The Memory Thief (5 page)

“Where is my family?” I ask her. “Why are you the only one here?”

“Well, your parents are dead. And you're an only child.”

“Whoa,” I say. “Rough. How did they die?”

“In a car accident. It was before I met you.”

“What about my friends, then?”

She smiles. “Oh, you have a lot of friends. Taylor and Jack are the ones you're closest to. I imagine they'll be here any minute, as soon as they get off work. I called them while you were talking to the psychiatrist.”

“What do they look like?” I ask.

“Taylor is tall and skinny, with short brown hair. And Jack is kind of a burly guy, with a goatee.”

No sooner does she finish her sentence than they burst into the room with identically huge grins on their faces. I hold a slim hope that I might recognize them, but no such luck. They stay until visiting hours are over, quizzing me, giving me bits of information about myself, chatting. It's late when all three of them leave, and I walk back to my room from the visitors' lounge and crawl into bed. I'm exhausted. Maybe when I wake up tomorrow, I will be myself again, my real self, with all the parts and pieces intact. In the meantime, I am incapable of processing any more information.

I watch TV for a while, an old episode of
The Twilight Zone.
But it cuts a little too close to the bone, and so I turn it off, along with the light, and lie there. After a while I drift in the direction of sleep. The world is comfortably, soporifically black, except for the sun that's beginning to rise in a brilliant display of color. The metal teeth are still attached to my boots—crampons, they're called; why did the name escape me before?—and they shriek as they bite into the ice. The cold air stings my lungs. Then comes the roar, the wall of white, the flight through the air, the pain. There is her face, well-known and well loved; there are his fragile bird's-wing shoulders. There is the fragment of poetry, delivered in that husky voice that is not mine.

That is the first night I wake on my hands and knees on the floor, slicked in sweat, my breath coming hard in my throat like it did on the mountain, like needles stabbing me. I cover my face with my hands, there on the linoleum floor of the hospital, and I cry like a child. I cry because I don't know who I am, sure, but I also cry because I am missing her, the woman with the long brown hair and the incredible laugh, the heart-shaped face and the pale skin, and him, the small boy who has his back to me. I miss the dark-eyed man, with his smile and his listening look. I cry because I know something is terribly wrong, that I am misplaced, somehow, lost in space and time. I cry because I don't know what is happening to me, or what will happen next. And then, with sudden grim resolve, I splash water on my face, put on a shirt from the stash Grace showed me, and make my way out of the room to find myself a cigarette. Because for someone who doesn't smoke, I am having a hell of a nicotine fit.

The morning dawns cool and clear, typical for late June. I sit at the kitchen table with my coffee, staring into the mug. Gabe gave it to me for Mother's Day last year; he painted it at one of those do-it-yourself pottery places, with his father. Aidan made me a little plate to match, with caricatures of him and me and Gabe. When you looked at the plate closely, you could see that all the faces were in the shape of hearts. Hidden in all the images, twined in our hair and our eyelashes, concealed in the folds of our clothing, was the message “Gabes
Mommy.” Gabe and I had made a game of finding all the words on the plate while Aidan sat across from us with one eyebrow raised, refusing to tell us how many we'd missed. “Where's the fun in that?” he'd said. “You just keep looking. I'll let you know when you're done.” And then he'd crossed his legs and started humming, just to piss me off.

My cellphone rings, and I glance at it. It's Jill Sutherland, one of the guides for Aidan and J. C.'s company, Over the Top Ascents. I know I should talk to her—this is the third time she's called in the past two days—but I just can't bring myself to answer. She wants to know how she can help, which is kind. The thing is, how can I tell her what I need when I don't know myself?

Jill gives up, and I go back to staring into space. Then the phone beeps again, a text this time. I pick it up. It's from Lila, my editor at Boulder's
Women's Magazine.
I had a piece due yesterday, a personal essay on the challenges of motherhood when your husband is a professional climber. I'd planned to write about how I missed Aidan when he was gone, but how his absence also gave me a sense of freedom and independence. As glad as I had always been to have him home, as relieved as I was to feel his arms wrapped around me, to know he was safe, it always took me a while to adjust to having him in the house, making decisions about Gabriel, talking to me when all I wanted to do was think. And as soon as I'd made the adjustment, he'd be off again, disappearing into the office with maps and charts, on the phone with potential sponsors, giving speeches and slide shows to raise money, and then getting on a plane. When he was gone, I felt like a single mother, or a military wife.

I'd told Aidan about the piece when I'd pitched it, and he'd put his head in his hands. “You're going to ruin me,” he'd said. “Feminists will attack me when I walk down the street. What are they gonna call it? ‘Selfish Asshole Abandons Family for the Sake of Personal Gratification and Athletic Glory'? Or did you have something more flattering in mind?”

“Do you not want me to write it?” I'd asked him, and he'd laughed.

“Write what you want, honey,” he'd said. “You put up with me, don't you? You're only telling the truth. Write whatever the hell your little heart desires.”

Needless to say, I haven't submitted the piece. Not only is it impossible for me to concentrate for more than two minutes at a time, but the subject matter itself is ironic to the point of tragedy, given the circumstances. Ever the responsible person, and operating in a state of shock, I'd emailed Lila to let her know what had happened and that I wasn't going to make the deadline. She'd emailed me back, called twice, and now she here she is, texting me.
Call me,
her text read.
I am v. worried about you.

I sigh and close my phone. Then I glance at the digital clock on the stove. With a start, I realize that the search and rescue team is due in any minute; Roma posted their flight information on Facebook yesterday, along with a bunch of photos. I tried to look at the pictures from the rescue effort, but every time I saw J. C., Jesse, and Roma standing together without Aidan, it broke me a little more inside.

The Facebook site is hard for me to handle. I'm overwhelmed by how many people knew Aidan, on how many people he'd left an impression. There are a ton of comments about his charisma, his determination, his talent as an alpinist and mountaineer, his excellence as a public speaker. People have written about what an excellent guide he was, what a good friend, how he was always up for a new adventure, how he'd try anything, how he was always the last guy to leave a party and the first one up in the morning. A couple of the filmmakers who worked with him, including Roma and his buddy Spy, have written about how he hammed it up for the camera, how he loved to be the center of attention and the more they focused on him, the wilder he got. Some of our close friends have posted comments about his talent as an artist, his patience as a father, his commitment to his family.

J. C.'s posting is one of the last, uploaded just before they left Alaska. He's written only, “Thanks for all of your support. It's been hard times out here. He will be missed. RIP A. J.” I stare at these few short lines, reading them over and over. J. C. is the master of understatement, and this posting is no exception. I know how much he has left unsaid.

The comments hurt, but the pictures are worse, somehow. I don't know where all of them have come from, but there are hundreds, a photographic chronicle of Aidan's adult life and career. Everywhere I look, there he is, halfway up a mountain with his ice axes dug in; perched on the edge of a cliff, grinning; swinging from a rope with his arms flung out wide. There are pictures of him and J. C. and Roma drunk at the Walrus, their arms around one another's shoulders, the night Over the Top Ascents first turned a profit; pictures of him and Gabe at the Spot, with Gabe hooked into a harness, making his way up a wall with Aidan belaying him from below, looking as proud as if Gabe had just memorized and recited
War and Peace.
There are pictures of him cliff diving in Hawaii and pictures of him fording a river in Thailand, the sharp end of the rope tied to his waist. There are pictures of him I've never seen, high up on some godforsaken peak with snow coming down on his jacket and his gear and his hood, only his nose peeking out, smiling like he couldn't be happier. There he is, summiting Annapurna with an orange oxygen mask strapped to his face, and then without the mask the next time he went up—
Just to see if I can do it,
he told me. His Patagonia videos are on there, too, and all the times Roma went along on expeditions to film him and J. C. There are pictures of the Shishapangma trip, with him and J. C. raising a glass to Alex Lowe, and pictures of him scaling Morocco's Taghia Gorge. And then there are recent pictures of him and me together, which I didn't expect to see, sitting on our back patio holding hands and looking happy, at a café in downtown Boulder. After I see those, I have to close the laptop and walk away.

The images have stayed with me, though, and the worst part about them is, they have set off some horrible kind of ricochet effect. I see him everywhere I turn—behind the wheel of his Jeep, having a beer with J. C. in the backyard, lying on the floor of Gabe's room, helping him build a Lego city. He's there, I swear it. Over and over I glimpse him in my peripheral vision, but when I turn to look at him, he's gone. When I close my eyes, pictures of him spool out, like a reel. It's like he's the only thing I can see, with my eyes and my imagination, too, like he's demanding my attention.

With Gabe around, I haven't allowed myself to sink into memories of Aidan; breaking down is an indulgence I can't afford. He isn't here now, though, and I relax into that thought like warm bathwater. I put my head on my hands and breathe deeply—in through my nose, out through my mouth, like we do in Vinyasa Flow. It's odd, but I can smell Aidan now, his earthy, woodsy scent, like leaves on the forest floor. If I concentrate, I can feel him standing behind me, his hands on my shoulders, bracing me. I lean back into the feel of his hands, the line of his body, and let myself remember.

The first time I saw Aidan James, he stopped my heart.

I mean this literally—not in a gushy, love-at-first-sight kind of a way. I was walking down a tree-lined trail at Wildacres Retreat in the mountains of North Carolina, obsessing about snakes, pondering the writing workshop I was about to lead, and wondering whether I should have worn different shoes, when I happened to look up and see a man dangling from a tree branch, about thirty feet in the air. All I could think was that he was going to fall to his death, and I'd be the only witness, haunted to the end of my days by his spectacular crash to earth. My heart stuttered in my chest. Staring up at the suspended figure swaying in the breeze, I screamed, a shrill, jagged sound that echoed off the trees, the ground, the not-so-distant mountains. And then I tripped over a log and landed on the damp, pine-needle-covered ground, scraping my palms and bruising my knees.

As I was collecting my breath and my dignity, I heard his husky voice for the first time. “You okay?” He sounded concerned, but I could tell he was stifling laughter nonetheless.

From my ignominious position on the forest floor, I glared at him. I couldn't make out his features very well from this far down. My first impressions were of his long legs, clad in beige cargo shorts, and his utter nonchalance. “Shouldn't I be asking you that question?”

He shifted his grip on the branch. “I'm absolutely fine. Why did you scream?”

Irritation loomed. “Why do you think?”

“Do you always answer one question with another?”

Great. He was psychoanalyzing me. “Are you always so impossible?” I snapped.

Now he did laugh, a full-throated sound that made me want to smile despite myself. “So they tell me.”

“Well, they're right.”

He did a chin-up. “Good to know.”

I got to my feet, brushing the pine needles off my jeans and wiping the dirt from my hands. “What are you doing up there, exactly?”

“What did you think I was doing?” His voice was dry.

Two could play at this game. “Deciding how to end your miserable existence, maybe?”

“Thirty feet off the ground? I'd probably just wind up with a bunch of broken bones and a concussion.”

I craned my neck up to judge the distance more clearly. “What are you made of, rubber?”

“Gumby is my alter ego,” he replied.

He was mocking me. Fabulous. “If your life's not in any immediate danger, then I guess I'll be on my way.” I gestured down the trail.

“Okay then. Nice meeting you. Thanks for stopping by.” He took one hand off the branch to wave at me. How could his arms not be tired? Was he part monkey?

“My pleasure.” I let a full measure of sarcasm flood my tone.

“Be careful,” he called after me as I made my way deeper into the woods. “You want to watch out for those logs. They can come out of nowhere.” He was laughing again.

As I wandered along, I contemplated the many ways in which I'd found him aggravating. First he'd frightened the hell out of me, then he'd somehow turned the tables so that I was the one who was taking her life in her hands, just by ambling down a quiet mountainside trail. (Although, when I thought about it, I had to admit that I'd taken a pretty spectacular wipeout right on terra firma, while he was safe and sound in midair, the bastard.) And then there was the laughing: You'd think that a grown man who decided to hang from trees like an orangutan would be a bit embarrassed about it, or least feel the need to offer an explanation—but not this guy. No, he'd made me feel like the crazy one, even had a good laugh at my expense, and then sent me on my way without so much as an apology for scaring me half to death and ruining my jeans. Yet somehow, I couldn't stop thinking about him.

I told myself that this was because he was so rude. Who wouldn't rehash such a bizarre encounter? I pictured myself back in Chapel Hill, telling the story to Lucy and Jos over lattes at Caffé Driade. They wouldn't believe it, either. I could hear Jos now: “You found him hanging from a
what
? And he had the nerve to laugh at
you
? The prick.” And Lucy, ever the lawyer: “I bet if he'd given you a heart attack, you could have sued.”

Bolstered by their support, however imaginary, I soldiered on until the trail looped around to where it had begun, depositing me in front of Wildacres Retreat's flagstone pavilion, with its spectacular view of western North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, which today were shrouded in clouds. Shaking off the memory of my brief encounter with Monkey Man—God only knew what bizarre convention of human beings had brought him here—I made my way to my room to change my clothes. I had a writing workshop to lead in an hour. Teenagers are a difficult audience at best, and this group, ten smart, savvy girls from the projects in Durham, was especially challenging. I'd hoped that my stroll would clear my mind and help me prepare for the class ahead. Instead, I felt more muddied than when I'd begun. Pulling on a clean T-shirt, I took a deep, cleansing yoga breath, grabbed my bag, and headed out into the mountain air.

In the end, my class went well, although it was challenging enough to demand all of my attention. The girls filed out of the room for dinner, and as I gathered their journals into my shoulder bag, the only thing on my mind was how to wrap up the class the next day: Would they be willing to read their pieces aloud? Should I combine their writing and photographs into a chapbook and send them copies when the retreat was over, or would they think that was stupid? Deep in thought, I bent to put the rest of the journals into my bag. I was straightening up when I heard his voice.

“Hey,” was all he said, but I'd been so far into my own little world that it startled me. I jumped about a foot, and the journals came cascading out of my bag. I hadn't expected to see anyone, much less a strange man who'd been hanging from a tree and giving me a hard time the first time we'd met. Maybe he was a lower primate and a stalker, all rolled into one alarming package. I glanced around for support and saw no one—my students were long gone, and everyone else had probably made their way to the dining hall by now. It was just me and Monkey Man, who looked like he was about to start laughing again.

“That's twice,” he said in that low, amused tone I remembered, crossing the floor in two easy strides to help me pick them up. “At least you didn't scream.” He joined me on the floor, where I was blushing a deep red and shoving the journals back into my bag as fast as I could. We started to stand up at the same time and nearly collided. He reached out to steady me, and that's when I got my first real look at Aidan James.

Then I was speechless, a rare occurrence. Close up, tree-boy looked to be in his late twenties, like me. Lean and muscled, he had wavy dirty blond hair, long enough that he had to brush it out of his eyes, which were a deep, saturated cerulean. They were set far apart, which worked with his high cheekbones. It didn't look like he'd shaved in a couple of days; blond stubble covered his cheeks and chin, but on him it was sexy instead of sloppy. His nose was long and narrow, like he'd just gotten off the
Mayflower.
But what got me the most was the light in his eyes, like he was in on a big secret and couldn't wait to share it. Energy radiated off him in waves. Even standing still, he seemed incredibly
alive
somehow. It was like nothing I'd ever felt.

He grinned at me. “Aren't you going to say anything?”

I realized I was staring, and ducked my head. “Oh. Sorry. I just—you scared me.”

“I know. Like I said, that's twice.” He handed me the last of my journals. “I came to apologize, but now I guess I owe you double. Can I take you to dinner?”

I gaped at him. “I don't even know your name.”

“Oh. How rude of me.” He extended his hand. “I'm Aidan James.”

“Madeleine Kimble,” I replied, shifting my bag onto my shoulder so we could shake. “Maddie.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, smiling away. His hand was warm. “So what about dinner? Care to join me?”

Everyone at Wildacres ate together in the main dining hall, and the meals were paid for in advance. I knitted my eyebrows. “Are you asking me if I want to sit with you tonight?”

“When you put it that way …” His smile faded to a little halfgrin, more of a smirk than anything else. “Yes, I guess that's what I'm asking, unless there's a little bistro around here that I don't know about.”

I regained my equilibrium enough to glare at him. “Very magnanimous of you.”

“It's the least I could do,” he said. “I'll carry your bag if you want.” He held out his hand for my shoulder bag. I pulled it away, and he chuckled. Just like last time, I had to fight a smile. What was it about this guy?

He took a step back and headed for the door without another word. At the doorway he turned, that smile lighting his face again. “We got off to a bad start, so I'm going to try again. Humor me.” He took advantage of my renewed speechlessness to knock on the open door, gesturing at me to respond when I stood, frozen, bag in hand.

“Come in,” I said, feeling like an idiot.

“Hey,” he said once more. “Sorry about scaring you before. I'm Aidan James.”

“Madeleine Kimble,” I said, for want of a better reply.

“Nice to meet you.”

I scrambled for something to say. “How did you know I was in here?”

“I was watching you teach.”

“You—what? From where?” It was a stupid question. The room had a wall of windows that opened onto the flagstone patio. I'd been facing away from them when I was working with the kids, and on the rare occasion that I'd turned around, I'd been way too absorbed in what I was doing to notice him.

“Don't be self-conscious. You're good at it. The kids like you.”

“You were spying on me,” I said, indignation clear in my voice. “That's creepy.”

“Sorry,” he replied, not sounding particularly repentant. “I figured you'd probably notice me standing there, given the enormous transparent wall and everything. If espionage was what I was after, I would've chosen a slightly more secluded vantage point.”

There was really nothing I could say to this without sounding like an idiot, so I didn't bother. He was right, it wasn't his fault I was so unobservant. Still, the thought of him on the patio, scrutinizing my rapport with my students and my teaching methods, wasn't exactly soothing. Stalker, I thought again, and wondered how I'd call for help if he decided to accost me.

It would be just like me to escape to a quiet mountain retreat, far from the proverbial madding crowd, and come face-to-face with a crazy person who wouldn't leave me alone.

My discomfort must have shown on my face, because he hurried on, in a more conciliatory tone. “So anyhow, I didn't mean to freak you out earlier, and I was wondering if I might be able to make it up to you at dinner tonight.”

“Well …” I began, and then trailed off. Did I want to go to dinner with this guy? On the one hand, he was superlatively gorgeous. On the other hand, he seemed to bring out my inner moron. Maybe I would just spend the evening making a fool of myself, and the subsequent hours kicking myself. I was a little too bruised for comfort already.

“How about if I say ‘please'? Please will you go to dinner with me, Madeleine Kimble?” He'd turned the full force of his blue eyes on me, and it was unsettling. There was an intensity to the way he looked at me that made me feel like he had me half-undressed already. Worse than that, I felt like he could see right through my clothes into what lay beneath—thoughts, feelings, desires and all. I squirmed.

“Pretty please? I promise to behave.” He raised one eyebrow, a trick I had yet to master.

I opened my mouth to reply but with no good idea of what I was going to say. What came out was this: “What were you doing in that tree?”

“Is our dinner date conditional upon my response?”

I revised my original opinion. Maybe he was a monkey, a stalker,
and
a lawyer—a crazy, tree-hanging, flirtatious-as-hell litigator. That seemed unlikely; he didn't look like the type of guy who spent a lot of time behind a desk, but hey, anything was possible. “I thought I was the one who answered one question with another,” I retorted. Banter was fine. Banter I could do.

“Fair enough. I'm a climber. I got bored. Also, it's good exercise.”

This was not the answer I'd anticipated. “Climber, like rock walls?”

“Climber, like Everest.” He was grinning at me again.

“Right.”

“You don't believe me? Would you like to Google me?” He was making a beeline for my laptop, still on the table behind us.

“You climb mountains?” It just figured.

“Mountains, glaciers, ice, whatever's around.”

“And trees,” I reminded him. “Don't forget trees.”

“Like I said, whatever's around.”

“You go around hanging from trees whenever you get bored?”

“Upper-body strength,” he said. “I'm not good at just sitting around.”

I stared at him, my arms folded, until he went on. “I got in last night, and I woke up early to go running, but then I had to give a talk to a bunch of folks for Outdoor Adventure Weekend. You know, owl prowling, orienteering, and me, your friendly neighborhood climber. So after that, I decided to blow off some steam.”

He'd just gotten here last night. That explained why I hadn't seen him around. I would've remembered, for sure. “Did you really climb Mount Everest?”

“If I say yes, does that mean you'll go to dinner with me?”

“Maybe.”

“Fine. You want the truth?” He shifted from one foot to the other. “I got three hundred feet from the summit and had to turn around. Weather. I'm going back in a few months to try again.”