But when we eventually entered the first boutique, Claire had lost some of her enthusiasm. She looked overwhelmed by the racks of clothes as she clinked through the hangers and layers of sweaters and shirts and trousers. She’d grab a shirt, hold it up to her chest, then squish up her face. I had no idea what this expression meant—it was not one I was used to seeing. “What do you think of this?” she asked me with each new item. This was something else I wasn’t used to. I don’t think Claire had ever asked me for fashion advice in all the time we’d known each other. “Do I even like purple?”
“You like green more,” I answered, handing her a blouse with scalloped cuffs and some black embroidery. “And this seems like you.” I offered her a flouncy little 1950s-style skirt littered with pansies. I wrapped my hands around Claire’s waist, surprised by how little of her I felt there. “My God, Claire. What are you, a size four these days?”
“I have absolutely no idea. Grab a couple of each one and we’ll figure it out in the dressing room.”
The sales clerk took our expanding piles into the dressing room as Claire riffled through the sale rack. I was already exhausted and the day had barely gotten started. I’d grown so used to making decisions only for myself; I was out of practice at having these kinds of discussions.
Claire asked me to come into the dressing room with her as she sorted through the mounds of clothes we had amassed for her to try on. I watched her as she slowly and carefully stepped out of her leggings, all the while balancing against the wall. Every one of her actions was studied and deliberate, and I couldn’t match this slowness with the Claire I used to know—always in a hurry, always impatient, always waiting for others to catch up.
As she took off her sweater and stood in the severe light of the changing room, she suddenly appeared so worn out, so gray and mottled, that I almost couldn’t look at her. Her skin was still marked with blue-and-purple bruises, some even black, from IVs and the ghosts of blood draws and other injections. At the hospital the nurses had complained again and again that Claire had terrible veins, blaming her for their missed pricks and “traumatic” draws. And here she was, all these weeks later, still splotched with the aftermath of those invasions.
But the worst thing for me was the pink-white scar puckered into her neck. A slit where the intubation tube had connected her to the respirator. I remembered too clearly the gurgles and sucking noises that had emanated from her neck, the thick sounds of near suffocation. This tiny scar, no more than an inch long, wrinkled into her neck, brought back the memory of all these sounds and struggles, and I felt something shudder in me. To disguise my reaction to Claire’s body, I pressed my palms against my eyes.
“Am I that bad to look at these days, Rach?” Claire laughed at her reflection.
“It’s not you.” I tried to meet her gaze. “Just some bad memories came out of nowhere.”
Claire was standing in front of me, the green blouse buttoned high up her chest and the billowy skirt swishing against her legs. Covered, she looked lovely. She still looked tired around her eyes, and that scar still peeked out between her clavicles, but she was smiling and the green lit up her face and she started to sense that she looked good, that she looked better than she had in weeks, and suddenly I could see that a part of her was returning.
“I love it,” I said. “You look really beautiful.”
“The green is nice, isn’t it? You were right about the color. And the skirt makes me feel flirty.”
“You look flirty,” I teased. “I recognize that look on your face.”
“Hmmmm . . . if only there was someone to flirt with.”
“What about Charlie?” I was prodding and I knew it.
“Oh, poor Charlie. If I tried to flirt with him, he’d probably tell me not to excite myself.”
“You never know; he might appreciate it.” I felt a sudden need to defend Charlie. I kept thinking of the way he’d scolded himself earlier that morning. He needs to feel like a husband again, I thought. I wondered how they were approaching each other, now that Claire was out of the hospital. In the months leading up to her illness, Claire had confided to me that she and Charlie hadn’t slept together in months. He was angry with her and wouldn’t say anything about it, she explained, and Claire had been too busy to care. And of course there were other reasons too.
But what about now? It was easy to see that Charlie seemed fully conscious of Claire’s health, her medications, her sleep, her seizures, but at the same time so unaware of the person that was suddenly in such close proximity to him again. He hadn’t touched her once since I arrived, except for one of his quick kisses on the forehead before we all retreated to bed. He sat across the living room from her, watching her from a distance after we had returned from the airport. I wondered if Claire had been keeping her distance too.
What I saw, I suppose, were the effects of a distance that had been growing for years, outside my own understanding and sight except for occasional glimpses during rushed visits. And what did I feel about all of this—the careful but cool interactions, the controlling politeness, all these tentative gestures? I wondered if it was possible to feel sadness and satisfaction at the same time. Was there a word for this kind of feeling? Was it a kind of revenge? I wondered.
“I doubt it. Charlie spends most of his time on the sofa, reading, and scribbling notes. He pretends that he’s going to come to bed ‘in just a bit,’ but the next morning he’ll explain that he slept on the couch because he didn’t want to disturb my sleep.” Claire let the skirt drop to her feet and grabbed a pair of cropped jeans from the pile. I looked away from her. Even if I had been the one to start it, I wasn’t sure I wanted to have this conversation with Claire; it felt disloyal to Charlie somehow. “He doesn’t look at me, except when he’s frustrated or angry, and even then he tends to look above one of my shoulders rather than at me directly.” Claire’s hair brushed against my arm as she reached for a sweater. “Kind of like you were doing just a minute ago.”
I met her gaze in the mirror. The red turtleneck sweater she had put on covered her scar and rested just above the belt loops of her jeans.
“Don’t look so guilty, Rach. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I don’t always like looking at myself these days either.”
“I swear, Claire. It’s not you. You look good; you look beautiful, really. It’s just that sometimes I can’t get the image out of my head—you attached to all those machines, and the doctors looking helpless and without any answers, and all the blood taken out of your veins as they tried to figure out how to make you better again. I try, but I can’t stop remembering it.”
Claire smiled at me in the mirror. “You look at me and can’t get away from those memories of Florida. You wish you could forget. But for me, I look for the clues on my body to tell me what happened to me in that hospital, to fill in the missing spaces of my memory. Isn’t that strange?”
I tried to smile back at her. “It is strange, Claire. I can’t even imagine what that unknowing must feel like for you. But if you have any questions, if there’s anything I can tell you, you only have to ask me.”
Claire looked at herself in the mirror. She wiggled her butt and then she grinned at me. She was trying to make us both feel better, but I couldn’t match her efforts. I was irritated with her suddenly and I wasn’t even sure why. “Ah, Rach. I know I can ask you anything. It’s one of the reasons I wanted you to come. Sometimes I think Charlie is too frightened to tell me the truth.”
I wanted to be generous, I really did. And I meant what I said to Claire. I was willing to answer her questions, but I wanted her to answer mine too. It couldn’t be only me providing the answers; I’m not that selfless. Before I knew what I was doing, I asked her, “Have you spoken with Michael?”
Claire turned away from our reflections and looked at me directly. “Michael who? What Michael?”
I examined her face, the way I imagined Charlie must have been doing for weeks now, looking for a glimmer of recogniti
on, some small sign of memory. Charlie and I were both very aware of Claire’s black hole, the joking name they had given to her memory loss, but I needed to be sure. However, there was nothing in her face that betrayed any kind of recognition. There was only a lopsided look of confusion, and I immediately regretted my question.
“Oh, Michael was the photographer you were on assignment with when you got sick.”
Claire rubbed at her eyes. “I don’t remember any Michael.” She spoke at the floor.
“Please don’t worry about it, Claire. It’s nothing important.” I took her hands away from her eyes. “Let’s look at you.” I turned her to face the mirror again. “The jeans look great, but I think you need a smaller size in the sweater. How about I run and get it for you? I’ll be right back.”
As I left the room, I felt a sickness in my throat. It was so easy to lie to her, as I just had. I promised myself I would make it up to her as I sifted through the sweater sizes. I would help her sort through the boxes piled high in the garage, just as she had asked me to do, the boxes Claire was sure Charlie didn’t want her to open. She had told me that every time she mentioned sorting through some of her things, the boxes from New York specifically, he would make excuses that it was too late, that she had had a strenuous day, that he was too tired now but would make time over the weekend. I wondered what the boxes held—perhaps her work files or her old correspondence. I wondered if they held any of the photos she had kept in her studio or on her desk, or if Charlie had thrown most of these memories away. It was hard for me to imagine him doing that; he was far too ethical and too kind. But I could imagine the temptation he must have felt, the desire to discard all the evidence that reminded him just how far away from him Claire had traveled. I’m not sure I would have been strong enough to let the clues remain, clues that maybe, one day, would lure her away again. Like me, Charlie wanted his second chance. I wondered how much of ourselves we’d be willing to sacrifice to bring it about.
When I got back to the dressing room, Claire was on the floor, thrashing and spitting, and her lip was turned up in a snarl. I straddled her legs. Charlie had told me to keep her as still as possible if this happened, and to talk to her so she could hear my voice as she came to, so that she would be less disoriented, less scared. Her breast had fallen out of her bra and I was crying. “Come back, Claire. Come back,” I was pleading with her. “I am so sorry, Claire. I didn’t mean to upset you. Please, Claire. Stop it. Come back.”
And then it was over, so suddenly. Claire’s eyes regained their focus, but she couldn’t talk yet. There was a line of drool running from her chin to her cheek. She had bitten her lip and her mouth was bloody. I took my sweater and pressed it to her lip. “You’re okay now, Claire. You’re okay. We’re in Burlington, and you’ve been trying on some lovely clothes.”
Claire smiled and brushed the hair out of my eyes. “Hi, Rachel,” she said. “It’s all right. I’m all right.” She had found her voice again. “Please don’t cry. It makes me feel too guilty.”
We sat on the floor together, holding hands, our legs entangled and our backs resting up against the wall. The sales clerk approached and knocked on the door. “Is everything okay in there?” she asked.
“We’re fine.” Claire answered for us both. She was suddenly ready to take charge again, while I was willing to sit, waiting, on the floor—waiting, I realized, for Claire to tell me what to do next.
Claire
Burlington’s Fletcher Allen hospital is not very far from Charlie’s work, so on the days that I have appointments, Charlie will drop me off at the hospital in the morning, then fetch me for lunch later in the day. He makes sure I bring my notebook, the charts the doctors have asked me to keep, and a checklist of all the recommendations the occupational therapist left with me the previous month. This is my current checklist:
• Use labels to indicate where things go (like which cupboards are for food, baking pans, aluminum foil, etc.).
• Put signs in places where I might forget to take something, like a sign by the door reminding me to remember my keys (not that I’m ever allowed out of the house by myself anymore).
• Hang an oversize wall calendar in a prominent spot to remind me of the date and any events that are taking place. (For me, events = doctors’ appointments or a library book coming overdue. I have been told that this calendar will lessen the times I need to ask Charlie or Rachel for help remembering things and make me feel more “self-reliant.” Instead the calendar only reminds me just how reliant I am on others—to drive me to the library to return my book, to take me to the pharmacy to refill my prescriptions, to bring quizzes to the doctor’s office to remind me just how useless my brain has become.)
• Keep a journal and write notes. (I have added: Keep my camera with me at all times and upload the images every night onto my computer. Write notes alongside the images while the information is fresh in my mind.)
• Try to stick to a regular routine. (What other kind of routine would I have around here anyway? But yes, wake up, have breakfast, take meds, get some fresh air, maybe some exercise, lunch, meds, nap, rummage through notes/boxes and/or read, dinner, meds, Scrabble, TV, meds, sleep.)
• Prominently display photographs of family and friends and label them with their names. (I have taken the labels off. I don’t need them. I don’t want them. If Charlie has to deal with an occasional question, so be it.)
Today, Charlie has put together a little quiz that he has been very secretive about, and he’ll be keeping me company during whatever the game is that he and Dr. Stuart have planned for me.
I meet with Dr. Stuart, my neurologist, once a month. The tests are always the same: He has me walk in a straight line, touching the heel of my right foot to the tips of the toes of my left foot and so on, as if I’ve been arrested for drunk driving. I am terrible at this. Usually he has to catch me before I fall. He asks me who the president is today, who it was eight years ago, who it was in 1988. He’ll say a list of words in a row that I have to repeat back to him. I am usually miserable at this test too. I throw up my hands and he laughs with me and always says, “At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor.” He looks over my chart and lists my medications and I nod and he asks me, “Who is in charge of your meds, you or Charlie?” And I always give him the same answer. I’m in charge, but Charlie double-checks my pillbox every evening to make sure I haven’t skipped a dose. Dr. Stuart usually nods at the chart, saying, “Good, good,” and I find myself nodding enthusiastically alongside him. We are quite a pair.
He asks me about headaches, and I tell him they are not a problem.
Dizziness?
Yes, sometimes in the morning when I first wake up.
Loss of balance, any recent falls?
Not this week, luckily.
Sometimes he’ll ask me a trick question. He’ll behave as if we’re just having a normal conversation, as friends might be having. Just last week he asked me, “Have you seen any movies lately?”
“Charlie and I just watched The Bourne Identity. We thought it might be educational.”
Dr. Stuart crinkled his eyes. “I haven’t seen it yet. Tell me about it.”
“It’s about a spy who doesn’t remember he’s a spy, until he starts speaking other languages, finds a bunch of passports with his identification, and realizes he’s a really good fighter.”
“Sounds intriguing. Does he ever remember how he came to lose his memory? Who he really is?”
And then I realize Dr. Stuart’s caught me. I think back to the film. I remember a scene on a boat, but the image quickly fades. I really don’t remember the movie at all. I know the bare facts of it, but nothing particular about it takes shape in my mind. I shrug my shoulders; I’m hesitant to give anything away. “You never know for sure.” Maybe I’m wrong; maybe I’m right. Dr. Stuart doesn’t betray much.
Today, Dr. Stuart welcomes Charlie with a warm handshake and offers me a quick hug. We have become friends of a sort. I see Dr. St
uart more than I see anyone else besides Charlie and Rachel. He is married, has grown children, has lived in Vermont for most of his life, and loves peppermint patties (the miniature ones are always in a jar on his desk), but other than that, I know very little about him. I will say, though, that he is always a kind and encouraging presence in my life. He is patient, and that is really all I can ask of anybody these days.
We start off with the usual series of questions and tests. Dr. Stuart asks me, “What is the date?” Then, “Could you please draw a picture of a clock on this piece of paper? Now draw twenty past two o’clock on its face.” I pass with flying colors! We are all smiling in this very small and overheated office. There is a picture of a snow-covered mountaintop with a minuscule figure silhouetted at the summit. I would give anything to be that person, alone, and far away from here.
Dr. Stuart asks us to sit down around his desk. He smiles at me. “Charlie has brought a small photo album for us to look at together, Claire. Charlie tells me your friend Rachel brought it from Boston, so you probably haven’t seen these pictures in a very long time. Don’t be concerned if you can’t remember them. We’re just treating this as a little puzzle to see how your long-term memory stacks up against the shorter term. We’re just mapping the geography of your black hole.” I’m getting tired of this metaphor.
Charlie is all smiles as he pulls out the album. We are always on our best behavior in front of Dr. Stuart. Charlie brushes his hand against my forearm and nods a quick encouragement, and then I settle in to look at my past.
What Charlie doesn’t realize, or perhaps doesn’t accept, is that it is easy for me to drift into the distant past, when my mother was still alive, when she told me stories of my eccentric relatives and her childhood adventures. Or when my father told me stories about battles between his father and uncle over a claim to him. I remember their stories as if I had experienced them myself. Their past is often more available to me than my own. I miss them more than I miss myself.
Remind Me Again What Happened Page 9
