You don’t hear me. “By the time you woke up, I was lifetimes more wealthy than I’d ever been as Jakob. I was in the process of building a tower, a skyscraper of my very own. When it was clear you were awake and would not be suddenly regaining your memory, but that you were physically well, I took you out of the facility. Against their wishes, and against the rather vigorous objections of the doctor. That was the last time I signed my name as Jakob Kasparek. I signed you out, and they let me. I brought you to my partially finished tower and put you in an apartment, and brought therapists to you, to help you relearn to speak, to walk, everything. About this time was when I realized I couldn’t tell you who you really were. You were different. You woke up... different. I don’t know. The girl I had known was gone. You were twenty years old and had no identity.”
You glance at me, to make sure I’m listening. “I know you want to hear me admit that I saw it as my opportunity to... I don’t know... create you to be the person I wanted you to be. And I suppose on some unconscious level there was an element of that. I helped... sculpt your new identity, but you chose it all. I didn’t force it on you. I brought you to the museum as something to do, and you didn’t want to leave. I wheeled you in your wheelchair from painting to painting, exhibit to exhibit. And you made me stop at theMadame X. That was real. I didn’t do that. It wasyou. I sent you books, brought them to you, box after box after box. I brought all kinds of books. Classics, modern fiction, histories, biographies, crime, everything. And you chose what you wanted. You read what you wanted. And for two,almost three years, all I tried to do was help you... find yourself, I suppose. I taught you things, yes. Manners, bearing, presence. How to intimidate people. How to read people.Idid not create Madame X—not alone. That was us, Isabel. I had no reason to think you’d ever regain your memories. So while I accept as valid your anger over what you perceive as me lying to you, that isn’t quite fair. But then, life is not fair, is it?”
“How old am I?”
You blink, roll your shoulders, as if to shrug off the mantle of the past. “How old are you? Twenty-six.”
“And my birthday?”
You smile, a faint, lukewarm thing, as if you’ve forgotten how. “July second, 1989.”
“And how old are you?”
“I was born in 1976, in Prague, what is now the Czech Republic. I am thirty-nine years old.”
“So when we first met . . . ?”
“You were fourteen and I was twenty-seven.”
“And when you first fucked me?”
“This?”
I lift my chin. “Yes, Caleb. This.”
You sigh. Pass your hand through your hair. You look so much younger than thirty-nine. Thirty, at most, I would guess. “You woke up when you were twenty, nearing twenty-one. It took... something like two and a half years of therapy before you were fully functioning, before you had complete autonomy over your speech, over fine and broad motor control, all that. In that time you were learning, reading, becoming Madame X.”
“Caleb.”
“I waited three years, Isabel—”
“Was I a virgin?” I ask, cutting in over you.
You wipe your face with both hands. “Isabel—”
“WasI avirgin?” I demand again. “You told me I wasn’t. And now you’re telling me I was. I don’t remember, and I can’t believe anything you say, clearly. How am I supposed to sort the truth from the lies?”
“You were a virgin. That’s the truth.”
“Why lie about it?”
A shrug, almost insouciant. “I didn’t want to risk bringing up…all of this. Answering the questions I knew you’d have if you knew you were a virgin when we first slept together.”
“Call it what it was, Caleb—youfuckingme.”
You lean close, suddenly fierce. “Oh no, Isabel. That’s not what it was at all. You wanted it. You wantedme. You didn’t know me, not as the man you’d known before the accident, but your body knew mine. Youwantedme. So don’t think you can pin that on me. I’ll take responsibility for the lies, but I never took from you anything you didn’t want to give me, sexually. Not then, at least.”
“How old was I?” I ask. “When you—when we first had sex?”
“You were twenty-three. The first time I touched you sexually was on your twenty-third birthday.”
“Why then?”
“You needed time to regain full mobility,” You say, with a sigh and a shrug. “And I needed to make sure you weren’t going to suddenly regain your memories. I lived in constant fear of that. I always have. I’ve dreaded and feared this day, when I would have to lay all this out for you. Try to make you understand... everything. I waited. Six years, I waited. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you that day on Fifth Avenue. Icravedyou after you kissed me in the alley. I thought I might go crazy with the need for you. And then you were in the coma for four years, and I watched you age, day by day, yet remain the same. And then you woke up, and you were no one. So I had to help you rebuild yourself. Or notrebuild, but...create a self. I couldn’t touch you. I knew I couldn’t. You had no way of consenting, of knowing what you would be consenting to, and that was not something I took lightly. But as the years went by it became clear to me that despite not knowing me, not remembering me, your body remembered your attraction to me. That was the same. You wanted me. You didn’t seem to know what to do with it or how to act on it or what it meant, though. So I resisted it. Fought off my need for you, every single day for three years. I bathed you when you were helpless. Dressed you. Fed you. Taught you to do all those things for yourself. I was faced with the temptation of your naked body every single day, but I couldn’t touch you. Couldn’t have you. You wanted me, I wanted you, but I couldn’t have you.”
You halt. Swallow hard. Turn away. Scrape your fingers through your hair yet again. Fist your hand at your side. Clear your throat.
“My vow, to you and to myself, was that I would wait until your twenty-third birthday. If you were totally well, independent, and in possession of all your faculties and motor skills, and still showed evidence of desiring me, I would allow myself to explore a physical relationship with you. But not until then.”
