Thanks for the Memories (28 page)
At first I shiver at the thought, goose bumps rising on my skin, but on further thought, I snuggle down into the bed and hug my body. I suddenly don’t feel so lonely, and I actually feel glad of the company within me. But can this really be the reason for the connection I feel with him? That in flowing from his channels to mine, the blood enabled me to tune in to his frequency and experience his personal memories and passions?
I sigh wearily, knowing nothing in my life makes sense anymore, and not just since the day I fell down the stairs. I had been falling for quite some time before that. That particular day . . . that was the day I’d landed. The first day of the rest of my life—and, quite possibly, thanks to Justin Hitchcock.
It has been a long day. The business at the airport, the
Antiques
Roadshow
, then the finale at the Royal Opera House. A tsunami of emotions has come crashing down upon me all in twenty-four hours, pulled me under, and overwhelmed me. I smile now, remembering the events, the precious moments with Dad—from tea at his kitchen table to a mini-adventure in London. I offer a toothy grin to the ceiling above me and a heartfelt thanks beyond the ceiling.
From the darkness I hear wheezing, short rasps drifting into the atmosphere.
“Dad?” I whisper. “Are you okay?”
The wheezing gets louder, and my body freezes.
“Dad?”
Then it’s followed by a snort. And a loud guffaw.
2 4 2 / C e c e l i a A h e r n
“Michael Aspel,” he splutters through his laughter. “Christ Almighty, Gracie.”
I sigh with relief as his laughter intensifies, becomes so much bigger than him that he almost can’t bear it. I giggle at the joyous sound. He laughs harder upon hearing me, and I at him. Our sounds fuel each other. The springs of the mattress beneath me squeak as my body shakes, causing us to roar even more. Thoughts of the umbrella stand, going live with Michael Aspel, the group cheering “Tchaikovsky!” at the camera, the hilarity grows with each flickering scene.
“Oh, my stomach,” he howls.
I roll onto my side, hands on my belly.
Dad continues to wheeze and bangs his hand repeatedly on the side cabinet that separates us. I can’t stop, and Dad’s highpitched wheezing sets me off even more. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him laugh so much and so heartily. From the pale light seeping through the window beside Dad, I see his legs rise in the air and kick around with glee.
“Oh. My. I. Can’t. Stop.”
We wheeze and roar and laugh, sit up, lie down, roll around, and try to catch our breaths. We stop momentarily and try to compose ourselves, but it takes over our bodies again, laughing, laughing, laughing in the darkness, at nothing and at everything. Then we calm down, and there is silence. Dad farts, and we are off again.
Hot tears roll from the sides of my eyes and down my plumped cheeks, which ache from smiling, and I squeeze them with my hands to stop. It occurs to me how happiness and sadness are so closely knitted together. Such a thin line, a threadlike divide. In the midst of emotions, it trembles, blurring the territory of exact opposites. The movement is minute, like the thin string of a spider’s web that quivers under a raindrop. Here in my moment of unstoppable cheek-and stomach-aching laughter, as my body rolls t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
/ 2 4 3
around—stomach clenched, muscles taut—it’s racked by emotion and steps ever so slightly over the mark, and into sadness. Tears of sadness suddenly gush down my cheeks as my stomach continues to shake and ache with happiness.
I think of Conor and me; how quickly a moment of love was snapped away to a moment of hate. One comment to steal it all away. How love and war stand upon the very same foundations. How my darkest moments, my most fearful times, when faced, became my bravest. At your weakest, you end up showing more strength; at your lowest you are suddenly lifted higher than you’ve ever been. They all border one another, these opposites, and show how quickly we can be altered. Despair can be altered by one simple smile offered by a stranger; confidence can turn to fear by the arrival of one uneasy presence. Just as Kate’s son had wavered on the balance beam, and in an instant his excitement had turned to pain. Everything is on the verge, always brimming the surface, with only a slight shake or a tremble to send things toppling. Dad stops his laughter so abruptly it concerns me, and I reach for the light.
Pitch-black so quickly becomes light.
He looks at me as though he’s done something wrong, but is afraid to admit it. He throws the covers off his body and shuffles into the bathroom, grabbing his travel bag and knocking down everything in his path, refusing to meet my eyes. I look away. How quickly such comfort with someone can shift to awkwardness. When you are convinced you know exactly where you’re going, you reach a dead end.
Dad makes his way back to bed, wearing a different pair of pajama bottoms and with a towel tucked under his arm. I turn off the light, both of us quiet now. Light so quickly becomes darkness. I continue to stare at the ceiling, feeling lost again, when only moments ago I’d been found. My recent answers transformed back into questions.
2 4 4 / C e c e l i a A h e r n
“I can’t sleep, Dad.” My voice sounds childlike.
“Close your eyes and stare into the dark, love,” Dad responds sleepily, sounding thirty years younger too.
Moments later his light snores are audible. Awake . . . and then gone.
A veil hangs between the two opposites, a mere slip of a thing that is too transparent to warn us or comfort us. You hate now, but look through this veil and see the possibility of love; you’re sad, but look through to the other side and see happiness. Absolute composure shifting to a complete mess—it happens so quickly, all in the blink of an eye.
k a y, I ’ v e g at h e r e d u s a l l here today because—”
O
“Somebody died.”
“No, Kate.” I sigh.
“Well, it sounds like— Ow,” she yelps as Frankie, I assume, physically harms her for her tactlessness.
“So are you all red-bused out?” Frankie asks.
I’m seated at the desk in the hotel room, on the phone with the girls, who are huddled at Kate’s house on speaker. I’d spent the morning looking around London with Dad, taking photographs of him standing awkwardly in front of anything resembling anything English: red buses, postboxes, police horses, pubs, Buckingham Palace, and a completely unaware transvestite, as Dad was so excited to see “a real one,” who was nothing like the local priest who’d lost his mind and wandered the streets wearing a dress in his hometown of Cavan when he was young.
While I chat, Dad is lying on his bed watching
Dancing with the
Stars
, drinking a brandy and licking the sour cream and onion off Pringles before depositing the soggy chips back in the can. I’ve called a conference call to share the latest news, or more
2 4 6 / C e c e l i a A h e r n
to plead for help and sanity. I may have gone one wish too far, but a girl can always dream.
“One of your kids just puked on me,” Frankie says. “Your kid just puked on me.”
“Oh, that is not puke, that’s just a little dribble.”
“No,
this
is dribble . . .”
There’s silence.
“Frankie, you are disgusting.”
“Okay, girls, girls, please, can you two stop, just this once?”
“Sorry, Joyce, but I can’t continue this conversation until
it
is out of here. It’s crawling around biting things, climbing on things, drooling on things. It’s very distracting. Can’t Christian mind it?”
I try not to laugh.
“Do not call my child ‘it.’ And no, Christian is busy.”
“He’s watching football.”
“He doesn’t like to be disturbed, particularly by you.”
“Well, you’re busy too. How do I get it to come with me?”
Another silence.
“Come here, little boy,” Frankie says uneasily.
“His name is Sam. You’re his godmother, in case you’ve forgotten that too.”
“No, I haven’t forgotten. Just his name.” Her voice strains, as though she’s lifting weights. “Wow, what do you feed it?”
Sam squeals like a pig. Frankie snorts back.
“Frankie, give him to me. I’ll take him to Christian.”
“Okay, Joyce,” Frankie begins in Kate’s absence, “I’ve done some research on the information you gave me yesterday, and I’ve brought the paperwork with me. Hold on.” I hear papers being ruffled.
“What’s all this about?” Kate asks, returning.
“This is about Joyce jumping into the mind of the American man, thereby possessing his memories, skills, and intelligence,”
Frankie responds.
t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
/ 2 4 7
“What?” Kate shrieks.
“I found out that his name is Justin Hitchcock,” I say excit edly.
“How?” Kate asks.
“His surname was in his daughter’s biography in last night’s ballet program, and his first name, well, I heard that in a dream.”
No response. I roll my eyes as I imagine them giving each other that look.
“What the hell is going on here?” Kate asks, confused.
“Google him, Kate,” Frankie orders. “Let’s see if he exists.”
“He exists, believe me,” I confirm.
“No, sweetie. You see, the way this works is, we’re supposed to think you’re crazy for a while before eventually believing you. So let us check up on him, and then we’ll go from there.”
I lean my chin on my hand and wait.
“While Kate’s doing that, I looked into the idea of sharing memories—” Frankie starts.
“What?” Kate shrieks again. “Sharing memories? Are you both out of your mind?”
“No, just me,” I say tiredly, now resting my head on the desk.
“Actually, surprisingly enough, it turns out that you’re not clinically insane,” Frankie continues. “On that count, anyway. I went online and did some research. It turns out you’re not alone in feeling that.”
I sit up, suddenly alert.
“I read interviews with people who have admitted to experiencing somebody else’s memories and even acquiring skills or tastes.”
“Oh, you two are pulling my leg. I knew this was a setup. I knew it was out of character for you to drop by, Frankie.”
“This isn’t a setup,” I assure Kate.
“So you’re trying to tell me honestly that you’ve magically acquired somebody else’s skills.”
2 4 8 / C e c e l i a A h e r n
“She speaks Latin, French, and Italian,” Frankie explains. “But we didn’t say it was magically. That would be ridiculous.”
“And what about tastes?” Kate is not convinced.
“She eats meat now,” Frankie says matter-of-factly.
“But why do you think these are somebody else’s skills? Why can’t she just have learned Latin, French, and Italian by herself and decided that she suddenly likes meat, like a normal person? Lately I like olives and have an aversion to cheese. Does that mean my body has been possessed by an olive tree?”
“I don’t think you’re quite getting this. What makes you think olive trees don’t like cheese?”
Silence.
“Look, Kate, I agree with you about the change of diet being a natural thing, but in all fairness, Joyce did learn three languages overnight without actually learning them.”
“Oh.”
“And I have dreams of Justin Hitchcock’s private childhood moments,” I add.
“Where the hell was I when all of this was happening?”
“Making me do the hokey-pokey live on Sky News,” I huff. I place the phone on speaker and pace the room and watch the time on the bottom of the television as both Frankie and Kate laugh heartily on the other end.
Dad’s tongue freezes mid-Pringle lick as his eyes follow me.
“What’s that noise?” he finally asks.
“Kate and Frankie laughing,” I respond.
He rolls his eyes and continues licking his Pringles, his attention back to a middle-aged news anchor doing the rumba. After two minutes, the laughter finally stops, and I take them off speaker.
“So as I was saying,” Frankie says, catching her breath as though nothing had happened, “what you’re experiencing is quite normal—well, not normal, but there are other, eh . . .”
t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
/ 2 4 9
“Freaks?” Kate suggests.
“. . .
cases
where people have spoken of similar things. The only thing is, these are all people who have had heart transplants, which is nothing to do with what you’ve been through, so that blows that theory.”
Thump-thump, thump-thump
. In my throat again.
“Hold on,” Kate butts in, “one person says here that it’s because she was abducted by aliens.”
“Stop reading my notes, Kate,” Frankie hisses. “I wasn’t going to mention that part to her.”
“Listen”—I interrupt their squabbling—“he donated blood. The same month that I went into hospital.”
“So?” Kate says.
“I received a blood transfusion.”
“That’s not even remotely the same thing.”
“Concentrate, Kate. She
received
a blood transfusion,” Frankie explains. “Not all that different to the heart transplant theory I just mentioned.”
We all go quiet.
Kate breaks the silence. “Okay, so, I still don’t get it. Somebody explain.”
“Well, it’s practically the same thing, isn’t it?” I say. “Blood comes from the heart.”
Kate gasps. “It came straight from his heart,” she says dreamily.
“Oh, so now blood transfusions are romantic to you,” Frankie comments. “Let me tell you what I got online: ‘Due to reports from several heart transplant recipients claiming experiences of unexpected side effects, Channel Four made a documentary about whether it’s possible that in receiving a transplanted organ, a patient could inherit some of their donor’s memories, tastes, desires, and habits as well. The documentary follows these people making contact with the donor families in an effort to understand the new
2 5 0 / C e c e l i a A h e r n
life within them. It questions science’s understanding of how the memory works, featuring scientists who are pioneering research into the intelligence of the heart and the biochemical basis for memory in our cells.’ ”
