Recursion(2)

“What does it feel like?” Barry asks, taking a clandestine step closer.

“What does what feel like?”

“Your false memories of this Vermont life.”

“I don’t just remember my wedding. I remember the fight over the design for the cake. I remember the smallest details of our home. Our son. Every moment of his birth. His laugh. The birthmark on his left cheek. His first day of school and how he didn’t want me to leave him. But when I try to picture Sam, he’s in black and white. There’s no color in his eyes. I tell myself they were blue. I only see black.

“All my memories from that life are in shades of gray, like film noir stills. They feel real, but they’re haunted, phantom memories.” She breaks down. “Everyone thinks FMS is just false memories of the big moments of your life, but what hurts so much more are the small ones. I don’t just remember my husband. I remember the smell of his breath in the morning when he rolled over and faced me in bed. How every time he got up before I did to brush his teeth, I knew he’d come back to bed and try to have sex. That’s the stuff that kills me. The tiniest, perfect details that make me know it happened.”

“What about this life?” Barry asks. “Isn’t it worth something to you?”

“Maybe some people get FMS and prefer their current memories to their false ones, but there’s nothing about this life I want. I’ve tried, for four long weeks. I can’t fake it anymore.” Tears carve trails through her eyeliner. “My son never existed. Do you get that? He’s just a beautiful misfire in my brain.”

Barry ventures another step toward her, but she catches him this time.

“Don’t come any closer.”

“You are not alone.”

“I am very fucking alone.”

“I’ve only known you a few minutes, and I will be devastated if you do this. Think about the people in your life who love you. Think how they’ll feel.”

“I tracked Joe down,” Ann says.

“Who?”

“My husband. He was living in a mansion out on Long Island. He acted like he didn’t recognize me, but I know he did. He had a whole other life. He was married—I don’t know to who. I don’t know if he had kids. He acted like I was crazy.”

“I’m sorry, Ann.”

“This hurts too much.”

“Look, I’ve been where you are. I’ve wanted to end everything. And I’m standing here right now telling you I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad I had the strength to ride it out. This low point isn’t the book of your life. It’s just a chapter.”

“What happened to you?”

“I lost my daughter. Life has broken my heart too.”

Ann looks at the incandescent skyline. “Do you have photos of her? Do you still talk with people about her?”

“Yes.”

“At least she once existed.”

There is simply nothing he can say to that.

Ann looks down through her legs again. She kicks off one of her pumps.

Watches it fall.

Then sends the other one plummeting after it.

“Ann, please.”

“In my previous life, my false life, Joe’s first wife, Franny, jumped from this building, from this ledge actually, fifteen years ago. She had clinical depression. I know he blamed himself. Before I left his house on Long Island, I told Joe I was going to jump from the Poe Building tonight, just like Franny. It sounds silly and desperate, but I hoped he’d show up here tonight and save me. Like he failed to do for her. At first, I thought you might be him, but he never wore cologne.” She smiles—wistful—then adds, “I’m thirsty.”

Barry glances through the French doors and the dark office, sees two patrolmen standing at the ready by the reception desk. He looks back at Ann. “Then why don’t you climb down from there, and we’ll walk inside together and get you a glass of water.”

“Would you bring it to me out here?”

“I can’t leave you.”

Her hands are shaking now, and he registers a sudden resolve in her eyes.

She looks at Barry. “This isn’t your fault,” she says. “It was always going to end this way.”

“Ann, no—”

“My son has been erased.”

And with a casual grace, she eases herself off the edge.





HELENA





October 22, 2007

Standing in the shower at six a.m., trying to wake up as the hot water sluices down her skin, Helena is struck with an intense sensation of having lived this exact moment before. It’s nothing new. Déjà vu has plagued her since her twenties. Besides, there’s nothing particularly special about this moment in the shower. She’s wondering if Mountainside Capital has reviewed her proposal yet. It’s been a week. She should’ve heard something by now. They should’ve at least called her in for a meeting if they were interested.

She brews a pot of coffee and makes her go-to breakfast—black beans, three eggs over-easy, drizzled with ketchup. Sits at the little table by the window, watching the sky fill with light over her neighborhood on the outskirts of San Jose.

She hasn’t had a day to do laundry in over a month, and the floor of her bedroom is practically carpeted in dirty clothes. She digs through the piles until she finds a T-shirt and a pair of jeans she isn’t totally ashamed to leave the house in.