The Memory of Things

by Gae Polisner

walk back

  and flip it facedown,

  then go one better and

  bury it

  at the bottom of the basket.

  I set Uncle Matt up in the living room in front of the television to wait for Karina, asking too many times if he’s sure he’ll be okay.

  “She’ll be here soon,” I tell him.

  “I’ll … sur-vi … fif-tee … min-uhs,” he says.

  We walk to the subway side by side.

  He talks about his uncle, and I listen, but

  the three boys from the cover

  keep drifting in.

  The boy with the cheeks and

  the dark brown hair.

  (Someone shouts and

  a door slams.)

  The someone shouting

  is

  me.

  On the way to the subway, the mist breaks and the sky clears. It’s unseasonably warm. The girl takes off her sweatshirt and walks close to me, so close her arm brushes mine. It can almost make me forget everything, to feel her next to me like this. At least until the wind shifts, and the toxic smell bears down, making my eyes burn and my throat itch, and the reality of what’s on the other side of the bridge comes slamming in.

  If she notices the smell, if it bothers her, she doesn’t let on, though her face is knotted in concentration. I want to reach out and take her hand. But I’m supposed to be looking out for her. Not taking advantage.

  “What does it feel like?” I finally ask, veering us down the next block. “Like, right now, inside your head? To not know things about yourself?” The second the words are out of my mouth, I regret them. They’re stupid. Insensitive. The last thing I want to do is make her feel worse or self-conscious. But I’m sensing some change in her, too, like maybe some details have come back to her, and she’s struggling to keep them away.

  She crosses her arms to her chest and shrugs.

  “I’m sorry. It’s—I meant, it must feel kind of weird, right? Like a puzzle missing a piece or something?”

  She shrugs again. “It’s not that I mind you asking. It’s just hard to explain. And I guess I don’t exactly want to talk about it now. Is that okay?”

  “Yes, of course.” I touch her elbow and steer us across the street to the subway station.

  We walk down the steps to the train in silence, then she says out of nowhere, “I don’t know what I’d have done without you, Kyle. I want to tell you things, give you answers, believe me. I swear I’m not purposely not telling you. You’ve been so nice…” She takes a deep breath and lets it out as a sigh. “So is it okay if we just don’t talk about it for right now?”

  I nod because it is, but, honestly, the word nice eats at me a little. I’m not being nice to her. It’s so much more than that.

  “Yes, sure,” I say, “Anything you want.”

  * * *

  The station is shocking when we enter. Not only because it’s mostly empty, or because missing persons posters plaster the walls here, too, or because American flags hang in strategic places like penants for the home team, but also because the place is crawling with military. National guardsmen, I think, in camouflage, automatic rifles gripped in their hands.

  Two stand at each end of the platform, eyes scanning, and several pace on the opposite side of the platform, as well. It’s downright eerie.

  The few civilans who are down here with us do that sweet, pathetic smiling thing, like how your mother looks at you if you tell her you’ve had a fight with your best friend. One woman around my mom’s age reaches out and touches my arm, as if to reassure me it will all be okay.

  As weird as it is, I feel it, too, the sense that we’re all in this together. That those of us who are out and about today are being bold and helpful, because we’re going about our lives like Mayor Guiliani told us we have to do.

  Pioneers, facing a brave new world.

  As we wait for the train, I turn and face the girl. In the yellow lights of the station, tiny droplets of mist sparkle in her short, choppy hair. I think about her photo in that ID, her hair long and pretty, and wonder why she cut it all off. I mean, she still looks pretty this way, but the cut seems hasty and wrong.

  “What?” she asks, noticing I’m staring.

  “Nothing. I was just thinking.”

  Out of nowhere there’s a shuffling noise, then a loud bang, and I jump, pulling the girl back from the tracks with me. The guards move forward, guns raised, and the woman who gave me the look cries out, but a second later we all see it’s only some dude behind us who dropped his skateboard. He picks it up, and gives us a sheepish, apologetic wave, but it takes a whole minute for my heartbeat to go back to normal.

  A minute later, lights appear in the dark tunnel and the train comes rolling into the station like always.

  The doors open and, for the briefest second, I imagine the girl stepping in, the doors closing, and her riding off without me, never to see her again. I don’t know exactly how it makes me feel, or maybe I do, but what I do know is that it seems oddly impossible that two days ago I didn’t even know she existed.

  How can everything be different now that I do?

  Kyle looks at me, but

  his thoughts

  are elsewhere.

  Maybe he’s had enough.

  Maybe he needs me to go.

  The look on his face …

  there’s something pained in it.

  I’m making life hard for him.

  I should let it all in, tell him everything

  —as if I have that much control.

  Anyway,

  I need one more day of

  not remembering.

  As we step into the train, I take her hand without thinking.

  I hope it’s okay.

  After a second, she squeezes back, and so I’m thinking, All right, then, maybe it is.

  He takes my hand and holds it tight,

  and for the first time in days,

  I feel safe.

  There are two other people in our subway car to Stillwell Avenue. This whole freaking city is a ghost town.

  One is an older white guy wearing a plain white undershirt, khaki shorts, black socks, and dress shoes. The other is an Indian woman in traditional dress, a floor-length, orange silk thing with black and turquoise threads and mirrored squares, the kind with the fabric that wraps over one shoulder. She has headphones on, and the train is so quiet I can hear sitar music or something like it coming out of them from across the car.

  I sit us near the center of the car. We’re still holding hands, and I realize I’m squeezing hard, so I loosen my grip, and we sit there, awkward and connected at the same time. The ride is only a half hour but, after a few minutes, my hand gets sweaty, so I figure I’d better let go.

  “Did I tell you?” I say, as we leave the dark of the underground terminals and scenery flashes by out the windows. “I read about this guy who had amnesia and—well, first of all, so you know, there are, like, seven different kinds of amnesia. And different degrees of it, too.

  “Like, some people can’t remember what they did five minutes ago, and each time they do something new, they forget it again. Others might remember everything from when they were little, or from five years ago, and everything from now, but don’t remember anything from an entire period in between, as if their mind has blocked out a specific event.

  “And still others remember some things from a while ago, but not all things, like, maybe little unimportant things get remembered, while any big, traumatic things are wiped from their memory.”

  I stop, realizing I’ve rambled. She looks at me, surprised. “You’re quite the expert,” she says.

  “Yeah, well.” I laugh self-consciously, wondering if she’s bothered that I’ve been researching her condition. “Anyway,” I say, because I can’t turn back now, “there’s this story about this guy, and he wakes up from some medical procedure, like a minor operation of some sort, and he suddenly doesn’t remember who he is or where he is, or anything.
But when the doctor comes to check on him, the guy is speaking Swedish. Only he’s not from Sweden, he’s American, and his wife says he never knew one word of Swedish before. Not one word. Plus, he says his name is Sven, but it isn’t. His name is, like, Bob, or something completely normal like that. Maybe Steven. But definitely not Sven, and nobody knows why he can speak Swedish now, or why his memory disappeared.”

  She stares at me oddly for a second, then asks, “Did he get it back?”

  “I’m not sure. All they talked about in the article was the Swedish-speaking part of the incident.”

  “That’s a great story,” she says, and when I try to figure out if she’s serious or not, she bursts out laughing. Like doubled-over, hurts-your-stomach laughing. So then I start laughing, so now we both are laughing, until tears are rolling down our faces.

  I’m not sure why we’re laughing so hard, and I’m not sure she is, either, but it doesn’t really matter, because it feels so good to be doing it.

  But when I look up, I see the old guy in the undershirt giving us an annoyed look, probably because he thinks we’re two punk kids causing trouble, or maybe because he hasn’t seen anyone laughing in days.

  And then, I realize something else. He could have lost someone. Someone he loves, inside those buildings.

  I sit up, sobered, and collect myself, shifting my gaze to him so the girl sees why I stopped laughing. I guess she gets it, because she collects herself, too. She takes my hand again—she does—and holds it tight, which is as good as the laughing, or even better. Then neither of us says anything more until the train stops and the guy gets off at the next station.

  When the subway doors open at Kings Highway, and the Indian lady gets out, too, the girl leans in toward me, putting her lips way close to my ear. And I’m thinking, Man, she is going to kiss me, and I’m waking up pretty much everywhere. But all she does is hover her mouth near my ear for, like, three whole excrutiating seconds before she whispers, “Sven,” and we both fall over, cracking up again.

  * * *

  Our moods shift again when we get out on Stillwell Avenue.

  The whole area is empty, somber. It’s always a little emptier this time of year since the rides on Coney Island close down after Labor Day. But it’s a different empty now. Almost nobody is here. The streets themselves are quiet. Those who are out give the same sad, conciliatory smiles or, instead, glance at us suspiciously as we pass by.

  And even though the news says that, throughout the country and especially in New York, storeowners should do their best to go about their business as usual wherever possible, the shops here are, for the most part, closed. And, not just closed, but with their metal gates drawn down, triple padlocked with heavy chains. I scan the names of the stores, and then I understand: Sahadi’s Grocery, Damascus Bread, Al Saidi Antiques, the names repeated underneath in Arabic. And, in their darkened windows, duct-taped cardboard signs, written in Sharpie as thick and bold as possible:

  It makes me feel sick to my stomach. Whatever happened Tuesday, we’re all New Yorkers here.

  I push forward with the girl, find her hand again, and squeeze. She doesn’t say anything, just links her fingers through mine. As we get closer to the boardwalk, the world feels a little more normal. Nathan’s is quiet but open. Any sign of the earlier threat of rain is gone. The sky is a perfect sunny blue. And the smell of burnt things has vanished here, replaced by the smell of french fries.

  “You like Nathan’s?” I ask, steering us in.

  We order hot dogs and fries, douse them in ketchup and mustard, and I pay, then direct us down toward the boardwalk and the water, white paper bag clutched in my hand.

  The ocean comes into view,

  vast and

  beautiful.

  (“Kick, Papillon, kick! Use your arms!

  Close your mouth!

  For Pete’s sake, Papillon,

  don’t drink the water.

  Swim!”)

  Several people are scattered along the boardwalk, making the world feel a little more normal here. We walk down to the edge of the beach, sit on a bench, and eat as we talk.

  “Good?” I ask.

  “So good,” she says, licking salt off her fingers.

  “Have you ever been here?” I nod out over the sparkling Atlantic.

  That one she doesn’t answer.

  When I finish my hot dog, I twist around and look behind us. Off to our right, the bright red Spirograph top of the Parachute Jump juts high above what used to be Steeplechase Park. Behind us, in the other direction, the Crayola-colored Wonder Wheel sits motionless, waiting for next spring.

  “I always feel happier here,” I tell the girl. “My great-grandpa Jack, my mom’s grandfather, he used to have a house in Breezy Point. So he’d take my mom here all the time. Then, when she had us, she took us, too. She’s always telling us stories about it.”

  The girl sits with her legs crisscrossed up on the bench, like she did the first night in my living room. Her knee rests on my thigh. “The Parachute Jump,” I say, trying to keep focused, “was defunct even then. It’s that one, over there. It was built by the Life Savers Company for the 1939 World’s Fair.”

  “The candy company?”

  “Yes,” I say, looking at her.

  “Okay, go on,” she says, taking a big bite of hot dog.

  “So it had all these brightly colored rings designed to look like the candies. Anyway, my mom says my great-gandpa Jack and all his friends used to wait in line for hours, like you would at Disney World now. He was in line one night when some couple got stuck on it for five hours, overnight, dangling a hundred and twenty-five feet up in the air. He and lots of other kids stayed camped out in the park to watch the rescue, and he always wished it had been him that got stuck. Because, apparently the stuck couple got sort of famous from it, and one of the perks was that they could always come back for free rides.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  She reaches out and steals one of my fries, though her own bag is full, and says, “Another great story there, Sven.”

  I’m about to be fake mad, but she leans her head down on my shoulder, and the way she does it, the way it feels, the way she is, I can’t explain it, but it makes my heart beat so hard I’m sure she can hear it. It makes me want to hold her and kiss her and know everything there is to know about her. And tell her whatever stupid crap there is to know about me.

  “When Kerri and I were little,” I say, fighting the urge to wrap my arm around her, “we’d come here with Mom, and she would want to take us on the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel. Kerri would go on both, even when she was a toddler. But I never would. I was afraid of rollercoasters. Still am, I guess, but now I would go on the Ferris wheel.”

  “Very brave of you,” she says, and I laugh. And then, because I can’t not, I touch my lips, just for a second, to the top of her hair. The vanilla scent is strong. I breathe it in, her in, letting it erase everything else, trying to ignore how much I want to do more. And my brain is kind of screaming that I could. I could tilt her face up and kiss her. But another voice is yelling that I shouldn’t, because of all the obvious reasons. One, I’m supposed to be looking out for her, not trying to, I don’t know, do something with her. Two, no matter how normal and good things seem right here, if you pan out with a wide-angle lens, we’re in the middle of a disaster. And, three, the truth is, by the time I get to three, I haven’t got a clue why I’m counting, why I shouldn’t kiss her, and I can barely stop myself from trying.

  I stand abruptly, crumpling my hot dog wrapper and half-eaten fries in the bag. “I’m done, you?” I back up toward the trashcan a few feet away.

  “Kyle?”

  “What? I’m ready,” I say, knowing it sounds rude. I feel overwhelmed, like I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong, like I shouldn’t be here, worrying about myself, about how bad I want to kiss some girl, when nothing is right with the world. “You ready?”

 
“Sure.” She follows me over, but I jog back to the bench for my sweatshirt and when I turn around again, she’s halfway down the beach, headed toward the water. I chase after her, stop a few feet from where she’s kicked off her shoes and tossed of her sweatshirt, and now wades into the surf.

  “Hey, Kyle,” she calls, “do you swim?”

  “What? Yeah. I guess so, but not—” I feel my face change, panicked, as she plunges forward, waist deep, into the waves of the Atlantic.

  (“Don’t be afraid!

  Put your face in, Papillon!”

  But I’m scared! What if I breathe in the water?

  What if I don’t come up?

  “Oh, but you will. You will, my heart.

  I’ve got you.

  You’ll be fine as long as

  I’m

  here.”)

  The girl wades deeper, disappears completely under as I stand dumbfounded and useless on the shore.

  I should go in after her, drag her back, but I don’t swim all that well.

  The waves swell up, crash back without her onto the shore.

  (“See, Papillon!

  Look how brave you are!”)

  She doesn’t come back.

  I throw my sweatshirt to the ground and rush into the shallow surf, but I can’t see her anymore.

  The waves lift me,

  fall off again, dropping me

  down.

  I catch my breath, swim out farther,

  past where they break,

  and the water is calm.

  Here, I float,

  let the silence of the water drown out

  the sounds

  (the tears,

  the explosions and

  shattering glass,

  that still ring

  in my ears).

  I turn and swim, diving under the water

  again and again:

  Let it erase the glazed pots!

  Let it wash away the empty table and chairs!

  Let it scatter the ghosts with

  their bony fingers!

  Let it mask

  their deceitful calls