The Memory Jar (9 page)

Then
(Memory Jar)

He got down on one knee. It was ridiculous. I wouldn't let him speak until he stood up, and even then I pointed at his knee and said, “You're getting wet.”

He looked down. The snow was sloppy, wet from the heat of the fire, and it had already soaked through the first layer of his snow pants, maybe all the way through. “You'll get cold,” I said.

I wanted to step away from him. I wanted to
run
away from him, but I'd have settled for turning away from his stare. I would step toward the fire, pretending I was cold, but Scott had me trapped, his eyes so intense, deep sapphires in the glow of the flames. The sky was still light, a kind of smear of gray behind him, and I didn't want this to happen. I didn't want any of this to happen.

“Taylor. Please. We can make this work.”

I opened my mouth, but he held up a hand and the words tumbled out. “Just marry me, okay?” He fumbled at a small box with his gloves on for a moment and then gave up and pulled the gloves off with his teeth. “M'seriousmmm,” he said through the gloves, and then he tipped the little box over into my hand so the ring fell out onto the palm of my red mitten.

Did any person ever in the history of anything dream of this moment? Is this anyone's dream come true? To have another person gaze into your eyes with something like love, perhaps, but also like panic—to have that someone stick a glove into their mouth and mumble out the words, “Just marry me, okay?” There are so many awful things in the world that happen, and yes, I knew that nobody dreams of those either. People getting shot up in the streets by gangs or backing over their own children in their own SUVs or dying in wars or whatever else, and yeah, those things are stupid and I hated them too, but that moment, in the snow, on the island, with that ridiculous ring lying on the palm of my mitten—was that what my life was going to be? Every single second I was learning the magnitude of my one mistake and trying to puzzle out the future of two million possibilities.

My mom was married once. That was fun. Wait, I don't even know if that was sarcasm or not because, see, it
was
fun, and I liked Grady. That was his name, but I was only seven and a half so I called him Gravy because it made me giggle and he didn't mind. I got to wear a red satin dress with a big heart on the back because they got married on Valentine's Day. He was good to my mom, but he was lazy, and he smoked a little too much dope, and I can remember her nagging him about his lack of
ambition
, even though I had only a hazy idea what that meant at the time. She pushed him away, but while she was busy with that she was extra sweet and gentle with me, the wary kid. I didn't want this baby to have to grow up wary like that, and what if he did? Scott would never leave me, but what if I deserved to be left? There were so many stupid what ifs in this whole stupid situation.

I can't marry you, Scott.
If I had found the courage to say those words, would anything be different? Would we have left the island earlier, while there was still light in the sky? Would we have avoided the ice ridge? Would any of this be real?

Sometimes I do this thing where I have a conversation over and over in my head until it's right. Until it's fixed, and I no longer stood there dumbfounded with a ring in my hand. A ring that didn't feel like an answer.

I put the stupid ring on my finger to keep it safe. It didn't feel like I was saying yes.

Now

There's a name for this stage, a new name, and it involves Scott moving away when they pinch his fingernails and making noises that may or may not be words. They're waiting for him to open his eyes when people talk to him, so of course everyone's in there talking to him non-stop. I still don't see the ring anywhere, though I keep my eyes skimming around the room as I walk in, wondering as I do what exactly I should do if I see it lying somewhere. Do I claim it?

Celeste walks me all the way to Scott's room after my session, says I should take the memory jar with me. She gives me a stack of slips to fill out. The two beads she threw in originally are still there, rolling around, their clunking somewhat softened by the memories I've already put in: the ones from my phone that Celeste helped me print, plus a few more I scribble out on paper. I don't write about me bleeding on the snow and Scott holding my hand as I died because objectively, that memory is not real, no matter how it feels. Grappling with reality is all I do right now. It can't be healthy.

“Taylor! We were just talking about you!” Emily folds me into a hug and stands beside me, beaming. The late afternoon sun shines in the window behind Scott's father, who nods at me without quite looking at me, and it lights up his mom's face as she turns to greet me. She holds her arms out and I lean in for a hug, even though she never used to hug me. She smells like hospital coffee and she feels so tiny and birdlike and fragile. Even though she never blames me, her embrace fills me with guilt.

“Any change?” I fold my arms across the front of my body, feeling all their eyes on me. I look at Scott, who looks mostly like he did yesterday, with slight changes to the coloration of his bruises. Well, not entirely like before. There's something a little different about the way his body rests in the bed, something more relaxed—less couch-cushiony.

“He opened his eyes and tried to talk,” says his mother, with a quick nod, but she slips into a small smile. “Nothing we could understand, and not really in response to anything we did, but it's progress.”

It's progress. Toward a minimally conscious state, which is better than a persistent vegetative state. My head swims with states.

This is so crazy. We're all gathered around his bed marveling over his ability to move his fingers and make an unintelligible sound. What's going on in his
head
is what I want to know. How much of Scott is inside that skull now? Will he still remember me? Will he still love me?

“Hey, Taylor. Glad you showed up.” I look up, toward the door, and there's Joey, a weird grin on his face. “I forgot to give you this yesterday.” His hand is in the pocket of his jeans, digging for something small, and I know he's going to do it—he's going to pull out that engagement ring right in front of his mom and dad, so I'll be trapped all over again. Who knows, maybe he's going to tell them all about the baby thing too.

“It's okay, I don't need it right now.” I hold up my hand to stop him, but it's too late; Joey's already reaching toward me. “No! It's—”

It's ten bucks. He shakes the crumpled bill in my face a couple times until I take it, holding it between my thumb and index finger, puzzled. “What's this?”

“For lunch, obviously.” He rakes his fingers through his hair and then brushes it down in front of his eyes, turning away toward the window. “I'm the one who asked if you wanted to go, and then you end up buying my food. Didn't want you to think I planned it that way.”

I can't keep from smiling, relief sweeping over me, and a little shame for thinking he'd betray my confidence like that. But after all, as recently as a day ago he was basically accusing me of murdering his brother. Attempting to murder.

“So.” Joey speaks into the room, which has fallen into that tired hush of people who've been spending a lot of time talking to each other in waiting rooms. “You guys could go take a walk or something, and Taylor and I could talk to Scott a little bit.” It's the kind of thing I would never say to them, but the only way I'll ever get a chance to be alone with Scott again.

His parents sort of nod their heads and murmur their goodbyes and slip out of the room. Scott's dad rubs his mom's back as they walk toward the elevators, and it's the sweetest thing. It's the kind of thing Scott would have done for me. Caring. Selfless. This whole family is pretty much intolerably good. Even Joey, who walks his sister down the hall and gives me a moment alone with his brother.

Then
(To Scott)

I put my mitten back on, and the damage was done—the ring was on my finger. I don't mean that, Scott. I don't mean that about the damage. I didn't know what to do, okay? How can anyone expect me to know what to say about marriage when I'm barely seventeen years old? Did you even know what I wanted out of life? Did you know what my dreams were? Did you know what you were asking of me?

I remember the mitten, I remember you holding me and me letting you, and you were warm and it was getting dark and then it was really dark, and there was no moon and the snow was freezing my feet and we sat on that chair so I could put my feet up to the fire as it died, but I wanted to go home.

I wanted to be alone, but not this alone, okay? It's the way I am; I need time to process things, and there was a lot to process. I asked you to bring me home and you said you would. I don't remember.

I can't remember.

Or maybe I won't remember.

Now

Joey comes back into the room, sliding into his dad's seat by Scott's left hand. He says hello, chats his brother up like it's a normal day. I lean back into the chair on the opposite side of the bed, but I'm watching Joey, not Scott.

“You're good at that,” I say after a while. “You're good at talking to him so naturally.” He's calling his brother back, over whatever time and space is squished up in between the impact of that ice and a few ounces of gray matter. “You're talking to him like he's the same.”

Joey smiles. “I read this thing once about the guy who did the voice for Bugs Bunny, you know? ‘What's up, Doc?'”
Joey holds an imaginary carrot in his hand and makes this face that's so hilariously similar to Bugs Bunny in that scene that I burst out laughing. “No, seriously,” he says. “The dude got into a car crash or something, and they couldn't get him out of a coma or whatever until some doctor called him Bugs or something, and then the dude sat right up and started living again, his normal self.”

We fall silent at that and turn our expectant attention to Scott, who does not sit right up and start living again, his normal self. There's a long moment of quiet, and then Joey does the Bugs Bunny thing and we both burst out laughing. I look around and I realize,
this
is a memory I want to put in my memory jar.

“I have a story for you,” says Joey after a while. “For Scott, I mean.”

Then
(Joey)

That summer we were in Idaho, when Scott was nine and I was six, we played baseball every day all summer long at the school ball fields, up the hill and across from the old cattle-feed warehouse. Scott and his friends, they never let me play unless I did what they said. Monkey Boy, they called me, and they would make me climb to the top of the dugout, or up to the top of the chain-link fence behind home plate. They used to make me carry all their bats, so I put them in my metal wagon and dragged them up the alley and across Fourth Avenue. All the older ladies doing their gardening would hear those rattling bats and come out to say hello.

Sometimes they would give me coins that I could take down to the gas station on the corner of the alley and buy enough candy to give me a belly ache. This was pure heaven for a country kid who'd never had access to a corner store before, and who was under the supervision of a great aunt who had no desire to care for children. “Home by dark, and nothing broken,” was her daily command. My great uncle occasionally took us fishing, but mostly he spent his days stomping around that old stale-smelling bedroom and growling at anyone who got in his way.

The older boys got mad that I was holding up their game talking with the neighbors, so they started hauling their own bats, but I didn't care. I decided to fill my wagon with something else. Something I could sell.

I thought about taking garden tools and offering my services as a weed-puller, but that sounded like a lot of work, and also, all these old ladies really seemed to love scooting around on those little rolling garden benches, digging in the dirt with their big hats on. I thought about what old ladies might want to buy. I thought about my granny, who liked reading books about the covered wagon days and dusting the mantel and cooking weird-smelling versions of the things my mom told her I liked, and then I remembered she was losing her little house, that my parents were taking her to that place that smelled kind of like pee. I missed her terribly. My great aunt was no substitute, and my great uncle was just plain mean.

Some of the ladies talked to me like I was a grown-up, using big words and asking what I was thinking about. One of the women always sang to me, religious songs. Her voice was high and thin and warbly, like a fragile bird, and I didn't like to leave her yard because she kept on singing while she waved goodbye. Scott and his friends thought I was stupid. They couldn't imagine talking to a bunch of old people. As nice as he always was to everyone else, Scott was the first one to say, “Hey, Monkey Boy, smells like you forgot to change your Depends,” which started everyone saying that.

But one morning it rained, hard and windy, with a dangerous storm predicted, and there was no baseball, no prowling the town for us. My brother and I were fighting in the living room, trying to wrestle each other into the scratchy orange rug. Scott pushed my face into the floor, scrubbing my cheekbone hard enough against the rug to give me a big red mark, and when I jumped up and ran to show Aunt Thea, she was completely exasperated. She looked out at the rain falling from the sky in sheets, and I know she was considering sending us out in it anyway.

“I'd like you boys to make a house-warming card for Grandma Wendy,” she said, and she got a sad plastic bag of markers out of her kitchen junk drawer and a packet of construction paper. As I sat there scribbling slap-dash, dry-markered flowers, an idea occurred to me that would, for the first time in my life, give me the upper hand over my big brother. I sort of thought it would be the kind of thing that would make Scott start taking me seriously, as a person.

As soon as the sun came out again, I carefully dried out my red wagon and filled it with Auntie's markers, the packet of paper, a pair of scissors from the kitchen drawer, and a set of pinking shears I stole out of her sewing basket. As usual, the ladies came flocking to meet me, many of them with extra smiles since they hadn't seen me the day before. They were all charmed by my entrepreneurial spirit. I told them they could order a greeting card, tell me what they wanted me to write and what kind of design they would like (though I strongly suggested motorcycles, dragons, or ninjas, if the customer wasn't interested in a quick squiggle of flowers, which was my specialty), and I would create the card
right while they waited
, which I said every time like it was some kind of remarkable great deal.

I gave Scott a chance to weigh in on this, to get in on the deal. I offered to let him come along. I asked him for his financial advice, even, wondering how much I should charge for each card. He laughed at me, rolled his eyes in a way he had just mastered that summer. “Nobody is going to buy your ugly cards,” he told me, and for the next two weeks, that was the phrase I made sure he heard repeated most often.

Because I was rolling in the big bucks with this venture. The ladies
loved
ordering cards, and they
loved
coming up with new things for me to draw and helping me write things on the cards. Some even sat with me and came up with a few lines of poetry, and one lady taught me how to draw a curling vine across the edges of the cards with little rose buds every few inches. Maybe because of Scott's statement, I never did come up with a price for the cards. I just asked for a donation, and that was the best business strategy ever. Those women were dying to give me the coins they'd gathered in their purses, or even sharply creased dollar bills that smelled like baby powder.

They added art supplies to my wagon—tubes of glitter glue or sticker sheets, ribbon scraps, and little plastic capsules full of sequins. I sat on their gardening carts and colored and glued, and then I took my wagon down to the store, loaded it with candy, and resold the candy to the guys at the baseball fields for a small delivery fee, which they grumbled about but paid anyway, unable to resist the sight of my tempting merchandise. By the end of that summer, I had a crew of regular customers who ordered their candy the day before.

The part Scott will probably remember, though, is when he tried to get in on the profits by pushing me to the ground and punching me. I can still remember the look on his face when my aunt raised her voice, pulling him off of me with a stern frown. “You can't go punching people just because they do something better than you,” she said.