Me Again (22 page)

She looked at me for my response. Gratefully I shook my head, and she resumed her conversation.

“That’s fine, Ellen. I’ll either call you in the morning, or I’ll simply drop him off if I’m in the neighborhood. No, it’s no trouble. You take care now.”

Mrs. Margolis put down the receiver. “There. Now you’ve got all night to collect your thoughts.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been so—"

“Don’t mention it,” Mrs. Margolis said, cutting me off with a gentle smile. “Now let’s pick out a room for you. Are you up to tackling the stairs?”

“Absolutely. I’m getting pretty good at them these days.”

But as we headed upstairs, my legs still wobbled, and I clutched the banister tightly until completing my ascent.

* * * * *

“Good night, Jonny” Mrs. Margolis said after making sure I had everything I needed in terms of towels and bedding. “Sweet dreams.”

It took me a long time to get to sleep. At one point I got up and made my way as quietly as I could down Mrs. Margolis’s creaking staircase, rooting around until I retrieved the photo album that had shaken me up so badly. I took it back upstairs with me and pored over it by the light of a lone bedside lamp, alternately crying and smiling as new memories bobbed to the surface, each prompted by a faded image on a plastic-covered page. My stomach growled occasionally, but never forced me to make any more sprints to the bathroom, likely due to the absence of any remaining food.

After catching myself nodding off several times, I switched off the light and lay back in the soft but unfamiliar bed. And then Mrs. Margolis got her wish: when dreams finally came, they
were
sweet.

I dreamed of Maggie. My little sister.

Chapter 27

I
WOKE UP TO THE SMELL OF BACON. It took a moment to realize where I was, and then I remembered how the evening had ended. My cheeks were wet – apparently I had been crying in my sleep. Yet I felt oddly happy, as if I’d spent the night catching up with an old friend.

My dreams of Maggie were still clear in my mind, and in those dreams I was a little boy, not a grown man recovering from a stroke. In those dreams I was happy, and I guess I brought some of that happiness back with me when I awoke.

After rinsing my face in the upstairs bathroom, I put on my shirt and pants from the night before and padded barefoot down the stairs, following that wonderful smell.

“Look who’s up,” said Mrs. Margolis as I entered her kitchen. The smile she greeted me with was a great way to start the day. “Are you hungry?”

“Extremely,” I said. “For some reason I’m utterly famished.” Then I remembered why and added, “I guess I wasted some great lasagna last night. I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t be silly. You had quite a night last night – that couldn’t have been easy for you.”

Her expression grew more concerned. “How are you doing after all that? Did you sleep all right?”

“I didn’t really sleep much,” I admitted, gratefully accepting a cup of coffee. “But thanks for letting me stay here.”

She waved a hand. “You’re welcome here any time. Now, eat.” She gestured sternly at the plate she had placed in front of me, heaped with bacon and eggs.

I obeyed, eating in silence while she bustled about the kitchen.

When I finished, she cleared my plate before I could get up and refilled my coffee. Finally she sat down across from me, a cup of coffee in her hand.

“Thank you for... well, for everything,” I said.

She nodded, smiling.

A sudden bang on the window to my left startled me. I turned to see a squirrel clinging to the outside of the window screen. He must have launched himself from the branch of a nearby tree. From the sound of the impact, I was surprised he hadn’t cracked the glass.

“Oh, my,” said Mrs. Margolis. “Looks like Stanley is rather impatient today.”

“Stanley?”

“Stanley the squirrel, of course,” she said. “I’m late in bringing him his breakfast, and he’s making his displeasure known.”

Sure enough, the look on the squirrel’s face as he stared through the window at us did seem to register a certain indignation. He moved his head in sudden jerks, like a badly animated cartoon, always keeping an eye trained on us.

“You feed him every day?”

“Oh, just breakfast,” she said, standing up and opening a cupboard. “I wouldn’t want to spoil him with lunch and dinner, too.”

“Of course not,” I said. I was smiling now, feeling a vague recollection of having helped Mrs. Margolis feed some backyard wildlife when I was a small boy. “And just what does a squirrel eat for breakfast?”

“Whatever I damn well feel like feeding him,” she said, trying to sound stern but failing. “Although he’s shown a preference for walnuts. Oh, and he loves Cheerios.” She withdrew a bright yellow box from her cupboard and poured some cereal into a bowl.

“Come along now,” she said. “We can’t keep Stanley waiting, now can we?”

“Perish the thought,” I said, following her as she stepped out onto her back porch.

We sat down in a pair of weathered patio chairs that overlooked her back yard. Watching us warily, Stanley made his way down from the window screen and scampered across the porch, choosing a location on its outer edge to perch, just above the steps that led down into the yard. He turned himself to face us, sitting on his hind legs, his front paws twitching eagerly.

Mrs. Margolis tossed a Cheerio in his direction. Stanley snatched it off the floor in a blur of motion and returned to his position, eyeing us as he chewed, his cheeks bulging with his prize. This transaction was repeated several times, and I noticed that each time the squirrel chose a spot on the porch a little closer to Mrs. Margolis for the consumption of his circular treats.

“Here,” Mrs. Margolis said, handing me the bowl. “You give him one.”

I plucked a Cheerio from the bowl and threw it towards Stanley. At least that was my intent; the oaten projectile flew far left of its target and skittered off the porch, lost in the grass somewhere. Stanley glared at me with contempt.

I handed the bowl back to a smiling Mrs. Margolis. “I guess we can add
throwing
to the list of things I can’t do anymore.”

“Well, you’re new at this,” she said, throwing another Cheerio to the ravenous rodent.

“True,” I said. “And I’m sure there were some complex aerodynamics at play.”

“No doubt.”

After a few more throws, Stanley’s cheeks were swelling to comical proportions, and he sat back on his haunches, chewing contentedly. I decided to launch what might become an uncomfortable conversation.

“I have some questions,” I said.

She turned to face me. “I thought you might.” Again, that sad, caring smile.

“You said that I... that I stopped being me a long time ago.”

Mrs. Margolis inclined her head but said nothing. She turned and aimed another Cheerio at Stanley.

“So,” I said, “what did you mean by that?”

She stirred uncomfortably in her chair. “Jonathan,” she began, “how much do you remember about Maggie?”

“I don’t know. I remember playing with her. I remember...”

I paused, thinking out loud now, essentially commenting on snippets of memory as they passed through my mind. “She was ticklish,” I continued. “And she called me... she always called me
Jonathan
. Never Jonny or Jon or anything else. And... and it took her forever to learn to ride a bike, even though I tried to help her.”

I was smiling, but my cheeks were wet again. Damn, these newly awakened emotions could get complicated.

Mrs. Margolis was smiling, too. “Well, despite your good intentions, you may not have been the best teacher in that regard. I seem to remember an awful lot of skinned knees when you finally took the training wheels off
your
bike.”

“I don’t remember that,” I said. “Just the part where I was trying to help her.”

“Do you remember when she died?”

The question hung there in the air. Mrs. Margolis sat perfectly still, waiting. Even Stanley stopped chewing and seemed to stare at me expectantly.

I thought for a moment. “No,” I said finally. “I don’t.”

“Do you remember anything else after that?” she asked. “Do you remember moving away? Or the couple of times I came to visit you at your new house?”

I thought some more. “No. None of that.”

“I didn’t think so.”

I looked at her, unable to read her expression. “Why do you say that?”

She sighed. “Well, you changed. Goodness, your whole family changed.” Her voice grew soft, but she kept going. “Everything changed after Maggie died.”

She sat across from me, maintaining a level gaze. Seeing if I wanted to go on.

I did. “What kind of changes do you mean?”

Stanley advanced a few steps, growing tired of being ignored. To buy us a moment’s peace, Mrs. Margolis grabbed a handful of Cheerios and sent them scattering across the porch, leaving the squirrel twitching in confusion as to which one to eat first.

Turning her attention to me, Mrs. Margolis said, “Well, your parents just couldn’t seem to accept it. They seemed to want to, I don’t know, wipe the slate clean. Act as if it had never happened. But the house kept reminding them. The house, the street – everything.”

“Did she... did she die on this street?” I steeled myself for the answer.

Mrs. Margolis nodded. “Right in front of your house. I don’t think your parents could ever get past that.”

Thinking how awful I had felt the first time I had seen my old house, I gathered that I never got past it either. Sitting on Mrs. Margolis’s porch I was aware of the house, looming just to my left, but I consciously chose not to look in its direction. I’d already lost my dinner, and didn’t want to lose my breakfast as well.

“So we moved away right after that?” I asked.

“Yes, later that year. To where your parents live now.”

She sighed. “I missed you – both of you – so much.” With a slight smile she added, “Although I can’t say I really missed young Teddy.”

I chuckled, then continued my inquisition. “You said you came to visit us at our new house?”

She nodded. “Months went by, then your family finally invited me over for a visit. I think I guilted your mother into doing that.”

She dipped into the bowl and let loose another spray of cereal, to Stanley’s combined delight and consternation. Then she picked up her coffee cup and stared into it, forming her words.

“Everything was so... different. Your mother was so cheerful, but in this strange, forced way. And downright hyperactive – she must have gotten up to refill my iced tea twenty times, even though I had barely touched it. Your father – well, he didn’t seem to hear a word I said. He just nodded a lot, and tried to smile, but you could see he was still in pain. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.”

“As for Teddy,” she said with smirk, “his personality was probably the one thing that hadn’t changed: he was still a snotty little brat!” Abruptly her smile faded, and her voice went soft.

“And you,” she said, shaking her head. “You were like a zombie. You barely spoke to your parents, or to Teddy. You lit up when you first saw me, but then it faded away, and after a while, so did you. You were in the room with us, and then you weren’t, but I never saw you leave.”

“Was I sad?” I asked, realizing how stupid the question sounded when spoken aloud.

But Mrs. Margolis surprised me by shaking her head. “No, you didn’t seem particularly sad. You didn’t seem particularly
anything
. It was like you had just switched yourself off.”

A sudden noise from the street startled Stanley, and he swiveled, frozen in profile in front of us so that he could keep one eye on us and the other on the back yard. Looking at the squirrel I wondered idly what the view was like when you had eyes on either side of your head. Certainly not as narrow as our own. But how do you see what’s directly in front of you?

Mrs. Margolis sipped her coffee, then continued.

“I went back for one more visit, and it was even worse. Your mother was so bouncy and chipper I just wanted to shake her. Your father just sat there like a lump, looking even more haggard. And you seemed so ill at ease around me, like you were glad to see me, but wanted to get away from me at the same time.”

She grimaced. “It all made me very uncomfortable. And so sad. And then when I noticed the pictures, it only made things more awkward for me.”

“The pictures?”

“You’ve already mentioned it, Jonny. There are no pictures of your sister in that house. None. It’s as if they want to pretend she never existed, like that’s the only way to... to escape the pain.”

We sat in silence while I processed what she had said. Stanley turned to face us and was soon rewarded with more airborne oats.

Finally I said, “Rebecca and I talked about it once. About you being the only person I remember. Well, you and Maggie, as of last night.”

Mrs. Margolis looked at me but did not reply.

“Rebecca wondered if I only remembered the people I loved, and forgot everybody else.”

At this Mrs. Margolis’s eyes began to well up. I started to apologize, then stopped myself, thinking about my previous conversations with her.

I went on. “That would explain why I remember you and Maggie. I loved Maggie.” I paused. “And I love you, too.”

“Oh, Jonny,” she said, a tear breaking free and working its way down her cheek, soon followed by another. But through her tears she smiled.

“It kind of makes sense to me,” I said, “but what about my parents? Didn’t I love them?”

“Not after you decided not to,” she said, again with that hard, level gaze.

“What?” I said, trying to grasp this bizarre statement. “I...
decided
not to love my parents?”

Mrs. Margolis’s eyes stayed locked on mine. “At least that’s what I think,” she said. “You loved Maggie. And you loved that dog of yours – what was his name?”

“Rufus,” I said, unable to suppress a smile at his memory.

“That’s right,” she said, also smiling. “Rufus. He was a sweet dog – you definitely loved him. And you loved your parents, too – I don’t want to think you didn’t. But...” Her voice trailed off.

“But what?”

She sighed. “Jonny, I’m no psychologist. But it seemed to me that after you lost Rufus and then Maggie – and this was all in the space of one year, if I remember correctly – I think you just decided to take... preventive measures.”

I started to speak, but she held up a hand. The movement startled the squirrel, who froze in mid-chew.

“You were always such a bright boy,” she continued. “Very logical. I think you looked at your situation, and decided that the things you loved most were being taken away from you. So you decided – and again, this is just my take on this – you decided that the way not to lose somebody you love was... to simply stop loving anybody.”