The Elizas: A Novel(99)

This still doesn’t explain Eleanor’s return, either, or my strange wake-ups at her suite, and the powder she’d put in my drink the last night I ever saw her. But some days, those scenes feel embellished, too. Had there even been a drink switch? Maybe I just invented that scenario after the fact to justify what I’d done next. She was going to poison me, so I killed her.

Maybe I am a terrible, terrible person.

“So why did that bartender say another Eliza had been sitting next to me at the bar?” I ask Albert, once I gather my thoughts. “Who was he talking about?”

“That I don’t know. And maybe you’ll never know, either.”

“But I want to know. Clearly the bartender saw someone. What if she is still alive?”

He clicks his pen on and off. “I think it’s highly unlikely. There was a report about her death.”

The report was given to me a few days into the hospital stay, when I still refused to believe anything I didn’t remember was real. Eleanor Reitman, it read, aged 52, dies from tragic fall in Alhambra. There wasn’t much more to it than that. A lot of the story was about how traffic was tied up for a good portion of the night. The writer touched very briefly on the fact that Aunt Eleanor was a resident of the Magnolia Hotel and that the staff adored her, and that her memorial wishes state that a remembrance ceremony would be held at M&F Chop House. There was no talk of foul play. There was no talk of the legacy she left. No family was mentioned. It wasn’t a police report, either. There was no talk of a body being found. For all I know, my parents fed the writer every detail. And they could have said anything.

“But say you really did see her at the bar,” Albert goes on, “and say you’ve seen her lurking around, as you’ve said. What do you think she wants after all this time?”

I can’t believe Albert would ask such a silly question. “I guess to kill me.”

He stares into the middle distance. “Are you sure?”

I run my tongue over my teeth. I felt so sure of this at the hotel, during Dr. Roxanne. And I’m pretty sure I felt certain at the Tranquility when I saw her. But now that I have the whole story, it feels jumbled. “In my book, she said that if she was going down, I was going, too.”

“Right. So okay, she could be after you. But maybe there’s another emotion at play here. Maybe you keep seeing her because you secretly miss her.”

I stare at him.

“Come on. You admit that you still love her. And face it: for a long time, you didn’t know she was hurting you. You loved your time together. You modeled yourself after her. And then, suddenly, this whole alternative truth about her, this hideous truth, is revealed to you, unequivocally. And then she’s gone. Shortly after she left, it’s erased from your memory, so you don’t even have time to properly grieve and work through your feelings. There’s just this . . . hole inside of you. You never got to say goodbye. You barely got to voice your fury. You never got to hear her side of things, not really.” He sniffs. “I mean, come on. You want to, don’t you? Even if it’s manipulative bullshit. Even if it’s the craziest thing you’ve ever heard. There’s no shame in wanting to know her thoughts. And there’s no shame in missing her, either.”

I get a pang. It’s true. I do miss her. “But isn’t that a self-destructive feeling? If she did poison me, I should hate her. Not miss her. Not love her.” I take a breath. “And why did she poison me? How could she have done such a thing?”

“Control. She worried about you leaving her. It was a way of getting attention. And a way of keeping you close.”

“But I would have remained close to her. She was my favorite person in the world.”

Albert reaches for his teacup again. “Well, she was sick. I can’t explain Munchausen by Proxy. I don’t know what drives people to do it. What drives child molesters? What drives people who abuse their spouses? It’s a terrible thing. But you have to accept that that’s who she was, too.”

“I’m not sure I can accept that,” I say quietly.

“Well, then you’ve got to let her go.”

My heart squeezes tightly. Letting go doesn’t mean loving or hating, it means feeling nothing. How could I possibly get there? And more than that: there is a film reel inside me still running, unfinished. I could be fooling myself, but I can still sense Eleanor’s pulse. I can still hear her thrumming energy if I put my ear to the ground.

“She’s still out there,” I repeat to him. “She’s still looking for me. She still wants to settle the score. I can feel it.”

“Eliza, she’s not. It’s a symptom of your ripped-out memories. It’s your mind playing tricks on you. You’re seeing a ghost you’ve created. If you want to be a functional person in the world again, if you want to go on with your life and be happy, then you need to try and exorcise her. Exorcise this feeling that she’s after you because you’ve done something so terribly wrong.”

“So how do I do that?”

He taps his chin. “Maybe you should do what Dot does in the book.”

Albert eyes the copy on his shelf. It is definitely new as of today; I would have noticed it before. Several copies of The Dots have been circulating around the hospital; I’ve caught nurses, administrators, doctors, and patients reading it. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised Albert has a copy, but it’s still discomfiting to imagine him reading it.