Memorizing You (36 page)

“You’re quitting school.” She stated it matter-of-factly.

“And you’re quitting the art store finally. Dad and I need you doing the calling and sending out the jobs. You can take a salary from the company like we do. You don’t need to be taking orders when you can give them to us.” I tried a small chuckle.

“Rosemary talked to his doctor’s yesterday, David. He’s not going to get any better than he is right now. He could have a stroke and even get worse.”

“I can handle it.”

“It takes a staff of three doctors to handle it right now.”

“It’ll get better.”

“Because love can heal all things?”

“Because it will.”

“You think being with him will help him remember. That’s a lot of work to go backward.”

“I can do it.”

“Ryan’s challenges are all in front of him, David. Not behind him.”

“I can’t leave what I love behind.”

She rose to plu is killing me.”

*

Connor came over to help me work out. It was going to be a long process, I knew. But he could help me pick up the weights I couldn’t, help wrap my grip around it for a set. I still had trouble bending my legs, but squats were getting easier.

April brought with it the predictable rain. We had to set our schedules around it. A lot of sitting indoors until the skies cleared before we could head out with the mowers. A lot of coffee drank. A lot of people avoiding conversations with me. Including my dad.

I used my time to look at the ‘Houses for Sale’ ads in the Post-Dispatch. I wanted to find something I could afford. It didn’t matter if it was near a college anymore. The two of us wouldn’t need school anymore.

Rosemary was teaching Mom how to do taxes. Her uncle had been a tax accountant and had sent her all the courses. The dining room table had been converted into a makeshift office for my mom. Another phone had been installed in the room. It sat next to the book she used to make out the schedules, and phone other businesses. She did most of her work in her robe until lunchtime now.

I watched the students on their way to school every morning. Bags filled with books filled with dreams. Futures with hopes and question marks. Marching into the mist… Thinking life actually played by a set of rules.

The days and weeks ticked off. I waited for Ryan’s mom to call. Get an update. Anything. Every day passed. I told myself it just meant he was getting better. Getting closer to be able to confront me again. Let me refresh his memory. I practiced speeches every night lying in bed, staring out the Romeo window as the trees filled with leaves again. I dreamed of him falling in love with me all over again. Love was in the blood. He’d remember. You can’t forget the things that made living important…they had to be part of your chemistry.

Every morning I’d touch the necklace on my chest. The half heart. I wanted to feel it was whole again. That the other half was there.

*

“You’ve lost weight,Zilas the ” Judy said, looking up briefly from her game of Solitaire as Philippe’s shears worked their way through my hair. “It looks better on you. Shows your cheeks off more.”

I know it was her way of being polite and making me feel better during my recovery.

The windows were open. The day was still gray with drizzle, but the breeze that blew through the kitchen was cool. Felt good.

She poured me a drink from the pitcher of Mai Tai’s that was next to her cards on the counter. She listened as I rambled about my plans. I’d gone there to ramble. I needed to hear them out in the open so they could become rational. I wanted people to agree with me that they were rational. When you’re immersed in a world of the irrational, you’re plagued with self-doubt.

She listened as she always had done. Her face always had a slightly amused expression so it was hard to tell her real thoughts as you told her yours. She studied my hand, holding the glass with the two fingers that refused to grip.

When she lost her game of Solitaire, she scooped up the cards and began shuffling them. “You’re a true romantic, David. You truly have convinced yourself that if you believe in something hard enough, it will happen. Like magic.”

“I know I can bring him back,” I declared.

“How?”

“Because I know it. I feel it. I believe it.”

“Because it was meant to be?”

“Yes.”

“You’re wanting to believe in a magic trick, David. You’re wanting to believe that because you had something special that the very nature of it can defy reality, and logic, and turn back time. You want to believe that what you feel is so strong that it can undo real scars and real wounds. Erase the things that have changed everything that was dear to you.”$?Imy

I wasn’t anticipating her being contrary to my ideas. It aggravated me a little. “I think I can help him remember what we had.”

“And that will make it like it was before?”

I hesitated. “Yes.” Then more firmly, “Yes!”

“And what if those pieces were cut out of Ryan’s head with surgery? Do you think you can replant them and they’ll grow back like Holland Tulips?”

I cringed. But I understood what she was saying. “I can remind him. We can start again. Fresh.”

“So you think love is inevitable? Like destiny? That it wasn’t a random sequence of unrelated events that somehow brought the two of you together? That you discovered each other by delicate nuances and accidental words and gestures? That the unsuspecting moments that brought you together and stirred feelings inside you weren’t just a collection of life’s surprises? That the things you treasure the most about your journey to finding your love…can be duplicated? Redone? And achieve the same end result?”

“I don’t know what you’re saying. But I think he can learn to love me again.”

“David, love happens because two people shared experiences that brought them to the realization of love. It’s not a puzzle in a box that you can piece back together to get the same picture. Just because you remember them doesn’t mean you can use them to put the pieces back together in his head. The great thing is you still remember them. Not many people even get that.”

I didn’t know what to say. I had come to her hoping she’d make me feel better. It hadn’t worked. No one understood. I could not give up my belief. My hope.

She rose. A soft, manicured hand stoked my cheek and chin. “You think I’m being harsh. But no matter how this turns out, you’ve already seen the treasure we all search a lifetime for. You’ve Zilas the got the whole rest of your life to be grateful for that.”

*

There was one thing I did know for certain. That was I couldn’t keep living in limbo.

“I’m going with you,” Rosemary said, picking up her purse. “As emotional support.”

I made the announcement when I returned home. There’d still been no call. No news. It had been a month. I’d been patient. I’d been an important part of his life. I didn’t belong seated on the fringe waiting for things to happen. I should be a part of them happening.

“What’s that?” Rosemary looked at the bag with the Ben Franklin logo on the lip.

“A gift.”

She looked inside. “Bazooka gum? You spent all of a dollar on a gift?”

I winked at her. “It’s the thought…” I assured her.

“You guys really had something together.”

“Have,” I corrected her, politely.

I pulled to a stop sign a few blocks from the hospital when the clouds split open and let through some blinding sun. I searched the opening for a rainbow. Anything to alleviate the spot of lowness I felt inside. It closed as fast and silent as it had opened.

Rosemary offered nothing more.

I was probably difficult to talk to anyway. My mind centered on the task ahead in dealing with Ryan’s mom. With all due respect to the woman, to exclude me from the process of his recovery was not, in my estimation, the wis to the panties.

If she protested, I’d stand my ground. We both had his best interests at heart. But she was trying to remind him of a past where a father did not love or want him. That he was only being used as a tool to satiate an unrequited ego. And a family life that was nonexistent for most of his life. There was nothing there to draw him back from the void. I believed I held the winning resolution. She’d have to see it my way. She’d have to let go for a while.

I would be a gentleman in doing this. I rehearsed the speech in my mind through the walk in the garage to the elevator.

The first thing I’d noticed was the desk staff had changed. It had been a while since I’d last been here. They said nothing as we walked past to Ryan’s room.

I heard the off rhythm of my gimp leg as I walked, feet slapping the floor in odd tempo. Rosemary’s backed the floor tune with a normal beat.

I carried the Ben Franklin dime store bag of gum in my three-fingered grip. I had two clear reminders of why I was better suited to help the man I loved.

A deep breath, I rapped on the door, pressed it inward. Rosemary hung behind, probably not wanting to be a part of the initial confrontation.

The first thing I noticed was that the room smelled amazingly fresh and clean. The next thing I noticed in a glance to the mirror on the wall that took in all the room was that it was empty. Completely empty. Bed made. Furniture dusted with a lemon polish. Chairs had been pushed against walls. There wasn’t one personal item anywhere to be seen.

Turning, I saw Rosemary still in the door. Her eyes traveled the room beyond me as I opened closets and drawers. There was nothing anywhere. I glanced back at the door number to assure myself I was in the right place.

The heat of alarm started in the pit of my stomach first. A whirring noise whipped through my head which I knew was a rush of blood. I limped past Rosemary back into the corridor, looking toward the desk. The strange faces behind it. I looked to the elevator to make certain is killing me.”

“Yes. He was transferred a couple of weeks ago to another facility,” she informed me.

I choked on the information. It stuck in me, blocking breathable air.

“What facility? Where?” My voice trembled.

“Oh, we don’t know that. Once the release papers are signed, they’re free to take him to any facility they choose. His condition requires that he be taken to a medium care facility until he fully recovers. That’s all I can tell you. You might find out from his mother since that’s who signed the release forms.”

I stared at Rosemary for a number of seconds before I was even aware she was in front of me. I heard the paper bag crackling in my unsteady hand. My fingers had sweated imprints on it.

My brain wanted an explanation. She’d moved him without even bothering to tell me. A couple of weeks ago. More than just a couple of days. Plenty of time to pick up a phone and call me. Keep me up to date as she promised.

Frantic, I dug my pocket for coins, looking for a payphone. The station nurse, seeing my discomfiture, let me use the desk phone. I dialed the number with slippery fingers.

“I’m sorry, the number you dialed is no longer in service…”

Blood abandoned every inch of my body. Thoughts splintered. A timpani drum banged in the center of my chest.

Rosemary took my keys in the garage. She would drive me. I was too erratic.

Rain had opened up full force on the city. It drummed on the hood of the car like the fear opening up inside me. Every block brought me closer to the dread. I held back the scream no one wants hear. I knew something I didn’t want to know.

Not one word was spoken on the drive to Ryan’s house. I watched the house close in on us through the slapping wipers. I saw the sign in the yard as Rosemary closed in on the curb. I spilled out of the car before she had parked, fell into the wet lawn. A shoe came off, stuck in the mud of the curb. My leg and ankle throbbed.

For Sale
.

A noise escaped me and drowned itself in the rain. I was being baptized in pain, soaked through. Rosemary stood behind me with an umbrella, skirting the howl as I plodded up the porch minus a shoe. Mud tattooed my knocks on the door pane. Unanswered, I pulled the spare key from my pocket.

I could smell the emptiness as I crossed the threshold. This was a house. No longer a home. No warmth.

I wandered through each empty room, Rosemary dogging my trail. It had been scrubbed down. Dusted. Made presentable for buyers. They had been gone a while. This wasn’t a hasty exit.

Making the circle, I was back at the stairs. Where the beginning of the end had begun. The history of this small square of space had emptied this house. My life. And now my heart.

I pulled myself up the stairs. Through the quiet. Through the things that were absent. Through their memories of what had been there, and how I could still feel them in the empty spaces. Into what had been his room.

He’d been scrubbed away. The smell of fake pine replaced where he’d been. Shining floors. Bare walls. Curtainless windows. Every inch of him had been stripped away.

Rosemary stepped through the door. She had found something. I knew I didn’t want to see it. She held it like she didn’t want to give it up. A slip of paper that had been folded a dozen ways.

She held it out to me. From it slid a necklace with half a heart at its end. It tangled in my fingers. I didn’t have to read the note in neat handwriting. I knew what a mother would say. She had a lifetime of work ahead of her now. She was trying to spare me her own heartac$2Py fy he. She wanted me to release myself from an obligation she knew I could not fulfill. They had disappeared where she could raise her new son. He was gone.

All light in me dimmed in a wail. I tried to find more light at the window to help me see my way. I threw it open, thrust my head into the mourning world. Rain spattered the sill. The sunflower seeds were gone.

The song had truly ended.

*

I lived in the inertia of disbelief for months. I held on to the fruitless hope that they had not left the city and I would encounter them somewhere, someday. That there would be another chance. Love makes us hopeful fools.

I’m a big enough man to admit I cried. Almost daily. To the point of weakness.

And then came the day of resolve. Knowing that the world had undeniably and permanently changed. That he was gone. The man I loved. Gone forever. That was the true nature of my forever after.