The Forgetting Curve (Memento Nora) (5 page)

VELVET

Somebody did need to do some explaining, but I didn’t know who that somebody was.

The cops? Hardly. Spike? A fat lot of good that’d do. Dad? I hated to worry him about stuff at home. Mom? Maybe. I live in hope.

It started to rain. How cliché.

Do not run.
Book of Velvet
. Chapter 3, Verse 12. Not from or toward anything.

My boots slapped the wet pavement as I walked past boarded-up houses. Spike lives on the nicer end of the West End. Mom and I rent the bottom of a sad-looking triplex on the crappier end. The top floors of our once pretty Victorian were empty. We’d pried off the plywood from the second-floor windows so that people wouldn’t assume the whole place was vacant—and thus up for grabs in the squatting department.

By the time I hit my front door, I was feeling like a stunned (and drenched) animal who’d been tranq’ed and released back into the wild.

Bagged, tagged, and released. With no idea who the baggers were.

“Is that you, Anne Marie?” Mom yelled from the kitchen. A pack of mongrels from Chihuahua up to mastiff-size bounded out to greet me. One of Mom’s causes. “Don’t let the new pups out.”

I knew the drill. This wasn’t my first dog rodeo. But a new dog, a big black one that kind of looked like the dog on the Black Dog Architectural sign, blocked the door into the kitchen. I stood my ground but didn’t make eye contact.

“She’s okay, Bridget,” Mom said evenly.

The dog sniffed me and stepped aside, her tail wagging slowly.

“That one is very protective.” Mom was busy sorting out the garbage and putting the organic stuff in the composter. “How many times have I told you, Anne Marie, to put your coffee grounds and table scraps into the compost?”

“Mom, we don’t even have a garden.”
We could just use a disposal like everyone else.

“It’s on my list.”

Mom has a long list of projects—and causes. She actually takes the compost to the community plot to trade for fresh veggies. She’s the queen of bartering.

“Mom?” I grabbed a towel from the laundry basket and dried myself off.

The new black dog nudged Mom for a bit of stinky cheese she was throwing in the compost. “Such a sad story.” Mom tsked. She grabbed the dog a biscuit from the treat jar as she talked. “She was—”

“Mom,” I cut her off. They’re all sad stories. The animal shelter. The people shelter. Whatever I have to complain about just doesn’t compare. Usually. “When did I get this ID chip behind my ear?”

“Honey, you know how I feel about those things. But if you want one, I’m not going to stop you.” She’d moved on from compost to feeding the dogs. She doled out the kibble into six dishes and mediated a squabble between two of the puppies.

Mom is against
things
. She grudgingly carries a mobile. We have a screen, but she keeps it covered up with a pretty fair-trade cotton cloth from a swap meet. She is in technology denial.

I tossed the towel onto the dirty laundry pile and then sealed up the compost bucket she’d left open.

“No,” I said. “I already have one, but I don’t remember getting it.”

“Oh, thank you, hon.” Mom took the bucket by the handle and wrestled it out into the backyard, placing it next to four other buckets. No doubt it was on her list to get those buckets down to the community garden. Right after she found homes for all the dogs, worked her shift in the food pantry, clothed all the homeless in Hamilton, sent books to all the soldiers in Syria, built a new wing on the Toys‘R’Us children’s cancer ward, and generally solved world peace. “So what did you say? You got an ID chip? Well, you needed one for school, anyway, so it’s fine with me.”

I gave up. I wasn’t on her list.

At least it had stopped raining.

She pecked me on the cheek as she hurried back inside. “I’ve got to get cleaned up for the spouses’ meeting. Mr. Severin found out his wife was killed in Damascus, and his son isn’t coping very well. Can you make your own dinner? I may be back late,” she called through the kitchen window. She didn’t wait for my answer.

I wish Winter were here.

The dogs were eating happily when I stepped back into the kitchen. I stared at the contents of the fridge. A wad of lettuce. Two shriveled carrots. A green pepper. Tofu. Four jars of mayo. A loaf of white bread. Half a can of tuna. All were either from the community garden or the food bank, where she volunteered.

What I wouldn’t give for a cheeseburger.

While Mom was in the shower, I grabbed the leather-bound notebook Dad had sent me for my last birthday and a pack of smokes, both of which I keep under my mattress, and went out to the backyard. I dried off the old Adirondack chair Mom had found kicked to the curb. She’d repainted it sage green, but the chair still listed to one side. I wedged it between the apple tree and the fence to keep from toppling over.

Such is my life.

I played a music ’casts on my mobile and stared at a blank page in my notebook. I could tell it how I felt, but I didn’t know where to begin with this one. I’d started writing some poems and lyrics earlier this year for a school project. Just bits and pieces, but I got into it.

I flipped through my notebook and read some stuff to get me in the writing mood. I started with my most recent song (unfinished, of course):

Okay, it was crap. Fog didn’t make any sense.

I turned back a few more pages. There, I’d jotted down a snippet of poetry Meme Girl read late one night:

I flipped back a few more pages and came across the chorus of another unfinished song:

Whoa.
Nora? Make us forget?
I snapped the notebook closed.

I did NOT remember writing those words at all.

Fumbling with a smoke, I listened to the cicadas whir above my head. A whiff of grilled meat wafted over the fence.

I miss Dad.

The ’casts reminded me that the Chipster was coming out in July, and it was like nothing I’d ever experienced. It was unforgettable.

Hah.

But. Inexplicably I wanted one. And I even felt the urge to vote. For Mayor Mignon. Weird.

The ’casts crackled, and the voice of the MemeCast trickled in like rain.

Make sure the voices in your head are your own,
she said.

I scribbled that shit down.

WINTER

Pink and lime green. And a Money Cat comforter with matching curtains. It was as if my parents had picked up my old bedroom—which we’d decorated when I was, I don’t know, eight—and plopped it here in this new house. Like the last three years hadn’t happened at all. At twelve, I replaced the smiling, waving Money Cats. I’d dyed the curtains and bedspread myself. Black. I was grounded for a week, but the Money Cats stayed gone. Until now.

The closet was worse. I had school uniforms hanging in there: a navy blazer with the Tamarind Bay Day School crest on the pocket, several plaid skirts, and many, many white shirts, some button up, some golf. I could see several green and navy sweaters neatly folded on the shelf. It was all very Japanese schoolgirl.

The hummingbirds fluttered.

The rest of the clothes in the closet were definitely all Mom, though Dad probably picked out the Winnie-the-Pooh sweatshirt. It was never going to touch my body.

I swiped the darkest T-shirt and plainest jeans (no sparkly pockets) to change into, grabbed the hair wax from my bag, and headed toward the shower. At least I could fix my hair. This slick bowl cut was way too glossy.

Mom does this thing with her lips when she doesn’t like something. She did it when I walked into the kitchen. She hated the spikes, but I felt more like me.

“Dad had to go back into work, but I took the day off to get you settled.” She caught herself doing the lip thing and forced a smile.

Then we stared at each other with this okay-now-what look on our faces. We were strangers thrown into a house together, like some stupid reality ’cast. The house was nice. Very suburban. Everything spotless and carefully neutral. You could even smell how new it was.

“Okay, then,” Mom said with a fake burst of energy. “Are you hungry? I can heat something up or we can go out.” She said this last part looking at my spikes, as if she hoped I wouldn’t pick that option.

I was tempted to say yes, let’s go out. Instead, I shrugged. “Whatever.”

Mom laughed. “My god, you are a teenager. It’s going to take me a while to get used to it.”

“I’ll go easy on you. Today.”

“Where have the years gone?” she asked without a bit of irony.

Tell me about it.

Again the silence. Except the hummingbirds flittered in the distance. I shook my head.

I slouched onto a bar stool at the kitchen counter. Mom opened a few cupboards and then stared into the depths of the fridge. After a moment, she announced, “I guess we need to go out.” She put on her forced smile again. “And we can do a little shopping.”

I am not Mall Girl. I can barely stand going to the vintage shops with Velvet. At least the stuff she thrusts at me doesn’t have bears on it, not even to be ironic. Velvet doesn’t get irony. Thankfully.

I should call her and Micah and let them know I’m out of the loony bin.

The hummingbirds were closer now.

Mom was looking at me like I was supposed to say something. Oh yeah. Shopping. Mall.

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to get all teenager on her again. Besides, I haven’t seen her in three years. Not that I remember, at least.

We took the Skyway to the Hub, the center of the compound, where the schools, shops, and offices are. I tried to call Micah and Velvet on the way, but neither call went through. Blocked.

Mom’s doing, I’m sure.

The Sky, as most people call it, is a walkway like the one in Hong Kong: a series of multilevel, moving and stationary walkways linking the residential areas of the compound with the Hub. The Sky is actually a genius bit of engineering—marred only by the ads and stock tickers projected along the sides. Green Zone. ExxonMobilShell. TFC. Mega-Gap. Nomura.

Mom pointed out my school and the exit I needed to take as we passed over it. She prattled on about how this school is better than the one on the other side of the Hub, which is mostly performing arts oriented. My school is more academically rigorous, she said. Translation: mathletes and pre-law. She told me about Tamarind Day’s engineering program, the students who went on to MIT, the five Rhodes Scholars, and so on. She also talked about the Bay’s nonexistent crime rate, the parks, the shopping. She was a regular tour guide.

Finally I said, “Mom, I need coffee.” I steered her toward a Starbucks on the mezzanine level of the mall. I ordered a double espresso.

“How long have you been drinking coffee?” she asked as we sat down at a table overlooking the Sky.

“Years.” I took a long sip. I could feel the warm sugary goodness beginning to flow through my veins. Mom watched me closely, as if searching for something familiar to hold on to. “Tell me about Japan,” I said, trying to get a conversation going. “What was Tokyo like?”

“Oh, it was very clean. Crowded, of course. Great shopping.” She took a sip of her tea. “We spent most of our time working, though. Developing the new product line. Testing new components. Usual stuff.”

Could her answer be any more generic? The hummingbirds buzzed in my ear.

“Did you do anything fun? Did you go to the museums? Mount Fuji? Sing karaoke?” I wasn’t sure why I needed to know this. I guess I wanted to be able to picture what she’d been doing for the last three years, what was more important than being here with me.

Mom blinked at me. “I’m sure we did, but that doesn’t matter now. We’re home. Everything is okay. We can get on with our lives. Forget about the past. You need to work hard. Go to school. A good school. Work for the company.”

It was my turn to blink at her. The hummingbirds fluttered in my head, but that little voice, the one that had told me about the hospital and Japan, was quiet.

And it was now inside my mother’s head.