The Second Mrs Adams

He’d always prided himself on his ability to face a mistake squarely, learn from it, then put it behind him and move on.

That was the way he’d survived childhood in a series of foster homes, a double hitch in the Marines and then a four year scholarship at an Ivy League university where he’d felt as out of place as a wolf at a sheep convention.

So, why was he standing here, drinking a cup of the worst coffee he’d ever tasted in his life, replaying that kiss as if it were a videotape caught in a loop?

He made a face, dumped the contents of the pot and the cup into the sink, then washed them both and put them into the drainer. Mrs. Timmons, his cook cum housekeeper, would be putting in an appearance in half an hour.

Why should she have to clean up a mess that he’d made?

David opened the refrigerator, took out a pitcher of orange juice and poured himself a glass. You made a mess, you cleaned it up...which brought him straight back to why he was standing around here in the first place.

The unvarnished truth was that if he’d divorced Joanna sooner, he wouldn’t be in this situation. By the time she’d stepped off that curb, she’d have been out of his life.

He’d known almost two years ago that he wanted out of the marriage, that the woman he’d taken as his wife had been nothing but a figment of his imagination. Joanna hadn’t been a sweet innocent whose heart he’d stolen. She’d been a cold-blooded schemer who’d set out to snare a rich husband, and she’d succeeded.

Because it had taken him so damned long to admit the truth, he was stuck in this sham of a marriage for God only knew how much longer.

David slammed the refrigerator door shut with far more force than the job needed, walked to the glass doors that opened onto the tiny patch of green that passed for a private garden in midtown Manhattan, and stared at the early morning sky.

Corbett and his team of white-coated witch doctors wouldn’t say how long it would take her to recover. They wouldn’t even guarantee there’d be a recovery. The only thing they’d say was that she needed time.

“These things can’t be rushed,” Corbett had said solemnly. “Your wife needs a lot of rest, Mr. Adams. No shocks. No unpleasant surprises. That’s vital. You do understand that, don’t you?”

David understood it, all right. There was no possibility of walking into Joanna’s room and saying, “Good evening, Joanna, and by the way, did I mention that we were in the middle of a divorce when you got hit by that taxi?”

Not that he’d have done it anyway. He didn’t feel anything for Joanna, one way or another. Emotionally, mentally, he’d put her out of his life. Still, he couldn’t in good conscience turn his back on her when she didn’t even remember her own name.

When she didn’t even remember him, or that she was his wife.

It was crazy, but as the days passed, that had been the toughest thing to take. It was one thing to want a woman out of your life but quite another to have her look at you blankly, or speak to you as if you were a stranger, her tone proper and always polite.

Until last night, when she’d suddenly turned on him in anger. And then he’d felt an answering anger rise deep inside himself, one so intense it had blurred his brain. What in hell had possessed him to haul her into his arms and kiss her like that? He’d thought she was going to slug him. What he’d never expected was that she’d turn soft and warm in his arms and kiss him back.

For a minute he’d almost forgotten that he didn’t love her anymore, that she had never loved him, that everything he’d thought lay between them had been built on the quicksand of lies and deceit.

He turned away from the garden.

Maybe he should have listened to his attorney instead of the doctors. Jack insisted it was stupid to let sentiment get in the way of reality.

“So she shouldn’t have any shocks,” he’d said, “so big deal, she shouldn’t have played you for a sucker, either. You want to play the saint, David? OK, that’s fine. Pay her medical bills. Put her into that fancy sanitarium and shell out the dough for however long it takes for her to remember who she is. Put a fancy settlement into her bank account—but before you do any of that, first do yourself a favor and divorce the broad.”

David had puffed out his breath.

“I hear what you’re saying, Jack. But her doctors say—”

“Forget her doctors. Listen, if you want I can come up with our own doctors who’ll say she’s non compos mentis or that she’s faking it and you’re more than entitled to divorce her, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

“Nothing’s worrying me,” David had replied brusquely. “I just want to be able to look at myself in the mirror. I survived four years being married to Joanna. I’ll survive another couple of months.”

Brave words, and true ones. David put his empty glass into the dishwasher, switched off the kitchen light and headed through the silent house toward the staircase and his bedroom.

And survive he would. He understood Jack’s concern but he wasn’t letting Joanna back into his life, he was just doing what he could to ease her into a life of her own.

She didn’t affect him anymore, not down deep where it mattered. The truth was that she never had. He’d tricked himself into thinking he’d loved her when actually the only part of his anatomy Joanna had ever reached was the part that had been getting men into trouble from the beginning of time...the part that had responded to her last night.

Well, there was no more danger of that. He wouldn’t be seeing much of his wife after today. Once he’d driven her to Bright Meadows, that would be it. Except for paying the bills and a once-a-week visit, she’d be the problem of the Bright Meadows staff, not his.

Sooner or later, her memory would come back. And when it did, this pretense of a marriage would be over.

Joanna sat in the back of the chauffeured Bentley and wondered what Dr. Corbett would say if she told him she almost preferred being in the hospital to being in this car with her husband.

For that matter, what would her husband say?

She shot David a guarded look.

Not much, judging by his stony profile, folded arms and cold silence. From the looks of things, he wasn’t any more pleased they were trapped inside this overstuffed living room on wheels than she was.

What a terrible marriage theirs must have been. Her throat constricted. Dr. Corbett had made a point of telling her that you didn’t lose your intellect when you lost your memory. Well, you didn’t lose your instincts, either, and every instinct she possessed told her that the marriage of Joanna and David Adams had not been a storybook love affair.

Was he like this with everyone, or only with her? He never seemed to smile, to laugh, to show affection.

Maybe that was why what had happened last night had been such a shock. That outburst of raw desire was the last thing she’d expected. Had it been a rarity or was that the way it had been between them before the accident, polite tolerance interrupted by moments of rage that ended with her clinging to David’s shoulders, almost pleading for him to take her, while the world spun out from beneath her feet?

She’d hardly slept last night. Even after she’d rung for the nurse and asked for a sleeping pill, she’d lain staring into the darkness, trying to imagine what would have happened if that passionate, incredible kiss hadn’t been interrupted.

She liked to think she’d have regained her senses, pulled out of David’s arms and slapped him silly.

But a sly whisper inside her head said that maybe she wouldn’t have, that maybe, instead, they’d have ended up on the bed and to hell with the fact that the man kissing her was an absolute stranger.

Eventually, she’d tumbled into exhausted sleep only to dream about David stripping away her robe and nightgown, kissing her breasts and her belly and then taking her right there, on that antiseptically white hospital bed with her legs wrapped around his waist and her head thrown back and her sobs of pleasure filling the room.

A flush rose into Joanna’s cheeks.

Which only proved how little dreams had to do with reality. David had apologized for his behaviour and she’d accepted the apology, but if he so much as touched her again, she‘d—she’d—

“What’s the matter?”

She turned and looked at him. He was frowning, though that wasn’t surprising. His face had been set in a scowl all morning.

“Nothing,” she said brightly.

“I thought I heard you whimper.”

“Whimper? Me?” She laughed, or hoped she did. “No, I didn’t...well, maybe I did. I have a, ah, a bit of a headache.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” He leaned forward and opened the paneled bar that was built into the Bentley. “Corbett gave you some pills, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but I don’t need them.”

“Dammit, must you argue with me about everything?”

“I don’t argue about everything...do I?”

David looked at her. She didn’t. Actually, she never had. It was-just this mood he was in this morning.

He sighed and shook his head. “Sorry. I guess I’m just feeling irritable today. Look, it can’t hurt to take a couple of whatever he gave you, can it?”

“No, I suppose not.”

He smiled, a first for the day that she could recall, poured her a tumbler of iced Perrier and handed it to her.

“Here. Swallow them down with this.”

Joanna shook two tablets out of the vial and did as he’d asked.

“There,” she said politely. “Are you happy now?”

It was the wrong thing to say. His brow furrowed instantly and his mouth took on that narrowed look she was coming to recognize and dislike.

“Since when did worrying about what makes me happy ever convince you to do anything?”

The words were out before he could call them back. Damn, he thought, what was the matter with him? A couple of hours ago, he’d been congratulating himself on his decision to play the role of supportive husband. Now, with at least half an hour’s drive time to go, he was close to blowing the whole thing.

And whose fault was that? He’d walked into Joanna’s room this morning and she’d looked at him as if she expected him to turn into a monster.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he’d said gruffly, and she’d made a gesture that made it clear that what had happened had no importance at all...but she’d jumped like a scared cat when he’d tried to help her into the back of the car and just a couple of minutes ago, after sitting like a marble statue for the past hour, he’d caught her shooting him the kind of nervous look he’d always figured people reserved for vicious dogs.

Oh, hell, he thought, and turned toward her.

“Listen,” he said, “about what happened last night...”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“No, neither do I. I just want to assure you it won’t happen again.”

“No,” she said. Her eyes met his. “It won’t.”

“We’ve both been under a lot of pressure. The accident, your loss of memory...”

“What about before the accident?”

“What do you mean?”

Joanna hesitated. “I get the feeling that we...that we didn’t have a very happy marriage.”

It was his turn to hesitate now, but he couldn’t bring himself to lie.

“It was a marriage,” he said finally. “I don’t know how to quantify it.”

Joanna nodded. What he meant was, no, they hadn’t been happy. It wasn’t a surprise. Her husband didn’t like her very much and she...well, she didn’t know him enough to like him or dislike him, but it was hard to imagine she could ever have been in love with a man like this.

“Did Dr. Corbett tell you not to discuss our relationship with me? Whether it was good or not, I mean?”

“No,” he said, this time with all honesty. “I didn’t discuss our marriage with Corbett. Why would I?”

“I don’t know. I just thought...” She sighed and tugged at the hem of her skirt. Not that there was any reason to. The hem fell well below her knees. “I just thought he might have asked you questions about—about us.”

“I wouldn’t have answered them,” David said bluntly. “Corbett’s a neurosurgeon, not a shrink.”

“I know. I guess I’ve just got psychiatry on the brain this morning, considering where we’re going.”

“Bright Meadows? But I told you, it’s a rehab center.”

“Oh, I know that. I just can’t get this weird picture out of my head. I don’t know where it comes from but I keep seeing a flight of steps leading up to an old mansion with a nurse standing on top of the steps. She’s wearing a white uniform and a cape, and she has—I know it’s silly, but she has a mustache and buck teeth and a hump on her back.”

David burst out laughing. “Cloris Leachman!”

“Who?”

“An actress. What you’re remembering is a scene from an old movie with Mel Brooks called...I think it was High Anxiety. He played a shrink and she played—give me a minute—she played evil Nurse Diesel.”

Joanna laughed. “Evil Nurse Diesel?”

“Uh-huh. We found the movie playing on cable late one night, not long after we met. We both said we didn’t like Mel Brooks’ stuff, slapstick comedy, but we watched for a few minutes and we got hooked. After a while, we were both laughing so hard we couldn’t stop.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. We watched right to the end, and then I phoned around until I found an all-night place to order pizza and you popped a bottle of wine into the freezer to chill and then...” And then I told you that I loved you and asked you to be my wife.

“And then?”

David shrugged. “And then, we decided we’d give Mel Brooks’ movies another chance.” He cleared his throat. “It’s got to be a good sign, that you remembered a movie.”

She nodded. “A snippet of a movie, at least.”

“Anyway, there’s nothing to worry about.” He reached out and patted her hand. “Believe me, you’re not going to find anything like that waiting for you at Bright Meadows.”

She didn’t.

There was no nurse with a mustache and too many teeth waiting at the top of the steps. There were no dreary corridors or spaced-out patients wandering the grounds.

Instead, there was an air of almost manic cheer about the place. The receptionist smiled, the admitting nurse bubbled, the attendant who led them to a private, sun-drenched room beamed with goodwill.

“I just know you’re going to enjoy your stay with us, Mrs. Adams,” the girl said.

She sounds as if she’s welcoming me to a hotel, Joanna thought. But this isn’t a hotel, it’s a hospital, even if nobody calls it that, and I’m not sick. I just can’t remember anything...

No. She couldn’t think about that or the terror of it would rise up and she’d scream.

And she couldn’t do that. She’d kept the fear under control until now, she hadn’t let anyone see the panic that woke her in the night, heart pounding and pillow soaked with sweat.

Joanna turned toward the window and forced herself to take a deep, deep breath.

“Joanna?” David looked at the straight, proud back. A few strands of dark hair had come loose; they hung down against his wife’s neck. He knew Joanna would fix it if she knew, that she’d never tolerate such imperfection. Despite the straightness of her spine, the severity of her suit, the tumble of curls lent her a vulnerability. He thought of how she’d once been...of how she’d once seemed.

All right, he knew that what she’d seemed had been a lie, that she wasn’t the sweet, loving wife he’d wanted, but even so, she was in a tough spot now. It couldn’t be easy, losing your memory.

He crossed the room silently, put his hands on her shoulders. He felt her jump beneath his touch and when he turned her gently toward him and she looked up at him, he even thought he saw her mouth tremble.

“Joanna,” he said, his voice softening, “look, if you don’t like this place, I’m sure there are others that—”

“This is fine,” she said briskly.

He blinked, looked at her again, and knew he’d let his imagination work overtime. Her lips were curved in a cool smile and her eyes were clear.

David’s hands fell to his sides. Whatever he’d thought he’d seen in her a moment ago had been just another example of how easily he could still be taken in, if not by his wife then by his own imagination.

“I’m sure I’m going to like it here,” she said. “Now, if you don’t mind terribly, I really would like to take a nap.”

“Of course. I’d forgotten what an exhausting day this must have been for you.” He started for the door. Halfway there, he paused and swung toward her. “I, uh, I’m not quite certain when I’ll be able to get to see you again.”

“Don’t worry about it, David. This is a long way to come after a day’s work and besides, I’m sure I’ll be so busy I won’t have time for visitors.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

Joanna smiled. “Safe trip home,” she said.

She held the smile until the door snicked shut after him. Then it dropped from her lips and she buried her face in her hands and wept.

Until today, she’d thought nothing could be as awful as waking up and remembering nothing about your life.

Now, she knew that it was even more horrible to realize that you were part of a loveless marriage.

“Mr. Adams?”

David looked up. He’d had his nose buried in a pile of reports he’d dredged out of the briefcase he always kept near at hand until the voice of his chauffeur intruded over the intercom.

“What is it, Hollister?”

“Sorry to bother you, sir, but I just caught a report on the radio about an overturned tractor trailer near the tunnel approach to the city.”

David sighed and ran his hand through his hair. It wasn’t any bother at all. The truth was, he didn’t have the foggiest idea what was in the papers spread out on the seat beside him. He’d tried his damnedest to concentrate but that split instant when he’d seen those wispy curls lying against Joanna’s pale skin kept intruding.

“Did they say anything about the traffic?”

“It’s tied up for miles. Would you want me to take the long way? We could detour to the Palisades Parkway and take the bridge.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea, Hollister. Take the next turnoff and...” David frowned, then leaned forward. “No, the hell with that. Just pull over.”

“Sir?”

“I said, pull over. Up ahead, where the shoulder of the road widens.”

“Is there a problem, Mr. Adams?”

A taut smile twisted across David’s mouth.

“No,” he said, as the big car glided to a stop. “I just want to change seats with you.”

“Sir?” Hollister said again. There was a world of meaning in the single word.

David laughed and jerked open the car door.

“I feel like driving, Hollister. You can stay up front, if you like. Just slide across the seat and put your belt on because I’m in the mood to see if this car can do anything besides look good.”

For the first time in memory, Hollister smiled.

“She can do a lot besides look good, sir. She’s not your Jaguar by a long shot but if you put your foot right to the floor, I think she’ll surprise you.”

David grinned. He waited until his chauffeur had fastened his seat belt and then he did as the man had suggested, put the car in gear and the pedal to the metal, and forgot everything but the road.

He called Joanna every evening, promptly at seven. Their conversations were always the same.

How was she? he asked.

Fine, she answered.

And how was she getting along at Bright Meadows?

She said “fine” to that one, too.

Friday evening, when he phoned, he told her he had some work to do Saturday but he’d see her on Sunday.

Only if he could fit it into his schedule, she said.

His teeth ground together at the polite distance in the words. Evidently, she didn’t need to remember the past to know how she wanted to behave in the present.

“I’ll be there,” he said grimly, and hung up the phone.

Sunday morning, he went for his usual run. He showered, put on a pair of time-worn jeans, a pair of sneakers and—in deference to the warming Spring weather—a lightweight blue sweatshirt. Then he got behind the wheel of the Jaguar and drove upstate.

Halfway there, he realized that he was out of uniform. Joanna didn’t care for the casual look. She didn’t care for this car, either. She had, a long time ago. At least, she’d pretended she had.

The hell with it. It was too late to worry about and besides, it was one thing to pretend they hadn’t been about to get divorced and quite another to redo his life. He’d done that for damned near four years and that had been three years and a handful of months too many.

The grounds of the rehab center were crowded with patients and visitors, but he spotted Joanna as soon as he drove through the gates. She was sitting on a stone bench beside a dogwood tree that was just coming into flower, the creamy blossoms a counterpoint to her dark hair. She was reading a book and oblivious to anything around her, which was typical of her. It was how she’d dealt with him during so much of the time they’d been married, as if she were living on a separate planet.

It made him furious, which was stupid, because he’d gotten over giving a damn about how she acted a long time ago. Still, after he’d parked the car and walked back to where she was sitting, he had to force himself to smile.

“Hi.”

She looked up, her dark eyes wide with surprise. “David!”

“Why so shocked?” He sat down beside her. “I told you I’d be here today.”

“Well, I know what you said, but...”

But he hadn’t cared enough to come up all week. Not that it mattered to her if she saw him or not...

“But?”

Joanna shut the book and put it on the bench beside her. “Nothing,” she said. “I guess you just caught me by surprise.”

He waited for her to say something more. When she didn’t, he cleared his throat.

“So, how are things going? Have you settled in?”

“Oh, yes. Everyone’s very nice.”

“Good. And are they helping you?”

“Have I remembered, do you mean?” Joanna got to her feet and he rose, too. They began walking slowly along a path that wound behind the main building. “No, not a thing. Everyone tells me to be patient.”

“But it’s hard.”

“Yes.” She looked up at him. “For you, too.”

He knew he was supposed to deny it, but he couldn’t.

“Yes,” he said quietly, “for me, too.”

Joanna nodded. “I just can’t help wondering...”

“What?”

She shook her head. She’d promised herself not to say anything; the words had just slipped out.

“Nothing.”

“Come on, Joanna, you were going to ask me something. What is it?”

“Well, I know I’m not a doctor or anything, but—” She hesitated. “Wouldn’t my memory come back faster if I were in familiar surroundings?” He looked at her, saying nothing, and she spoke more quickly. “You don’t know what it’s like, David, not to be able to picture your own house. The furniture, or the colors of the walls...”

“You want to come home,” he said.

Joanna looked up at him. There was no mistaking the sudden flatness in his voice.

“I just want to get my memory back,” she said softly. “It’s what you want, too, isn’t it?”

A muscle flickered in his jaw. “It wouldn’t work,” he said carefully. “You need peace and quiet, someone to look after you. I’m hardly ever home before ten at night and even when I am, the phone’s forever ringing, and the fax is going...”

A cold hand seemed to clamp around her heart.

“I understand,” she said.

“Who would take care of you? I could hire a nurse, yes, but—”

“I don’t need anyone to take care of me.” Her voice took on an edge. “I’m an amnesiac, not an invalid.”

“Well, I know, but what about therapy?”

“What about it?” she said with sudden heat. “I don’t see how learning to paint by numbers or weave baskets is going to help my memory.”

David stopped and clasped her shoulders. He turned her toward him.