The Memory Painter: A Novel Page 19

  After he had boxed all the films, clothes, and books, he took Michael’s journal and placed it in a drawer for safekeeping. He thought about what his mother had said. Why had Conrad wanted Michael’s journals? He already had the formula.

  Bryan realized that he also knew the formula and fought to clamp down his excitement. He would think about that later. Right now it was time to join his mother and see her reaction to his paintings. He couldn’t put it off forever.

  When he walked in, he found her standing before the one painting Bryan had created before he flew to Newfoundland. It was Garnissa holding Anssonno after he had been born. He wondered what affinity she felt for the image, if any. Did her spirit respond to the likeness of a woman who had once been her mother?

  “So much talent. Where did it all come from?” Her face displayed a mixture of emotions as she took in the paintings. “You never stopped dreaming, did you?”

  It wasn’t really a question, but Bryan answered anyway. “No.”

  “I think I always knew. I just wanted to convince myself you were better, that you had found peace. Because I couldn’t help you find it. And that’s my job.” Her voice wavered. “I just didn’t want to put you in another hospital, another study. You told the doctors they had stopped.… I wanted to believe you when you said they had stopped. But I knew they hadn’t.” She broke down. “And you had no one to talk to. No one to believe in you. I’m so sorry.”

  “Mom, please don’t. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore—I couldn’t.”

  “But I still feel it in you. The turmoil.” As she said it her eyes traveled to the painting of the Egyptian goddess.

  Bryan examined it with her. The power of the portrait dominated the room. He looked closely at the goddess’s shrouded face. Her gaze seemed to be mocking him, her mouth parted as if to whisper secrets in his ear. He turned away from it and took his mother’s hand. “I can’t explain what happens to me. And no psychological analysis is going to make me better. You have to have faith in me and accept me as I am.”

  His words made her cry even harder. “I do love you. So much.”

  “I know. I’m sorry I haven’t made it easy for you.”

  He embraced his mother for the first time in years. She squeezed him back tightly, and they stood together for a long moment.

  She pulled away and clasped his arms. “I’m not going to pry. But I want you to know I am here. Anytime you need me, I will move mountains for you.”

  Bryan could feel the immense power in her—the power of a mother who would do anything for her child. He found his voice. “Thank you.”

  They both knew there was nothing more to say for now. Bryan walked her to her car and gave her another hug; he didn’t want to let go. Tonight had been a turning point in their relationship. Perhaps on some level she had known her son needed her—and that he needed to know Anssonno had never been lost.

  Bryan stood on the curb, long after her car’s taillights had disappeared, and let the tears run freely, purging all that ancient pain. He didn’t want to go inside. Emotionally spent, he sat down on a park bench across the street and stared up at the night sky. The stars tugged at him, and he remembered all of the moments he had ever looked up at their light. His thoughts veered toward Linz. She had turned his world upside down—a world already skewed to begin with. Where did that leave him now? Incapacitated on a park bench, apparently.

  He pulled his pan flute from his pocket and started to play. In their life in Petra, she could recognize his flute anywhere. He closed his eyes and let the notes take over, remembering.

  He was so focused, that he almost failed to hear the car pull up. It was Linz. He put the flute down and called out to her. “Nice night.”

  Startled, she turned toward him, searching for him in the dark. “Bryan?”

  He gave her a salute.

  She hesitated and crossed the street. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Stargazing.”

  Unable to look him in the eye, she hovered at the curb. “I’m sorry for driving off tonight.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  For a long moment, neither of them spoke. She stared at the flute in his hand and cleared her throat. “All your ‘dreams’ landed you in a string of mental homes as a child. You forgot to tell me that part.”

  “Who told you that? Your father?”

  Linz crossed her arms. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it’s true,” Bryan admitted. “I said I went through the therapist mill.”

  “In a state hospital for the mentally ill. You were diagnosed with schizophrenia.”

  “I’m not schizophrenic,” he assured her, trying to stay calm. “I was in a state hospital. I was in a lot of hospitals. My parents were desperate. It’s where you put kids when you don’t know how to make their nightmares go away. You had dreams. Is this really what you want to hear?”

  “But I never believed I was those people.”

  Bryan prayed for patience. Yelling at her would not help the situation. “I’m not crazy. Our meeting sparked something … awareness, memories. There’s a puzzle here, and we need each other to solve it.”

  Linz shook her head. “Michael—” She couldn’t believe she just called him that.

  Bryan waited for her to acknowledge what just happened.

  Instead she said, “I think it’s best if we stop seeing each other.”

  “You’re just afraid,” he replied, his voice flat.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are,” he insisted, standing his ground. “You know. Logically none of this makes sense and I sound crazy. But I’m not. On some primal level, you know I’m right.”

  “Look, I didn’t come here to do this.” Linz tightened her grip on her purse strap. “I just wanted to say good-bye in person. I thought you deserved that much.”

  “Do you have a pen and paper?”

  “What?”

  “Do you have a pen and paper?” He nodded to her satchel.

  She glared at him and crossed her arms.

  “I have to show you something.”

  Linz fished out a piece of paper and a pen and handed them over. “Show me what?”

  “Shhhh.” Bryan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He wanted to write what he saw in his mind but couldn’t. His hand wouldn’t move—something was wrong.

  Linz stepped back into the street. “Okay, look. I have to go.”

  “No, wait. I have to show you.” He stared at the page, willing himself to write so much his hand shook. In that moment he probably did look as crazy to her as she thought he was.

  “I’m sorry. This has to end.” She walked away and didn’t look back. Bryan knew he was about to lose her. He stared at the pen in his hand, and it came to him—Michael had been right-handed and he was left. Switching the pen to his other hand, he tried again. This time the pen flew across the paper.

  He heard Linz get into her car and tried to write faster.

  * * *

  Across the street, Linz slammed the door to her car and burst into tears. She knew it made no sense, but she was upset that Bryan had not tried harder to stop her from leaving. But didn’t she want to end it? So why was she crying?

  Swiping at her tears, she started the car and pulled out—and then yelped and slammed on the brakes as a hand slapped a piece of paper on her windshield.

  Bryan stood next to the car, out of breath. Linz squinted at the paper through the glass. What she saw was not possible: an incredibly complex chemical formula that would have taken her hours to comprehend. At a glance, she could make out various compound molecular formulas, notations for weights, melting points, isomers, and a full breakdown of pharmacokinetic parameters.

  She turned off the ignition and got out of the car. “You just wrote this?” She snatched the paper from him. “What is it?”

  “Renovo. At least it’s the original formula.” He waited while she studied the page.

  Linz hesitated and then reached
into the car and pulled the Renovo file from her briefcase. She started rifling through the pages.

  Bryan frowned. “What’s that?”

  “The project file on Renovo. I haven’t looked at it yet.”

  He gave her a quick summary. “It’s an experimental drug designed to generate neurons for a potential cure for Alzheimer’s. They found a way to stimulate the creation of massive amounts of neurons, which in turn formed new pathways for memory retrieval. They succeeded beyond their wildest imagination.”

  “And you know this because you created the drug?”

  “Just find the formula,” he told her. He had recognized Michael’s writing on several of the pages she had been sifting through. Somehow she had gotten a copy of the original file. He didn’t think it even existed.

  He identified the formula before she did. “That page.”

  Linz pulled it out. Turning on the car’s interior light, she studied both formulas: the one Bryan had written and the one Michael had written. They looked identical down to the last pen mark. “You’re saying you just wrote this? Right now.”

  He saw the skepticism on her face, along with something else—burgeoning belief—and shook his head with a smile. “God, you drive me crazy.”

  He reached across her and pulled another piece of paper from her bag and wrote the formula out again. “I remembered Michael’s entire life while I was in Canada, including his work.” He handed the page to her.

  Like a schoolteacher, she checked the new page against the other two. Every notation was once again identical, including the penmanship. “My God,” she said, her voice barely audible.

  Bryan waited, unwilling to let himself believe he had gotten through to her. “You believe me.”

  She sat there for the longest time, staring at the formula. Her eyes filled with wonder. When she spoke, her voice quivered. “I believe you.”

  Bryan was overwhelmed. He had done it. She was with him now. He was no longer alone.

  He kissed her with everything in his heart. Finally Linz broke away and hugged him, resting her cheek against his. But her mind was filled with questions—she needed to know what this meant. “Where do we go from here?” she whispered. “I already tried to speak to my father, but he refuses to talk about anything related to Renovo. We could try together.”

  “There’s someone else I think we should talk to first.” He didn’t want to get into Conrad, not yet.

  “Who?”

  “Just trust me.”

  She pulled away. “Why go to a total stranger over my father? Michael was like a brother to him. He’d want to know that … whatever they did had ramifications for you.”

  For us, Bryan thought. She still wasn’t ready to embrace the whole truth. He would have preferred to tell her everything, but he knew it would only put up a wall—possibly one that he couldn’t tear down again. “Please trust me.” He promised, “I will talk to Conrad, just not yet.”

  “Who else could be so important?”

  “Their other partner.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Bryan had researched Finn along with Conrad. He had found out that, after the accident, Finn had spent a year recovering at a burn center in Houston. His name had resurfaced ten years ago when The Kauffman Foundation, a private research foundation with offices in both Boston and New York, announced him as its new director.

  The Kauffman Foundation was a well-funded private biomedical research company; and judging by the residential address that Bryan had located for Finn in Beacon Hill, it seemed like his old colleague had done well for himself. Bryan and Linz tried not to feel conspicuous in front of the well-lit brownstone. With its antique lampposts and brick masonry, the entire neighborhood had the feel of Old London to it. Finn’s home was the biggest one on the block—it almost was the block. Bryan wondered what Finn would think of them showing up at his door.

  His butler could well have been a bouncer blocking the entry to a club. The six-foot, three-hundred-pound Japanese man looked more sumo wrestler than domestic worker. “Dr. Rigby doesn’t see strangers.”

  Linz nodded and inched backward. Bryan put his arm around her, anchoring her to his side and apologized. “I’m sorry we didn’t call first, but it’s very important we see him. Tell him Mandu is here.”

  “Mandu?” the man and Linz both said at the same time.

  “Yes.” Bryan gave an innocent smile. The man nodded and shut the door.

  “Mandu?” Linz’s tone demanded an explanation.

  “You’ll see.”

  They waited several minutes. The door opened again, wider this time. The big man smiled, now looking quite friendly. “Please come in. Dr. Rigby is anxious to meet you.” He surprised them both by providing house shoes in the traditional Japanese manner and led the way.

  Inside, Bryan and Linz were both taken aback by the grandeur. The first room they walked through was constructed entirely of silk screens and gleaming Macassar Ebony floors. An ancient sundial sat mounted in the center on raised marble, adding to the dramatic effect. The next room they walked through was a gallery filled with antiques. Finn, like Conrad, had developed a taste for collecting.

  Bryan kept his gaze on the floor and hurried through, not wanting to risk another episode like the one he had experienced at Conrad’s.

  Off the gallery, two doors slid open to reveal a library. The room had leather walls and towering bookshelves filled with well-worn texts—a scholar’s room.

  Finn Rigby sat in a big overstuffed chair next to an antique table lamp that cast a soft glow on the room. Bryan stared at him and recognized the Finn from his dreams—only this man was older, and the right side of his face, neck, and arm bore scars from severe burns. His hair was cut short now and it was more white than blond. But he was still Finn. Bryan noticed that he had on eyeglasses with dark-brown lenses and wondered if he still suffered from migraines.

  Finn studied them with the same intensity. “Mandu,” he said.

  Bryan stepped forward. “A lifetime you and Michael both remembered … two brothers from the Wardaman tribe in Australia’s Northern Territory. Neither of you knew the exact time frame, only that it happened well before the Europeans arrived in the sixteen hundreds.”

  Finn seemed to have trouble forming his words. “How do you know that?”

  Bryan stunned him even further by answering in Wardaman, an aboriginal dialect that was now almost extinct. “Because you were my younger brother, Bardo. It was the first recall you ever had.”

  Bryan could sense that Linz was about to ask what language he was speaking, and he squeezed her hand in a silent signal to let him finish. “Bardo loved to play tricks on Mandu … always taking his spear and finding ways to torture his brother. Their time together was short. You drowned when you were a boy.”

  To the Wardaman, death signals the twilight time, when the soul returns to its birthplace so it can be reborn. Remembering that life had given Bryan a deep connection to nature, to the Earth, and to the power of dreams. The Wardaman believe in a great tapestry of life and see their dreams as memories of Creation Time, when Ancestral Beings had walked the Earth. Mandu’s memories and the peace they brought Bryan had come at a time when he had needed them most. It was the reason he had finally felt able to come home to Boston and make peace with his childhood.

  Finn remained perfectly still, except for two fingers that performed a staccato tap against the table.

  Bryan knew this meant his old friend was deep in thought, and he switched back to English. “I remembered Mandu’s life three years ago. Overnight, I knew how to live off the land. I traveled to remote regions of the world, slept under the stars, hunted my own food, and made a fire by rubbing two sticks together—an ancient art long forgotten. It was a year before I felt the urge to see a modern city again.” He had only returned to civilization at Therese’s urging. When he had called her from some remote outpost near La Rinconada, Peru, to see how she was doing, it seemed that his art had become famous the year that he ha
d been off the grid, and offers were coming in from gallery owners to present his work in Berlin, São Paulo, and New York in solo exhibits. He would never have been able to make that leap of faith without Mandu’s wisdom.

  Bryan waited, giving Finn time to process everything.

  Finn looked to Linz and then back to Bryan and whispered, “My God, it is you. Both of you. How?”

  Bryan heard Linz’s breath catch at the recognition in Finn’s voice.

  Finn sat forward. “I thought I’d never see you again. How long have you been remembering?” He motioned for them to sit.

  Bryan led Linz to the couch. She was looking a little dazed. He answered for them. “Since we were children. She’s remembered Juliana but no one else. I can’t seem to stop mine.”

  Finn absently touched the scar on his cheek. “Extraordinary. Renovo really has worked beyond our wildest dreams.”

  Linz sat down. “Would someone please tell me exactly what you all did?”

  Finn looked to Bryan, a bit of a challenge in his eyes. “Would you like to do the honors?”

  Bryan could tell Finn still wasn’t sure if this was a hoax. He nodded in acceptance and turned to Linz. “The journey started in 1974, the first year Harvard Medical School partnered with the Medical Scientist Training Program. It was a national program for both MD and PhD students and was created to support the next generation of physician-scientists in biomedical research. We were all accepted. Diana and Finn already knew each other from when they were undergrads. The fellowship supported our individual research for six years.” Bryan addressed Finn, “Your research focused on understanding how to limit the release of glutamate, a vital chemical in the brain that, if produced in excessive amounts, kills cells.” His gaze returned to Linz. “Diana’s work concentrated on developing a way for the brain to produce more acetylcholine—”

  “A chemical believed to be essential to thinking and memory formation.” Linz finished his sentence, growing impatient. “And Michael’s research?” she asked with a frown, as if trying to piece it all together.

  “His dealt with brain cell regeneration, which at the time was a little-known field.”