Thanks for the Memories (6 page)
“Who has one, then?” I close my eyes and study the image embedded in my memory. A sunny day, a cactus on a windowsill, white voile curtains billowing out an open window. I smell a barbecue, I hear children laugh outside the window and the sound of a ball bouncing. I move closer to the window and see a girl with white-blond hair looking up at me. There’s a look of horror on her t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
/ 4 7
face, and then I see the ball headed toward me. It flies through the window, knocks the cactus from the sill and to the ground. I jump with fright in the bed.
“What’s wrong, love? Should I call a nurse?”
“No, it’s just—” I feel beads of sweat breaking out on my forehead. I feel dizzy and confused, madness setting in, a mother without her cub. Suddenly frustration overwhelms me, and I shake my head aggressively. “I want a haircut,” I say angrily, blowing my fringe off my forehead. “I want to get out of here.”
“Okay, love.” Dad’s voice is quiet. “A little longer, is all.”
e t a h a i r
c u
t ! J u s
t i n b l
o w
s the mop out of his eyes
G and glares with dissatisfaction at his reflection in the mirror. Until his image caught his eye, he was packing his bag to go back to London while whistling the happy tune of a recently divorced man who’s just been laid by the first woman since his wife. Well, the second time that year, but the first that he could recall with some small degree of pride. Now, standing before the fulllength mirror, his whistling stalls, the image of his Fabio self failing miserably against the reality. He corrects his posture, sucks in his cheeks, and flexes his muscles, vowing that now that the divorce cloud has lifted, he will get his body back in order. Forty-three years old, he is handsome and he knows it, but it’s not a view that is held with arrogance. His opinions on his looks are merely understood with the same logic he applies to tasting a fine wine. The grape was merely grown in the right place, under the right conditions. Some degree of nurturing and love mixed with later moments of being completely trampled on and walked all over. He possesses enough common sense to recognize he was born with good genes t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
/ 4 9
and features that were in proportion, in the right places. He should be neither praised nor blamed for this. It’s just how it is. At almost six feet, he is tall, his shoulders broad, his hair still thick and chestnut brown, though graying at the sides. This he does not mind; he’s had gray hairs since his twenties and has always felt they give him a distinguished look. For Justin, moving on and change are what he expects. He is not one for pausing, for becoming stuck in life, though he didn’t expect his particular philosophy of aging and graying to apply to his marriage. Jennifer left him two years ago to ponder this, though not just this, but for a great many other reasons too. So many, in fact, he wishes he had taken out a pen and notepad and listed them as she bellowed at him in her tirade of hate. In the dark lonely nights that initially followed, Justin wondered if his solid, tight philosophy could make things all right. Would he wake up in the morning and find Jennifer in their bed; would the light scar on his chin have healed from where the wedding ring had landed; would the list of things about him she hated so much be the very things she loved?
Through strands of the long hair hanging over his eyes, he has a vision of the man he expects to see. Leaner, younger, perhaps with fewer wrinkles around the eyes. Any faults, such as the expanding waistline, are partly due to age and partly of his own doing—he often took to beer and take-out for comfort during his divorce process. Repeated flashbacks of the previous night draw his eyes back to the bed where he and Sarah got to know each other intimately. All day he definitely felt like the big man on campus, and he was just seconds away from interrupting his talk on Dutch and Flemish painting to give details of his previous night’s performance. Only three-quarters of the class, first-year students in the midst of Rag Week, had shown up after the previous night’s foam party, and he was sure those who were in attendance wouldn’t notice if he launched into a detailed analysis of his lovemaking skills. He didn’t test his assumptions, all the same.
5 0 / C e c e l i a A h e r n
Blood for Life Week is over, much to Justin’s relief, and Sarah has moved on from the college, back to her base. On his return to Dublin this month he coincidentally bumped into her in a bar, one that he just happened to know she frequented, and they went from there. He isn’t sure if he will see her again, though his inside jacket pocket is safely padded with her number.
He has to admit that while the previous night was indeed delightful—a couple too many bottles of Château Olivier (which until last night he’s always found disappointing, despite its ideal location in Bordeaux) in a lively bar on the Green, followed by a trip to his hotel room—he feels much was missing from his conquest. He acquired some Dutch courage from his hotel minibar before calling round to see her, and by the time he arrived at the bar, he was already incapable of serious conversation, or more seriously, incapable of conversation— Oh, for Christ’s sake, Justin, what man do you know cares about the damn conversation? But he feels that, despite ending up in his bed, Sarah did care about the conversation. Perhaps there were things she wanted to say to him, and perhaps she did say them while he saw those sad blue eyes boring into his and those rosebud lips opening and closing, but his Jameson whiskey wouldn’t allow him to hear, instead singing in his head over her words like a petulant child.
With his second seminar in two months complete, Justin throws his clothes into his bag, happy to be leaving this miserable musty room. Friday afternoon, time to fly back to London. Back to his daughter and to his younger brother, Al, and sister-in-law, Doris, visiting from Chicago. He departs the hotel, steps out onto the cobbled side streets of Temple Bar and into his waiting taxi.
“The airport, please.”
“Here on holidays?” the driver asks immediately.
“No.” Justin looks out the window, hoping this will end the conversation.
“Working?” The driver starts the engine.
t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
/ 5 1
“Yes.”
“Where do you work?”
“A college.”
“Which one?”
Justin sighs. “Trinity.”
“You the janitor?” The driver’s green eyes twinkle playfully at him in the mirror.
“I’m a lecturer on art and architecture,” Justin says defensively, folding his arms and blowing his floppy mane from his eyes.
“Architecture, huh? I used to be a builder.”
Justin doesn’t respond.
“So where are ye off to? Off on holiday?”
“Nope.”
“What is it, then?”
“I live in London.” And my U.S. social security number is . . .
“And you work here?”
“Yep.”
“Would you not just live here?”
“Nope.”
“Why’s that, then?”
“Because I’m a guest lecturer here. A colleague of mine invited me to give a seminar once a month.”
“Ah.” The driver smiles at him in the mirror as though he’d been trying to fool him. “So what do you do in London?”
I’m a serial killer who preys on inquisitive cabdrivers.
“Lots of different things.” Justin sighs and caves in as the driver waits for more. “I’m the editor of the
Art and Architectural Review
, the only truly international art and architectural publication,” he says proudly. “I started it ten years ago, and we’re still unrivaled. Highest-selling magazine of its kind.” Only twenty thousand subscribers, you liar. There’s no reaction.
“I’m also a curator.”
5 2 / C e c e l i a A h e r n
The driver winces. “You’ve to touch dead bodies?”
Justin scrunches his face in confusion. “What? No.” Then adds unnecessarily, “I’m also a regular panelist on a BBC art and culture show.”
Twice in five years doesn’t quite constitute regular, Justin. Oh, shut up.
The driver studies Justin now. “You’re on TV?” He narrows his eyes. “I don’t recognize you.”
“Do you watch the show?”
“No.”
Well, then.
Justin rolls his eyes. He throws off his suit jacket, opens another of his shirt buttons, and lowers the window. His hair sticks to his forehead. Still. A few weeks have gone by, and he hasn’t been to the barber. He blows the strands out of his eyes. They stop at a red light, and Justin looks to his left. A hair salon.
“Hey, would you mind pulling over for just a few minutes? I won’t be long.”
“Look, Conor, don’t worry about it. Stop apologizing,” I say into the cell phone tiredly. He exhausts me. Every little word with him drains me. “Dad is here with me now, and we’re going to get a taxi to the house together, even though I’m perfectly capable of sitting in a car by myself.”
We’re outside the hospital, and Dad has hailed a cab and now holds the door open for me. I’m finally going home, but I don’t feel the relief I was hoping for. There’s nothing but dread. I dread meeting people I know and having to explain what has happened, over and over again. I dread walking into my house and having to face the half-decorated nursery. I dread having to get rid of the nursery, having to replace it with a spare bed and fill the wardrobes t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
/ 5 3
with my own overflow of bags and shoes I’ll never wear. I dread having to go to work instead of taking the leave I had planned. I even dread seeing Conor. I dread going back to a loveless marriage with no baby to distract us. I know it would be common sense for me to want my husband to come rushing home to me—in fact, for my husband to
want to
come rushing home to me—but there are many buts in our marriage. And to behave the right way, to do the adult thing, feels wrong right now; I don’t want anybody around me. I’ve been poked and prodded physically and psychologically. I want to be on my own to grieve. I want to feel sorry for myself without sympathetic words and clinical explanations. I want to be illogical, self-pitying, self-examining, bitter and lost, for just a few more days, please, world, and I want to do it alone. As I said, that is not unusual in our marriage. Conor’s an engineer. He travels abroad to work for months before coming home for one month and then going off again. I used to get so used to my own company and routine that for the first week of him being home I’d be irritable and wish he’d go back. Now that irritability stretches to the entire month of his being home. And it’s become glaringly obvious I’m not alone in that feeling.
I always thought our marriage could survive anything as long as we both tried. But then I found myself having to try to try. I dug beneath the new layers of complexities we’d created over the years to get to the beginning of the relationship. What was it, I wondered, that we had then that we could revive now? What was the thing that could make two people want to spend every day of the rest of their lives together? Ah, I found it. It was a thing called love. A small, simple word. If only it didn’t mean so much, our marriage would be flawless.
My mind wandered a lot while I was lying in that hospital bed. At times it stalled in its wandering, like when a person enters a room and then forgets what for. It stood alone, dumbstruck.
5 4 / C e c e l i a A h e r n
Sometimes, when staring at the pink walls, I thought of nothing but of the fact that I was staring at pink walls. On one occasion while my mind was wandering far, I dug deep to find a memory of when I was six years old and had a favorite tea set given to me by my grandmother Betty. She kept it in her house for me to play with when I came over on Saturdays, and during the afternoons, when my grandmother was “taking tea”
with her friends, I would wear one of my mother’s pretty childhood dresses and have afternoon tea with Aunt Jemima, the cat. The dresses never quite fit, but I wore them all the same, and Aunt Jemima and I never did take to tea, but we were both polite enough to keep up the pretense until my parents came to collect me at the end of the day. I told this story to Conor a few years ago, and he laughed, missing the point.
It was an easy point to miss—I won’t hold him accountable for that—but what I was aching for him to understand was that I’ve increasingly found that people never truly tire of playing games and dressing up, no matter how many years pass. Our lies now are just more sophisticated; our words to deceive, more eloquent. From cowboys and Indians, doctors and nurses, to husband and wife, we’ve never stopped pretending. But sitting in the taxi beside Dad while listening to Conor on the phone, I realize I’ve finally stopped pretending.
“Where is Conor?” Dad asks as soon as I’ve hung up. He opens the top button of his shirt and loosens his tie. He dresses in a shirt and tie every time he leaves the house, never forgets his cap. He looks for the handle on the car door, to roll the window down.
“It’s electronic, Dad. There’s the button. He’s still in Japan. He’ll be home in a few days.”
“I thought he was coming back yesterday.” He puts the window all the way down, and the wind topples the cap off his head; the few strands of hair left on his scalp stick up. He fixes the cap t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
/ 5 5
back on his head and has a mini battle with the button before finally figuring out how to successfully leave a small gap at the top for air.
“Ha! Gotcha.” He smiles victoriously, thumping his fist at the window.
I wait until he’s finished celebrating to answer. “I told him not to.”
“You told who what, love?”
“Conor. You were asking about Conor, Dad.”
“Ah, that’s right, I was. Home soon, is he?”
I nod.
The day is hot, and I blow my bangs up from my sticky forehead. I feel my hair sticking to the back of my clammy neck. Suddenly it feels heavy and greasy on my head. I have the overwhelming urge to shave it all off. I become agitated in my seat, and Dad, sensing it again, knows not to say anything. I’ve been doing that all week: experiencing anger beyond comprehension, so much that I want to drive my fists through the walls and punch the nurses. Then I become weepy and feel such loss inside me, it’s as if I’ll never be whole again. I prefer the anger. Anger is better. Anger is hot and filling and gives me something to cling to. We stop at a set of traffic lights, and I look to my left. A hair salon.
