The Memory Artists

  In gentlemanly fashion, he helped her off with Norval’s coat, while discreetly observing what this revealed: a cropped fawn-coloured jacket, short jean-skirt, dark brown tights. He opened the closet door, clanged around nervously for a hanger. “I … I’m sure you can help, and I’ll pay you of course. I mean if you have the time.”

  “I’ll make the time. But that’s not … exactly why I’m here. Although I did want to tell you that—I will help out if I can, I swear.” She looked directly into Noel’s eyes after he had closed the closet door.

  “I believe you,” he said. The light in her eyes remained fine as pearl, but she was clearly distressed, underslept.

  “Did I get you out of bed, Noel? I’m really sorry …”

  “I wasn’t in bed.”

  “I feel so stupid, this is so embarrassing. The thing is, to make a long story short … I’ve had a really heavy load of courses and lots of expenses and I … well, couldn’t pay my rent. So I was kicked out, evicted. So I went to stay with this guy, this friend, but then his girlfriend, well she sort of … kicked me out. Tonight. In a jealous fit. At like, midnight. But I’ve got money coming in, a student loan, and Vorta owes me a bit and … JJ said you had a big house and … I mean, I could go to my mom’s now but … well, I was wondering if, just temporarily …”

  “I’ll show you your room.”

  In a room down the hall from his mother’s, Noel was carrying in fresh bedsheets when Samira emerged from the bathroom, an Arctic white towel wrapped around her, as in a Doris Day movie. “I took a whore’s bath, hope you don’t mind. I’ll go back tomorrow for the rest of my stuff. Like all my clothes. Do you have something I could wear to bed? It’s silly, I know, but I don’t feel comfortable … sleeping naked.”

  Noel glanced at Samira’s square neckline for a discreet microsecond, then at the skirt and tights she clutched in her hand. “Yes … of course, I don’t sleep naked either. Though I probably should, I’m so incredibly hot. I mean the house is … incredibly. The temperature … I’ll get you something.” He remained rooted to the spot, staring at the floor, visualising the patterns—plaid, pinstripes, fleur-de-lis—on his three pairs of pyjamas. Which ones would be most suitable? He darted out of the room as fast as Mercury, as if delay could be fatal.

  Samira, when he returned, was stroking away creases from the bottom sheet, leaning over the bed, still covered by the towel but only just. Noel looked at the ground and other unresponsive objects. Samira hadn’t heard him enter. When she saw him she straightened her torso and towel, eyed the tartan pyjamas. No, I meant a T-shirt, she was about to say. “Thanks, Noel. That’s perfect. Listen, this is just for one night, OK? I really don’t want to cause any problems for you … and your mom.” She took the pyjamas, opened Noel’s closet door and stepped behind it. As she was putting on Noel’s top she began to think about what she had seen in the bathroom. Not only the signs on the wall, but its general condition. It was a shambles, it hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. Like the rest of the house.

  Noel stood awkwardly by the door, wondering whether he should still be there.

  “Is your mother … here?” Samira asked, peering round the closet door.

  Noel nodded. “She’s sleeping down the hall.”

  “She won’t mind if I stay? Just until I find a place …” Samira stepped out from behind the closet door, holding the towel and pyjama bottoms. “Your mom’s getting worse, isn’t she. In the bathroom I noticed …”

  Noel could not believe what was happening, that Heliodora Locke was standing before him, dressed only in his pyjama top. Was it a mirage, a product of stress or sleep deprivation? A creation of some jinnı¯, formed in an instant and destined as quickly to dissolve?30 Had he been slipped one of his mother’s neuro-drugs or Norval’s hallucinogens? He closed his eyes and saw the opening scene from Zappavigna’s The Bride and Three Bridegrooms. A cor anglais playing merrily in the background …

  “Noel?”

  Water racing up sand, her beautiful voice, an orchestra of hues …

  “Noel, are you all right? Noel?”

  He opened his eyes, one at a time, and seemed startled by what he saw. “Sorry, I was just … spacewalking, a bad habit of mine, I really have to cut down. We were talking about …”

  “I asked if your mother was getting worse. The bathroom …”

  “Right.” He shook the film footage out of his head, replaced it with the signs in the bathroom, the handiwork of the Bath Lady. “I’m not the one who put those signs up. They’re really not needed. Or all the other crap either. My mom’s getting better all the time, she really is. JJ and I are … working on things.”

  “I’m just going to get under the covers. Why don’t you sit down?”

  Noel looked around for a chair. When he realised there wasn’t one, he sat down at the foot of the bed, tentatively, placing a very tiny portion of his rear end on the edge of the frame.

  Samira smiled, then looked deep into his eyes, a habit of hers. “You’ve been looking after her all by yourself, haven’t you. For how long? Months, years? Which explains why … which explains why you look so terrible.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, I meant why you look so … tired. It must be incredibly hard on you. Are you getting enough sleep?”

  “Of course I am. Well, maybe not always … sometimes it’s hard to get my eight hours.”

  “Eight? You look like you’ve been getting two.”

  “No no, I’m fine, really, sleep like a top. It’s just that JJ and I have been really busy the last few days. And when you get close to something, you get excited, and sometimes adrenalin keeps you up all night. I’m fine, really. I don’t need much sleep.” I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

  “You should take care of yourself too, you know. Not just your mother. Give yourself a break.”

  Noel nodded. “You sound like the Bath Lady.”

  “The who?”

  “The … the day nurse who comes in. Sancha.”

  “Well, you should listen to her. You have to take time out for yourself, you know.”

  There’s no time out, Noel thought, even when I’m in bed. Either my brain is still in the lab or my mother is burning a light into my eyes. “I try.”

  A lowboy beside the bed caught Samira’s attention, a fine piece but spotted and scarred. She reached over and traced a line in the dust on its walnut surface. “Don’t you have any relatives who can help out?”

  “Not in Montreal. But my uncle in New York has promised to help.”

  “How exactly?”

  “Well, he … he didn’t really say.”

  “Can’t you hire somebody?”

  “We have the Bath Lady, who comes in twice a week. We can’t afford anyone else.”

  “But … Norval said you were rich. And this house, it’s a palace. Or was.”

  “We used to be … comfortable.”

  “What happened?”

  Noel heaved a long sigh. He had never been able to tell anyone— including his relatives and best friend—what had really happened, the gory details. It would’ve been a filial betrayal.

  “You don’t have to answer that. It’s none of my business.”

  He looked deep into her eyes, boldly, for the first time ever. She stared right back. He barely knew her, but it didn’t matter. “What happened? Everything just seemed to … unravel, fall to pieces, when Mom took early retirement. Not right away. But after a few weeks of idleness—recuperating, I should say—she started acting a bit … strange. Out of character.”

  “What do you mean? Like forgetting things?”

  Noel paused. “She began giving all her money away. Or most of it. Writing out cheques to childhood friends, distant acquaintances, dubious charities … even beggars on the street. Not to mention every canvasser that phoned or knocked on the door. She fell for the usual telemarketing scams, about winning a Tahitian holiday or helping to free some political prisoner in Chad … It was very uncharacteristic of her. She used to
have a radar for that kind of thing.”

  “And that was when she began to have her … memory problems?”

  “Right.”

  “Couldn’t you have tried to get her into a part-time … help centre or whatever they’re called? Something subsidised?”

  Noel nodded, relieved to be able to skip some of the details. “Adult day-care. I did. A place called Sun Valley Assisted Living. I planned to drive her there and back every day. The first time she was waiting for me on the porch with all her luggage. Like she was going to stay there for the rest of her life. What she couldn’t fit into her suitcases, she’d stuffed into plastic bags and pillowcases. ‘Please don’t make me go there,’ she said to me, so softly I could barely hear her. ‘Couldn’t I stay here with you, dear? Just a bit longer? I’ll try to be better.’”

  “Oh my God. So what’d you do?”

  “I grabbed her bags, took them back upstairs, told her she could stay with me forever.”

  Except for JJ’s snoring, the house was still until dawn. In her troubled state, Samira decided to take the sleeping pills that Noel offered, two crude blue pills that looked home-made. She slept blissfully. Noel had taken the same pills, but tossed and turned until someone with a light entered his room.

  “There’s a man downstairs,” his mother said in his ear, her voice and hunter’s lamp quivering. “A big man with red hair. I caught him redhanded, making bacon and … those round things. Shall we call the police?”

  Noel squinted at her shaking hands, one almost entirely covered with blue-ink reminders, like tattoos. “No, Mom. He’s a friend of mine, you’ve already met him, he’s staying here.”

  “He’s got a knife.”

  “I’m sure he’s just—”

  Here a head poked through the door, a head with orange stick-up hair. “Morning, people. I thought I heard some voices. Morning, Mrs. B.”

  “You put quite a scare into my mother, JJ. She thought you were coming after us with the carving knife.”

  “Now Noel, I did not say that. I only said—”

  “That’s all right, Mrs. B. Entirely my fault. I’m the intruder. Takes some getting used to. Are you hungry? Feel like a good old-fashioned petit déjeuner québécois?”

  Mrs. Burun shook her head. Who is this man? “No, I … I’m not really hungry.”

  “I found another album of photographs, in with the recipe books. I was wondering if you’d take me through it. If you have time, that is.”

  Mrs. Burun’s aspect changed, as if she’d just recognised a childhood friend who had come over to play. “The album … in the kitchen? With the recipe books?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Some of those pictures are quite dear to me. They were taken by my mother, you see.”

  “Were they, now? I noticed a picture on the cover. A beautiful girl with curly blonde hair. By the seaside.”

  “Why, that’s … me.”

  “No!”

  “Let’s go down, shall we?” said Mrs. Burun excitedly. “Take a look? Did you manage to find everything in the kitchen …” Here she paused, trying to remember the gentleman’s name. She should know it, he’s been around here long enough … How many days, now?

  “Not everything,” said JJ. “I’ve been looking high and low for the tea strainer. I said to myself, JJ, you must be blind!”

  “I can’t find it either! I think somebody must have stolen it!” She turned to look at her son.

  Noel was now sitting up in bed, bleary-eyed. “I know where it is, I’ll just get dressed and—”

  “You stay in bed,” said JJ. “We’ll manage. I’ll bring your breakfast up later. In the meantime, get some sleep. Your mother and I have some things to do, don’t we, Mrs. B?”

  “Why, yes, I suppose we do … JJ.”

  After a long shoving-match with insomnia, his regular nocturnal visitor, Noel found himself onstage, a snow-blindingly white spotlight boring into his eyes. He put his hand up as a shield and squinted out at the audience. On one side he could make out, just barely, his mother’s face, and on the other, Norval’s. The spotlight shifted to something approaching from offstage: a chryselephantine horse-drawn carriage, spattered with mud. Inside was a bare-shouldered woman wearing a jewelled crown that sparkled with colours he had never seen before, colours not derived from the primaries. With great fanfare, a tuxedoed man with a microphone asked Noel to name the person inside the carriage. As it rattled closer, dark shadows fell across the woman’s face, but he recognised her anyway, because she was speaking. The meaning of her words did not register. “Time’s almost up,” said the quizmaster, who began to look like Dr. Vorta. Even though a correct response was worth thousands of dollars, Noel decided not to answer the question. “I don’t know who it is. I’ve never seen her before.” It was Heliodora Locke, the actress. He gazed at her as she passed, but she did not return his gaze. Her lustrous eyes were directed elsewhere, toward … Norval? As the carriage disappeared from view he could hear the rhythmic sound of a drumbeat—or was it horse’s hooves? Rat-a-tat-tat rat-a-tat-tat …

  “Noel?”

  He unglued his eyelids, listened. It was the sound of someone rapping on his door. “Mom, is that you?”

  “Can I come in?” The door slowly opened. “Sorry, Noel, but I thought it was time to wake you. And there’s a call for you.”

  Noel squinted into the semi-darkness. The jigsaw pieces of his dream lay scattered on the floor, which a beam of light from the hallway vaporized. “Is that …? What are you … right.” His heart began to churn. “Come in. Are you OK? Is my mother OK?”

  “Everyone’s fine.”

  “I’ve just been … what time is it?”

  On Noel’s writing desk Samira set down a covered stainless-steel platter, on top of which a portable phone was balanced. “Eight, eightthirty.”

  “In the morning?”

  “No, at night.”

  He sat up. “You’re not serious. That’s impossible … My God, twelve hours? Why didn’t someone wake me?”

  “Because you needed the sleep.”

  “I haven’t slept that long since … age two.” He stroked his cheek: stubble, almost a beard. He felt like Rip Van Winkle. “Is my mother all right?”

  “She’s fine, Noel, we spent the day together. But there’s a call for you.” She handed Noel the receiver, whose red battery light was flashing. “It’s Norval.”

  Noel rubbed his eyes, shook out cobwebs. “Can you … tell him I’ll call him back?”

  “Can he call you back, Nor? No? Tell him what? OK, fine. Ciao.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said fuck you very much, and that he can’t make tomorrow’s ‘classic mat’? Does that make any sense?”

  “Yes. Is my mom OK?”

  “Noel, your mother’s fine, relax. You’ve got other people—employees— working for you now.”

  “I do? Oh, right. And how about you? Everything OK? Accommodations satisfactory?”

  “Couldn’t be better. Can I turn this on?” She nodded towards his bed lamp.

  Noel yawned widely, like a lion. “Yes, go ahead. I can’t believe I—”

  “Are you hungry? No, don’t get up.” She watched Noel out of the corner of her eye, amused. “Do you always sleep with your clothes on?”

  “No, I … I must’ve been really tired.” He leaned back against the headboard and stretched his arms, while surreptitiously smelling his armpits.

  “Move over.” Samira set the platter on the side of the bed then dramatically opened the lid: poached eggs, home fries, sausages, grilled tomatoes, two crumpets, orange juice and a Dresden blue pot of tea, its spout chipped in a way that had been familiar to him for years. “Your mom said you like breakfast at night sometimes. I wish I could say I made it for you.”

  “JJ?”

  “Your mom.”

  “Really? Fantastic. She hasn’t done that in … a while.” He examined the items on the platter. Everything was done the way he like
d—the finest of membranes on the yolk, a well-done crispness to the potatoes … His mother used to remember things like that. She remembered everything about him, it seemed. Even as a child, it touched him that she bothered. “Where is she now?”

  “Playing Crazy Eights with JJ. While playing songs from the sixties— and singing all the words.”

  Noel smiled, then began a sentence he couldn’t finish. He started another. “I … really … you know, appreciate—”

  “Eat.”

  As Noel salted and peppered, Samira pulled the stringed tea bags from the pot and poured out two cups. Noel paused, his eyes at a level coinciding with her centre of gravity. He speared a cherry tomato and popped it into his mouth. A morsel of potato followed, then another, then half a glass of orange juice, then another tomato. With his mouth full he said, “Want some?”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  “Right.”

  “Have you always been so close to your mom?”

  Noel swallowed, then emptied his glass of orange juice. He was feeling good. Like a castaway he felt exhilarated talking to someone. “No, I was an idiot in my teens. Like most adolescents I ‘rebelled’—except how can you rebel against someone who devoted her life to you? In my twenties I wasn’t much better. Selfish and stupid. But I woke up. Just like that, mysteriously, like a voice telling me to return. The prodigal son. She never once reproached me either.”

  “‘How like a serpent’s tooth to have a thankless child.’ King Lear?”

  How sharper than a serpent’s tooth … “Right. Act one, scene four.”

  “No line number?”

  “Around nine hundred, I think.”

  Samira laughed. “That’s … phenomenal. I’ve heard a lot about you, Noel. All good. So tell me what you do for Dr. Vorta. Do you use your memory in … whatever you do?”

  Noel took two quick gulps of tea. “I just help him out with his research. And certain memory experiments. Part time. Whenever I can. He’s very understanding, very flexible.”

  “That’s good, since you already have a full-time job. Your mom. So is that what you took … I mean, what did you study at school?”