City of Strangers

by Marjorie Salzwedel

Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

The next day, Saturday, when the couple drove over the Golden Gate early in the morning, neither could remember where they were going when they got to the other side.

“I’m having a hard time remembering our plans for today,” Hannah complained.

“I know,” he said. “We’ve been working too hard.”

“Are we going to Muir Woods? We didn’t bring a map.”

“No, we went there a month ago,” Ed said without hesitation.

“I can’t remember? Did I ever see the Redwoods?”

Ed stared at his wife, “You love them. We’ve gone many times.”

“You know, I think I forgot how to fry eggs. I wanted some for breakfast, but it scared me that I couldn’t remember how to cook them.” Hannah’s voice sounded weary.

Ed looked at her quizzically. “That’s okay. One of these days we’ll just have to count on going out all the time. Are you hungry?”

“I’m starved!”

After passing several restaurants that were closed, they stopped at the first restaurant they saw on the waterfront that was open for business. The Hodgepodge Grill was a new place in Sausalito, off by itself, and unlike the other places, it was very plain.

After they ordered, they didn’t stay long. When the order of eggs and toast came, it was the worse they had ever tasted. They told the waitress that they weren’t hungry after all. The waitress was a young girl who told them she was married to the cook, and he was usually a good chef.

“I wonder who taught him how to cook eggs?” Hannah whispered when the waitress had gone to the kitchen. ‘The whites are runny, and the toast is burnt. We could have done as well ourselves.”

Ed shook his head in dismay. He paid the check, and they left after taking only a few bites.

Up the street a short way, they saw tables set up for a bazaar in the park.

“It must be over,” Hannah sighed.

“Maybe it hasn’t started,” Ed replied.

An old man with keen blue eyes was selling fish and chips at the corner. The couple bought some cod and asked the man where the usual crowds were. He said that the other vendors never arrived.

After eating, Ed and Hannah crossed the street and looked in the shop windows nearby, disappointed that the stores were closed.

When they got home they couldn’t remember the name of the café that served burnt toast as they sat in the kitchen and ate cold cereal. They put on the television and were surprised that the nightly news was on. They thought it was only about two o’clock in the afternoon.

“Where did the day go?” they asked each other. They could not account for where they had been, and yet they were not upset. It was as if it hadn’t mattered at all.

The next morning they sat in their living room after breakfast discussing how far it was to Petaluma. “I love numbers,” she said. “I remember them better than cooking directions. And I even love words by themselves. I used to be a good speller. Now I can’t concentrate.”

“Our computers do it for us anyway,” Ed reminded her.

“Well, they do, but I really liked knowing how to spell,” Hannah whined.

When the phone rang, Hannah answered it. “Hello. Yes,” she said. She put the heel of her hand over the phone. “I forgot what our supervisor’s name is. He may be on the line, unless it’s someone else. Do you know a Dr. Wells?” she asked as she handed the phone to Ed.

“Hello,” he said, wondering why their boss was calling on a Saturday. “What? You were expecting us to come to work today? We were getting ready to drive up to Petaluma to visit friends. Just a minute,” he said.

He held the phone at arm’s length with his hand over the mouthpiece. “Sam Wells says it’s not Saturday, it’s Friday. That can’t be. I glance at my calendar every morning and check off the days. It’s right here by the phone. He’s wrong. We are too. It’s Sunday.”

“Well, what happened to our Saturday then? What happened to his Friday? Either he or all of us are living in the wrong day,” Hannah said as she looked perplexed.

“He is. I’ve kept it straight on my calendar here,” Ed said. “We had fish in Sausalito yesterday. That was Saturday.”

“Well, if it’s Sunday, tell him we are going to church like we do every Sunday,” she replied, passionately.

Ed spoke again into the phone. “Hello,” he said. Frowning, he listened, looking confused for a long time before he put the phone back on its cradle without saying good-bye. He turned to Hannah. “He said he is letting us go, and that it’s better to fire us before we start the new assignment. He hung up on us.”

“He can’t fire us on a Sunday. It’s not a work day.” Hannah looked confused. “Maybe he’s drunk and doesn’t know what he’s doing,” she said. She was silent for a moment and then she yelled, “It’s Sunday! It feels like Sunday!” In a quiet voice she said, “Let’s go to church.”

They changed clothes and drove down to the Glide Methodist Church in the Tenderloin District where Hannah had been going ever since she had volunteered for a semester teaching fourth and fifth graders in the Sunday school. Ed used to be a Lutheran until he left for college and stopped attending church. He told Hannah that the Methodist Minister’s’ sermons were agreeable enough. The food at the Friday Night suppers for young people was tasty and cost the two of them only five dollars apiece.

When they were ready to go, they hurried down the stairs to the street where their cars were parked in front. They got into Hannah’s Volkswagen instead of Ed’s station wagon because the Beetle model was easier to park in small places.

When they got near the church they found a space around the corner from Ellis Street.

“There’s hardly any traffic,” Ed said as he looked back at the street from the top of the steps before they entered the church. When they stepped into the narthex, Hannah counted the people.

“There are only twenty people in the middle rows of the sanctuary,” she whispered. “There’s a lady in the front row and half a dozen people in the choir - four women and two men,” she whispered.

Ed nodded in agreement.

“Something’s wrong,” she added as she looked around. “The place is usually packed.”

They stepped into one of the middle pews behind the others and sat down. “We’re probably late,” she said. “Nobody is passing out bulletins.”

The minister stepped up to the pulpit. He was a middle-aged man, on the portly side with a congenial manner. He waved to the woman in the front row and said, “We’ll skip the scripture readings this morning.”

“He’s usually a good preacher,” Ed whispered.

“Yes,” Hannah said beginning to feel anxious. She had never attended a church service without scripture being read.

The minister chuckled as he spoke, peering out over his glasses. He made funny expressions, widening his eyes and showing his dimples. He tittered as he glanced over the mostly empty pews. When he finally stopped, he looked out over his glasses and said, “We’ll have the hymns later.”

The members of the choir whispered loudly to one another in protest. The minister must have heard their remarks because he glanced back at them several times. Each time, he returned his gaze to the front row of the sanctuary and smiled at the woman.

“I thought it was Monday, and that I had given the sermon yesterday,” he said. “What I did however was rehearse my sermon from the pulpit to a few people who had wandered off the street. I remember now that I had gone over the Sunday sermon for those folks, and I forgot it wasn’t you people, but passers-by. I was thinking today was Monday and that I was repeating myself, and that you were all strangers off the street again.

“Now, it suddenly comes to me that you’re not strangers at all. You’re my congregation, well, some of my congregation. I don’t know where the rest of the people are.” He shuffled the papers in his hand and put them on the pulpit and glanced out over the pews. “Today we’re doing things in a new way. Every day is a new beginning.”

It was hard for Hanna and Ed to follow the sermon that was something about every day being born anew. Reverend James kept digressing about the flowers that were blooming all over the city. He talked about how when the good seeds were planted in the right soil, they always found their way up through the earth. Hannah and Ed never heard a sermon on the birth of flowers before.

If the truth be known, the minds of most of the congregation were probably wandering anyway. None of them looked like they were listening as they fidgeted. A few of them rattled their church bulletins, and a couple ladies kept turning the pages of their hymnals. You could hear the sound of paper flapping. Others kept whispering to each other that there had been no collection taken.

Hannah kept wondering if she needed a new winter coat. She could only remember that brown one she had in the sixth grade.

“At least the pastor gave the sermon in English. There were a few places where I actually understood what he was saying,” Ed whispered to his wife after the benediction.

“Me too,” Hannah replied. They walked to the door and greeted the minister with a handshake, both smiling benevolently. Hannah said her customary “Thank you.”

Outside, they were almost at the car when Hannah stopped and gasped. Ed turned to hear what she was about to say,

“You know, these streets don’t look like the ones in Cleveland.”

“No, they don’t, do they?” he said flatly.

“This is my car, isn’t it?

“Yes,” Ed said as he stared thoughtfully at his wife, thinking about how he learned to converse with his aunt who had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. He knew Hannah had a different malady. He wasn’t even sure of his own memory the last few days. When he opened the car door, she got in and stared out the window. They sat there awhile before he said anything.

“I read an article in last week’s Examiner about dementia. There’s a protein they discovered that can restore memory,” Ed said with optimism in his voice. “You know, if we ever get really forgetful, it’s a good thing to know they have an inoculation to reverse the effects. Scientists say now that the neurons are never all dead, some can be regenerated.” Ed saw she wasn’t listening. Even so, he wanted to remind himself with his speech, and maybe it was possible she heard some of his words and understood.

Hannah’s eyes looked glazed as she turned to look at Ed. She had been staring a long time at the pink flowers alongside where they parked. Her mind seemed many years away.

“I love those petunias. They’re my mother’s favorite flower,” she said.

“Oh,” he replied cautiously.

The sun was high over a light blue sky replacing the morning grayness as the couple drove home, both silent as if they were strangers. When Ed parked the car, Hannah was perplexed when he got out, went around and opened her door.

“This is not where I live,” Hannah said, looking puzzled.

“I know. But we’ll have lunch here.”

“Is it a café?”

“We’ll have our favorite food. You’ll like it.” He didn’t want his wife to argue about going inside.

“Do I know you?”

Ed looked at his wife and answered, “Yes, you know me.”

A red convertible sped by them. Halfway down the block they heard the sound of metal crashing. They turned and saw that the sports car had sideswiped a gray sedan as it turned out from its parking space. They were both frightened as another car’s brakes screeched behind them coming down the steep hill from Jackson Street. When it didn’t stop, it collided with a small green minibus going across the intersection. Ed put his arm around Hannah as they got out and hurried toward their flat.

She didn’t say anything as he turned the key at both doors. Neither took off their shoes as they had done before when they climbed the stairs. As soon as they were in the living room, Ed put on the television set hoping to watch the news. They had forgotten what time it was.

“Come sit beside me,” Ed said. “You look pretty in your church dress, Hannah.”

“You look familiar,” Hannah said as she looked at him sitting alongside her.

Their favorite news anchor was on the television, though Ed could not remember where he had seen him before.

“We’ll sit and watch the news. After, I will check what we have in the refrigerator to eat while you watch television.”

“Yes, I’m hungry. Do you have some cookies?”

“Yes, we do. I’ll get some in a minute.”

He turned up the volume so he would be able to hear the television from the kitchen. He lingered beside her, distracted by the sudden special report.

The newscaster’s voice boomed loud, “Disaster has struck San Francisco. Spectators who had been watching the Fourth of July fireworks from the Presidio National Park were contaminated with black dust that fell on them at the close of the celebration. Later in the evening, rain washed most of it from buildings, yards, parks and city streets.

“In its initial contact, the soot carried a live short-lived protein that may have penetrated the skin of more than one hundred thousand spectators. Some of these folks may be experiencing loss of memory, which is believed to be a form of temporary amnesia.

“The smallest amount of this microscopic protein, when absorbed through the skin, circulates through the lymph system. Finding its way into the brain cells, it inhibits the neurons connecting memories. People wearing long sleeves and long pants and had their hair covered were affected less. In clinical trials during the past year, scientists have reversed similar damage in people afflicted with dementia.

“The National Guard and Homeland Security’s Special Forces have flown in doctors and medical staff who have already been going house to house inoculating those affected.

“The FDA and the AMA, in an unprecedented decision, have given their approval for this antidote protein that the Center of Disease Control has been stockpiling. We hope to see a population of childlike people return to their normal level of cognitive skills in a few days and remember who and where they are.

“The bridges have been closed to local residents who show any signs of memory loss or lack of cognitive skills. The California Highway Patrol will allow cars over the bridge only if the driver answers brief questions correctly. It is not known at this time if this Fourth of July incident is a criminal act, an accident or an act of terrorism. It is a terrible thing, folks. San Francisco has become a city of strangers.”

“I didn’t understand that at all,” Hannah said in a whiny voice. “If my mom and dad were here, they would see to it that I got what I needed. Where are your parents?”

“Hannah, you’re regressing. Wait until they tell us where we can get this inoculation we need.” He worried suddenly about the odds of being overlooked and tried to put that thought out of his mind. He would go to the kitchen and get them some cereal to munch on and keep listening for the doorbell. “Hannah, I have a feeling you don’t know where you are.”

“Well, that isn’t so. I’m in Ohio. I know that.”

“Someone will come to the rescue. We just have to wait,” Ed reassured her.

The news anchor continued, but Ed and Hannah weren’t listening. They stared out the window as thin fog muted the view of the city to a gauzy unrealness.

“Everything is strange.” Hannah sighed. She smiled at Ed in that special way. “I know I like you. I just can’t remember your name.”

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