Forgotten by Catherine McKenzie
Chapter 7: Imagine the Possibilities
Africa again. Same dream, same smells, same wide-open sky.
Only this time? When my mother appears? She doesn’t warn me that the coughing, flushed guide who’s serving dinner is sick. Instead, she tells me to eat everything on my plate like a good little girl. There are starving kids in Africa.
And in that moment I know. My mother knows I’m going to get sick.
My mother wants me to get sick.
Emma? You awake?”
My eyes fly open. I expect to see Karen’s face poking through the tent flap, but it’s only Dominic, standing in the doorway in his striped pajamas holding a cell phone in the palm of his right hand.
“I think so.”
“Your phone keeps ringing.”
I sit up. My throat feels dusty, and my skin feels like it’s spent too much time in the sun. “Sorry, did it wake you?”
“I needed to get up anyway. Here, catch.” He tosses me the phone. It flies through the air in a perfect arc, landing in the blankets in my lap.
I look at the blinking message light and my heart starts to race. Please, please, please let it be Stephanie. I flip it open and look at the number. It’s local and familiar. A little too familiar. I dial into my voice mail, ready to be disappointed.
“Hi, Emma, it’s Matt. I’ve spoken to the Management Committee, and it’s looking good, but there are a few things I wanted to discuss with you. Call me at the office when you get this message.”
I close the phone and slump down.
“Bad news?” Dominic says.
“Good news, I think. About work.”
“Are you sure that’s good news?”
“I like my job.”
He gives me a skeptical look.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’ve just never met a lawyer who actually liked what she did.”
I throw back the covers and stand up. The cold seeps through my naked feet. “Well, now you have.”
“Who’d you want the call to be from?”
“My best friend, Stephanie. She’s gone looking for me.”
“Ah.”
I nod. “That about sums it up.”
“Coffee?”
“That’d be great.”
I stare at the phone in my hand. I never called Stephanie’s mother back like I promised I would. And maybe, just maybe, they’ve heard from her. I punch the buttons and get Lucy on the first ring. I’m not the only one anxious for news. She’s glad to hear from me, but she doesn’t know any more than I do. Of course they’ll call me the minute they know anything. I hang up with a hollow feeling in my heart. When I thought of coming home, all those months, I never thought I’d feel more alone here than when I was halfway around the world.
“Do you want eggs?” Dominic asks from the kitchen.
“Yes, please,” I yell back. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
I return Matt’s call, my heart fluttering. The rational part of my brain knows they must be willing to take me back, but its connection to the fears-and-irrational-thoughts part of my brain seems to be broken.
“Emma, thanks for returning my call,” Matt says in a cheery tone.
“Of course.”
“I’ve spoken to the Management Committee, and everything’s all set.”
“That’s great, Matt. Thank you.”
Did I just thank him for giving me an opportunity to make them hundreds of thousands of dollars every year? My pleaser complex must be in overdrive.
“We thought with it being Christmas, it would be best if you started in January.”
“Sure, I understand.”
“And we’d appreciate it if you’d do a bit of press in the interim.”
“Press?”
“We’ve had a request for you to appear on Cathy Keeler’s show.”
“You want me to go on In Progress?”
“That’s right.”
“But millions of people watch that show. Why does she want to interview me?”
“It’s a great story, isn’t it? Everyone thinking you were dead, you being on the ground during the earthquake, your triumphant return to work.”
I can hear the deep baritone voice-over already. When Emma Tupper set out on her fateful journey, burdened by grief, she hoped Africa’s beauty would heal her heart. She wasn’t expecting to fall afoul of illness and destruction . . .
I hate those goddamn shows.
“You really want me to do this?”
“It would be great publicity for you.”
Great publicity for TPC, more like it.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Trust me, Emma, the benefits could be enormous.”
Which means, of course, that I don’t really have any choice in the matter. Not if I want to start things off on the right foot.
“Right, I understand. I’ll do it.”
“Excellent. Her people will be calling you to set up the details for tomorrow.”
My stomach flips. “Tomorrow? Isn’t that a little soon?”
“There’s no time like the present.”
Sure there is. There’s the future, when I’ve had time to get some decent clothes and my hair cut, and I’m not quite so fragile.
I try to inject some confidence into my voice. “Sounds good.”
“Good luck. I know you’ll be great.”
We hang up, and I take a long look at myself in the mirror. My wheat-colored hair is six months past a haircut. My eyes have always been a little too round and far apart for my liking, and my face is thinner than it should be. My ordinary lips are still cracked from the sun, and the bridge of my nose is peeling. I look older than the last time I saw myself this clearly. As I stare and stare, I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly. My mother? Myself? The self before I became introspective and brittle? Well, she may have looked a lot like the girl in the mirror, but the person inside? The woman I was?
She’s missing, presumed dead.
I walk to the kitchen, needing caffeine but no longer hungry. I sip my coffee as I watch Dominic make scrambled eggs with chopped-up bacon and cheese mixed in like a professional. I can tell by the blue patch of sky out the window that it’s freezing outside.
He serves me a large helping along with the newspaper. “Look who made the front page.”
I look at it with trepidation. The headline reads MISSING LAWYER RETURNS UNSCATHED. There’s a TPC publicity shot of me staring at the camera with my arms crossed over my chest, a small smile playing on my lips. I look . . . ferocious.
“You’re famous,” Dominic says.
“I see that.”
I put the newspaper down and start eating my eggs. They taste great, but my mind is preoccupied with the lingering disorientation the Dream always leaves, and seeing my life become front-page news.
“What’s on the agenda today?” Dominic asks as he uses a piece of toast to shovel eggs into his mouth. “Christmas shopping? Skating on the canal? Making snow angels?”
I nearly choke on a piece of bacon. “Making snow angels? Do I look like I’m seven?”
He looks me up and down.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to guess your age.”
“This should be interesting.”
He squints at me. “Thirty-four and three-quarters.”
“What? That’s impossible.”
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
“How did you know?”
“I’m psychic.”
“No way I’m falling for that.”
He taps the paper. “It says how old you are in the article.”
I glance down at my serious face. It really wouldn’t hurt me to smile once in a while. Show a little teeth. “It says I’m thirty-four and three-quarters?”
“I just added the three-quarters part for kicks.”
“You get your kicks in some strange places.”
“Sue me.”
“Seriously? You know I’m a lawyer, right?”
“I’ve been trying to block that out.”
“Ha, ha. Anyway, you asked about my agenda?”
“Did I?”
“Yes. A few minutes ago, yes.”
“Well, then, I must’ve wanted to know.”
“You ready for this? My office just signed me up for a session with Cathy Keeler.”
His eyebrows rise toward his hairline. “You’re going to be on TV with her?”
“Tomorrow, apparently.”
“Jesus.”
“You think He can help me find the right outfit?”
He points his fork at me. “See, I knew shopping was in there somewhere.”
Really, Dominic, you don’t have to come with me,” I say as we walk down the frosty street toward my bank. I’m wearing Dominic’s old fisherman’s sweater and his ski jacket. It’s keeping out most of the wind that’s swirling a fine mist of snow around us, glinting in the sun. The sun seems to have seeped into Dominic too. He almost has a spring in his step.
“I don’t mind.”
“You must have something else to do. Photographs to take? Stew to make? Other damsels in distress to save?”
“No, no, and . . . no.”
“It’s becoming clear to me that you really had no life before I came along.”
He wags his index finger at me. “Watch it, honey. Watch it.”
We walk past a familiar store. That last time I shopped there, it was with Steph. We tried on every dress in the store, from too expensive to too-ugly-to-imagine-what-anyone-was-thinking. We mocked and exclaimed, and I bought three of them. I wore one to my mother’s funeral, a plain-black number that I’m actually glad I’ll never see again.
What the hell has happened to my life? One minute Steph is teasing me about not having enough room in my closet, and the next I can’t even reach her and I’m wearing a strange man’s clothing. I start to shiver, my teeth clacking loudly as tears spring from my eyes. They feel cold against my cheeks.
“What’s the matter?” Dominic asks.
What’s the matter seems so obvious to me, like I’m carrying it around outside my body, visible to everyone, that I almost laugh.
“It’s everything. Steph being where she is, and my career in the toilet, and not even having a picture of my mother, and . . . I have nothing. Nothing.”
Dominic reaches into his pocket and pulls out a Kleenex. I take it from him gratefully and wipe my eyes and nose. Given the amount of crying I’m doing lately, I really should start carrying a handkerchief, but that feels like admitting something about myself that I don’t want to. Weakness, maybe.
I bunch up the Kleenex and shove it angrily into my pocket. “Goddamnit! I wasn’t going to cry today.”
Dominic gives me a kind smile. “I think it’s a normal reaction, Emma.”
“Not for me. You don’t really know me, but this is not how I normally react to things.”
“How do you normally react?”
“I don’t know. Fiercely, I guess.”
“Well, you were pretty fierce with Pedro.”
“I was, wasn’t I?”
“I would’ve been scared if I were him.”
“Thanks.”
We walk in silence for a few moments. The snow crunches beneath our feet.
“You know,” Dominic says, “if everything in your life is fucked up, you can change whatever you want.”
“I guess.”
He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, ever since, well, you know. And the thing that keeps occurring to me, the only positive thing, is that I can start over. How many people have a chance to change something major in their lives without having to suffer the consequences?”
I give him a look. “You think I’m not suffering the consequences?”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I meant, and maybe this sounds silly, but, I don’t know, just imagine the possibilities.”
“Like what?”
He thinks about it. “You could change your job.”
“But I love my job.”
He smiles ruefully. “Will you work with me here?”
“Okay, okay. I get it. I don’t have to be me anymore, if I don’t want to be.”
“Exactly.”
“I guess that could be a good thing.”
“Trust me, it will be. Now . . .” He rubs his hands together. “You need some of that over-the-hip grandma underwear, right?”
A laugh bubbles out of me. “How’d you guess?”
Dominic sees me through the Catch-22 ordeal I have to go through at the bank to get access to my life savings, despite the papers Detective Nield gave me. (Sample exchange: “We need proof that you’re alive in order to reactivate your account.” “What are you talking about? I’m standing right in front of you.” “Our files indicate that you’re likely deceased.” “You’ve got to be kidding me.”) I consider going postal, but instead I go to my Zen place and explain my situation to the floor manager, branch manager, and finally regional manager, who, thankfully, read that morning’s paper. After several apologies, I’m issued brand-spanking-new credit and bank cards, and I feel oddly rich. Maybe it’s because I haven’t spent any money in over six months, but the comfortable number of zeros in my bank account puts me in the mood to shop.
I get rid of Dominic 1.5 stores later, partly because it feels weird to be picking outfits with a man I hardly know, but mostly because he has some pretty definitive opinions on fashion.
“Leggings are for schoolgirls,” he says as I eye a pair from Lindsay Lohan’s collection.
“Who made you the boss of my wardrobe?”
“Just looking out for you, honey.”
“I thought guys didn’t care what girls wore, unless it involved schoolgirl uniforms.”
“Mmm.”
“What?”
“Now I’m imagining you in a schoolgirl uniform.”
I take a whack at his arm. “Quit it.”
Dominic laughs and directs me toward Banana Republic, telling me that it seems more like my kind of store. He’s right, of course (my pre-Africa wardrobe was 85 percent Banana), but I act affronted. Didn’t he just tell me I could change anything about myself I didn’t like?
“But you like this store.”
“Did it say that about me in the paper too?”
“Nah, I can just tell.”
“You know what? I think I can take it from here.”
“You want me to go?”
“I think it would be best.”
“All right, but don’t come crying to me if you buy a bunch of things you’re never going to wear. And stay away from scoop necks. They make you look like a soccer mom.”
“Out,” I order.
I get home after dinnertime, full of food-court burrito and poorer, but with a good start on rebuilding my wardrobe. And not a scoop neck in sight.
Dominic’s slouched on the couch in the living room with his feet propped up on the coffee table. He has a pair of oversized headphones covering his ears, and his iPod rests on the couch next to him. I dump my packages in the hall and join him, taking a seat in the armchair that sits kitty-corner to the couch.
He slings his headphones around his neck. “Successful trip?”
“I bought five pairs of leggings.”
“A bold choice.”
“Whatcha listening to?”
“Mermaid Avenue.”
“What’s that?”
“Billy Bragg and Wilco singing Woody Guthrie songs. They took these old, unrecorded lyrics and added music.”
“Huh.”
“It’s really good. You should listen to it.”
I shrug. “I’m not a big fan of country music.”
He brings his feet to the floor and leans forward in a pose I recognize. He’s about to try to convince me of the error of my ways.
“It’s not country, it’s folk.”
“Mmm. Tell me. If I said that it’s all the same to me, would you freak out?”
“You’re not into music?”
“No, I like music. But not in that obsessive way most guys do. Like, I bet you know all the track names of the songs on this Mermaid Sessions thing.”
He grits his teeth. “It’s Mermaid Avenue.”
“You see what I mean? A woman would never get upset if you got something like that wrong.”
“Some women might.”
“Sure, right. If they were interested in you.”
“You’re saying women just pretend to be interested in things men are interested in?”
“This is news to you?”
“Kind of.”
I lean back on the soft cushions. “You like that famous photographer, right? What’s his name? You know, the black-and-white photos you have in your room?”
“You mean . . . Ansel Adams?”
“Yeah, him. Anyway, I’ll bet the women you’ve brought home have all told you how much they like those prints, right?”
He gets a funny expression on his face. “You don’t like them?”
“I find him a bit boring, to be honest.”
“Okay.”
“Sorry, is he a big influence?”
“You could say that.”
“What kind of photographs do you take?”
He fiddles with the headphones in his lap. “Whatever catches my attention.”
“Give me an example.”
“Well, recently, I’ve been in Dublin photographing the countryside being gobbled up by housing developments.”
“That sounds interesting.”
He perks up a bit. “Yeah, it’s actually turned out pretty well. I even found this family that’s still traveling around by horse and buggy. I got a great shot of them with the IBM campus in the background, just visible through the mist.”
“It’s pretty cool that you can make a living doing that.”
“I’ve been really lucky.”
“I’d like to see some of your stuff sometime.”
His mouth twists. “You already have.”
“No, I don’t think so. Oh. The boring Ansel Adams pictures?”
He winces. “So glad you repeated the ‘boring’ part. It didn’t quite kill me the first time.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“No, I do this. I try to make some stupid point and I end up being a jerk.”
“Don’t be hard on yourself, Emma. It’s been a rough couple of days.”