For most of the boat trip to the island René remained in a quiet funk. But at one point she asked, “What if you take your little trip and convince yourself you saw Nick in the cottage that night? What do you have?”
“I already told you—the truth.”
“Bullshit. You’ll have a self-fulfilling delusion,” she said. “You’ve lined things up in your head so you can arrive at a predetermined conclusion—that Nick had something to do with your mother’s disappearance.”
“I’m counting on recognizing the difference between delusion and memory.”
“Yeah, and thirty percent of the patients on Memorine are conversing with people from their childhood.”
“But in their heads they’re back there.”
She shook her head in frustration.
THEY ARRIVED AT THE ISLAND AT about one-thirty and hired a taxi to take them to the Vita Nova. They had begun to descend the steps to the cottage when Jack felt a small shudder. Overhead the sky was a dark, roiling canopy of clouds. And in the distance they could hear the rumble of thunder accompanied by explosions of light in the clouds as if from an unseen battle at sea. The conditions were nearly the same.
They made their way down to the cottage without saying a word. The key was back in its plastic container under the flower box, and with it Jack let them inside.
In spite of his adamancy, he really had no idea whether this would work or how long it would take even if it did—or how long René would tolerate the experiment. But for the last several days, all the drug had done was turn his head into a kaleidoscopic run of dissociative past-time vignettes that had no connection to that night three decades ago. But the storm resonated in some deep place.
And Jack knew that the flashbacks needed just the right stimuli—like some of the old people on the Greendale ward hearing an old tune and suddenly they would be back in grade school. And although René might turn out to be right—that it was insane, dangerous, and probably a dead end—it was also a last-ditch effort to satisfy a festering unknown that he knew would not otherwise go away until his death.
Around three P.M. Jack took his first tab. By then René had resigned herself to the absurdity of the experiment and saw herself as simply on standby alert should Jack flip out. Over the next few hours Jack tried to make small talk with her. She gave halfhearted answers about where she was born, where she went to college, about her parents.
By six, Jack still felt nothing, so they made a dinner of pasta with a jar of store-bought sauce. At one point, while they were working in the close confines of the small kitchen, Jack turned to her. “René.”
She turned toward him from the stove where she was stirring the sauce.
“Why did you decide to come out here with me?”
The question caught her off guard. “To make sure you don’t hurt yourself.”
Jack could not help it, but as he took in those clear blue eyes and full and faintly disapproving lips, he felt a warm longing flood him. Here was a beautiful, desirable, and intelligent woman—the kind who dated famous brain surgeons, business execs, or movie stars—a woman who was so far above his league yet who had come all the way out here in the middle of a storm because she cared. Yes, maybe it was academic or out of some professional sense of obligation—but he didn’t want to believe that. And now he was sharing a very small space with her and enjoying it in spite of the bizarre circumstances. “That’s very nice of you.” And for a second he thought he was going to slip and lower his face to kiss her.
But a sudden sizzle cut the air.
“The pasta water’s overflowing.”
Gratefully, Jack snapped off the gas jet as foam poured over the sides of the pot. With a fork he snagged a strand of spaghetti and handed it to her. She blew on it, then tasted it. She nodded. “Perfect.”
As he poured the pasta into a colander in the sink, he said, “By the way, do you like Armenian food?”
“You mean like shish kebab?”
“Yeah, and pilaf, stuffed grape leaves, and lamejun, which is Armenian pizza.”
René was setting out the dinnerware and dishes. “I’ve never really tried it. Why?”
“I’m just thinking that once this is over, what do you say we give it a shot? I know a nice place in Watertown. They also have takeout.”
He could see that she clearly was not in the mood to talk about some future date. “We’ll see.”
Jack nodded and stored that away, glad that he had not yielded to his foolish impulse and spoiled the moment. Besides, he reminded himself, another reason she was out here was to vindicate her old friend and mentor, Nick Mavros, from the nuttiness of Jack’s experiment. But her “we’ll see” gave him hope.
With dinner, Jack took another half tablet. Still nothing happened, and the storm was getting closer.
After they ate, René settled on a couch with a book. She did not want to talk any more, sending the message that she was not a participant in Jack’s nutty experiment.
At eleven Jack took another tab—swallowing a whole pill to René’s protest. By one o’clock he still felt nothing but drowsiness. He put more logs on the fire.
Meanwhile, René sat with her book and sipped wine. Vials and syringes of antiseizure agents were lined up on the coffee table. Every so often she’d mutter how she couldn’t believe she was doing this. And on the other side of the coffee table Jack sat in another sofa, where the crib had been, and stared at the door.
After a while he felt a fluidy warmth spread throughout his brain. The lull of the rain against the roof and the fire conspired against him, and he closed his eyes as a delicious drowsiness settled over him.
He could hear the rain pelt the roof like BBs. And in the distance, a deep-bellied rumble of thunder.
On the coffee table sat a shiny metal meat mallet he had brought. Also, the photograph of him on a pony beside a statue of an Indian; his mother was holding him in the saddle. According to the faded ink on the back, it was taken on the Mohawk Trail when Jack was fourteen months old.
It was the last image in his mind as the warmth of the fire pulled him under.
He knew he must have fallen asleep, because sometime later he vaguely felt himself being lifted and carried to another room, which was dark and where he was laid onto a bed and covered.
“And here’s Mookie.”
And he felt something nuzzle up against his side.
“Ahmahn seerem.”
(How did René know Armenian?)
“His eyes are moving.”
“That’s good, he’s dreaming.”
“Jack, I’m right here.”
(Beth? I thought you were in Texas.)
“They’re just going to take some pictures.”
He could hear her through the door, on the far side of the living room. He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t work.
“You won’t feel a thing.”
Thunder rumbled.
“Almost there.”
(I’m coming. I’m coming. I’m coming … . )
He was in a deep sleep when he heard a knock at the door. His eyes cracked open, and through the space of the open door he saw René let in the visitor. “I thought you’d never make it,” she said in a low voice.
(How did René know somebody was coming out here?)
Jack saw the figure pass the opening of his door. Because of the storm, he was wearing a dark, hooded slicker that blocked his face. René closed the door and asked how he managed to make it in this weather, and he said something about the sea not being bad yet.