Henry Cutter is your pseudonym. Only it’s a little more intimate than that. Henry Cutter isn’t just the name you put on the cover of your books, he’s the person you try to become when you’re writing. All those things going on in your head, all those dark things, you try to keep those in Henry Cutter’s head and not yours. When you’re in your office and some guy is having his arms torn off by gangsters, that’s Henry Cutter’s world. When you’re having dinner with Sandra or watching a movie with Eva, that’s Jerry Grey’s world. You keep the two worlds separate. Don’t worry—you’re not suffering from any kind of delusion where you really think you’re a different person, and the distinction may be subtle, but when you switch your computer off at the end of the day, you also need to be able to switch yourself off too. It didn’t used to be that way. In fact, the reason you do it is for your family. Sandra would often say you were distant, that often you weren’t there because your mind was chasing down loose ends, and she was right. You were always trying to figure out how Character A was going to survive what Character B had planned, and that made it very easy to slip out of the real world to pursue what was happening in the imaginary, made it easy to tune out of a conversation you were having with Sandra to make some mental notes. When you got published, Sandra helped come up with the pseudonym, and it was shortly after that she said, I just wish Henry could live his life in your office and we could have Jerry the rest of the time. That was when she explained to you what you were like. You can still remember that day, that hug you gave her when you promised her you were going to try what she just suggested, and guess what, F.J.? It’s worked. Henry Cutter is who you become when you’re wearing your “author hat.” There aren’t many professions where you spend all day imagining you’re somebody else. And right now you’re going to put that hat on, and let Henry take over.
Over to you, Henry.
It was a Tuesday when Sandra borrowed the diary. A Tuesday like any other for most people, but not for Sandra—this was her second Tuesday since learning her husband was leaving her, and she was going to spend it reading his inner thoughts. He was scared, she was pretty sure of that—hell, she was scared. By the end of next year she would be alone, perhaps even by the end of this one. She couldn’t help it, but already she was thinking of what she would do—would she move on? Would there be a mourning period for a man who was still alive but in many ways so far gone? Would she meet somebody else and start a new life? She didn’t know. And what if she did start that new life, and in five years’ time there was a cure and Jerry became Jerry again?
Coffee and a muffin. That was breakfast—not the healthiest, but she never had been the healthiest when it came to eating, which is why she hit the gym three days a week before work—four, if there was time—and time, she thought, was something she wouldn’t have much of while Jerry was sick. She would have to take time off work, which would be tough, as there were some cases ready to go to trial, but she would do it. She would do anything for Jerry. She was already taking time off to help Eva plan the wedding. She carried the diary and her breakfast outside. She sat at the table on the deck and sipped her coffee and started to read. Day One, the opening words, and there was Jerry talking to himself, Jerry sounding just like . . . well, just like Jerry. The neighbor’s cat had jumped the fence and was sitting on the edge of the deck, pausing from cleaning itself every now and then to stare at her. The coffee was too hot, so she let it cool, and soon it was forgotten. She carried on reading. And as she read, she found herself feeling sad for Jerry. And then she saw something that made her storm into the house. Jerry was still asleep. These last few days he’d been sleeping in every morning.
“Just what the hell is this?” she asked, waking him up. She was angry. She shouldn’t have been, but she couldn’t help herself.
Jerry looked tired and confused. “What? What’s going on?” he asked.
“This,” she said, and she tossed the journal onto the bed next to him, and the eyes, the two puppet eyes glued to the cover rattled in their shells.
“You’re reading my journal?”
“You asked me to.”
“Like hell I did.”
She paused for a moment, looking for the deception, but no, he wasn’t lying, he had woken with no memory of it. Is this how it was going to be from now on? Lost conversations where Jerry argues everything she says? “You asked me last night,” she says, wanting to get to the real issue here. “But what’s more important is that we have a gun in the house. How could you! And you think that what, one day you may use it on yourself?”
“You had no right to read any of it!”
“I have every right because you’re my husband and I love you, and I hate that this thing is happening to you, but it is, and I need to know what’s going on in here so I can help you,” she said, and she tapped the side of her head, but really she should have been tapping the side of his. It made her look like the crazy one. He looked distraught. He looked like a cornered animal. She needed to back down. “I’m worried about you.”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” he said. “Sounds more like you’re spying on me.”
“I’m not, and you asked me to read it,” she said.
“I would have remembered something like that. You’re using the disease against me. Is this what you’re always going to do now to get your way? Lie to me and tell me I said something when I didn’t?”
“I would never—”
“Get out,” he yelled, and threw the journal at her. It missed and hit the wall behind her. She had never seen him like that, and it frightened her. It worried her. She knew even before Jerry was diagnosed that no matter what the problem was, she would stay by his side. For always. That journal hitting the wall next to her—in that moment there was a flicker of doubt. She picked it up and ran out of the room.
By the time she got out to the deck, she was crying. Twenty seconds later Jerry was behind her. She turned towards him, but it wasn’t the Jerry from the bedroom, it was the Jerry she fell in love with, the one she met in university, the one who was in the Star Trek closet, the one whose side she would never leave. Beverly, the grief counselor, had warned them he could get like this. It was all part of the Alzheimer’s package. It was going to take time to adapt, but adapt she would. For him. For herself. For Eva.
“Jesus, I’m so sorry,” he said, and he put his arms out, and the one percent of her that wanted to push him away was drowned out by the ninety-nine percent that opened her arms to receive him. The flicker of doubt that had already disappeared was now well buried. “I’m just so . . . so messed up,” he said.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said, and they were words she’d heard herself using over the last few weeks, as if her saying them enough would make them come true.
“I want you to read the rest of the journal,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He disappeared inside to make breakfast while she stayed on the deck. When she finished she went back inside and found him in the kitchen eating a piece of toast and staring out the window.
“I want you to get rid of the gun,” she said, staying calm.
He turned towards her. “I’m not going to kill myself.”
“Jerry, please, I would feel better if it was out of the house.”
He nodded. He didn’t look like he was going to argue. “It’s under the desk in my office.”
“I know. You mentioned it in the diary.”
“It’s a journal. Not a diary.”
They walked together to the office, and she stood aside as he pushed the desk towards the window. He took a screwdriver out of his desk drawer and used it to pry up a loose floorboard. When he reached into the cavity he went right to his shoulder. Then he started to move it around, searching.
“It’s gone,” he said, and he sounded confused.
“What do you mean gone?”
He pulled his arm back out. There was nothing in his hand. “It was here, and it’s always here, but now it isn’t.” He looked rattled. “I don’t . . . I don’t know where it is,” he said. It looked like Jerry from the bedroom might be on his way back.