The Book of M. Peng Shepherd

meaningless biography of another person. He didn’t want to know that he learned how to sail in high school. He wanted to singe his palms on the rough rope, breathe salty air. He wanted to feel whether he had hated it or loved it.

      He should have clung to it, but he began to despise the name that was stated on his driver’s license. It was not him. It was someone else, whom he was never allowed to know but also not allowed to forget.

      The other patients could feel it. Small parts of them inside understood. They began to call him anything but that name. The newcomer. The young one. The car-crash lad. Most often, because it was not Alzheimer’s that stole his past but an accident: the amnesiac. The man—the amnesiac—loved them for it.

      Midway through the first week, Tilly, who at a hundred and three years old had the revered title of oldest person in the facility, grinned at him as she was wheeled past. “You have a visitor today, Hennykins,” she sang.

      “That’s not your Hennykins,” her nurse said gently. Hennykins was what she had called her youngest son, Henry, when he was a baby, when she remembered that she had a son.

      “Of course it is,” she said. She eyed the nurse. “Who are you, though?”

      “You actually do have a visitor,” Dr. Zadeh said, coming up behind him.

      A visitor? Someone had come to see him? The amnesiac stood speechless for a moment. It was a weightless, dizzy feeling. There was a person in the building who had known him from before.

      He didn’t know which way to walk, so he started walking in circles until Dr. Zadeh led him hurriedly to one of the community rooms. “Take it easy,” he said to the amnesiac kindly. “I’ll be right outside if you need anything, all right?”

      Inside, a middle-aged woman with shoulder-length blond hair jumped stiffly to her feet as the amnesiac closed the door behind himself. They both stood there, staring at each other. The amnesiac waited to feel the sensation that had been described to him as familiarity—a wave, a warm rush, a tingle, a lightning bolt. Nothing.

      “My God,” the woman said. She put a hand over her mouth.

      Oh, my eye, he realized. She must have known him when he’d had two. “Hello,” he finally said back.

      “How are you feeling?” she asked. She paused before she sat back down on the couch. She was trying to decide whether or not she should hug him, the amnesiac deduced. They knew each other at least somewhat well, then.

      “Very well, thank you,” he replied. He went to the armchair across from her. The next line came out automatically, more like a long musical phrase rather than distinct words, he had practiced it so many times. “I’m sure Dr. Zadeh told you, but I suffered neurological complications from my accident. Would you kindly tell me your name, and how we know each other?”

      “Um. Of course.” The woman shifted awkwardly and tucked her hair behind her ear. She was not pretty, the amnesiac decided. That was not the word he’d use. “My name is Charlotte. We went to college together.”

      “Oh, yes. I have a bachelor’s degree in history,” he recited. He watched her for another long moment. The way she had answered made it seem like not the full truth. Not a lie; just not everything. The flash cards said he did not have a sister. “Did you also study history?”

      “No, anthropology.” She smiled. “Very marketable.”

      “Did you become an anthropologist?”

      Charlotte laughed. “I’m in marketing. Data storage company.” She uncrossed her legs, crossed them again the other way. “You—you also didn’t end up becoming a historian,” she offered.

      “No.” The amnesiac nodded. “I went into law.” So were the facts.

      “Yes, I know.” She smiled.

      That excited him. “Did I enjoy law school? How did I seem there?” he asked.

      Charlotte pressed her lips together. “Well, probably no one enjoys law school—it’s a lot of studying, a lot of competition. But I think you enjoyed being a lawyer. You always seemed passionate when you talked about your job.”

      “I’m glad,” he said. That was very nice. He was happy he had liked being a lawyer. Charlotte pushed her hair behind her ear again and clasped her hands. It struck him then. Fixed. That was the word he would use. He meant it in the best of ways. He felt as though he was spinning around the world, unanchored, careening all the time. But for Charlotte, the world spun around her. He could feel it. She did not move an inch. She was the most fixed thing he’d found so far.

      “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” she blurted suddenly. “This was as early as—I didn’t know you’d been in an accident. Dr. Zadeh only called me last week. I guess it took them some time to work everything out off your driver’s license. Who you were, everyone you might have known.”

      “It’s all right,” he said. It really was. He hadn’t known to miss her at all.

      Charlotte tried not to fidget. She was trying to look at him intently without actually looking at him.

      “You can ask me anything,” the amnesiac said. “I don’t mind.”

      “So you remember nothing? Nothing from before you woke up in the hospital?”

      He shook his head. “The first thing I remember is a nurse. She was leaning over me, trying to adjust my IV bag, when my eyes opened.”

      “But you remembered what an IV bag is.”

      “Yes.”

      “And how to talk.”

      “Yes.”

      “Could you walk? And dress and eat?”

      “Well, at first everything was too broken for me to move. But once I healed, then yes.”

      Charlotte leaned back on the couch. “Huh,” she said to herself, mystified. “Huh.” The plate of cookies the facility staff had supplied for the visit sat untouched on the coffee table between them. He thought she might be about to cry.

      The amnesiac understood then what she wanted. Why her answers were true but incomplete. The answer was no. No, no matter how long she sat there with him, he would not suddenly remember her on his own.

      Dr. Zadeh suddenly appeared in a burst of starched cotton and papers. He was the way he was when on the verge of another idea to test on the amnesiac—excited, moving at double speed. He seemed to have forgotten that they were mid-visit, that Charlotte was even there. “Sorry to interrupt,” he managed at last, aiming a remote at the sleeping television in the corner of the room. He looked at the amnesiac as the screen blinked on. It was a festival of some kind, it seemed. At the center of all the colors, there was a man. A man with no shadow beneath him. “You have to see this.”

      THE AMNESIAC SAT BACK AND SETTLED HIS ELBOWS ON THE armrests. The chair was uncomfortably small. “Have I ever been on a plane before?” he asked.

      “Many times, I’m sure,” Dr. Zadeh said as he fastened his own seat belt.

      The amnesiac nodded, considering. The endless, low droning sound that filled the cabin of the plane made him feel like he was back in the hospital, hooked up to something. He wouldn’t notice it after a while, Dr. Zadeh had promised. “Have I ever been to India before?”

      “That you have not,” Dr. Zadeh replied. “The consulate didn’t have any record of previous tourist visa applications under your name when I filed for this one.”

      The amnesiac nodded. “Good.”

      “Good?”

      “This will be my first experience that hasn’t actually already happened before.” He smiled. “My first real memory.”

      THE FLIGHT WAS VERY LONG. BUT NOT AS LONG AS HE HAD laid locked into his broken body in the hospital. The amnesiac