Page 65 of An Immaculate Deception

I stare in dismay. “No, that can’t be. That was two decades ago.”

“Maybe not.”

“What do you mean?”

“If the last thing she remembers is the carriage accident, then maybe it wasn’t such a long time ago to her. Maybe in her mind, it was only yesterday.”

39

I make him repeat himself several times, and each time it sounds more preposterous than the last. Mother has awoken from her slumber with severe memory loss. She has forgotten—“repressed,” he says—the past twenty years. My entire life. She thinks the fateful carriage accident of 1877 only just happened.

“But why?” I say. “Why did her mind return to that particular event?”

“People sometimes experience memory loss surrounding moments of great trauma. And I believe that carriage accident, and the subsequent loss of your father, was a massive trauma that split her world in two. Before that, she was a member of society, and after that, her life slipped into isolation and disgrace. With the loss of your father, her life changed dramatically for the worse.”

“But she remembers me. So she can’t have forgotten the past twenty years entirely.”

“Unless…” He rubs his chin.

“Unless what?”

He gives me a wary look. “I will venture a guess that you were named after your father?”

He raises his brows meaningfully.

A cold, oily feeling runs down my spine. “Are you insinuating that she’s confusing me with my father?”

“Do you remember the very first thing she said to you when she saw you? After calling out your name?”

I press my clammy palms to my temple, trying to think. My thoughts are in disarray, cluttered and jumbled. But then it comes to me. “She asked me how I was feeling.”

“Why would she ask you how you’re feeling? She is the one who has been sick, not you.”

I don’t answer. I wondered the same at the time.

“Because she thinks you were just in a terrible accident.”

“No.” I shake my head. “No, that can’t be right.”

“Did she address you as you would expect?”

My mind races, poring over every moment with new eyes. She greeted me. She said my name, but it is also my father’s name. She embraced me, but she could have done that to him as well. What’s concerning is what she did not say. She never asked why she was in a guest room rather than in her own room. She never asked about the yellow fever. She hardly even addressed me, which is peculiar. She kept glancing at me out of the corners of her eyes, as though aware of my presence but not fully at ease.

My vision blurs around the edges. Mother forgot me?

“Before you walked into the room,” Doctor Lobo says, “she had been asking about your father, how he fared in the accident. I was about to tell her that he died, but just then you walked in, cutting our conversation short. I didn’t manage to break the news to her that her beloved suitor had died. She appeared to recognize you, which didn’t make sense; she thought you were a baby in the womb. I thought perhaps her memories returned upon seeing you. But after you left to get water, she asked about her mother as though her mother was waiting for her to return home. It didn’t seem right. So I set up a test. I asked her about the president of the country. She knows nothing of Prudente de Morais or our civilian government. She doesn’t even know Brazil is a republic. She thinks it’s still an empire, as it was in 1877.”

A sinking feeling forms in the pit of my stomach. “Oh no…Then we must remind her.” I pick up my pace as we head to the casa grande. “We must—”

“Wait.” He is following behind me now. “It is never a good idea to attempt to force traumatic memories back into someone’s mind. Especially one who so recently emerged from this deep slumber. It can backlash, trigger an even greater shock. It is best to allow the memories to return on their own.”

“Are you certain?”

“There is a famous case study in the medical literature of a woman who, newly awakened from a deep slumber, was forced by relatives to confront traumatic memories she had repressed.”

“And?”

“She fell into a permanent stupor.”