The Memory Thief (3 page)

“Did you see that?” It is her voice, filled with excitement and hope. “They moved, didn't they?”

“They sure did,” says the owner of the hand. “Good work, Nicholas. Now open your eyes.”

I am not sure that I want to, but anything has to be better than where I am now, this weird little world of half knowledge, so I do my best to comply. And what do you know? My eyes open right up, and I blink to focus them.

I am in a hospital room, all right. Hovering over me is a youngish woman with light brown hair, tied back in a ponytail, and horn-rimmed glasses like you'd expect to see on an old-fashioned librarian. She's wearing blue scrubs patterned with roller-skating cats—a nurse, I imagine. “Welcome back,” she says to me.

I clear my throat, cough, and manage to get a word out. “Thanks,” I say. My voice is croaky and rusty from disuse, but at least it works.

Before I have a chance to formulate any questions—like where I am, or how I survived that horrific fall—a second woman's face appears in my line of vision. It's a very pretty face—angular, with high cheekbones and green eyes, set off by long, straight red hair—and at the moment it is wearing an expression that commingles worry and relief. “Nicholas, thank God,” she says, and her voice is the same one that was begging me to wake up just a few minutes ago. Her green eyes are sparkling with tears.

Now I am really confused. Worse than not knowing her name, I don't recognize her at all. This is not the woman I saw when I was thinking about the mountain. This is a total stranger.

Panic shoots through my limbs, and the monitor goes crazy again.

I am sitting in J. C. and Roma's tent, shivering. Wherever we are, it is cold as hell. The inside of the tent is covered with a layer of ice, the way it always is when the temperature drops low enough. It's condensation from our breath, which is pretty nasty when you think about it. I breathe in, feeling the familiar ache in my lungs, then out, expecting to add to the frozen scrim that coats the VerTex. And that's when things get weird—nothing happens. It's below freezing in here, but I can't see my breath in the air.

J. C. lies zipped into his sleeping bag, staring up at the ceiling. Next to him, Roma snores. He has a deviated septum and it's not his fault, but I'm sure J. C. wants to hit him. I know I would. Roma's a great guy, but sleeping at altitude's tough enough without a circular saw running next to your head.

“Hey man,” I say to J. C., but he doesn't answer, which is strange. I wave at him and he doesn't react. Instead he rolls to the left carefully, like he's trying to find a position that doesn't hurt, and flinches. I know why: Every time he moves, some of the ice on the ceiling of the tent falls down on him. It's not the best feeling in the world.

J. C. shakes his head from side to side, trying to dislodge the particles of ice, and winces again. He's got a tight look around his eyes, like he has a bad headache. I look closer and see that he's been crying. What the hell is going on here?

“Hey,” I say again, and again he doesn't reply. Something is wrong, and I'm sure J. C. knows what it is. I am tempted to shake the answer out of him, headache be damned, but a growing sense of discomfort holds me still. I try to think about what mountain this is, what expedition, and come up with nothing. I don't know where I am. I don't know where I've been. There's a crucial fact I ought to remember, a puzzle whose answer is almost within my grasp. But every time I try to figure it out, I come up against a wall. I can't think around it, I can't go through it or over it. It blocks my way.

Maddie. Is something wrong with Maddie? I think of her and feel a sense of panic, like there's something I need to do, a promise I need to keep. I think of Gabriel, my small warrior boy, and sadness sweeps me. Something is wrong, but I can't put my finger on it. I feel … adrift, somehow, dislocated in space and time.

I look around the tent, searching for clues, but all I see is J. C., who rubs his temples, pulls his sleeping bag up to his chin. “I'm sorry,” he says quietly, so he won't wake Roma. “I'm so fucking sorry.” He closes his eyes then and falls into a fitful sleep. He dreams a memory, and somehow I dream with him. We're in my backyard in Boulder. Maddie is very pregnant with Gabe, maybe seven months along. I see us from J. C.'s perspective: We are smiling, in love. But he is not smiling. In fact he's just broken up with his girlfriend, Elise. He is depressed, and the happier we look, the worse he feels.

“How did this happen?” he says in our general direction. “It's like some cruel joke.”

Maddie looks surprised, like she has no idea what J. C.'s talking about. But I know. “This is ridiculous,” he says, tossing a bottle cap from one hand to the other. “All I ever wanted was a relationship that worked out and a family.”

This isn't the total truth. Yeah, he'd wanted those things, abstractly. But really, he wants them with Maddie. He wants what I have. Usually he's got better control than this; he wouldn't bring it up at all, much less in front of her. But he is drunk, and mad, and he just keeps going. Maybe he figures he has nothing to lose.

“You were never after any of that,” he says, his eyes accusatory. “You told me enough times you just wanted to climb, travel, have good friends, good times. And now look at this shit. Here you are, with Maddie and a baby on the way, happy as can be. And here I am, doing this.” He gestures at himself, sprawled in one of the deck chairs, at his beer. “What kind of fucked-up universe do we live in?”

I drop my arm from Maddie's shoulders and step away from her. It's the least I can do, with him so upset. “I don't know,” I tell him. “Maybe I just got lucky.”

“You sure did,” he says. In the dream, I feel how torn up he is. She's pregnant, for Christ's sweet sake. We're married. What's wrong with him?

The dream fades and he surfaces again, blinking at the dull light. I'm forced outward, back into the frigid air of the tent. Whatever was wrong then, it's no better on this cold gray morning. He still loves her, that hasn't changed, but something else has. What?

“I miss you, buddy,” he says. He's just mouthing the words, really, but I can hear him. “You were the closest thing I had to a partner in this crazy life of mine.” He's quiet for a second. Then he says, “She's gonna hate me, and it will break my heart.” He rubs his temples, trying to chase the headache away. When he speaks again, he sounds sad but determined. “You never gave up, A. J., and neither will I. I'm going to take care of your family. I swear I won't let you down.”

He closes his eyes again. The dream scatters into air, and I go with it, seeded with doubt, riddled with certainty.

The next time I collect myself, I am in Gabe's room. He's awake, his soft blue blanket pulled up to his chin, his white teddy bear lying on his pillow. His surfer night light, the one with the devil on it that I brought back from Tasmania, gives the room a dim glow. In it I move toward him, sit down on the bed.

Gabe's head turns toward me. His eyes go wide, and he shivers, like he's cold. “Daddy?” he says, like maybe he thinks I'm someone else. I try to answer him, but although I feel my mouth move, no sound comes out.

“Daddy!” he says again. “How come you're home from Alaska? Why do you still have your mountain clothes on? Are you all done climbing?”

Alaska, I think. The McKinley expedition. Of course.

I look down at myself and he's right. I'm wearing my black Marmot soft shell and my alpine pants. My gear's clipped around my waist, and when I look at my hands, I see my gloves. Snow coats the fabric. I look farther down and there are my mountain boots, complete with crampons. The bed is cold and wet where I'm sitting.

“The heat is broken, Daddy,” Gabe says. “I was going to fix it if you didn't come home.”

I think about that one for a second. It's June. It should be warm, no need for the heat. Gabe's right, though: It's not exactly cozy in here. Of course, that could be because I'm coated in ice and snow. Which brings me back to Gabe's question: Why am I sitting here on his bed, in full-on climbing regalia, in the middle of the night? How did I get here?

I have no answer for this question, which disturbs me mightily. Last thing I can remember, I was on McKinley, getting ready to lead that epic pitch. Then I was sitting in J. C.'s tent, listening to him talk to himself. But that was a dream, right? Surely it was a dream.

Maybe I am dreaming now. It's the only way to make sense of things. Unless—no. Oh, no. Surely not.

Here I am in Gabe's room, dressed like I was for the McKinley expedition.

J. C. couldn't see me, couldn't hear me. But I could hear him, apologizing, telling someone he'd miss them. He'd been crying. I've never seen him cry, not even when Ellis died.

I promised her I would come back. I swore it. I promised I'd never let her down.

I lied.

Gabe throws the covers off and crawls to the end of the bed. His teeth chatter as he throws his arms around me, Teddy clasped in one small fist. I try to hug him back, but my arms close on nothing. I am gone, falling alone into the dark and the ice and the cold. I rail against the darkness, I scream, I pray. It makes no difference.

It is June, but I am freezing.

Someone is shaking me, hard, their small fingers digging into my arms. “Mommy, wake up,” I hear Gabe say. “Wake up.”

I blink my eyes open, pushing my hair away from my face. “Gabe? What's wrong, honey? Are you okay?” I switch on the bedside lamp and see him standing there in his Batman PJs, hugging Teddy to his chest. His face is all screwed up, like he's trying not to cry.

Out of habit I glance over at Aidan's side of the bed, but it's empty; he's more than three thousand miles away, most likely leaving high camp right about now, if the itinerary he left for me and Gabe to follow has held true. With an expedition like this one, of course, you never know. So much depends on the wind, the visibility, the condition of the snow, on luck.

Or on whether the mountain will have you, I think, then shiver into the warmth of the room. J. C.'s prone to talking about the big peaks as if they've got a will of their own, a notion that Aidan dismisses as New Age bullshit and I find alternately enchanting and ominous. He says a prayer to the spirits of the mountain every time he climbs, for clemency.

“What's the matter?” I ask Gabe again, rubbing my arms to chase the goose bumps away.

“Daddy,” is all he says. His teeth chatter.

“Daddy what? Did you have a bad dream?” I open my arms and pull him onto the bed. “It's fine, I'm here. Don't worry.” I pet his hair, and he curls against me. “You're freezing, buddy. And your feet are wet. Did you have an accident?”

“No,” he says. “Daddy was here. In my room.”

“Don't be silly. You know Daddy's on Mount McKinley. You had a dream, that's all. But he'll be home soon.” I rub his arms to warm him up. Poor little guy. He's missing Aidan, I know he is. There's a Father's Day party next week at his preschool, right before they let out for the summer. I could tell he was disappointed that Aidan was going to miss it, even though he pretended that it was fine. “Just two more Tuesdays, right?”

I tell him, since we've been counting the days on the calendar until his daddy will come home.

He snuggles against me, under the patchwork quilt my mother made for us after we got married. “Mommy, something happened to Daddy on the mountain,” he says in his smallest voice. “He's not coming home.”

The certainty in his voice gives me chills, and I don't say anything for a minute. I can't; it's too close to what I've been thinking since Aidan told me about the McKinley trip. I thought we'd done a good job of keeping our disagreement from Gabriel. Obviously, I was wrong. “That's a terrible thing to say, buddy,” I say. “Why would you say something like that?”

Fear makes my voice tight, angry. But before I can apologize, Gabe starts to cry.

“I saw him in my room. He was all snowy. He left a puddle on the floor.”

I feel like a terrible person, taking my fear out on a four-year-old. “You had a bad dream, that's all. I know it's scary when Daddy's away. Mama gets scared, too. But your daddy's a good climber. He'll be home in just a little bit and then he won't be going away again for a long time.” I force myself to sound calm, like I know what I'm talking about. Madeleine the Oracle, that's me. Emotional Sherpa to the Discontented, as Aidan used to say.

He hides his face in my hair. “My room was cold,” he says into my neck. “I stepped in the puddle.”

I hold him away from me, looking into his face. He stares back at me, still and stubborn. “Gabriel, it was a dream. A nightmare. We'll call Daddy tomorrow and you'll see he's fine. You want to stay in here with me? You and Teddy can sleep right here, on Daddy's pillow.”

He shakes his head back and forth. Now he is crying in earnest. “Something's wrong,” he says. “Something bad happened to Daddy on the mountain.”

I am going to kill Aidan when he gets back. I am going to kill him. “Stop it, Gabe,” I say. “You can't know that. You had a dream, that's all. Sometimes they feel like they're real, but they're not. Daddy is fine. Nothing is going to happen to him. He told you that himself, before he left. Does Daddy lie?”

“He didn't lie,” Gabe whispers. “He just didn't know.” Tears drip down his chin and onto poor abused Teddy.

We regard each other in the light from the lamp. His eyes are wide. The house is quiet, save for his breathing, choky with tears, and mine, scared and quick. He shakes.

Then the phone rings, breaking the silence to bits, and everything goes wrong for real.

I move toward the phone with the eerie inevitability of sleepwalking. My feet stick to the floor with each step. Gabe has followed me, clutching his teddy, and he looks so tiny in the light from the hall. I want to protect him from this horrible phone call. But who will protect me?

“Hello?” I say, steadier than I feel. Maybe if I pretend this is a normal turn of events, that my phone regularly rings at two in the morning, everything will work out fine.

J. C. is on the other end. Even through the static of the satellite phone I can tell that his voice is laced with tears. “Maddie,” he says, and in that one word I hear the weight of the world.

“No,” I tell him. “No.”

“I am so sorry,” he says to me. Avalanche, he says. Unexpected. Missing. Search and rescue. Too long without air. Fast. I don't think he knew what hit him. Sorry sorry sorry so sorry. He says a lot more but I'm not listening. Instead I just see Aidan's face in front of me, feel his hands on mine. Come home, I say to him. Please come home. And then I say it aloud, into the receiver that I am clutching so hard my fingers hurt.

“You bring him home to me,” I tell J. C., as if an authoritative approach is what's called for in this situation. “Find him and bring him home.”

“I wish I could,” he says. Static crackles and flares between us.

“Please,” I say, switching tactics. “Please, J. C.” I don't know what sense this makes. After all, it's not like J. C. has kidnapped Aidan and is holding him hostage. But somehow I feel like if I ask nicely enough, if I beg, everything will be all right.

There is silence. Then through the static comes J. C.'s rough, ragged sobs. I have never heard him cry before, and it is that, more than anything else, that undoes me, makes me believe this is real. “He loved you, Maddie,” he says. And then the line goes dead.

I stand there in my dark house, gripping the phone. I don't know what I am waiting for—maybe for J. C. to call me back and tell me that this was all a mistake, that they have found Aidan and everything is fine. But the phone doesn't ring again. It's silent in my hand, an innocent-looking instrument of destruction.

Aidan, where are you?

Gabe is standing in front of me now, his teddy dangling from one hand. “Mama?” he says, looking at me with those blue eyes that are so much like Aidan's, it makes my heart hurt. I put my hand to my chest. How will I tell him that his daddy is dead?

But then I remember: He already knows.

My knees buckle and I sink to the floor, dropping the receiver. Gabriel kneels next to me and very carefully, he hangs up the phone. Then he goes into my bedroom and comes back with the quilt. It's way too big for him to carry, so he drags it along the floor behind him, a determined set to his lips. He tucks it around me, then steps back. His eyes are grave in his small, pale face. “Daddy's not coming home, is he,” he says, and it's not a question.

I shake my head.

Tears well up in his eyes, and I can see him fight them back. He is so much like his father, it frightens me. “What did Uncle J. C. say?”

I will my voice to come out steady. My heart feels as if it is frozen and broken all at once, splintered into small icy pieces in my chest. “Your daddy had an accident on the mountain,” I say, and wince at how it sounds. Saying it out loud makes it real. “There was an avalanche.” I pull the quilt tighter around me. “Do you know what that is?”

“When the snow all comes down at once. Daddy showed me on YouTube.”

Of course he did. “There was an avalanche on the mountain and your daddy couldn't get out of the way in time. He got stuck under the snow and he couldn't get out.” Goddamn it, Aidan, I think. Damn you for making me say this to our son.

Gabe's brows furrow. “Why couldn't Uncle J. C. find him?”

“I don't know, honey. Maybe there was too much … too much snow.” My teeth start to chatter. I told him not to go. I told him over and over. And now look what's happened.

Now the tears do break loose. They cascade over Gabe's cheeks, and his lower lip trembles. “But Daddy will be cold,” he cries. “He'll be cold under all the snow all alone.”

I try to respond, but for a moment I can't. I have a horrible visual of Aidan buried under snow and ice, trying to claw his way out, struggling for air until he has to give up. Hold on, I tell myself. Don't fall apart. Aidan wouldn't want you to fall apart. He'd want you to be strong for Gabriel. One of the shards of ice twists in my chest, and I gasp; but the pain is somehow what I need. It distracts me enough so that I pull myself together. “Daddy can't feel anything anymore,” I tell Gabe. “He can't feel the cold.”

“But where is he?” Gabe wails, and I know just what he means. I start to tell Gabe that he is in heaven, but then I hold back. Maybe they'll find him, I think. Maybe he isn't dead after all, really just missing. I think about all the times he rescued other climbers when no one else was willing to take the risk or bivvied on ledges so narrow he didn't dare roll over in his sleep, the way J. C. and Roma always said he was like a cat with ninety-nine lives instead of nine. He was so confident about this climb. Maybe too confident.

I open the quilt and pull Gabe to me. We rock back and forth on the floor, Teddy pinned between us. I lower my face into his hair, those dirty blond tangles that are so much like Aidan's. At least there is this, I tell myself. At least I have this.

“He was in my room,” Gabe says through his tears. He's got a handful of my hair and he's tugging on it like he used to do when he was a baby. It hurts a little, but I don't care. I need to feel something, anything, other than the jagged, ragged twisting in my chest. It's like I'm outside myself, like everything I feel is an echo of the real thing.

“Mommy,” Gabe says, pulling on my hair again. “He was in my room, for real. He sat on the bed. He had his mountain clothes on. The room was all cold, like it was winter. He left a puddle. If he's stuck under the avalanche, how did he get to be in my room?”

“You had a dream, Gabriel,” I tell him. A prophetic dream, to be sure, but a dream nonetheless. What is the alternative, that Aidan visited Gabriel before he went … wherever it is that he is now? And if that's the case, why didn't he come to me? Again the pain ripples through me. I draw a deep, sharp breath.
Strong,
I tell myself.

“It wasn't a dream,” Gabe says, stubborn as Aidan at his most insistent. “It wasn't. He was there.”

I can't argue about this, not now. “Okay, honey,” I say, stroking his tangled hair. “Okay.”

“I want Daddy,” Gabe says into my hair. He isn't whining. He's stating a fact.

“I do, too,” I tell him, rocking us back and forth. “I do, too.” It feels like a cold hand is gripping my heart and squeezing. I close my eyes and Aidan's face floats behind my lids, smiling his little half smile. I open them again and he is gone.

I know I should do something. I should call my mom, I should call my best friend, Jos. I have to call Aidan's mother and his sister, I realize with dawning horror. And what about his dad? I don't want to call anyone, I don't want to pass this news along. Right now it's contained within the four walls of our living room. I feel like the universe could still take it back.

The phone rings again. I wriggle my arm loose from the quilt and reach for it, hoping that it's J. C. calling to tell me he made a mistake, that everything is fine. But in my heart I know better. I reach for the phone, holding Gabe's small, soggy body against me with my other arm, and I hope against hope for a miracle.