Jack Ketchum - I'm Not Sam

I pull the chain on the bedside lamp and the bedroom suddenly glares at me. That keening sound rises higher and more urgently, as though the light were painful.

I see her. There she is. On the floor in the corner wedged between the wall and the hutch, facing the wall, her naked back to me, her arms clutching her knees tight to her chest. It’s not cold but she’s trembling. She glances at me fast over her shoulder and then away again but I see that she’s crying.

That sound is Sam, crying.

But I’ve heard Sam crying when her mom died and it doesn’t sound anything like that. This doesn’t sound like her at all.

I’m up and out of bed, going to her, to take her in my arms and…

“Nooooooo!” she wails. “Noooooooo!”

It stops me dead but I think, that’s not her. That’s not her voice. All the time knowing that’s impossible.

“Jesus, Sam…”

“Don’t!”

And now her left hand is darting through the air over her head like she’s shooing away a sudden flock of birds.

I reach for her. She sees me out of the corner or her eye.

“Don’t…touch!”

To me the voice seems maybe an octave higher than it should be. What the fuck?

“Don’t touch,” she says, a little calmer this time. Through sniffles. And that’s when it hits me.

It’s a little-girl voice. Coming from my Sam.

Under other circumstances I could almost smile at the sound. Sam playing the widdle gurl. But these are not other circumstances. The look in her eyes when she glances at me is not funny.

Okay, she won’t let me touch her but I need to do something to comfort her. Plus she’s naked. For some weird reason that bothers me. I get up and pull the blanket off the bed. Kill two birds with one stone.

I go down on my knees behind her and hold the blanket out to her.

“Sam, here. Let me…”

She bats at me with both hands, hard and fast, and now she’s crying again.

“Don’t touch me…you hurt me!”

“Hurt you? Sam, I’d never…”

“Not Sam!”

“What?

“I’m not Sam!”

And now I’m way beyond confusion. Now I’m scared. I’ve slid down the rabbit-hole and what’s down there is dark and serious. This is not play-acting or some waking bad dream she’s having. She’s changed, somehow overnight. I don’t know how I know this but I sense it as surely as I sense my own skin. This is not Sam, my Sam, wholly sane and firmly balanced. Capable of tying off an artery as neatly as you’d thread a belt through the loops of your jeans. And now I’m shivering too.

In some fundamental way she’s changed.

But damned if I’m simply going to accept it. I put on my best comfort voice. Comfort and reason.

“Of course you are. You’re Sam. You’re my wife, honey.”

“Wife?”

She stares at me a moment, sniffles, wipes some snot from her upper lip, then laughs.

Actually, she giggles.

“Not your wife. How can I be your wife? That’s silly.”

I wrap the blanket over her shoulders. She lets me. Clutches it close around her.

“I’m Lily,” she says.

There are silences that seem to peel away layer upon layer of brain matter, leaving you as stupid as a gallon-a-day drunk.

“Lily,” I say finally. Or at least I think that’s me.

She nods.

I get up off my knees and sit on the bed. Our familiar bed.

She’s stopped crying. She sniffles but that’s all. I’m still getting these distrustful looks, though. I notice Zoey sitting in the doorway, glancing first at me, then at Sam and then back at me again, like she’s trying to puzzle out the situation as much as I am.

“Why do you say that? That your name is Lily?”

“Because it is.”

I point to Zoey. “Who’s that?”

“Zoey,” she says.

“And me?”

“You’re…” I see tears welling up in her eyes again. “You’re…I don’t know who you are!”

Then she’s sobbing. Her whole body heaving.

I can’t bear to see this. I don’t know what to do but I’ve got to do something so I get off the bed and go down to her again and before she can stop me I wrap my arms around her. She tries to wriggle free of me at first but I’m nothing if not tenacious so I hold on and her body’s betraying her anyway — the sobbing’s got hold of her bad.

It takes a while but at last she subsides. Her muscles seem to drift slowly from high-wire tense to slack. I’m stroking her head exactly like you would a little girl’s.

She seems exhausted.

“Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”

I lift her carefully to her feet and point her toward the four-poster.

“No,” she says.

“No?”

“No. Not there.”

I want to ask her why not there but I don’t.

Maybe I figure it doesn’t matter. Maybe I’m afraid to know the answer.

“Okay, the couch? That all right?”

She nods. She turns and I see her staring into the hutch, frowning.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“You locked up Teddy. I want him. I want my Teddy.”

Good grief. She wants the goddamn bear.

“No problem.”

I throw the latch and open the glass doors, pluck him out from amidst his Barbies and hand him over. She hugs him to her breasts. And I’m about to tell her hang on, I’ll just get some sheets and a blanket and pillow when she’s already stepping out past the cat and down the hall into the living room. She seems to know exactly where she’s going. Zoey follows along behind her.

I gather up the bedclothes and a pair of light pajamas I know she likes and when I get into the living room she’s already lying down, holding on to Teddy. Zoey’s curled up at her feet.

“I brought you your pajamas. Can I get you anything? Glass of water?”

She shakes her head. Lets the blanket fall away and stands and steps first into the pajama bottoms and then slips into the shirt and buttons it up top to bottom. She’s not shy about it. I’m watching her. It’s a woman’s nude body I’m watching her clothe but the movements are wrong somehow, they’re quick and jerky, full of restless energy, without Sam’s smooth flow and glide.

Where are you, Sam?

She sits down on the couch. Looks at me. Like she’s studying me, trying to figure me.

“I could have the water now,” she says.

“Sure.”

In the kitchen letting the water run to cold I’m aware of her standing behind me in the doorway. I pour the water, turn off the tap and when I turn around I could almost laugh. She’s standing there straight-legged, with her hands on her hips and head cocked to one side. A kid’s cross-examination pose.

“Who are you, really?” she says. Then pauses, thinking. “Are you my daddy?”

Her voice is so very small.

“I’m… no, Lily. I’m not. I’m not your daddy.”

There. I’ve said it. I’ve addressed her by the name she wants me to use. Lily.

“Who then?”

“Patrick. I’m Patrick.”

I hand her the water and watch her gulp it down. She hands me back the glass.

“I’m sleepy, Patrick.”

“I know. Come on.”

I fix the bedclothes and fluff the pillow. There’s something I’ve got to know. I tuck my wife in. My wife who thinks she might be my child. I’m sitting beside her on the couch. She’s watching me. Holding Teddy. It takes me a while and she must be wondering what I’m thinking but I finally get up the nerve to ask her.

“Back in the bedroom. You said I hurt you. How did I hurt you?”

She shrugs.

“Come on, Lily. Tell me. How? So I don’t do it again, y’know? How did I hurt you?”

She shakes her head.