I nod. “Your delusions were at their height.” I reach out my hand and rest it on hers. “I tried to tell you that I’d never look at another woman, but you wouldn’t believe it. This is another reason you’re on medicine now. Without it, you can get quite violent. And we can’t have you hurting Valentina.”
Her eyes go wide, and she shakes her head. “I would never hurt her.”
I give her a solemn look. “You say that now, but you’ve done things. We won’t speak of them now, since I promised you we wouldn’t mention them again, but it’s not a good idea for you to be around new people. Anything could happen.”
She’s crying now. “What am I supposed to do with myself all day while you and Valentina are gone? I’m stuck here all day. You won’t even get me a car.”
“You know it’s not safe to drive on your medicine. The last time you did, you almost hit a child. Right before you crashed into the wall and ruined your face.”
“What?” She looks horrified. Though she knows the story of the car crash, this is a new detail I am adding to the false narrative.
“Yes, we didn’t tell you at the time because you were too vulnerable. But I can’t withhold the information any longer if you’re going to start talking about driving again. You were so intent on hurting yourself that you didn’t notice a little girl on her bike and had to swerve into a fence to avoid hitting her. You didn’t stop but kept going and then . . . you know . . . you ended up quite smashed up.”
She swallows hard and looks at her mug.
I pull out a piece of paper. “You can do the things I’ve outlined here. I’ve left you recipes for soups, casseroles, breads. You can prepare healthy meals and start doing more for me and Valentina.”
She takes the paper from me wordlessly and scans it. When she looks back at me, I see an emotion I haven’t in a while. Anger. “You’re joking, right? You expect me to just stay in this house and cook all day?”
I snatch it back and glare at her. “You’re lucky I don’t—” I stop myself and take a deep breath. “You need to think about everything I’ve put up with. Your depression, your moods, your crazy temper. Maybe you’d be better off back in the sanitarium.”
The threat is enough to douse the rebellion in her eyes. “Julian, please. I need more than this. I’m going crazy here.”
I raise an eyebrow. “My thoughts exactly.” But I realize that she does need something more. She’s no good to me, and to Valentina, if she’s this miserable. “I’m sorry, let me think about it. We can talk more tonight, okay?”
She nods. “Thank you.”
A former patient of mine is the head librarian at the town library just down the road. I’ll tell Cassandra to apply for a job there. I’ll make sure she doesn’t get it, of course, but the process of applying should keep her busy for a while. She’ll appreciate the fact that I tried to help her, but won’t blame me for the fact that she’s not qualified enough. I’ll get the credit for the effort and get to play the hero. A role I very much enjoy.
In the meantime, I’ve hired a trainer to come and work out with her in an effort to get her back into shape. Even my devotion has its limits. I need her to be as close to the original Cassandra I married as possible.
??57??
Julian
Even though Cassandra seems fully assimilated, I did have a scare last week. We were watching a television drama that takes place in Florida. I intentionally suggested it, wanting to see if I’d been as successful as I thought in eradicating her memories of growing up there. After the first episode, there was no reaction, but in the next episode there was a scene at the beach, and she began to get visibly agitated.
“Turn it off!” she shouted, standing up from the sofa.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
She began to tremble. “I don’t know. The beach. It looks familiar. Something bad happened there.” She was pacing then.
“But you grew up in Maryland,” I reminded her, sticking to the backstory that mirrored Cassandra’s. “There are no palm trees in Maryland.”
“Maybe I went to Florida with my parents, or one of my foster families,” she suggested.
I needed to see how much she could remember. I went to her, took her hands in mine, and gently squeezed them. “Take a deep breath. Sit down and close your eyes. See if you can remember.”
She did as I asked. After a few moments, I prodded again. “Picture that beach. What do you see?”