I return two days later to Petaluma, and I tell Mr. Brohm I would like to keep my job. Then I contact the couple, the Newtons, who offered me a room to rent. We arrange to meet the next day.
This couple’s only daughter lives on the East Coast with their son-in-law and two grandchildren. The Newtons want very muchto have a young person living in the house with them, as they see their own family too infrequently. They see me as a perfect fit for them.
My new room on the Newtons’ second floor includes its own bathroom and is decorated in a calming shade of cornflower blue.
I find that I very much like living with the Newtons. They are cheerful with each other and with me, and they never fail to ask me about my day. Within days of my moving in, they begin inviting me in the evenings to play board games with them or listen to their favorite radio programs or the news of the war. I can tell the Newtons enjoy my company, too.
My newfound freedom is nearly intoxicating. To be able to go to the library whenever I want or the cinema or a department store or to stroll through the park unsupervised is almost too wonderful. Experiencing such a profound sense of liberation seems so odd when the whole world is at war. But I find that I like coming home to a place where I will be missed if I were to suddenly not show up. I have the independence I have been hungering for, but I am not alone in it. The Newtons care about me.
The only echo of my old, shackled life that I allow myself to hold on to is the lingering ache of losing Amaryllis. It is a pain that I both hate and love because it reminds me that Iamsomeone’s mother, despite not knowing where my child is, and despite what was done to me. Remembering her hurts like no other pain I have ever experienced, but the thought of forcing myself to forget her is impossible. I won’t. I can’t.
Just before the holidays, I am promoted to managing the dining room service, a position that gives me more responsibility and better pay. I’m sad to be leaving the kitchen, but the money will be helpful for when I do decide to move on. My new uniform is not unlike the black dress Celine made me wear. But this one is tailored to my figure and trimmed in expensive white lace. WhenI wear it, I do not feel like the girl who was seduced by an unhappy married man.
As the months progress, I start to ponder how much longer I want to stay in Petaluma. I have made a few friends at the hotel, though I keep to myself so much that most of my coworkers no doubt assume I’m shy around other people. I enjoy my responsibilities in the dining room and the money I’m making, but I can’t see past each unfolding day. I have a new life, but I still don’t know what to do with it. What does a person like me do with a life? The colors are an ever-present reminder that I am different from everybody else. My altered body—the fact that I can never give anyone children—reminds me of that, too. I always thought I’d be married by now, and I still want that kind of companionship for my life. I want what my parents had. But will I ever meet a man who will want someone who can’t give him a baby?
One evening a few weeks before my twenty-second birthday, and while I am preparing the dining room for a small assembly of scientists who have gathered for a conference, I pass by one of the ballrooms where they are meeting. I hear a man speaking at the microphone about a sensory anomaly. He is explaining to his colleagues that it is a neurological condition in which a stimulus to one of the senses—hearing, for example—triggers an automatic and instantaneous response in another sense, such as vision. He calls itsynesthesia.
I am at once glued to where I stand.
“Synesthetes might hear a bell and see a color or experience a taste on their tongue,” the man says. “Their minds might assign colors to names and places and numbers. The senses for someone with synesthesia overlap, sometimes in more ways than one.”
I am frozen as I listen, forgetting I am supposed to be readying the dining room for when this group breaks for dinner. I hurryaway, my thoughts tumbling. My ability to see the colors has a name? It has aname? An explanation?
And other people see the colors, too?
I hover in the dining room when the meeting adjourns and the conferees begin drifting in to be seated. I linger as if obsessively interested in making sure everyone has what they need at their table. I watch for the man who was speaking to enter the room. When he does and is seated, I don’t take my eyes off his table. I must speak to him. I simply must. I sprint to refill his water glass after he has taken only two sips. He looks to be a few years older than me, maybe early thirties. Dark brown hair, even darker brown eyes.
The man thanks me, and when I see that the other people at his table are engaged in conversation, I say quietly, “I was listening to you speak just now, from the doorway, and I heard you talk about that condition called sin... sin...”
“Synesthesia,” he finishes for me, smiling.
“Yes. How do you... I mean, how...?” I don’t know which words to use to form my questions. I have so many. “How do you know about it?” I finally ask.
His smile broadens. “I’ve been studying it for a while.”
“And so... so there are many other people that have it?”
“Other people?”
When I say nothing in return, he adds, “You experience this, miss?”
I nod slowly, achingly aware that I am doing what I have vowed never to do again. Confide in someone about the colors. “I didn’t know it had a name. I didn’t know other people saw the colors, too.”
He leans forward in interest. “What is it that you experience, if you don’t mind my asking?”
I can feel my pulse quickening its pace, in both apprehension and expectation. “When I hear sounds, I see colors and shapes,”I say quietly. “In my mind. It’s like they are there but not there. I have always seen them. I’ve tried to stop them, but I can’t. No one has been able to understand it. And I... I have suffered.”
He regards me for moment, his interest shifting to compassion.
“I am so very sorry to hear that.” The man’s words are so gently spoken that I nearly fall to my knees in gratitude that at last, at last, I seem to be understood.
“No one has ever been able to tell me why,” I say.
“It’s a condition we are only just now starting to understand.”
Unbidden tears begin to rim my eyes, and my gaze flits about the room to see if any of the other hotel staff are observing me speaking to one of the guests while holding back tears.
He notices and pauses a moment before continuing. “I would really like to talk with you about your experiences, Miss...”
