The Woman Who Forgot Who She Was: The Avery Victoria Spencer Fables, #1

By Vivian Ruth Probst

The thing about buried trauma is that it doesn't stay buried.

A lonely woman's façade as a successful bank president begins to unravel, revealing an old trauma that has ripped memories out of her life. It's called dissociative amnesia.

Avery Victoria Spencer's forgotten past is about to force its way into the façade of her successful life. Avery's unrelenting need to spend more than she earns sets her up for a very public swan dive into bankruptcy. Financial wizard and president of Waukesha's Prairieville Bank, she is used to high praise from raving clients--and its contentious companion, overt jealousy, (in the person of neighbor and local society columnist, Millie St. James).

Why can she take care of everyone's financial problems, except her own? As despair overwhelms her and bankruptcy looms--and a myserious Englishman arrives in Wuakesah and quietly opens a shop that caters to Avery's extravagant taste, just as she prepares to renovate her house—further stretching her spending.--Avery Victoria Spencer must face an old tragedy or suffer the humiliating consequences of her vicious need to spend more than she earns.

George Robert Logan is Avery's long-forgotten husband.  wenty years ago, a terrible accident stunned Avery into dissociative amnesia. George has tried to move on; but he can't. George's return triggers an unconscious awakening inside Avery.  Her silent cry for rescue seeps into her dreams, landing her to a medieval castle where a smart-aleck candle leads her to clues to solve her problem, which, she will learn, has nothing to do with money.

Logan's return triggers Avery's first fantastical dream—a dream that could unravel the source of Avery's financial problem, which has nothing to do with money. Is she willing to remember who she really is?

A quest for many modern women, The Avery Victoria Spencer Fables are the author's intimate series of stories that brought her to an authentic life. Welcome to Book One, Woman Who Forgot Who She Was.

From the uniquely historic city of Waukesha, Wisconsin comes a story of facing loneliness, forgotten love, and the courage to transcend a troubled past.

 

For every major life issue she has faced, award-winning author Vivian Probst has been given a story—often in a dream—that unveils the root cause. Despair, weariness, unworthiness, rage, illusion about who she really is—these captivating fables have all led to triumph over incredible obstacles. In The Avery Victoria Spencer Fables, we journey to an inner world where all that is forgotten begs to be reclaimed. Book One is now available with more to come!

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeMark Press
• Release date: May 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9780975342213

Vivian Ruth Probst

Vivian Probst Trained in culture, anthropology, and linguistics with bachelor’s degree in Multicultural Ministries 34-year veteran/national trainer and consultant to the affordable housing industry (theopro.com) Creator of the endowed CANIF Fund through the Women’s Center of Waukesha, WI Creator of gender inclusive WEnglish™ (vivianprobst.com/WEnglish) Author/playwright/songwriter/poet (through LifeMark Press): (vivianprobst.com) Website:  VivianProbst.com Contact for information and events: Sharyn Alden/Sharyn Alden Communications

Book preview

Dedication

Dedicated to all who yearn

to rise from despair to greatness;

from weariness to worthiness;

from rage to wonder,

and into your own true life.

And To My Mother, Wanita Mae King Theobald

Who fought valiantly to find herself;

And in so doing

Made my own journey possible.

There is only one journey. Going inside yourself.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Relief from Light

In darkness, truth awaits.

Eyes closed; brilliance creates.

All you claim you cannot see

Holds all you are intended to be.

Is light superior to dark?

Which holds divinest, purest spark?

View with soul’s immortal bliss;

Reach forth—embrace—all that is!

For what you see is over—done.

Beg faith’s sweet darkness now to come.

Vivian Probst

Foreword

Iused to ask myself , ‘How could it possibly take twenty years to write a novel?" And my husband, how he dreaded hearing ‘I’m done,’ because I wasn’t, but I didn’t know I wasn’t.

Looking back, I understand I was working on a story jigsaw puzzle, and each piece had to be specifically crafted to snap into place. I didn’t control the jigsaw—the Universe did. I would sit with a piece of story until suddenly I saw how it fit.

Unlike a puzzle, however, I couldn’t see a complete picture as I worked. More like an ancient tapestry, I could see only one piece at a time because working so close to each detail, I had to focus there. At last I can stand back and smile at what has come to pass.

‘The Woman Who Forgot Who She Was’ began as a dream, on March 10, 2000. I was in deep despair about my finances. While I made very good money, I couldn’t keep it. Like Avery Victoria Spencer, the heroine in these tales, I spent more than I earned and couldn’t stop.

On that night I asked for an answer and Book One began in a dream.  As I wrote quickly to fill in the details, I felt very much like David Copperfield is presented in the movie, ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas.’ Characters own our stories; it’s our work to listen.   There’s quibbling over details because characters can be arrogant and egotistical, yet ultimately an author knows what to write. To offend such an unruly tribe is to lose one’s sense of wonder—even if it takes years to put it all down, and especially if one is given a new form of English to write with (or with which to write).

More about that at the end of this story. 

PART I

Chapter One

Thursday, August 17 , 1974

1:00 p.m. CST; 7:00 p.m. in London, England

George, I think it’s time. Evelyn Morgan pauses to let her words sink in as she sits nervously on her sofa, chain smoking cigarettes. Senior professor of Women’s Studies at Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Dr. E as she’s known by her students, has struggled to decide what to do. Even now she wonders if she’s a fool. After all, it’s been eighteen years since the tragedy that took one of George and Avery’s twin three-year old daughters, Adele; crippled and blinded her sister, Allisyn; and robbed George’s wife, Avery, of her memory of him and their daughters. Dissociative amnesia. George has been back in England and Scotland for so long; Allisyn knows only that life and the care of George’s mother, who has raised her.

Why bring it up now? Why remind him? Isn’t it better to let it be? Evelyn asks herself again and again, although she already knows. She’s been George and Avery’s closest friend and knows George Robert Logan still loves his wife. He’ll want to know so he can decide what to do. It doesn’t matter to him that Avery doesn’t remember him; nor does it matter that almost two decades have passed.

OK, thanks Evelyn, George replies after she gives him details. I’ll be on the next flight out. Call you after I land. You’re still smoking?

George, you can’t possibly be ready that quickly—yes, Evelyn confesses, laughing.

Oh, can’t I? George retorts.  Just how long do you think I’ll want to hang around after I tell my family, who are all sitting around our dinner table right now, that I’m coming back to the U.S. to reconnect with my one true love? Think again.  I’ll be tortured about my impossible dream of seeing if I can persuade my wife to fall in love with me again.  Mother will be in tears; Father will be enraged.  No, I think I’ll catch the next plane out, like I said. He still has his sense of humor.

Ok, George, Evelyn relents. I only hope I did right by calling you. She smiles in spite of herself as she hangs up. I knew it. He hasn’t changed.  She stubs her cigarette. "

Evelyn no longer imagines a happily ever after outcome for her two friends, but it’s a perfect time for George to return, and she can’t ignore it. If it were put to a vote, those who know what’s been going on would want George to stay away from Avery, arguing that it’s merciful because it could kill her to remember. Avery’s doctors were emphatic. We can save her, but we can’t tell you she will ever be who she was.  Evelyn knows she’s not, but that won’t matter to George.  He’s miserable. After all these years, he hasn’t found another woman to love. Avery isn’t the only one suffering—she’s simply the only one who doesn’t know.

Evelyn knows what Flora would say. Her long-time lover, dead now almost three years, was always easy with her opinions. George is a fool for love, she would say. Lucky him. If another woman hasn’t snagged him, he needs to go back and see what’s left of Avery. That story still needs an ending.

GEORGE’S BROTHER PEYTON, a well-established medical doctor in London, is strangely quiet after George hangs up the phone and informs his family of his immediate departure. As he pushes back from the dinner table he says simply, George is old enough to take care of himself. He knows his chances are slim.  If he wants to run off to her, let him. He doesn’t have much of a life here anyway; and I, for one, am tired of his sulking around. Allisyn’s old enough to take care of herself for the most part, and we’ll all be here for her.

Chapter Two

Evelyn knows better than anyone that the woman George refuses to divorce is no longer living inside Avery. She walks and talks like Avery, but her eyes are dull; she’s stiff, wooden, and without feeling. Sort of like a vending machine, she dispenses financial advice matter-of-factly. Those few people in Waukesha who knew Avery before, see it, except for Avery herself. And who is fool enough to drop such a bomb on her now, especially since she’s come so far on her own?

Yes, Avery is the president at Prairieville State Bank and a wizard at financial strategies. She can resurrect a dead real estate deal, although not in three days, so she’s not God. But she’s logical, with a flair for transforming financial disasters into stunning successes. Her warmth and sense of fun left the day she heard about the accident. She blames herself. Forgetting is how she copes but forgetting has its consequences.

Sharp, cold, aloof, and protected, Avery is friendless, except for Evelyn Morgan who has been her best friend since college. To Avery’s good fortune, Evelyn is a retired bank president’s daughter with enough moxie to persuade Prairieville Bank’s Board of Directors to make Avery her father’s chosen successor.  As the first woman bank president in Waukesha, Avery has done wonders for investors.

That Avery Spencer, people say.  What a woman! What a way she has with money! Who cares if she’s a heartless old maid? It’s the seventies; married last names are dropped in favor of women’s lib, and most people don’t know she’s still married to George Logan—not even Avery.

Evelyn knows Avery is still alive in George’s mind, even if he’s been cached out of her memory banks. He’s had plenty of time to get over her and fall for another woman, but he hasn’t. He’s handsome, eligible, and talented. It isn’t that other women don’t find him suitable. It’s George. No woman can replace Avery. He carries a secret pain that prevents him from close encounters of any kind.

If Avery were dead, perhaps his quest would end. But as long as Avery is alive, people can call it stupid, naïve, even insane, but it’s what a stubborn, incorrigible man like George does. And Evelyn reasons to herself (as if to forgive herself—to wash her hands of any guilt associated with what George decides), it’s the perfect time. Avery has taken out a loan to improve her home. George is a masterful interior designer who knows exactly what Avery would want—down to the grout color in her kitchen floor.

GEORGE’S PARENTS REFUSE to support his return to the U.S.  It’s far too late for that, his father bellows. You should accept your obligation to our family, especially at your age! We will not support you financially in any way for such a-a-an unworthy pursuit!

"Last time I checked, my wife was still my family and my responsibility, George says evenly. And keep your money, he adds. God knows you’re going to need it if you don’t do what I’ve suggested."

We need you, George, his mother says.  Going after that—that hopeless dream...after so long...you can’t be serious!  Oh George, you must stop such nonsense, or we’ll be ruined!

No, we won’t, Mother, George retorts. We’re ruining ourselves. Our assets should be valued to decide what we keep and what we sell. We’ve got land, houses, buildings, antiques, volumes of ancient literature. If any of you would listen to me and do that, we’d be fine. But no. You all want to throw more of what’s left of our wealth into a failing business. Count me out! He disappears and returns later with his packed bags.

George doesn’t hide his anger.  "Now, I’m leaving. By the way, for almost twenty years of my adult life, I’ve been without comfort. My wife has forgotten me, I have lost one daughter and thankfully have one still living who is my greatest joy. You’ve been telling me for years to get on with my life. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m getting on with my life—and my life includes Avery Victoria Spencer Logan, who is still my wife." He pauses.

You all know I’m useless here. I’m not adding anything to our family’s financial well-being, and I refuse to drain what’s left of our resources. It would be nice if you all would wish me the best. With that he brushes away years of wishing and hoping. Sounds of