Remind Me Again What Happened

by Joanna Luloff

  Charlie put his cup down. “At least two of us remember things.” He smiled and scowled at the same time.

  “What did the doctors say this time, Charlie?” I passed him another cracker.

  “Much of the same. Patience. Exercises. No stress or exertion. Who knows. We’ll see. Unpredictable. Time will tell. It’s amazing, the clichés that come out of these doctors mouths.”

  Always the editor. Charlie has always hated sloppy arguments. “One step at a time,” I said, smiling.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

  “It’ll be a long road ahead.”

  “We must prepare ourselves for whatever comes next.” Charlie laughed and reached for a bottle of wine.

  “We’ll help her remember, Charlie.” I grabbed two glasses from the drain board and watched as Charlie’s heels hit the counter in anticipation. I wondered if this is how he and Claire used to sit in our kitchen while I buried myself in blankets in my room. Did their courtship start this way, over wine and gentle teasing? Who was the first one to edge a bit closer, brush an arm or a leg with a hand?

  This time, I pulled myself up onto the counter next to Charlie. I clinked his glass with mine and rested my head on his shoulder. We would sit like this for a long time until I headed to the guest room and Charlie pretended to return to Claire before making his bed on the couch.

  Claire

  Charlie and I both try to keep busy, in and out of each other’s company, and attempt to keep Rachel nearby as much as we can. Just last week I told Charlie that I wanted to bring some of my boxes into the office so that I could sort through my research and maybe find my way back to the stories I was working on when I got sick. Charlie agreed that this was a good idea, and he cleaned out the office to make room for my things. He placed a jar with my favorite pens (felt tip, fine, black ink, he assures me are my favorites) on the corner of the desk. Meanwhile, Rachel helped me organize a folder with clips of my articles from the past two years. This is in the top drawer. Charlie has moved all his things—the desktop computer, his folders of tax forms, travel receipts, and who knows what else—into the filing cabinets downstairs, where I know he sleeps, even though he pretends, sometimes, to join me in bed. He has left the wall calendar (botanical theme, November has an image of an orchid) and a photograph of the three of us—Charlie, Rachel, and me—standing in front of Rachel’s brownstone. The sun is in our eyes and we are squinting, and we are obviously happy. Our arms hidden behind one another’s backs, me in the middle.

  So I work in the office and listen to the distorted sounds of the TV drifting from downstairs. Just last night, when I came down to the kitchen, Charlie nodded at me and asked how the work was going. I told him that it was going well. “There is an intriguing story I found about a commune of sorts outside Pondicherry. A French woman started the place and it’s rather self-sufficient, like a village from the eighteenth century or something.”

  “Hmmm,” Charlie said, as he kept his eyes fixed on the TV. “Is there a blacksmith and a baker and single-room schoolhouse?”

  I stared at Charlie. I tried to gauge whether he was making fun of me or was merely uninterested. His face was pink from recent shaving and he rubbed at a little nick on the edge of his chin. I wanted to hit him, and I had no idea why. Instead of throwing the pen I was clutching in my hand at his face, I walked into the kitchen to heat some water. I sat on the counter and peeled a banana, and without really thinking about it I kicked my legs against the counter sides.

  “Will you stop that, please?” Charlie called from the living room. “It’s incredibly annoying.”

  I thought about keeping it up. I felt like a petulant teenager. But I stopped and fixed my tea like a grown-up and then made my way back upstairs. I felt Charlie’s eyes on my back as I walked up the stairs, but I wouldn’t look at him. Later in the evening, I heard him pass the office on the way to the spare bedroom. His computer groaned to life, and I switched mine off and headed to the living room. I turned on the TV to some medical drama that I couldn’t follow, wrapped the quilt around me, and closed my eyes. Charlie might have come to wake me later in the night. Or perhaps it was Rachel who reminded me to take my last doses of medication and ushered me up the stairs. Or maybe I remembered to do these things on my own, but I woke up in our bed, alone, with the alarm beeping away.

  Charlie emerged from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair dripping water into his eyes. When he isn’t wearing his glasses, he squints and his face looks much younger. His body is still thin and pale, almost hairless, and in the outlines of the early morning he could have been taken for a ghost. “Sorry about that,” he mumbled. “I got up early and forgot to turn the alarm off.”

  “It’s okay.” I kicked the covers away from me. “I should get up anyway. I thought I’d come into town with you and Rachel today. I feel like getting out of the house.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll finish up in here and leave you to it. Think you can be ready in an hour or so?” He was back in the bathroom before I could even give him my response.

  Mornings are difficult for me. The phenobarbital and steroids I’m on make me sluggish and hazy. Tasks I know should take me only a few minutes seem to take forever. I’ll stand in front of the closet for a long while, occasionally forgetting if I’ve already picked out a pair of pants or a sweater from the drawers on the opposite end of the room. I’ll wonder what the weather might be like, and then Charlie’s voice will startle me from downstairs. “Claire, what’s keeping you? I’ve got your tea in a travel mug and some toast with jam you can eat in the car. Let’s get a move on.” And so I’ll grab a pair of jeans and one of Charlie’s sweaters and race down the stairs. I fear I wear the same clothes almost every day of the week. The pretty skirts and blouses Rachel helped me pick out are still in their shopping bags. They seem inappropriate for my lazy life. Who would I be getting dressed up for?

  On another occasion, Charlie has the idea of taking me to work with him. After my unsuccessful attempt at getting myself to town, I think he has become worried by my restlessness, but he continues to worry about leaving me alone, unsupervised. So he suggested that I join him at the office today, meet the newer staff, take in the renovations. When I tried to picture the little news office that had been under Charlie’s supervision for eight years now (he constantly reminds me), all I could envision was a 1950s newspaper room, abuzz with clicking typewriters, men shouting orders at one another or at girls with notebooks and pencil skirts who wear a look of urgency and efficiency. Who knows where these girl Friday images come from? I think I remember movies better than our own lives.

  Even though Charlie works for a small, local paper, I knew the place would be filled with computers and blinking phone lines and glass-walled offices where men and women alike share space and pursue their assignments. But still I pictured an old-fashioned landscape of bustle with Charlie at the helm, measured, fair, diligent. The chief editor, the boss, the man who keeps things orderly and on-task. However fuzzy the memories of his office, however they shift in and out of focus in my mind, Charlie continues to appear, unchanging—stoic, responsible, tight lipped. You can count on Charlie for anything; he is nothing if not reliable.

  A memory comes to mind as we sit over breakfast; it is hazy at its edges. I am on a ladder at Rachel’s house, dressed in paint-spattered clothes. I hold a brush clumsily and blue paint is trickling down my arm. It has already covered my shirt, my shorts, the ladder. Little dribbles of blue fall from my brush to the tarp laid out on the floor. I think Rachel has just been in, scolding me for my mess, and I am feeling wounded. And suddenly Charlie is there at my feet, his warm hands encircling my ankles, a crooked smile of uneven teeth on his face. He is gazing up at me. Did he wink? It seems out of character somehow, but I see a quick crinkle at the corner of his eyes as he takes the brush from my hands, lays it carefully on the paint can, and changes positions with me on the ladder. Charlie seems impossibly tall in this memory
. With a turpentine-soaked rag, he rubs away at my mistakes. The ceiling splatters disappear and all the uneven lines of drying paint get smoothed over by his roller. I look up at him, his brow wrinkled in concentration and the afternoon light casting shadows into the hollows of his cheeks. I can see him older in this moment; I can see him as he appears today, at least twelve years later, as he wipes a napkin across his lips after a final sip of coffee. When he climbs down from the ladder, he stops in front of me and moves a stray piece of my then long, straight hair. And quite unexpectedly he kisses me just above my collarbone, the tickle of his beard lingering on that vulnerable stretch of skin. Where do these memories come from? They, too, feel borrowed from a movie.

  I touch my collarbone now and perhaps I even blush a little at the memory. Perhaps I am remembering the first kiss Charlie ever offered me, that gentle graze against my neck, sheepish and quick, testing my reaction. How did I react? The memory is frayed. Did he leave the room? Did Rachel enter? What would her expression have been as she caught Charlie and me in this moment? There is guilt attached to this memory, something I most certainly feel, although I can’t be sure why. Did I hurt Charlie by not responding to his kiss? Did Rachel take offense at this small act of intimacy?

  I’d like to ask Charlie now, as he bends over his newspaper at the kitchen table, whether he remembers our first kiss, but I worry he might take it the wrong way. For me not to remember such an important moment would be yet another betrayal of our shared past. The question would make us both awkward and I want this day to go well. If Rachel were here, perhaps I would ask her instead, but she has already left for town. She has become the keeper of our shared memories. Unlike Charlie, she is generous with her stories. She lets me see myself with her over the years and she is not afraid to talk about the unhappy, angry moments too. I set aside the question for now, knowing that in a few hours, if I remember to ask her, she can confirm or deny it for me and another memory can be put in its proper place.

  Charlie raises his eyes from the paper and checks his watch. For just a brief moment he seems surprised to find me here, across the table from him. “You about ready, then?” he asks, and before I can reply he’s pushed his chair back and brought his mug to the sink.

  The newspaper’s offices are small, a cluttered wing of a large warehouse building in downtown Burlington. The directory has a long list of businesses: a massage therapist’s office, a few accountants, lawyers, counselors, and the mysterious F. D. Brown, Finder of Folks, Facts, and Falsities. As Charlie and I wait for the elevator, I ask him if there is in fact a real life private dick working in his building. Charlie’s face lights up at the question. “Ah, the infamous Mr. Brown. He is a walking noir movie. You’ve got to remember him, Claire. He’s been here for ages—fedora, mustache, buffed wing tips?”

  I shake my head. The only image that comes to mind is Cary Grant in that movie—what is it called? I am still trying to come up with the title when the elevator dings its arrival.

  “I can’t believe you don’t remember him. He’s a real character. Maybe we’ll take a pass by his office later today so you can at least catch a glimpse of his secretary. Her name is Lollie! It’s tremendous, really. You’d expect their lives to take place in black and white with a machine pumping fog into the office.”

  “What does he get hired for?” I am intrigued by Mr. Brown and Lollie. And I am glad to see Charlie so animated. I begin to imagine offering up my photography services to them. I could knock on their door and play right into the mystery. I could tell them in a cryptic voice that in the past I did investigations of my own, that I have traveled and seen much of the world, but that now I have returned to small-town life, carrying old wounds. I would be the perfect spy, forgetting immediately whatever it was that I had seen, so their clients’ privacy and nasty little secrets would quickly disappear into the black hole of my mind. Perhaps I could even hire Mr. Brown to solve the mysteries of my own past. Out of professional courtesy and gratitude for my discretion, he would offer his services for free, and then Charlie would be under the watchful eye he so frequently places on me.

  Suddenly, in my mind’s eye, I become the femme fatale, the woman with the red lipstick and the stiletto heels and husky voice. I will ask for a cigarette and pause provocatively between words. I will ask for an ashtray and push a neat pile of twenties across the office desk. I have secrets. I will leave in a perfumed cloud of mystery.

  “Claire, are you coming?” Charlie is standing outside the elevator, looking at me with that bewildered gaze that has become so typical lately. “We don’t have to do this, if you’d prefer not to. We can always visit another day.”

  Charlie has taken my daydreaming for hesitation, yet again. He is worried about my potential embarrassment at not remembering all the old, should-be-familiar faces. He has quizzed me several times on our car ride here. Henry is a features editor—forties, beard, ex – football star, broad shoulders. Emile—the arts editor, a transplant from Montreal—talks with his hands and with long pauses. Nolan—the sports editor, unexpectedly frail and freckled, redheaded. Chessboard on his desk at all times. Nancy—obits and marriage announcements. Grandmother of ten, loud talker, smells of rosewater. A hugger.

  I’m intrigued by Charlie’s descriptions of other people. He looks carefully and critically at the world around him and offers up his inspections and evaluations as if they were the result of prolonged research. He’ll wrestle with just the right details. Henry isn’t quite “rude,” he’s merely “effortlessly belligerent.” Emile isn’t quite “effeminate”; he “is comfortable with his feminine side.” Nancy isn’t “a gossip”; she is “enthusiastic about the narratives of others’ lives.” If I thought Charlie would handle it well, I’d tell him that he could use an editor himself to help him cut to the chase. Let’s get that word count down, Charlie. We’ve got only two columns to work with.

  It’s bad timing; the moment Charlie opens the door to his office, I remember the movie I was trying to think of, and before I can stop myself I shout out, “Charade!” and punch Charlie on the shoulder. He is blushing to his ears, and I quickly whisper, “The Cary Grant movie.” Charlie looks at me as if I’ve really lost it.

  Of course, I’ve realized too late that Charlie hadn’t been a part of my internal conversation about private dicks and perfumed smoke and I want to fill him in so he won’t carry that “she’s crazy” look on his face for a minute longer, but suddenly there is a young woman standing in front of us, handing Charlie a stack of mail and some memos and a schedule for the week. She identifies each packet as she loads up Charlie’s arms, and if I could describe her voice as a food, I would choose cotton candy. Charlie has not briefed me on this employee of his. She is lovely and I am suddenly aware of my dingy corduroy pants and pilled, roll-neck sweater and bitten-to-the-quick fingernails.

  She holds out her now empty hand to me, and I am running through Charlie’s list in my head just in case I’m missing someone he mentioned, even though I’m certain I would have remembered a description of this woman. She rescues me.

  “It’s been a long while,” she says. “I’m Sophie.”

  And I am suddenly relieved. She has a kind smile and her hand is small and cool in mine. “My God, your teeth are perfect.” I don’t know where this comes from. This is my tendency these days—to blurt things out without thinking first. Perhaps I’ve always been this way. I am sure I have never seen teeth so white and uniformly perfect as the ones offered up by Sophie’s smile.

  “Thanks.” Sophie laughs as she takes her hand back. “They run in the family. No braces even.”

  I look to Charlie for help, and for a moment he seems flustered too. I have become paranoid in an instant. Look at this girl. Everything about her is contained and in place. Her short bobbed hair and uniform bangs across her pale forehead, dotted with freckles. Eyebrows plucked to perfection arched over brown, cow-like eyes. Her lipstick, a muted pink, traced meticulously around well-shaped lips. Every color of her stays
within its lines, right down to her painted toes peeking out of her tasteful green heels. Oh, how well she suits Charlie and his own version of tidiness. And how I must always appear to him like a messy scribble.

  I sense immediately that Sophie and my husband must be having an affair. What I can’t determine is whether I feel any jealousy or instead feel like giving him a celebratory punch on the shoulder.

  But then I realize that I’m meant to be a part of the conversation, and I remember to tell Sophie that I am Claire and that I’m happy to meet her, and I apologize for the teeth comment. These days, I say, I seem to have lost any kind of filter.

  “Oh, you should never take back a compliment.” Sophie smiles at me. She is trying so gamely to make things comfortable in this impossibly tiny office. I feel a little bad for all of us.

  Meanwhile, Charlie has snapped back into some sort of efficiency. Before I know it, he has guided me through his office with his hand gently pressing between my shoulder blades. We have greeted Henry and Emile, and Nancy has given me a hug and a box of macaroons. I collapse into Charlie’s chair and kick my feet up onto his desk. Next to his computer, there is a picture of the two of us, squinting with the sun in our eyes and our backs to a turquoise sea.

  “Honeymoon,” Charlie says as he follows my gaze toward the frame.

  “Before the sunburn,” I add, and there is such a look of relief and pleasure on Charlie’s face, I almost want to take it back—this little glint of memory that always sets up false hopes for us both.

  Charlie leans over to give me a quick kiss on the forehead. “You smell like Nancy.” He is feeling better. The earlier moments of awkwardness, perhaps even guilt, have passed. “Will you be all right in here if I go chat with Henry for a bit? There are a bunch of magazines in here or you can use the computer. I’ve pulled up some of the articles you were researching before you got sick, if you’re up for having a look. Only if you want to, of course. I noticed earlier this week that there have been some developments in the hunger strike. Anyway, the password is Maldives if you want to have a peek.”