence, then: "This is Cameron."

"My sister, Cameron?"

I heard a sharp intake of breath on her end, and a mild expletive. Then: "Sheba told me you asked about the camera behind the VFW Hall. I'm way ahead of you. I got them to give me the tape from the night of the party. I'll send you the interesting part."

"Thanks."

"And by the way, I, uh, recovered the ring. I just happened to see it. Nobody knows that I've got it. You can play that little fact any way you like."

"Okay," I acknowledged, uncertain what she meant.

Reading the hesitancy in my reply, she asked, "You know what I'm talking about, don't you?"

"No, sorry, I really don't."

Cameron made a disappointed, disapproving sound, and said, "Well, watch the tape, then. You'll figure it out."

She hung up. A moment later my phone gave a plink!: a video had been shared with me. First I saved Cameron's number into my contact list. Then I downloaded the video and watched it.

There was no audio. It was black and white. It was an excellent view of the dumpster. Dumpster fans would approve. The timestamp was from last Monday at 22:13. I walked into the frame. It was definitely me. Barney immediately followed, moving past me. It didn't look as though either of us were aware of the camera. Throughout the video we shifted back and forth, changed places, moved in and out of view. The camera was definitely all about the dumpster, but it caught a lot of our expressions and gestures.

Me and Barney were having an intense discussion. It was clearly hot — by which I mean angry. It wasn't physical, though. There were plenty of gestures and pointing, but no grabbing or pushing or hitting. It went on for several minutes, until Barney turned and exited the frame. It must have been the point when he re-entered the VFW Hall.

I saw myself on the little screen ball up my fists and scream in rage. It was a little frightening and disturbing to watch. The scream was an ugly, full-body scream, from the soles of my feet, up my legs, to my clenched fists. My head was thrown back to face the sky. After the body-shaking howl, I growled and stamped and threw my arms around like an animal, punching the air and continuing to scream. I guess no one must have heard, because no one else appeared. Then I struggled to pull a ring off my hand — off my ring finger. My engagement ring. It had to be. It was hard to take off; I made several tugs and tries, but I couldn't do it. So I turned to run off, in the opposite direction from Barney, away from the VFW Hall.

After a few steps, I stopped and turned back toward the dumpster. I'd finally slipped the ring over my knuckle and worked it the rest of the way off my finger. That done, I reared back and threw it — aiming for the dumpster, meaning for it to end up in a landfill somewhere far away. Instead, the ring hit the metal lip of the container, and ricocheted down. It hit the ground and bounced underneath the dumpster. I stared for a few moments, before at last turning to leave. I watched myself run off, my tiny figure shrinking smaller and smaller until there was a bright flash and I was gone.

Somehow I knew — not remembering, but reading in my face on the video — that in those moments when I stared back, what I was doing was debating internally: did I see any point to going back and dropping the ring directly into the dumpster? Was it worth taking the extra moments to consign it definitively to the trash? Instead, clearly, the thing I wanted most was to get away. To leave Mariola, and never return. That flash of memory came to me once again: I saw myself in the mirror, declaring that I'd never go back. Never.

 

---

 

When the police came, they didn't have much news for me. But then again, they hadn't come to give me news. So, I pressed them.

"How's Amos?" I asked.

"Still in rough shape," Carly informed me, "but he's getting better. I don't think he has anything more to tell us."

"He didn't remember anything more about me? Anything I said?"

"Uhh— well, he said you mentioned something about a hotel." She gave me a sly look. "He thought you were asking if he wanted him to take you to a hotel."

I felt a little uneasy. "And then?"

"You told him there wasn't any point, which hurt the poor guy's feelings."

"Okay," I said. I didn't know what else to say.

"We didn't find anything of interest in Hugh's car. CSI towed it in and went over it with a fine-tooth comb. Same with Mason's car."

"Mason's car?"

"Yeah, we told you: he slept one night in the Good Old Inn. His car was still in the parking lot, but it didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. We're trying to get in touch with his family. I'm afraid we might have to take a little trip to Amsterholt and look his people up."

"Amsterholt..." I ventured. It kind of rang a bell.

"Yes, we've talked about this before. It's way the hell out in the sticks. You have to drive all the way to the middle of nowhere, then take a left and drive for another hour. That's how you get to beautiful downtown Amsterholt, as long as you don't blink and miss it.

"Anyway, though: Let's talk about you, girl! So much news! Now we know who you are and where you're from. Right?" Carly nodded to Tatum, who consulted her little notebook.

Tatum read, "Celandine Lisente, aka Deeny Lisente—"

"Not my name," I interjected, but they ignored me.

"Resident of Mariola—" [here she read my street address] "—Mariola, born and raised." [here she read my birthday] "The good news: you're not yet thirty. The bad news: you're almost thirty."

"Don't worry," Carly interjected. "Thirty's not so bad."

"It's not bad," Tatum quipped, "It's awful!" They laughed, and I found myself smiling.

"Anyway, though," Carly put forward, "If your sister can be believed, you were in Mariola last Monday evening / Monday night. We need to pin down the times as well as we can. Thing is, Mariola is almost 300 miles away as the crow flies, but you're not a crow. You can't fly. You'd have to drive, straight west, then straight south. It takes like four, five hours, hauling ass."

"Unless you cut across the desert," Tatum put in, "But at night? That's a pretty chancy shot, and there wasn't any moon that night."

I pondered this, and offered, "So it's more of a puzzle than before."

"Au contraire, my dear Celandine!" Carly retorted with a broad smile. "It gives us a lovely data point to stick in our timeline! Finally, a fact! A fact relating to you!"

She seemed enormously pleased; I felt her reaction was out of all measure.

If she was happy before, she was over the moon when I showed her Cameron's dumpster video, which (at their request) I sent to Tatum's phone.

They also asked me for Cameron's phone number.

"Now, we have to talk about where you're going and where you'll be," Carly began. "If you're intending to leave with your sister for Mariola—"

"I'm not going to Mariola," I declared.

"You're not?"

I explained about Lucy and her brother, and their offer to me. They wanted the address, along with the phone numbers of Hermie and Lucy.

"They aren't going to get in trouble for this, are they?" I asked.

"Course not," Carly responded immediately. Then she asked me to call Hermie on speaker phone so she could verify the arrangements.

 

---

 

Dr Thistlewaite bustled in, red-faced, at the end of all this, a little put out at not having participated in any of it, especially for his having missed my "reunion" with my sister.

Chiefly he was afraid that my memories had returned while he wasn't there to witness it. Now that I was being released, he worried that he'd lose touch with me, so I asked for his business card and assured him I'd keep him posted on my progress, if any.

"I've pretty much gotten used to the idea of never getting my old life back," I told him. "I'm going to learn to live without my memories. I'll make some new ones. They'll be better."

"You feel that way now—" he warned, but I shook my head.

"If things change, I'll change," I said. "I'm fine with the way things are, right now."

 

---

 

After that came paperwork, things to sign. Sheba brought with her a bag of clothes, my clothes, along with my documents (birth certificate, drivers license, bank cards, insurance, library card). Either the police or the hospital had warned her that she'd need to produce bona fides to show not only who I was, but who she was to me.

She, or whoever packed the bag, did a great job. I know this will sound stupid, and I'm glad no one was around to hear me say it, but when I tried on the clothes in the bag, I exclaimed, astonished, "Everything fits!"

Yes, of course they fit: they were my clothes.

And then came the difficult part. I must admit as I'm telling this, that I realized that — whoever or whatever else I am or was — I'm kind of an asshole, and not very considerate. I say that because I called up Sheba to (1) thank her for coming and bringing my things, and (2) to give her the address where I'd be staying.

At first she didn't speak. I thought the connection had dropped. "Sheba? Sheba? Are you there?"

"Yes, I'm here," she said. I sensed danger on the line. Her response started out low and slow, but she built up to a tirade that really cleaned my ears out. "What is wrong with you?" was her first shot across my bow.

I knew the question was rhetorical, but I croaked an "Uhhhh...." as a sort of reply.

She pointed out the effort that she — and even more than she, that Jeff had made, driving through the night, through the darkness, and for what? "For what?" she asked. "For a selfish sister who only wanted a change of clothes? No thank you!"

She acknowledged that, yes, Barney was more than likely a jerk who deserved to be dropped into the dumpster behind the VFW Hall and left there, but that didn't give me the right to run off and pretend to have amnesia and live with some weirdos who were probably hippies, communists, and scam artists.

I don't believe I need to go through her entire takedown of my personal issues, faults, and offenses. She was quite throrough, and I took a few mental notes, building a profile of Deeny-as-seen-by-her-younger-sister.

At the same time, I was shocked at myself, by my own callousness in thinking I could easily, simply brush off a young, open, vulnerable person who saw me as one of her closest blood relatives, as a person she'd known her entire life. Was I really so insensitive that I thought a matter-of-fact change-of-address notice would be enough? Apparently yes, I *was* that insensitive.

Sheba quickly, effectively shot down every one of my "sorries" as if they were clay pigeons.

She ended by demanding to know what time I'd be released. I told her. She replied, "I'll be there," and hung up the phone.

 

---

 

A few minutes later, Cameron called. She cut through my hello, telling me, "You've always been a selfish, narcissistic child, but this time you've really taken the cake." With that, she hung up.

The two calls left me so nervous that I paced my hospital room, back and forth, running my hands through my hair, stopping every now and then to blow a raspberry. Don't ask me why — it just came to me.

I didn't think anyone could hear me, but eventually one of the nurses came to my door, and with a cautious look asked me in a quiet voice, "Is that you? Are you having problems with gas?"

Oh, no, of course not! I explained what I was doing. Not farting, for the love of God! She gave me a dubious look and asked that if I had to make a noise, could I make some other noise instead? "I'm sure you don't realize it," she said, "but that sound is going everywhere."

Okay, fine. Instead of raspberries, I went into the bathroom to splash water on my face.

My phone rang again. Another unknown caller.

"That you, Deeny-pie?" A woman's voice inquired. There was a strong Texas twang coming through.

"Mamma?" I ventured.

"See that? I knew you were fakin', girl! You can't fool your old mamma! Tell me, now, what on EARTH are you telling your sisters? You've got the pair of them worked up in a tizzy!" She let out a brisk tsk!

"But, look — Mamma—" [I had to make a conscious effort to say that name] "—I really do have amnesia, and—"

"Stop that! Stop that, now! Do you hear me? No child of mine is going to run around having amnesia! No such a thing! You're embarrassing yourself! You're embarrassing the family! You stop it now! Just stop! In the name of Jesus! No daughter of mine is going traipse through the state telling people she don't know her own name! No, sir! No, ma'am! How can I DARE show my face—"

"Mamma, it's real," I told her. "I have amnesia. I only guessed that this was you calling, but I swear to God, I don't remember you, or Sheba, or Cameron. I lost my—"

"Do NOT take the name of the Lord in vain!" she thundered. "We raised you to know better!"

At that moment, a group appeared at my hospital-room door: Dr Thistlewaite, the two policewomen: Carly and Tatum, and a hospital orderly pushing an empty wheelchair.

My phone buzzed. I could see that Hermie was calling.

"I'm sorry, Mamma, but I have to go. They're releasing me from the hospital. I'll call you."

She was still talking — or, rather, shouting — as I hung up.

I picked up the other call. "Hello, Hermie?"

"I'm parked at the front door," he said. "They told me to wait for you here."

"I'm on my way down," I told him.

"Good," he said. "Uh— your, oh, your sister Sheba is here, and she is— uh—" I could hear Sheba's voice in the background: is that her? Give me that phone! Is that her? I'll strangle her! "She's— uh—"

"Don't worry, Hermie. Everything's going to be okay," I assured him. "Hang tight. I'm on my way."