After that first shared meal there was a difference. There were many differences. Never again did he undress before her or ignore the fact that she was not eating. He began to pay for little things—bus fares, lunches, and, later, to let her precede him through doorways, to take her elbow when they crossed streets. He went to the market with her and carried the packages.
He remembered his name; he even remembered that the ‘Hip’ was for ‘Hippocrates’. He was, however, unable to remember how he came by the name, or where he had been born, or anything else about himself. She did not urge him, ask him. She simply spent her days with him, waiting. And she kept the piece of aluminium webbing in sight.
It was beside his breakfast plate almost every morning. It would be in the bathroom, with the handle of his toothbrush thrust into it. Once he found it in his side jacket pocket where the small roll of bills appeared regularly; this one time the bills were tucked into the tubing. He pulled them out and absently let the tubing fall and Janie had to pick it up. She put it in his shoe once and when he tried to put the shoe on and could not, he tipped it out on to the floor and let it lie there. It was as if it were transparent or even invisible to him; when, as in the case of finding his money in it, he had to handle it, he did so clumsily, with inattention, rid himself of it and apparently forgot it. Janie never mentioned it. She just quietly put it in his path, time and time again, patient as a pendulum.
His afternoons began to possess a morning and his days, a yesterday. He began to remember a bench they had used, a theatre they had attended, and he would lead the way back. She relinquished her guidance as fast as he would take it up until it was he who planned their days.
Since he had no memory to draw on except his time with her, they were days of discovery. They had picnics and rode learningly on buses. They found another theatre and a place with swans as well as ducks.
There was another kind of discovery too. One day he stood in the middle of the room and turned, looking at one wall after another, at the windows and the bed. ‘I was sick, wasn’t I?’
And one day he stopped on the street, stared at the grim building on the other side. ‘I was in there.’
And it was several days after that when he slowed, frowned, and stood gazing into a men’s furnishing shop. No—not into it. At it. At the window.
Beside him Janie waited, watching his face.
He raised his left hand slowly, flexed it, looked down at the curled scar on the back of his hand, the two straight ones, one long, one short, on his wrist.
‘Here,’ she said. She pressed the piece of tubing into his hand.
Without looking at it he closed his fingers, made a fist. Surprise flickered across his features and then a flash of sheer terror and something like anger. He swayed on his feet.
‘It’s all right,’ said Janie softly.
He grunted questioningly, looked at her as if she were a stranger and seemed slowly to recognize her. He opened his hand and looked carefully at the piece of metal. He tossed it, caught it. ‘That’s mine,’ he said.
She nodded.
He said, ‘I broke that window.’ He looked at it, tossed the piece of metal again, and put it in his pocket and began to walk again. He was quiet for a long time and just as they mounted the steps of their house he said, ‘I broke the window and they put me in that jail. And you got me out and I was sick and you brought me here till I was well again.’
He took out his keys and opened the door, stood back to let her pass in. ‘What did you want to do that for?’
‘Just wanted to,’ she said.
He was restless. He went to the closet and turned out the pockets of his two suit jackets and his sport coat. He crossed the room and pawed aimlessly at the dresser scarf and opened and shut drawers.
‘What is it?’
‘That thing,’ he said vaguely. He wandered into and out of the bathroom. ‘You know, that piece of pipe, like.’
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘I had it,’ he muttered unhappily. He took another turn around the room and then shouldered past Janie where she sat on the bed, and reached to the night table. ‘Here it is!’
He looked at it, flexed it, and sat down in the easychair. ‘Hate to lose that,’ he said relievedly. ‘Had it a long time.’
‘It was in the envelope they were holding for you while you were in jail,’ Janie told him.
‘Yuh. Yuh.’ He twisted it between his hands, then raised it and shook it at her like some bright, thick, admonishing forefinger. ‘This thing—’
She waited.
He shook his head. ‘Had it a long time,’ he said again. He rose, paced, sat down again. ‘I was looking for a guy who… Ah!’ he growled, ‘I can’t remember.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said gently.
He put his head in his hands. ‘Damn near almost found him too,’ he said in a muffled voice. ‘Been looking for him a long time. I’ve always been looking for him.’
‘Always?’
‘Well, ever since… Janie, I can’t remember again.’
‘All right.’
‘All right, all right, it isn’t all right!’ He straightened and looked at her. ‘I’m sorry, Janie. I didn’t mean to yell at you.’
She smiled at him. He said, ‘Where was that cave?’
‘Cave?’ she echoed.
He waved his arms up, around. ‘Sort of a cave. Half cave, half log house. In the woods. Where was it?’
‘Was I there with you?’
‘No,’ he said immediately. ‘That was before, I guess. I don’t remember.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘I do worry about it!’ he said excitedly. ‘I can worry about it, can’t I?’ As soon as the words were out, he looked to her for forgiveness and found it. ‘You got to understand,’ he said more quietly, ‘this is something I—I got to—Look,’ he said, returning to exasperation, ‘can something be more important than anything else in the world, and you can’t even remember what it is?’
‘It happens.’
‘It’s happened to me,’ he said glumly. ‘I don’t like it either.’
‘You’re getting yourself all worked up,’ said Janie.
‘Well, sure!’ he exploded. He looked around him, shook his head violently. ‘What is this? What am I doing here? Who are you, anyway, Janie? What are you getting out of this?’
‘I like seeing you get well.’
‘Yeah, get well,’ he growled. ‘I should get well! I ought to be sick. Be sick and get sicker.’
‘Who told you that?’ she rapped.
‘Thompson,’ he barked and then slumped back, looking at her with stupid amazement on his face. In the high, cracking voice of an adolescent he whimpered, ‘Thompson? Who’s Thompson?’
She shrugged and said, matter-of-factly, ‘The one who told you you ought to be sick, I suppose.’
‘Yeah,’ he whispered, and again, in a soft-focused flood of enlightenment, ‘yeah-h-h-h…’ He wagged the piece of mesh tubing at her. ‘I saw him. Thompson.’ The tubing caught his eye then and he held it still, staring at it. He shook his head, closed his eyes. ‘I was looking for…’ His voice trailed off.
‘Thompson?’
‘Nah!’ he grunted. ‘I never wanted to see him! Yes I did,’ he amended. ‘I wanted to beat his brains out.’
‘You did?’
‘Yeah. You see, he—he was—aw, what’s the matter with my head?’ he cried.
‘Sh-h-h,’ she soothed.
‘I can’t remember, I can’t,’ he said brokenly. ‘It’s like… you see something rising up off the ground, you got to grab it, you jump so hard you can feel your knee-bones crack, you stretch up and get your fingers on it, just the tips of your fingers…’ His chest swelled and sank. ‘Hang there, like forever, your fingers on it, knowing you’ll never make it, never get a grip. And then you fall, and you watch it going up and up away from you, getting smaller and smaller, and you’ll never—‘ He leaned back and closed his eyes. He was panting. He breathed, barely audible, ‘And you’ll never…’