Memorizing You (35 page)

I stepped up to the front door and knocked. Waited. Nothing. I slipped the spare key I always carried with me from my pocket, opened to door and stepped inside. It was the first time I’d been in the place since…

It smelled like stale cigarette smoke inside. I called out, “Hello!” I wasn’t sure if I expected an answer, but I thought it was polite just in case. Ryan’s mom could have someone, even her sister, watching the house as she was busy at the hospital. There was no response.

I was surprised to look in the living room and see the Christmas tree was still in place. I walked to it. The presents were still under it. In fact, there were more presents. She’d been adding to them. It looked as if she had added one for every week that he’d been away from home.

The kitchen was the source of the smell of cigarettes. A full ashtray was next to a coffee cup. Only one shade of lipstick was on the butts. The trash was filled with TV dinner trays. The room was solemn with a mother’s worry.

Walking back up the stairs made me uneasy. Fourteen stairs that had completely changed our lives. At the top, I looked back down. It didn’t seem that such a short distance could change so many things. I looked at my hand. Made a grip that two fingers resisted.

The door to his room was shut. The stillness I found past the door disturbed me. It seemed suspended. His bed was made. There were clothes folded on the end of it. The chair at its foot was where she’d been sleeping. The blankets rolled in it were like a small camp. The door was closed to preserve the room. Just in case. There were no ashtrays, glasses, or plates. She only came in here to sleep and be with her memories.

I felt the breeze before I saw the curtain move. The window was open a crack. I looked down to the sill outside and saw the sunflower seeds that had been laid outside. She was carrying on his tradition in his absence. I could look down into the garden…to the rock.

I walked to the barn. Someone had emptied the compost bins. That was smart. The mulch would have soured without being turned for any length of time. I opened the seed drawers that Ryan had kept so meticulously. They’d been emptied. She’d been careful to take care of his things.

Something made me walk to the spot where we’d camped at the middle of the field. I saw the circle of rocks that had been the campfire. Something had been stacked high in its center and burned down to ash. I used a stick to sift through the small burnt mound. It appeared to be his dad’s clothes. I saw glossy bits of paper, bent down to inspect them. They were pictures of Ryan’s dad. They’d also been burnt. A lot of pictures. Like someone had emptied an entire album. Perhaps it was her way of purging her anger. Maybe it simply was the result of her anger. But it was clear the man would never be welcomed back in their lives.

I sat in my car trying to collect my thoughts when another car pulled in front of their house. I had to look twice. I thought it was Ryan’s mom. But it was a Ford Fairlane. Not a Riviera. And the woman was blond. But the resemblance was uncanny. It was Ryan’s mom’s sister. The scrapbooker. She made her way into the house. It was amazing how many people got sucked into the vortex of tragedy.

Mom was on the phone when I returned. She seemed excited to see me. Signaled me to come to the phone.

“Just a moment,” she said into the receiver. $2Py fy “Here he is.” She looked at me. “It’s Jerry.”

My stomach leaped against my ribcage as I grabbed the phone.

“Sorry, I haven’t got to you earlier. Been working in another wing. He’s been awake for a week…”

I heard nothing after that. My head erupted in an explosion of joy. I not only lost my bearing. I lost my rudder. I was hobbling in directions that would get me nowhere.

I showered, shaved, then dressed. I clumsily bumped my leg against the sink and was reminded that I wasn’t completely healed.

“Do you want to take him some cookies, or something?” Mom asked, looking like she thought she needed to make a contribution to the occasion.

I shook my head. I knew then what I needed to take, and I was out the door, in my car, and on my way.

I don’t know how I made it there without getting a ticket. I don’t remember one stop sign or light. I didn’t even know I was in the hospital garage until the parking stub was in my hand and I was on the way to the elevator. I finally turned around to take note of which level I parked on.

A million things were turning over in my mind to say. Nothing stuck. I just made my way through the maze of halls until I arrived at the desk in the wing where Jerry had told me to go. It was a part of the hospital I hadn’t seen. More like bedrooms in homes than the austere rooms with the metal beds with green and gray walls.

The receptionist at the desk in this section was courteous. Less structured by rules it seemed. She looked at the packages I was carrying, smiled and gave me the room number. No instructions, no regulations to keep non-family members away. Just the room number that would get me to him. I was ecstatic.

My heart was pumping so hard it made me dizzy. Before I knew it I was standing at the door, looking at the number on it. I wiped the pinpricks of sweat from my lip, took a deep breath and knocked before I pushed it inward.

I saw the whole room in silhouette against the massive bank of western windows. I $2Py fy could make out two of the shadows turn toward me as I stepped into a vault of sunshine. One was on a bed. One seated next to it.

And then I saw him. He was thin. Very thin. Most of his muscle mass had dissipated and his terry cloth robe fell on a sunken chest. His face was gaunt, but his bone structure would always give him away. His hair was long now. It covered his forehead and ears and seemed straw-like having been covered in bandages for so long. He smiled as I drew near the bed. His mother sat to the side of him, watching his reaction.

After all the things I’d rehearsed to say, all I could manage was, “Hi.”

He said, “Hi,” back, looking at the packages I’d brought in.

The Candyland game and the deck of Old Maid cards.

As I stepped within a couple feet of the bed I could see that his eyes were different. One seemed set off to the side. Like what I heard called a lazy eye. And there was an odd indentation in his scalp beneath his hair on the left side of his head. I could see a pencil-thin white scar running the entire length of his scalp.

The quiet in the room after our greeting was prickling with oddness that I couldn’t put my finger on.

Ryan’s mom touched him, looked at me, and I could read something unsaid in her eyes in the space between us.

“Ryan, this is David,” she said in a voice that was unsteady, but telling.

The smile never left his gaunt face. “Nice to meet you, David,” he said, sticking out his hand to shake mine.

My mind evaporated within me. I made steps forward. Like a million, I guess, and I shook his hand.

“I haven’t had many visitors,” he said.

There was a slight slur to his words. Like his tongue was having a difficult time wrapping around the sy$sky fy llables.

But with all of these things, these adjustments to the guy I knew, he was still the most gloriously beautiful sight to behold. I wanted to scoop him up in my arms in the tightest hug and kiss him until I went blind. We had both made it through. We were both still here.

“We’re just catching up on things,” his mom said, filling in the gap so I didn’t have to formulate something to say in the awkward frame of where I now knew I stood.

There was a family album opened on his lap. As I stepped closer I could see where photos had been removed. I knew what those photos were and what had happened to them.

It was as if I were looking at the room from the wrong end of a telescope. There was no balance. Nowhere to move that didn’t make me feel as if I was walking off the edge of something.

He looked at the boxes I was carrying in my good arm.

“What’s that?” he asked. He sounded childlike.

“Candyland and Old Maid,” I said, placing them on the bed in front of him.

He rubbed the surface of the Candyland box like it was a Christmas present. His eyes took in all of the display cover.

“Great. You’ll teach me to play it, I hope?”

Every word he said was knocking things down inside of me. My supports were failing. It was like standing on a mountain of sand that was being funneled away from my feet by ocean waves. I was tottering.

His mom stood, taking me by the arm. “It’s almost time for the doctor’s to come in for Ryan’s physical therapy. It was very good of David to come in to see you and bring you some games, don’t you think, Ryan?” She was urging me toward the door. I didn’t resist her.

“Thanks, David,” he called after us, the smile never leaving the frail face. “I hope you’ll come back when I learn how to play the games.”$?Imy

I think I nodded. I don’t know.

It was a brisk walk to the corridor. My mind absorbed a thousand bits of information, trying to make sense of it all in seconds.

Her voice was gentle, but firm. “I didn’t call you because this is a very difficult time. He’s come back from a very long recovery. He has…trouble with his memory because of the operation. He doesn’t even know who I am. His mother. That’s why I’m showing him pictures, trying to reacquaint him with his life. With our life. He doesn’t recall what happened or how he got here. I still don’t even know how I’m going to tell him that. Or where his father is.”

“I understand.”

“I’m not being cruel when I’m telling you that now is not a good time. Your presence will only further confuse a confused situation until I get him caught up. And I’m doing this the best I can.”

I leaned against the wall. My head was spinning. I had a headache. “How long before he gets it back?” I asked. “His memory? How long before he remembers everything?”

She looked away. “The operation took away part of his brain, David. They don’t think he will get a lot of his memory back. He may have flashes of things, but he’ll never have a full recovery. A lot of it is gone. Forever.”

She was looking into my eyes again. I could see that she was telling me the truth. And it hurt.

The weight of what she told me did not want to sink in. I was forcing a barrier between me and the truth I didn’t want to acknowledge.

“He doesn’t know who I am,” I said. I couldn’t control the quaver in my voice. I was on the edge of an emotional cliff. “I’m a stranger to him.”

“We’re all strangers to him, David.”$2Py fy

“What’re we gonna do?” I asked like I thought she had an answer. I wanted her to have an answer. Something I could deal with.

Her silence said way too much. I wandered down the hall. I didn’t want to lose it. My head told me I was going to. The pain curled like fire behind my eyes. I closed them. I wanted to close them, count to three and wake up from the nightmare to the normal world again. I opened them. She was still there, standing beside the door. I walked back to her.

“What’re we gonna do?” I asked her again.

“You’re going to have to give me some time to try to bring him back up to speed. You’re just going to have to trust me, that I am doing everything I can do in this situation.”

I could see she was near tears. I hadn’t meant to do that. I was doing what I could to control my own.

“I love him.”

“I know.”

“I’ve been erased.”

“I know.”

Her hand touched my chin. “You have to give me time. I’m going to try everything I can to help him get back. But I can’t have him confused while I’m doing that. Can you do that for me?”

I stared at the door. I knew it was the least of the blockades I now faced.

“I’ll leave a message for you in a few weeks. Can you give me that?” she asked.

I lost my way out of the hospital. I made no$?Imything but wrong turns. I couldn’t even remember which level of the garage I’d parked the car. I started at the top and walked all the way down until I found it. I sat in it, smoking a stale Chesterfield that was still in my coat pocket. It looked funny between the two fingers of a hand whose last two fingers jutted out permanently in a feminine gesture. Before I knew it my ashtray was full, the sunlight had faded from the garage edges, and the fluorescent lights were on. I was encased in blue concrete.

I’d replayed the eyes that didn’t recognize me over and over in my head. The hand he held out as introduction…as if we were meeting for the first time. The two things that told me a history had been lost between us. All our wonderful moments.

It was nine in the evening when I made it home. Rosemary was in the kitchen with Mom, as usual, working on the books. There were fresh cookies on the stove.

I sat down and told them the situation. My voice stayed steady the whole time. When I was done, I went up to my room, closed the door and lay in my bed. I was numb inside. Finally. Thankfully.

I turned the radio on low, studied the shadows on the ceiling. Time had altered even the sounds it seemed. There were no sounds of a Romeo climbing the trellis to greet me through a window. Breathing next to me in the bed. Snoring in my ear that would wake me.

I thought of him in that room. How he woke to be greeted by a blank slate. Not knowing a soul, even if he’d seen them every day of his life. Looking into the faces of people who loved him and seeing a stranger. Being truly alone.

It’s strange how a resolve can overtake you in a moment of anguish. But sometimes, I think, that’s what it takes to make us realize the importance of making a decision. Sometimes only a crisis can make us see the value of time, and how it can slip away from you. Or steal something from you if you don’t do something.

Mom knew something was up. She was up earlier than usual, making breakfast. French toast with brown sugar and cinnamon. One of my favorites. Dad was sleeping in. He’d had a long day yesterday because I was gone again. And he was tired. One of the retirees was picking up the slack.

She sat in front of me and waited.

“I’ve been treating this business like it’s a part time job after grade school,” I began. “It’s the family business now. It pays for the house, the cars, the food. Everything. It’s getting bigger every day. Rosemary has to help you with the books.”