Remind Me Again What Happened

by Joanna Luloff

  Dr. Stuart is just as much a referee for us as he is a doctor to me. “Of course it’s understandable. I’m angry with myself too.”

  “Try to be patient, Claire. With yourself and with Charlie.” Dr. Stuart offers his benign and, right now, infuriating smile. “We need each other’s memories as much as our own to understand our shared history. If you can’t corroborate Charlie’s version of your past, then that past starts to feel less stable, you know what I mean?”

  Of course I know what he means. I’m not an idiot, I want to yell at him. I’m in the middle of all this too, I want to scream. We can add to the adjectives Charlie and I are supposed to be feeling. In addition to angry, frustrated, sad, and confused, I get to add guilty. I’m tired of feeling guilty all the time. So I try to change the subject. I ask Dr. Stuart if he’d be able to write my prescriptions so that I don’t need to refill them as often. He looks surprised, then concerned, so I quickly add, “In case I want to travel, say, with my friend Rachel.”

  “We could always call in a refill for you, if you planned to be away from Vermont. I’d just call a Walgreens or a Rite Aid or any other drugstore in California or Colorado or wherever you want to be.”

  “But what if we wanted to travel outside the country, to France or Canada or Mexico or some other place?” The more I’ve been studying my half-complete articles, the more my mind has been traveling toward India. I want to finish what I started there. Most of me understands that this is an impossible fantasy, but the other part is rebelling against this knowledge. I have a feeling I am a person who has often made impetuous decisions.

  Dr. Stuart removes his glasses. “Claire, we’ve talked about how travel might be off limits for a while. It’s important for you not to put too much strain on your body. Routine is important. Small trips are okay, preferably by car, but nothing too far afield. Does Charlie know you’re thinking about traveling?”

  I suddenly feel I’m being accused of something. I realize I can get paranoid sometimes, but there are moments when I really believe that everyone is acting as one of Charlie’s spies. “I’m not planning on going anywhere. I’m asking more theoretically.”

  “I see.” Dr. Stuart rubs his eyes and sighs. “Your antiseizure meds are barbiturates, Claire, so we’re not really permitted to prescribe them beyond the stretch of a month or two. Plus, you’ve only been on this combination of drugs for a few months now. It’ll take some time before we know how you’re really progressing and when we might be able to reduce some of the steroids and benzos. Brain trauma is tricky, Claire.”

  How many times in a given week do I want to shout: I know all this! I have done my research; I am not an imbecile. For instance, I know there are places in the world where it’s much easier to get medicine over the counter, without a prescription. I know, too, that conversations between patients and their doctors are confidential. And so I say to Dr. Stuart, “I’d prefer if you didn’t mention any of this to Charlie.”

  “Of course, Claire.” And here is where he starts to lecture me. “You owe it to yourself to take it easy, give yourself time, allow your body to rehabilitate itself. The brain is a fragile thing. The smallest stress can trigger enormous and damaging reactions.”

  Every time I am in Dr. Stuart’s room, I feel my world shrinking. I leave his office with all the reminders of what is forbidden: drinking, traveling, becoming overheated, driving, becoming overtired, running, swimming, being alone for an extended period of time. Where am I, Claire, the actual person, in any of this? I feel as though I have to ask permission even to go to my next appointment with my internist, who will draw blood and ask me the same questions as she shines a light into my eyes. “Good, good,” is all everyone says around here, while all the while I just want to run away.

  Soon, there is a gentle tapping at the door. Charlie has returned. I could identify his polite, hesitant intrusion anywhere. Now it is time for Dr. Stuart to pull Charlie aside for “a little chat.” This is typical too. I sit just outside in the waiting area, but I can hear them discussing me through the door. I listen for the betrayals. Dr. Stuart asks Charlie many of the same questions he’s asked me. Dizziness? Falls? Seizures? While I downplayed the situation in my answers—I really do feel much better—Charlie highlights and exaggerates each small mishap.

  Dr. Stuart: Has Claire’s balance and equilibrium been improving?

  Charlie: She is still quite unsteady in the mornings. If she doesn’t take a nap, a fall or a seizure is guaranteed by the end of the evening.

  I imagine Dr. Stuart taking notes.

  Dr. Stuart: Have the seizures been longer? Shorter? Has she started to anticipate them?

  Charlie: Claire can be stubborn. Even when she senses them coming, she’d rather keep to the task at hand than have a pause and take care of herself.

  Dr. Stuart: On average, how many seizures do you think Claire has in a given week?

  Charlie: I’d say four, maybe five.

  This is a lie. I document all my seizures in my notebooks. Over the past weeks, I am down to two a week, I’m sure of it. So what is Charlie’s purpose in upping these numbers and making my health and recovery look more precarious? I am baffled. Most of the time, Charlie seems exasperated with me, impatient and snippy, even if he tries to disguise his impatience with his everyday politeness. We are tiptoeing around each other like boxers in a ring. You’d think he’d want me out of the house more, capable of doing more things on my own, but the things he says to Dr. Stuart serve only to contain me within his walls and routine.

  As I gaze at celebrities’ dresses versus the images of movie stars captured in their shopping clothes in this month’s People, I fantasize about my escape. What would it take to burn Dr. Stuart’s files, to replace them with a more optimistic prognosis, to chart all my accomplishments rather than my ongoing failures? Even without setting fire to the evidence of my helplessness, how many weeks will it take to persuade Dr. Stuart to give me permission to go about my life on my own terms? I have showed him how orderly my notes are, how conscientiously I keep track of my medicine, my seizures, my sleep, the little sparks of my memory. I would like to convince him that I can get on a plane again, that I can map a new story to research, that I can be the person captured in the image of my now useless driver’s license and passport, and remind him that a passport cannot be revoked in the same way my driving privileges have been.

  When I really want to torture myself, I flip through my passport’s pages and marvel at the distances I’ve traveled. How can someone with a passport like mine be expected to haunt the creaking floors of an old farmhouse or her husband’s little office overlooking a quiet park in a quiet little city? My passport makes me feel like a much smaller version of myself, even if I am not entirely sure of who I used to be. What I do know is that Charlie’s new version of me is not the self I would ever choose to claim. Seizures or not, I am not helpless, diseased, failing. I have evidence that I am capable of traveling great distances. One day both Charlie and Dr. Stuart may be surprised at just how far I have come.

  Charlie

  After we returned from the hospital, Claire went up to take a nap and I joined Rachel in the living room, music from the stereo barely humming in the background. Rachel was sitting cross-legged on the floor, balancing a mug on her inner thigh. Her toenails were painted pink, which surprised me. She still drank coffee late into the day and bragged that she never had problems falling asleep. She didn’t look as though she’d have any trouble tonight either. She looked rattled, and I wondered if she was still a bit shaken from her shopping trip with Claire a few days earlier. It took me a moment or two before I saw one of Claire’s boxes half-unpacked beneath the coffee table. It took me another moment still to realize that Rachel had been crying.

  “Rach? What have you been up to all day here by yourself? Are you all right?” I tried to meet her gaze. There were times when she was impossibly difficult to talk to, and I feared that I might be up against one of them now.

  Rachel
fixed her eyes on the box. She seemed angry—with me or with Claire or just generally, it was impossible to say. “Rach?” I asked again. “What’s wrong?”

  “Have you been through her things?” Rachel finally looked up. “Have you let her go through all of them?”

  Her tone stung me a little. “I’m not a prison warden, Rach.” I tried to laugh; I tried to get her to laugh with me, but she was making me unsure of myself and she refused to look up from the box.

  “Sure you’re not. No one is accusing you of any such thing, Charlie.” She was trying to smile as she kicked the box away. “I’m going to help Claire sort through some more of these tomorrow if she’s feeling up to it.”

  “Of course,” I answered. “I’m sure she’ll be up for it.”

  Rachel raised her eyebrows; her look was almost teasing, but I was still sensing some hostility in her gaze. “It’s all right with you, then? There’s a lot of her work things here. Her stuff from New York, her correspondence.” Rachel paused.

  “I know what’s here, Rachel. I moved it myself.” I was becoming irritated. After our visit to the hospital, my patience was already worn thin. There were things Rachel wasn’t saying, and she seemed to be savoring the process of leaving me in the dark.

  “If she asks me about things, I’ll have to tell her the truth.”

  I squatted down beside Rachel and picked up a photograph she had taken out of one of the boxes. It showed the three of us perched on a wall on Charles Street. Rachel was licking an ice cream cone and Claire was wearing a Red Sox jersey. I remembered the day the shot was taken. We had just been to Fenway Park. It was August, just before school was about to start up again. I had a mustard stain on my shirt and Claire was staring directly into the camera, her gaze not entirely friendly. Who had the photographer been? One of Rachel’s short-lived suitors perhaps. Her classmate from Magazine Editing or the bartender from the local pub. I couldn’t remember.

  “Of course you will. I haven’t been hiding anything from her, if that’s what you’re getting at. If she bothers to ask me things, I tell her the things I remember.”

  “And if she doesn’t know what questions to ask?” Rachel leaned closer to me to take another look at the photo. “You have a stain on your shirt. It’s very unlike you.”

  “What’s with all this hostility, Rach? I’m not a mind reader and I refuse to do all the work for her. I think you’re asking for too much.”

  Rachel took the photo from me and slipped it into her pocket. There again was the half-attempted smile. It looked as though the gesture was causing her some sort of pain. It shouldn’t cost her such an effort just to smile at me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not being fair. It’s been a tough couple of days, Charlie. I haven’t been able to sleep since Claire’s seizure in town. It was a bad one. I was terrified. I felt helpless—you know how much I hate that.” She tried to smile again and, this time, took my hand in hers. “As usual, Claire ended up reassuring me when it was all over.”

  “Yes, she’ll do that.” I squeezed Rachel’s hand. “I’m sorry you had to see her like that. It is rather traumatic, though she assures me that she doesn’t feel any pain. She’s convinced, actually, that the whole thing is harder on me than it is on her, but it’s a difficult thing to believe.”

  Rachel dropped my hand. “She doesn’t remember India, Charlie. She doesn’t remember her research or her articles. She barely remembers our time in the house or when she moved in. And what she remembers sounds like regurgitated facts that she’s memorized. There’s no feeling to her memories, if they are, in fact, her memories.”

  “It unsettles me too.”

  “She sounds like you, Charlie.” Rachel laughed. “It’s funny to hear your descriptions come out of her mouth. No one describes things like you do.” She paused again. I wondered if she meant that as a compliment. “This morning, she asked me when the two of you had your first kiss. I told her I thought it was the day we were painting the bedrooms upstairs. She asked me if the paint was blue and I told her no, it was yellow, and her face completely changed, Charlie, she looked at me as if I were lying to her. It all felt very strange.”

  “Oh, I’m quite familiar with that look.” It felt good to have some of my experiences confirmed by Rachel. These small accusations that showed themselves on Claire’s face, the coy smile that suggested she had caught me in a lie. It was maddening.

  “And then you start second-guessing the truth of your own memories. I sat there for a second, thinking maybe it was blue paint, maybe I don’t have it right.” Rachel laughed again. “I live in that house every day, Charlie! Of course the master bedroom is painted yellow, not blue! She has me tied up in knots.” Rachel played with an edge of packing tape on one of the boxes. She had stopped laughing. “I was right, though, wasn’t I? That was your first kiss? In my parents’ bedroom with paint all over the place?”

  It was difficult for me to look at Rachel. Even all these years later, it still feels like a breach. We were the three of us, the closest of friends, and I knew I was upsetting the balance even if Rachel no longer had feelings for me. I had sensed her presence that afternoon when I had leaned in to kiss Claire. In my nervousness, I had missed her lips entirely and knocked my mouth somewhere against her chest. “It wasn’t really a kiss that day.”

  Rachel wasn’t looking at me either, which was making the conversation rather unbearable. “Well, maybe I’m remembering it wrong, then. Maybe you should tell her when it was. She seems eager to remember.” She was growing distant again, the tension creeping back into her voice.

  And there was that familiar anger growing in me. It wasn’t Rachel’s fault, but I felt like slapping her. As if all of this should be my job, this remembering for the two of us. I have my memories; Claire has hers. They are in there, somewhere; I know they are. And she has to do some of the work to get them back. It isn’t for me to tell her how or what to remember. “What good would it do for me to tell her, then, Rach? If she doesn’t remember, it doesn’t exist for her. I can’t tell her that she loved me, that she kissed me first. I can’t force her to remember these things—they’re just words to her. Like you said, regurgitated nonsense out of my mouth. Who is even to say that I’ve got it right? Maybe I imagined the whole thing the first time around, and she never loved me at all. Maybe I kissed her first. There’s no one else who can confirm it for me.”

  Rachel raised her hand to cut me off. I realized just then that I had been yelling. “I’m not exactly sure why you’re angry with me. I can understand, Charlie, how hard this is for you. I can even understand you feeling sorry for yourself from time to time, or even taking things out on me if it helps.” She looked up at me. “I came here to help. I love you both. But I think you’re being a bit ridiculous—being jealous, or maybe protective is the better word, of your own past.” Rachel straightened her skirt. She reached out to touch my arm. “It’s not only you, Charlie. I still drift back to that time. I want her to remember those years too. Without her memories, it’s hard to be certain that we all loved each other; it’s hard to believe that those moments ever existed. And of course, it’s impossible to lay blame, isn’t it? When the other person can’t confirm the past. It must be really frustrating for you, Charlie.” Rachel took her hand away.

  “Which part, exactly?” I tried to laugh, but when I looked up at her, she wasn’t smiling back at me. I moved to the couch.

  “That she doesn’t seem to remember him.”

  Now it was my turn to try to change the subject. I didn’t trust myself to continue without becoming angry. Rachel had no right to try to rattle me just because she herself was feeling unsettled. “When did you start painting your toenails? It seems out of character somehow.”

  Rachel seemed embarrassed and her mug almost spilled over as she shifted her feet under her. “I started painting them out of boredom, and now I’m hooked.” She grinned. “I’m a sucker for fuchsia.”

  “I would have pegged you for something more vampish—Red
Diva or Glammed Out Garnet or Razz Berry.” It was a clunky attempt at teasing. I was trying, perhaps too hard, to put things right between us.

  Rachel wasn’t playing along. “My goodness, Charlie. Who knew you were such a nail polish expert? Very mysterious, I’d say. After all, Claire has never worn nail polish.” Rachel gave me a mischievous grin, but there was a hardness to it. She was fishing for something and I suddenly wondered if she and Claire had made some kind of pact. Rachel would get answers out of me for Claire without Claire’s having to muster the effort to ask questions herself. I was tired from all our bickering, the half-spoken accusations, the old hurts pushing to the surface.

  I thought about Claire’s questions coming out of Rachel’s mouth. It made me drift back to the earliest days of our friendship, when I was so very convinced of our shared loyalties and trust. I wondered now if there hadn’t been something competitive brewing all along, jealousies developing alongside the devotion to one another. How could there not have been? I am certain that we all loved each other, but of course, we were all capable of being brutal in our own ways. Rachel, though, was surprising me now. Perhaps it was the trauma of the past days or the fact that we’d plucked her from her routine again, but she had seemed so short fused with me. And prying too. She had me on edge. But just as I was about to leave the room to make some tea, she scooted over to me and reached up to grab my hands.

  “I’m so sorry. I’ve been feeling cranky all day. I’m being unkind.” She rested her head on my knee. “I think those boxes triggered something in me and then you walked in, just at the moment I was feeling most frustrated.”

  “There’s really no need to apologize, Rach. None of us are at our best right now, obviously.”

  She lifted her head and smiled a bit sadly at me. “You don’t want to talk about it. That’s okay, Charlie. Mostly I just wanted to say I was sorry.”