The Memory Thief (10 page)

“We eat out here a lot,” Aidan said as we stood in the backyard, the last stop on his impromptu house tour. “Even I can handle grilling a burger without mangling it too badly. J. C.'s the grillmeister, though. He makes some sick marinades. Spicy as hell, and he never warns you, either. Just lets you dig in, and then laughs his ass off when your mouth's on fire.”

Understandably, this assessment of J. C.'s culinary character made me a little nervous when he offered to make dinner that night. As it turned out, though, I had nothing to worry about. He made a simple meal, but a good one—grilled chicken, Caesar salad, roasted potatoes—and while we ate, we talked. Aidan had already told me they'd known each other since their freshman year of high school in Pensacola, where both their dads were in the Marines. After they graduated, he'd taken off for Colorado, but J. C. had stuck around at University of Florida in Gainesville, where he'd majored in architecture.

“He tried to get me to come with him, but I told him no way,” J. C. said. I hadn't noticed it at first, but he had a slight southern accent that surfaced from time to time. When I asked, he told me his dad had been stationed in Georgia before they'd moved to Pensacola, which explained the drawl—and maybe the good manners, too. “I'm a southern boy at heart,” he said. “The cold's not really my thing.”

“So how'd you wind up here?” I asked.

“Oh, I came out to visit him on spring breaks and stuff, and he got me into climbing. Just small stuff at first, but then somehow he roped me into doing El Cap, no pun intended. I nearly killed both of us about eight times on that one, remember, A. J.?”

“Not likely to forget,” Aidan said. “Or forgive.”

J. C. shot him the bird. “Anyway, the summer after we graduated, A. J. moved out to Carbondale, which is about three hours from here. He went on and on about how great it was. I finally moved here just to shut him up. He tricked me, getting me to come up here when it was warm. I've been freezing my ass off every winter since.”

“Oh, you love it,” Aidan said. “Don't lie.”

“You call him A. J.?” I said to J. C. with surprise.

“Most people do. It's his initials, you know, like J. C. for me. I don't know, I've always called him that, since high school. Maybe I started a fad.” He took a bite of his salad. “Long story short, I thought I was just hanging out with this crazy dude for the summer. Then he got me hooked on the crags, and the rest is history.”

“How come you never told me that?” I asked Aidan.

“What? That I'm responsible for J. C.'s dirty little habit?”

“Damn enabler,” J. C. said, leaning back in his chair.

“Not that,” I said to Aidan. “That you usually go by a nickname.”

“Don't take it personally.” J. C. poured himself some water from the pitcher on the table and refilled my cup. “He's the original chameleon. Knowing A. J., he's probably got a third identity squirreled away somewhere. You know, in case of emergency, break glass.”

I started laughing, and Aidan rolled his eyes. “That's me, special ops all the way.” He speared a mammoth forkful of potatoes. “I knew you two would get along. You have the same messed-up sense of humor.”

“Great,” J. C. said. “You're dating a female version of me, except shorter and Jewish, instead of Italian. She even has brown hair and brown eyes. What do you know. You and I could've gotten together a long time ago, and saved ourselves a lot of trouble.”

Aidan crumpled his napkin and threw it at him. “Fuck you,” he said.

“Apparently, you wish you could,” J. C. said as he ducked out of the way. “Sorry, buddy. This ship has sailed, and it ain't going in your direction.”

The funny thing was, Aidan was right. J. C. and I got along well, from the start. He wanted to know all about me—where I'd gone to school, what I did, where I lived. And when I answered his questions, he listened and then asked some more. He figured out the way I liked my coffee and prepared it for me, unasked, with the attention to detail of a fellow caffeine addict. When Aidan had to go into the climbing gym on Saturday, J. C. took me to the farmer's market, laughing at the way my eyes widened—”They're bigger than your stomach, that's for sure,” he said after I loaded up on mango sticky rice, summer rolls, and chocolate croissants—and ate with me in the park, finishing my leftovers with gusto and regaling me with stories of some of his more insane exploits.

“I mean,” he said, stabbing a slice of mango with enthusiasm, “there I am, trying to ford this thing that's supposed to be a stream, but I've picked the exact wrong place, because it's just crazy rushing rapids. I'm tied into the rope, and I can see the other side, but I don't know how I'm going to make it across. My friend Nathan is on the bank, anchored to a tree, and I can hear him laughing his damn fool head off. I'm soaking wet, I'm freezing my ass off, and just when I think it can't get any worse, I hear a noise and I look up and there is an honest-to-God grizzly bear on the other bank, standing just where I'm going. She doesn't look happy about it, either. I look down, and I realize that I am standing right in the middle of this giant school of salmon, which is of course the bear's dinner. And I think, I am toast. I'm going to be the main course, and the salmon is going to be dessert.”

“What did you do?”

“What could I do? I had three choices: stand there and wait for the bear to charge me, or try to get across, toward the bear—which seemed like a really bad idea—or beat a hasty retreat. I chose option C.”

“And the bear?”

“I didn't wait around to find out. I grabbed that rope and hauled myself out of the water as fast as I could, and Nathan and I took off running. The bear didn't follow us. Too busy eating the salmon, I guess.” He smiled at me.

“You're nuts,” I said.

“I prefer to think of it as open to experience.” He lay back in the grass, his hands knotted behind his head, letting the sun warm his face. I sat next to him, thinking about how lucky I was to be there, sitting in the grass of this beautiful park with a full belly and good company, waiting for the guy I was dating to get off work so we could spend the afternoon together. I felt more complete than I had in a long time. It was a satisfying feeling. It was the beginning.

I'm jolted back to the present by the feel of icy water on my skin. I guess I've been in the shower longer than I thought. That's been happening a lot—I keep losing track of time, staring at the wall and discovering that hours have passed. Shivering, I turn the water off and wrap a towel around myself. Then I head into the bedroom to pull on jeans and a T-shirt. I even braid my hair.

When I walk back into the kitchen, feeling marginally more like a human being, J. C. is setting the table. “Feel better?” he says, folding a napkin in half.

“A little bit. Less salty, anyhow.”

“Sit.” He pulls a chair out for me, the same one I was using this morning, and I slide into it. “I moved your laptop to the counter so it wouldn't get messed up,” he says as he pours fresh coffee into a mug.

“Thanks. I was looking at the Facebook site, before you came.”

He's opened the refrigerator to search for creamer, so his back is to me. “And?” he says, his voice as neutral as he can make it. I wish I could see his face.

“It was pretty overwhelming,” I tell him. “Don't get me wrong, I'm glad so many people cared about him. I just don't know how I'm supposed to respond. There's so much … all the photos, and the videos, and the things people wrote. It's a lot to take in.”

He sets the coffee in front of me and pours a cup of his own. “I know what you mean. I could barely stand to look at it, myself. It was Roma's idea.”

“I could see that.”

“Here,” he says, bringing a series of small plates to the table: avocado, zucchini, red cabbage, shredded cheddar, limes, sour cream, chopped fresh cilantro. I had no idea this stuff was even in the refrigerator; my mom must have gone crazy at Whole Foods, in hopes that the magic combination would lure me into eating. J. C. extracts a stack of tortillas from the oven and sets them in the warmer with a subdued flourish. “Build your own burrito,” he says. “What do you think?”

I look at the array of items. Somehow, separated like this, they are less threatening, more appealing. “I think this is the only thing I could possibly consider eating right now,” I say, which is the truth. “Thank you.”

“No problem. I should probably eat, too. Alaska Airlines isn't known for its stellar cuisine.” He settles opposite me, coffee mug cradled in one hand.

“You've lost weight,” I observe.

“You know how altitude is. And that climb is one hard slog. Plus, after it happened … well, eating was the last thing on my mind.”

I don't say anything, just pull the plate of tortillas toward me. J. C. watches me without blinking. The circles under his eyes are dark purple, and I wonder again about the last time he slept. “Can I ask you something?” he says as I squeeze a lime over the avocados.

“Of course.”

“How did you know?” he says. He leans across the table, his chin propped in his hands.

There is no use pretending I don't know what he means. “I have no idea. It was just a feeling. I had it from the moment he mentioned going, and it just got worse and worse. But no matter what I said, he wouldn't listen. So here we are.”

“Huh,” he says. “Freaky.”

“Tell me about it.” I stab a slice of avocado with my fork, although my appetite has diminished as quickly as it revived. “And I've got more where that came from.”

“What do you mean?” He eyes me curiously.

“The night you called me, I was already awake. Gabe had a bad dream. He told me his dad was in his room, all snowy, is what he said, and when he left, there was a puddle on the floor. And the weirdest thing was, Gabe's clothes were all wet and cold, and not from pee, either. He was crying, and he told me that he thought something had happened to his daddy on the mountain, that he didn't think Aidan was coming home. I was trying to tell him it was just a dream, not to worry … but then the phone rang, and it was you.”

“No shit,” J. C. says.

“What do you make of that?”

He piles ingredients on his tortilla with studied nonchalance. “I don't know, Maddie. He probably heard you and A. J. fighting, and it morphed into some crazy subconscious deal that came out as a nightmare. The timing was bizarre, sure, but that's about it.”

“I guess,” I say, heaping sour cream on top of the zucchini.

“What's the alternative? That A. J. paid him some kind of goodbye visit on his way from this world to the next?” His voice is harsh.

I don't believe that myself. In fact, I've spent a fair amount of time arguing J. C.'s very point of view during the last two weeks' late-night sleepless sessions. But for some reason, I feel compelled to play devil's advocate. “Is that any weirder than my premonition, or whatever you'd call it?” I say, looking him right in the eye.

He shifts in his chair. “I guess not,” he says. “I don't know what to think. My brain is fried. Sorry if I offended you.”

“You didn't offend me,” I say, and my voice is as weary as his own. “I don't really believe Aidan was in Gabe's room, myself. I don't know what's wrong with me. Sorry I snapped at you.”

“No apology necessary,” he says, pushing the plate of cilantro my way. We eat our burritos in silence until Gabe and my parents come home.

After J. C. leaves, Gabe and I stumble through the rest of the day. My mom gives him a bath and reads him a story, while my dad stands around looking as if he'd rather be anywhere else. When they go back to the hotel, though, he hugs me hard. “I love you, Maddie-berry,” he says. It's an old nickname, one he hasn't used in years, and it makes me tear up. I tell him I love him, too. Then I go to bed. Almost immediately, I dream.

I'm at my old house, in North Carolina, standing on the porch, my key in my hand. It's about three months since my first visit to Boulder, and I've just gotten back from teaching a writing workshop for Duke's continuing education program. There were about eight people there, ranging in age from their twenties to their sixties, and all of them asked interesting questions. I'm feeling happy with myself as I get out of the car and walk toward my house, and it's a welcome feeling.

I haven't felt truly happy in a while, not since I went to see Aidan right before he left for Switzerland and caught him kissing someone else at the expedition's goodbye party. We haven't spoken since. He took off for the Eiger with J. C. and Ellis after that, and I came home to lick my wounds. I spent about a week closeted in my house, eating Oreos and cursing Aidan James. I interviewed people, I wrote articles, I met my deadlines, but as soon as I'd completed a task, I ran down like a windup toy whose key had completed its final revolution. At least I didn't tell him I loved him, I thought. That would have been really humiliating.

My closest friends, Jos and Lucy, made it their personal mission to dislodge me from the worst of my funk. After I unloaded the whole ugly story on them, they responded with appropriate best-friend gestures of sympathy. But neither of them is the type to wallow for long, and they weren't about to let me wallow, either. Over the course of the last eight weeks they've come up with a variety of alliterative names for what happened, including the Denver Debacle, the Boulder Blitzkrieg, and the Creepy Colorado Climber Cataclysm. Thanks to them, I've almost succeeded in having a sense of humor about the whole situation.

As I come up the steps, for once I am not thinking about Aidan. I'm thinking about my workshop, hoping I did a good job. Teaching absorbs a lot of my energy, no matter how much I love it, and I'm looking forward to kicking off my shoes and watching an old movie. I put my hand on the doorknob, about to insert the key. And then I freeze.

I've forgotten to lock the door, something that surprises me. Usually I'm pretty obsessive about it. I'm turning the knob from left to right, wondering if a serial killer is closeted in my bedroom, when the door opens. On the other side is Aidan James, and he looks terrible—skinny, unshaven, and like he's gone nine rounds in the ring. There are shadows under his eyes, and his lips are cracked.

Relief washes over me like a tidal wave, followed by fury that he'd have the nerve to show up like this after what he did, complete with an invasion of my personal space. I'm torn between wanting to kiss him, cracked lips and all, and wanting to punch him. Paralyzed, I do neither. We stare at each other in silence until he says, in a hoarse voice, “Sorry if I scared you. I had a key.”

When I don't reply, he has the good grace to look abashed. “And, um, I was afraid if I didn't use it, you wouldn't let me in.”

“That was a fair assumption.”

He moves aside so I can pass, and shuts the door behind him. Then he just stands there, wearing khakis and a blue T-shirt, looking more exhausted than I've ever seen a person look. There's a healing gash across his left cheekbone and another one on his forehead. More than that, the light has gone out of his eyes. They look glazed. I've seen Aidan a lot of ways—confident verging on arrogant, angry as hell, filled with enthusiasm about a new route or a great day. I've seen him focused and I've seen him when his mind is thousands of miles away, in the Himalayas or Aconcagua or some other godforsaken place that I can only imagine. But I've never seen him like this, wrecked and stricken, lost. I can't help it: I step closer and hug him. He feels insubstantial somehow, like he might vanish at any moment.

For a moment he doesn't move. Then his arms go around me, holding me so tight I can't breathe. He buries his face in my neck, takes two hitching breaths, and then he's sobbing. His knees give and together we sink to the floor. Through his tears I can hear him saying something over and over. It takes me a long time to realize he is repeating the same three syllables: “I'm sorry.”

There on the floor, I hold him, rock him like a child, stroke his tangled hair. I wait, a feeling of dread spreading throughout my body. For Aidan to disintegrate like this can only mean that something horrible has happened, something far worse than his little fling with the blond bimbo. I open my mouth several times to press him for details, but then close it again. I'm not sure I want to know.

After a while his sobs taper off and he pulls back. He won't look at me. Finally I put one hand on either side of his face and turn his face toward mine. Tears streak his cheeks, and without thinking I wipe them away. Before I can finish, he reaches out and grabs my hand. He holds it to his face and closes his eyes.

“Ellis died.”

“Oh no.” I picture Jim Ellis in my head as I last saw him, downing a Corona in Aidan's living room, playing air guitar like the world's oldest frat boy. Then I think about his wife, the way she'd compressed her lips whenever the conversation turned to the Eiger. “Poor Patty,” I say aloud.

“It was my fault.” Tears make their way out from under his closed lids, tracking down his face and dripping onto his T-shirt. He makes no move to wipe them away.

“What happened?” It's all I can think to say.

Aidan says nothing for a long time. His sentences, when they come, are jagged, as if he has to force each of them out one syllable at a time. “Ellis got sick—cerebral edema. It was bad. The weather turned on us, and we couldn't get a copter up there. No visibility. So I started lowering him and J. C. both down, together. Then the cornice I'd tossed our slings over came apart, and all hell broke loose. J. C. got knocked out and the two of them went right over the lip of a crevasse. My axe finally bit about ten feet from the edge. When J. C. got it together, he hauled his end of the rope up. It was totally shredded, like someone cut it with a knife. He climbed out, beat to shit—how he didn't break a limb is beyond me—and I rappelled down to look for Ellis, but he was just … nowhere.” He draws his knees up to his chest and puts his head down on his folded arms, as if telling me this has absorbed the last bit of energy he has.

It's a terrible story, and for a moment I can't think of how to respond. “I'm so sorry,” I say. “But it wasn't your fault, Aidan. How can you say that?”

“Ellis trusted me. His face, before I lowered him down—it was so scared.” His shoulders heave. “I should have been able to stop our fall earlier, before the rope got sliced. I tried. I swear I did.” He takes a shuddering breath. “Maybe I should've anchored into the rock instead of using the slings, to begin with. Or maybe the rope was just frayed when they went in, Maddie. Maybe if I'd anchored my axe and my blades in faster after we fell, gotten to the edge sooner, I would've been in time. I had a shitty time getting solid purchase, plus I'd lost half my gear when we went down and I had to improvise. I didn't want to fuck up twice. I wanted to be sure I had a bomber anchor going, or as much as I could, under the circumstances. But what if the anchor was fine to begin with, and the time I spent fucking with it cost Ellis his life?”

I scoot over to him and try to lift his head. No dice. “Aidan,” I say, trying to sound soothing, rather than how I really feel—enraged that this stupid mountain has robbed Patty Ellis of her loving, if obsessive husband; terrified that Aidan almost died, and that he might well be next; relieved beyond measure to have him safely home; furious for what he'd put me through. “I'm sure you did everything you could. Patty will know that. You're not Superman.”

“We called her when we got down,” he says into his arm. “I had to tell her. It was … the worst phone call of my life.”

There is nothing I can say to that, so we are quiet for a while. I rub his back through the thin T-shirt, trying not to let my mind wander. Still, I can't help but wonder how Patty felt when she got that call. No matter how Aidan had behaved, losing him that way would've destroyed me in more ways than I cared to admit—and I'd come pretty damn close, I realize now. I hold my hand still on his back, feeling the heat of his body through his shirt, and trying to reassure myself that he is here.

After a few long minutes, Aidan says, “We fell at least six hundred feet before I got my axe to stick. I thought I had it a couple of times, but it broke loose and there we went again. I could see the crevasse and I thought we were dead for sure. They were going to pull all of us down before I could stop it. I was going to die in a fucking crevasse on that goddamn mountain and you would never know what happened to me.” He pauses then and grips his knees tighter. His knuckles are white, and when his voice comes, it is quieter than before. “I wouldn't have ever had a chance to tell you how I feel or why I was so stupid. I hated that more than the dying, I think.”

He has my attention. My hand stills on his shoulder blades.

“There's no reason why that happened to Ellis. He's never had a problem like that at altitude before. But it happens, Maddie. It can happen to any of us. And Ellis, he was a family man. He was careful. Patty and the kids, they always came first. I have to be honest with you, I've never been like that. It's been me and the mountain and I've always pushed the envelope. I didn't have anything to lose. But now I have you.”

He lifts his head and twists to face me. “I know I fucked up, okay? I ran away before I even left. But I don't know how to be a good … boyfriend … and a climber. I don't know if the two are compatible. I don't know how to balance them.” He is still gripping his knees with one hand; the fingers of his other hand drum on his upper arm, faster and faster.

“Isn't that ironic,” I say. “You're right, you never promised me anything.”

“No. But I wanted to, and it scared the shit out of me.” His voice is level, but I can feel the effort it takes for him to keep it that way. I'm willing to bet that it takes a lot more courage for him to show me the real, unadorned Aidan James than it does for him to negotiate a tricky ice fall at seventeen thousand feet. Still, he keeps his eyes on mine and doesn't look away.

“Please say something,” he says.

“What did you want to promise me?”

He doesn't answer right away. He goes still, and his gaze turns inward, as if he has to steel himself for what he is going to say. I wait.

Finally he comes back to himself and takes my hands in his, like he did that first night at Wildacres. “Everything,” he answers.

I swallow hard.

Aidan traces his calloused fingers along my palms, following my lifeline to the place where it meets my wrist. He is looking at our hands when he goes on. “I've been with a lot of women, Maddie. I never tried to hide that from you. But us … it was different. It was something special. For the first time there was someone who I wanted to be with just as much as I wanted to put up a new route or stand on the summit. More, even. And the way you looked at me, I thought you might feel the same way. It scared me to death.” He circles my wrists with his fingers, then releases me and braces his hands on his knees. “So I ran. I fucked it up so I wouldn't have to figure out what came next, and I told myself I didn't care. Then I went up on the mountain and all hell broke loose. And then I couldn't lie to myself anymore.”

Happiness courses through me. Aidan hadn't cheated on me because he didn't care about me. He'd cheated on me because he cared too much. Then the ludicrousness of that concept dawns on me, and I become abruptly, completely furious. “What are you saying? You messed around with that slut to … what? Make me so mad I'd have nothing to do with you? You let me catch you on purpose?”

Aidan feigns sudden interest in the seam of his khakis. “It was a dick move. Obviously. I don't expect you to forgive me.”

Rage is winning out over sympathy as my dominant emotion. “No pun intended. If you're not after absolution, then why the hell are you here?”

He lifts his head. His eyes are a dark, deep blue, and the look they hold pierces my heart. “I love you, Maddie,” he says, his husky voice just above a whisper. “I just wanted to tell you that, in case it makes a difference.”

I sit, stunned. He might as well have hit me over the head with a crab mallet. “You what?”

“You heard me.”

I lower my head into my hands. “You are
so
fucked-up.”

“I know.”

At a loss, I leave my head buried in my hands rather than face him. What a mess.

“Please say something,” he begs.

“That's getting to be a familiar refrain,” I say to the inside of my palms. “Besides, I already did.”

“Tell me something I don't know then.” An edge of desperation creeps into his voice.

“You are emotionally retarded,” I mumble.

“Perhaps you missed my earlier request.” He tugs at my hands, trying to get me to drop them so he can see my face. “Maddie, please say something. If you don't love me, just tell me so I can stop humiliating myself and get the hell out of here. I'll go bury myself in a big dark hole and you'll never hear from me again.”

“And melodramatic,” I add, resisting his attempts to lower my hands. “Did I leave that one out?”

“For Christ's sake,” he says. He's starting to sound mad.

I drop my hands. “Say it again.”

“For Christ's sake,” he repeats, sounding madder than before.