The Memory of Things

by Gae Polisner

  from behind velvet curtains,

  and the banks of nonexistent shores.

  Let it fill my mouth, and wash away the girl

  who shouts angry words,

  and cruel accusations,

  at a man who can take

  no more.

  Let the water overflow,

  and its current

  bring back a distant summer.

  Summer, when the woman’s hair

  is lush and long.

  Summer, when pink peonies still bloom on thick green

  stems that

  heave

  with the weight of them.

  Let the waves crash down

  and obliterate it all.

  TETHERED

  I stand frozen in the surf, my shirt soaked, my jeans heavy with water.

  The wind and salt sting my face.

  I’m sure I’ll never see her again.

  But then, I do. She’s swimming back, slowly but surely, toward shore.

  I wade out, arms wrapped to my chest,

  clothing weighted and clinging,

  sand pressing through my toes.

  Kyle shivers on shore, his face wet with

  seawater, or

  tears.

  “Why’d you do that?” he says, when I reach him.

  His voice shakes with fury.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  “I’m not mad. You scared me.

  I was fucking scared.”

  I wipe my nose, push my hair from my forehead.

  He holds his arms out to me.

  I walk forward, and

  let him wrap them around me.

  “Don’t do it again, okay?” he whispers.

  “I won’t. I don’t know why I

  had to.”

  I pull away, look him in the eyes.

  “I’m getting you soaked.”

  “I’m already soaked,” he says.

  Okay, then.

  He hugs me back to his chest, and

  I give in and rest my head there.

  When we finally get going and reach Nathan’s, I usher her inside. “You should use the bathroom in here,” I say. “Stand under the hand dryer. Get yourself warmed up, okay?”

  “Okay,” she says. She starts toward the bathroom, but stops and turns back to me. “I know you must think I’m crazy, Kyle, but before, for those few minutes … Well, remember how you asked me earlier how it feels, how I feel, to be me right now? To remember things and not remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it feels like that, Kyle, back there. Like I’m adrift, in soaking wet clothes that are too heavy with the weight of things I don’t even know. And then the water doesn’t drown me but carries me and, for a second it lightens everything a little, and I feel momentarily hopeful. But always, there are things, beneath the waves, threatening to pull me under. And the land is right there, close enough to swim to—I can see it—but I’m not sure I want to come back to shore again. It’s like I’m here, solid, but I’m not connected to anything. I’m completely untethered. I know that makes no sense,” she says.

  “It does,” I say, “I think I get it. But you’re wrong. You’re tethered to me.”

  * * *

  I order a large Coke and wait for her. When she finally comes out again, she’s a whole lot dryer than when she went in.

  “You want your sweatshirt back?” she asks, peering up at me.

  “No,” I say, “Keep it. Come on, swimmer girl. Let’s get you home.”

  V

  LIFE LINES

  We head back the way we came, toward the subway.

  On Stillwell Avenue, an awning I hadn’t noticed on the way here catches my eye. It sticks out because it’s purple—a bright pinkish in-your-face kind of purple, like magenta. But it’s the neon crystal-ball sign blinking in the window that makes me think about going in.

  Not that I think about it too hard. It’s an impulse. One I’ll probably wish I hadn’t acted on.

  The sign reads:

  Palm Readings.

  Tarot Cards.

  Hypnosis.

  $10.

  Madame Yvette.

  Come In. Your Future Awaits.

  Truth serum or hypnosis.

  I grab the girl’s hand. “Hey, let’s do this,” I say. “For the heck of it.” But even as I’m saying it, I’m regretting it. Because what if it works and she remembers everything, and then she’s ready to go home?

  But that’s the point, right? For her to remember and go home. For her to be tethered again, to her family. She must have someone, right? So, it’s selfish of me to want otherwise.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I mean, maybe the palm reading thing. I don’t like the idea of being hypnotized.”

  Palm readings aren’t one of the cures.

  “Yeah, me neither,” I say, “So palm readings, then.”

  And maybe I’m a little relieved.

  The door chimes when we open it,

  and an old woman ushers us into the back,

  parting a thin burgundy curtain.

  It’s just a cheap, flimsy thing, but still,

  images slip through my mind.

  I close my eyes to block them,

  block the pieces that

  filter in.

  The woman is small and seems ancient. She has a face like an apple carving, pinched and shriveled, sharp features that all but disappear into a series of wrinkles and folds.

  She leads us to a small table covered in a cheap, red, velvet cloth flecked with gold. Candles burn on shelves; the smell of incense, too sweet, wafts through the darkened room.

  “I’m Madame Yvette,” she says. Grasping each of our hands in her bony grip, she turns them over and studies them. She motions me to sit. “You go first. Money up front,” she says.

  She’d be seriously creepy if I couldn’t easily take her with one hand. Maybe no hands.

  The girl moves to my side. I try to gauge if she wants to leave.

  She gives no clue, so I fish a twenty from my wallet and put it on the table. Madame Yvette sweeps it quickly into a cardboard box.

  I look up at her again and she looks away, this time trying not to smile.

  Madame Yvette sits and switches on a small green reading lamp. The light is little more than a soft, eerie glow.

  “So,” she says, “Palm reading, you say, yes? This is your pleasure today?”

  I’m not sure about the pleasure part, I think, but she doesn’t wait for my answer. Instead she pulls out a deck of cards from somewhere under the table, shuffles them, and places them face-up in front of me. They’re not playing cards like Uncle Matt uses, but thick oversize ones with weird and colorful pictures of strange-looking people with sunburst eyes, and trees with snakes wrapped around them. “I like to start with tarot,” she says.

  “Oh, we were just thinking a palm reading. Right?” The girl rolls her eyes and nods. “Just palms,” I say, making it clear.

  “Suit yourself.” She scoops the deck back, but then stops, lifts the top card, and places it on the table in front of me. “Oh, but we must do this one, because it is very, very good. You should like to know this is your first card.”

  Madame Yvette taps the card on its drawing of a purple goddesslike woman with flowing hair and gold wings. Behind her, a bright sun rises. Two naked figures stand before her, who look sort of like Adam and Eve. “Ah, see? I knew. I knew.” She nods. “I had a feeling about you.”

  My eyes move to hers, questioningly. “See this? This is why you like to do tarot. Because for you the Lovers come first.” Now, I definitely don’t look at the girl. My ears must be turning bright red.

  “The Lovers are the divine and perfect expression of love, or, in this instance, protection. This is your card. And if I keep reading for you, it will only get better from here.” She turns and raises an eyebrow at the girl, as if I’m too thick to get what she’s implying.

  “That’s nice,” I say. �
��But, really, no thanks. I think we’re good with only the palm readings.”

  “It’s your money, child. Suit yourself,” she says, sweeping the Lovers out of sight.

  “Okay. Let’s take a look.” Madame Yvette holds her hands out on the table, so I place mine faceup in hers. She holds on to my right one and adjusts the lamp with the other, so it shines directly onto my palm. She runs her finger over the various lines.

  “This!” she says loudly, startling me, which nearly makes the girl start laughing again. She taps on the most noticeable curve that runs from the base of my palm to between my thumb and index finger. “This is your lifeline. You’ve heard of that before, yes?” I nod. “Much to the dismay of many a customer, the life-line will not predict how long you will live.” I feel relieved at this news, not dismayed.

  “The lifeline tells us of other things. Illnesses. Hardships. Tragedy. Heartache. Possibility. It is the story of your life before you walked in this room here, today.” Her eyes seek to convey a great gravity, and it occurs to me I shouldn’t have brought the girl here. I have an overwhelming desire to get us out.

  The woman must sense it. She grips my hand tighter. “Don’t be frightened, child. Now, see here…?” She pulls my hand closer and touches a small crisscross in the line at the outside edge of my palm, then shifts her finger the smallest bit. “This is where it starts, and if you follow it to here, at this cross, or island as we say, this notch is from when you were a small boy. How old are you now?”

  “Sixteen. Almost seventeen.”

  “Ah, so old? I didn’t know. Well, back here, some illness or tragedy befell you, then?” I shake my head, and she says, “I do not mean to you directly, necessarily, but to a treasured loved one, that greatly affected you. Yes, I see it here, I’m sure. Very clearly, at age five.”

  I swallow hard, wishing she’d picked a different age, any other age that could have left me skeptical and her just some crazy old woman. Six. Seven. Four.

  “My Grandpa Kyle died,” I whisper. “The night before I started kindergarten.”

  “See?” she says. “But more than died,” she adds, dramatically. “It was a tragedy!”

  The crazy old lady is right. We were at his house with my grandmother, having dinner. And he had a stroke right there in front of us. Fell to the floor.

  I didn’t know what happened. I thought he’d simply fallen asleep, so I thought it was funny, and kept telling my mom to wake him. Until she screamed and started to weep.

  I was afraid to go to school after that. Afraid people would simply fall down and die. I missed my first day of school and couldn’t sleep for nearly a year.

  “He’s the one I’m named after” is all I give her.

  “Ah, see? No wonder it’s so deep, then,” she says, tapping the spot on my palm. “There is a very strong connection.”

  She traces the line forward. “Not so much tragedy since then, though, eh? So it’s good.” But before I can feel better about her being wrong and a fake, she stops at a spot right past the center of my palm. “Until here. But this is a recent tragedy, yes? A few months ago. In spring. Someone close to you. Not a death, but a terrible, terrible accident.”

  My eyes go to the girl. She hears it, too, and understands. She shifts uncomfortably.

  “My Uncle Matt,” I say, my voice shaking. “He got in an accident that paralyzed him.”

  “Too, too terrible,” she says, and makes a tsking noise with her tongue. “The palms never lie, see? But don’t despair. Because, you see here?” She touches a spot a little closer to my thumb. “You notice how it straightens out? This indicates—understand, I cannot make promises, only tell what I see—but here is indication that there will be a great recovery. More than anyone is expecting.”

  I can’t do this anymore. I pull my hand away, my eyes welling.

  Madame Yvette waits. “Let me finish. You’ll be happy. There is much good news,” she says.

  I put my hand back and she squeezes it, before tracing the lines again.

  “Now, this one.” She smiles and traces the curved line that starts near my middle finger and runs to my pinky. “This is a different story. This is your heart line.”

  Now I really panic. If she can truly see into things, into me, I’m worried what she might say in front of the girl. It was bad enough she said those things about the tarot card.

  But instead she says, “People think of the heart line as in romance and ooh-la-la, but, sorry, my friend, it is not.” She winks, then, as if reading my mind, adds, “If you want that information, I can easily bring back out our Lovers again.”

  “Maybe another time,” I say.

  “Whatever you wish. It is your ten dollars. So, the heart line tells us more about one’s family, how you were raised, whether you were coddled or not, eh? See the way yours sweeps up in a nice curve? This shows you are loved by your mother and father, am I right?” I nod, but she keeps talking, without needing confirmation.

  “But this, this little break here?” She tsks again. “This break, the way it wants to lead off your hand here? It shows me you haven’t quite found your own love yet.” Her eyes go to mine and she must sense me panicking again, because she quickly adds, “For yourself, child. Self love, not outward, is what I need you to understand.” I pull my hand back, which she takes as an invitation to grip my chin in that bony hand of hers. She tips my face up. “The line is strong. You have good instincts, but you need to learn to trust in yourself. Not worry about others. Follow your heart.”

  “Okay, I will,” I say, hoping to be done.

  “But of course you will!” she says, leaning in to whisper the next part, as if we are coconspirators. “And I suspect this lovely girl here might be the perfect one to help you.”

  “My hand tells you all that?” I roll my eyes at her now.

  “No, sweetheart,” she says, a sly smile curling her lip. She nods over at the girl. “Her face does.”

  The old woman motions for me to sit in Kyle’s place.

  I don’t know that I want a turn,

  that I want to know.

  But I sit anyway.

  I hold out my hand.

  She traces her finger thoughtfully along each crease, each line,

  then stops, looks up at me, confused.

  “I misunderstood,” she says. “You two are related, then?”

  I shake my head.

  “Not that we know of,” Kyle says.

  “Ah, I see. How strange.”

  Madame Yvette lowers the lamp, pulls my hand

  closer.

  “It’s just that this spot here, the island, you see?

  A few months ago, early spring?

  A terrible tragedy. Same exact time as the boy’s.

  So I thought, maybe…”

  I fight not to pull back my hand.

  “But, no, now I see, of course not,” Madame Yvette continues.

  “This island here

  is much,

  much

  deeper.

  A permanent break in the line.”

  Her eyes shift to mine, and she drops my hand.

  “Oh, you sweet child.

  I’m so, so sorry, my dear.”

  The girl bolts. I run after her. I finally catch up to her and slow her down. I don’t ask anything. Neither of us speaks much on the way back down to the subway, or on the ride home. I don’t know what I was thinking, giving Madame Yvette the chance to upset her.

  I keep thinking about what the old woman had said, about how something deeply terrible had happened to her in early spring. Something permanent. Even before Tuesday and the Twin Towers.

  Was Tuesday only part of it, then?

  Was Tuesday not the worst part?

  I try not to think anymore.

  POLISH COOKIES

  Karina is in the kitchen with Uncle Matt.

  “What happen?” she asks, eyeing us with concern. For a second, I’m not sure why she’s so alarmed, how she knows, but then I realize how damp
and disheveled we both look from our little excursion into the ocean.

  “Oh, that. We went to Coney Island,” I say. “To the boardwalk.” I shoot the girl a look. “One of us may have waded in a little far.”

  The girl gives me a weak smile.

  Karina shakes her head like I’m trouble, but we both know she loves me. She’s always pinching my cheeks and bringing me stuff she made at home, like special Polish cookies and pies and things. Already I’m eying the plastic tray on the counter, covered in her trademark pink plastic wrap.

  She’s feeding Uncle Matt lunch, moving his hand to his fork, from there to the plate, like I’ve been doing, like I’ve watched her do a hundred times since July. “You do it, Mr. Donohue,” she says. “Don’t be lazy. Show your nephew how you’re the boss. You make the hand work for you.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to make it work to eat that?” I say, teasing her about the lump of mayonnaise-slathered something-or-other piled up on his plate. It could be chicken salad, except it has weird yellow chunks poking out of it. “Because if that is pineapple in there…”

  Karina swats at me, playfully. “Shoo, wise guy! You don’t like pineapple? Is a delicious Polish recipe from my grandmother. And you never complain when you eat my ciastka.”

  “Ciastka,” I say, turning to the girl. “Polish for cookies.” I double click the back of my tongue and do that stupid gun thing with my fingers, like I’m something special for knowing a little Polish, and Karina swats at me again.

  “You two go get cleaned up. Let Mr. Donohue finish his lunch here. I don’t have all afternoon.”

  Karina’s not being hard on Uncle Matt, she’s trying to help him. She’s good at it, too. “Tough love,” she told me the first few days she was here working with him. “He don’t need nobody treating him like niemowlaka. Baby. He needs to get better, most important.”

  “He’s been talking up a storm,” I tell her. “And doing memory tricks,” I add, figuring she should know.

  She looks up at me. “This is good. Very good. I see this, too. How much clearer he is. Music to my ears, Mr. Donohue.” She stands up. “You kids hungry, want to eat?”

  I notice Karina accepts the girl’s presence without question, and I wonder how much Uncle Matt tried to explain to her. Karina walks over to the Tupperware bowl next to the tray, the one that must hold the pineapple chicken salad, and tips it up to us.