Remind Me Again What Happened

by Joanna Luloff

  But he disappeared after a while in the wake of my disinterest, and he was replaced with temporary others. Some Charlie would bring home, singing the praises of my cooking; others Claire wooed on my behalf, and I would watch them shrug off their disappointment as they turned to me and realized the alignments for the evening. I played my part as gamely as I could for a week or two, or sometimes even for a couple of months at a stretch, but I eventually let my apathy send them on their way, and Claire, Charlie, and I would settle back into the routine of us three. I couldn’t bring myself to admit the truth of our situation—that I was in love with two people who were my only family, and that they were in love with each other. And when I wasn’t feeling like a fool who couldn’t trace the moment when things had shifted, I started to resent my best friends. And I hated myself for my jealousy. It had been I, after all, who had broken things off with Charlie. But it had been Claire, of course, who had guided me toward that decision, and I had let her, just as I had let her make the other choices that, ultimately, freed Charlie up for her taking. I loved them and I hated them and they were my family. And their pictures are still the only photos, the only traces of my past and present, decorating my refrigerator.

  Now Claire wants me to help her plan a surprise party for Charlie’s birthday. I know that Charlie hates surprise parties, but Claire is determined, and it’s good to see her so animated and driven to be in charge of something. We have been making plans while Charlie is at work. Who should we invite? Claire asks me. Who are Charlie’s friends? We both have very little idea, so we decide to include Charlie’s coworkers, a few neighbors, and us. Claire is particularly insistent that we invite Sophie. “I’ve got my eye on that one,” she said earlier tonight with a little mischief in her eyes. Claire seems strangely delighted that she might catch Charlie out on some illicit flirtation. As for me, I have my doubts that Charlie would be capable of any real kind of deceit. It’s against everything he values in himself, and it would even the score between him and Claire, and I suspect he wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice his moral high ground.

  So Sophie is invited and Claire has laid out her plan for her own private investigation. I have agreed to help. Claire is still extremely skilled at devising plans and encouraging those around her to join in her orchestrations. My job is merely to lure Charlie out of the house; the rest of the plan is up to Claire.

  Claire

  Out of one of my “India/Articles” boxes, there is a man who looks up at me from several pictures. He smiles from the photographs with a straightforward gaze, or sometimes his profile is cast in twilight or he holds up a palm to block the glare of the sun. He flirts with the camera or the person holding it, and there is intimacy and trust in his gaze. I think this man is speaking to me in the way that he is looking at the camera, but I couldn’t tell you his name, even though Rachel has planted a name in my mind. I call him Michael, and his image seems to respond. He looks like a Michael—sturdy, reliable, easy in himself. He was paper-clipped to my India notes and he is suntanned and a bit travel worn. Perhaps we traveled together. Without really knowing why, I hide his face from Charlie. I have tucked him into the folds of my books, which are still boxed up in the garage. There is one that I keep out, though. I stuff it into the pockets of my jeans. We are conspirators in this place of restrictions, and the photo is starting to bend from even my limited movement.

  This photograph suggests all the ways I don’t trust my own memory. I know this person; I feel it under the surface of my skin. But when I go looking for him in my memories, my brain jumps to an image of my uncle and the pair of roller skates he bought me for my eighth birthday. They were metal and they clanked along the sidewalk, their straps awkward over my green sneakers. Or I skip to a day when my mother taught me how to crochet a little blue dress for my favorite doll. Or to the day my father took me up on a chairlift for the very first time. This is what happens when I try to remember one particular thing. My mind suddenly becomes a kaleidoscope of fragmented memories, and I lose track of the original path that brought me there. And so I try to focus again. I look at the picture and I stare at Michael’s expression. I listen for his voice in my head, an escaped snippet of dialogue that we might have spoken, something mumbled over a shared curry at the snack shop I can see in the corner of this photograph. I can almost hear him. I can almost see him popping a piece of chapati into his mouth. He is wearing a camera around his neck and he is asking me a question, and then he vanishes again. In his place is the owner of the diner at the center of my hometown. He pushes a plate of pie and french fries across the counter at me and winks. We are sharing a secret in the late afternoon of a wintery day. These memories exhaust me.

  When I’m alone I breathe in the insides of these boxes and wonder if there is a trace of Tamil Nadu in them, a trace of New York City. I sniff around a lot, craving a sensory trigger or two, an opening up of my mind where suddenly the past will spring to life. The doctors tell me that smells and sounds are just as good starting places for memory as sights or stories that other people tell. Perhaps Michael might begin to speak to me, fill in the gaps of silence that Charlie is so eager to protect.

  I kissed Charlie two nights ago, or perhaps it was he who kissed me, in our kitchen, which still smelled of burnt onions and garlic. Rachel had already gone upstairs with her book and a final glass of wine, or perhaps she had taken a walk. I don’t remember. Who knows whether I’ve ever been a good cook, but I’m as absentminded in the kitchen as I am on my wanderings. I get to thinking about something, searching my memory, or feeling the tug of an image that is almost taking shape, and suddenly the smoke alarm shrieks and I’m holding a smoking pan. We salvaged dinner—a stir-fry, not too spicy, with rice on the side, and a rather sad-looking salad. I have no interest in eating meat these days, so Rachel helped me stock the fridge with peppers and eggplant and zucchini and cheese. Fortunately, Charlie doesn’t complain. This house makes me think that Charlie is a kind of aesthete anyway, and there’s something in his carriage, or perhaps it’s just a romanticized notion of his Englishness, but I think he enjoys deprivations. I think I may have kissed him just to see how his body would respond. Would it surprise me, or would I recognize the feeling of his lips, the press of his hips, the smell of his neck? How can I describe it now? Can something be expected without being familiar?

  Charlie’s lips are dry and soft. His neck smells like his sweaters, which I often wear around the house—a bit of fireplace, a bit of neutral soap, a bit of piney sweat. His hips are bony and hesitant, his body keeps the same distance and control as his words. He kissed me with his eyes open, so I know he was looking for my response to him, just as I was hoping for his mysteries to be revealed. I smiled in order to reassure us both and I rested my hand in the small of his back. Was I a changed Claire to him? I wondered. Was the taste of my mouth familiar to him, or has it become more metallic from all these stupid pills? Perhaps it felt strange to him that my hair didn’t fall across his shoulders. He couldn’t brush it away playfully, because, of course, I don’t have my hair anymore. Was this still a shock to him? Did I ever wear perfume or use lavender soap or taste like the wine I’m now forbidden to drink? Was he disappointed? Was I?

  It is a strange feeling—this guilt at not being the right person. It would be kinder to myself to say that I raised his sweater over his head and unbuckled his belt because I wanted to help him, to ease the disastrous unfamiliarity of me, but I was being selfish. Curious, pure and simple. I needed to know how our skin felt pressed together, how his hands felt on my breasts, what sounds he might make as I climbed on top of him. I needed him to reveal some secrets and I thought my body might make his face show something to me. So I did it for myself, not for Charlie. I coaxed him to the couch and I smiled and I said, “I miss you,” and here he stopped and clutched my wrist and stared into my face and I realized he was looking for a secret too.

  I wanted him to know that I would tell him the answers he was looking for, but I didn’t even know h
is questions, so I couldn’t possibly have the answers. So I said it again. “I miss you, Charlie.” His expression should have stopped me—is it possible for a face to hold disgust and grief and desire simultaneously? But I was too curious, and so I used my free hand to tug at his trousers and to unzip my skirt. He kicked his legs out of his pants and he looked so very exposed to me. Such skinny legs, with their coils of black hair. Two argyle socks, one halfway up his calf, the other scrunched down by his ankle. All the while he was staring into my face and I was smiling without really meeting his eyes. I did not have the things in my mind that he needed, but I was happy to feel him kiss my shoulder blade, to move his warm, callused hand between my legs. I was glad to hear him sigh and finally close his eyes and let himself be laid out on the carpet, socked toes pointing up at the ceiling. I traced my fingers across his eyebrows and pressed them into the crinkles of his forehead. He pushed my hands away and opened up his eyes, and again, that stare, that mix of anger and sadness and pleasure. “What is it, Charlie?” I asked.

  “I just can’t be sure, Claire,” he shook his head so gently and rested his hands on my hips, “if you’re really back here with me.”

  And then I had to close my eyes because I still didn’t have his answer and because his body didn’t feel familiar to me as I had hoped it would. Charlie is being greedy, I thought, he’s asking for too much. How can he expect his body, his house, his smells, to feel like home to me, when he gets to keep his silences? Even his body is silent; it reveals nothing. Why this disgust in your eyes, Charlie? My bruises are healing, my scars less jarring. It is something deeper than what is marked on the surface of my skin.

  And so I grew angry at Charlie for not providing any more answers than I could, and I punished him without his even knowing it. I closed my eyes and I replaced Charlie with Michael. I rocked my hips and I listened for a camera clicking. I saw desert and roaming water buffalo, pink saris pulsing in the wind. I saw the faces of vibrantly painted gods stacked up on temple roofs. I heard the camera clicking and I saw Michael’s eyes grinning back at me. He was my secret to keep.

  To make up for my guilt over ghostly Michael as well as my escape fantasies, I arranged a surprise party for Charlie’s birthday. Rachel was in on it, of course. Our plan was that she would bring him into the office for a couple of hours while I arranged the house and got some food together. The day before, Rachel and I had gone on a shopping excursion and hidden our surprise in the garage. Later that night, she had made some excuse to Charlie about needing to fax some documents to Boston, to get some editing work off before the end of the weekend. Charlie was easy to convince—he had some paperwork to catch up on too, he said, and perhaps he was just happy for the excuse to get out of the house and away from me for a few hours. I wanted to laugh at him, for his eagerness to go into work on his birthday, and on a Saturday, no less!

  Rachel helped me shop for his favorite foods (she had to remind me of some of them): samosas with peas and potatoes, salmon with just a touch of lemon and dill, aged gouda with those little specks of salt, southern Italian wine, fig spread. None of the ingredients seemed to go together, but Rachel assured me that I’d make it work somehow, and regardless of how it all came out, Charlie would appreciate the effort. I had wanted to do something nice for him, and at the same time I wasn’t sad to have the house to myself for the afternoon. To be honest, I had some ulterior motives of my own, even as I wanted him to enjoy his birthday. I had invited his work friends over for the evening, emphasizing the surprise, and Nancy, Henry, and Emile were due to arrive at 6 p.m., but I had asked Sophie to come early to help me with some of the preparations. She had been eager to keep me company, even offered to make a lemon curd cake; she thought Charlie had once mentioned its being his favorite dessert. She asked me if she was right, but I told her that her guess was as good as mine. I seem to remember Charlie loving his chocolate cakes—chocolate everything, really—but perhaps lemon curd cake was his favorite after all.

  I suppose that I wanted to balance out my feelings of guilt with the possibility that Charlie might be guilty of something too. Maybe this combination of wanting to do something good for someone else while simultaneously sleuthing a little bit would bring me even closer to Charlie. After all, him bringing me home to this house seemed more and more like his attempt to both rescue me and punish me for some past misdeed.

  Rachel had arranged to grab lunch with Charlie in town before they headed to the office, so I was counting on at least five hours before they’d return, so that I could get the meal together and have some time with Sophie. As soon as they left, I printed out the recipes and ingredients and charted the schedule for prepping and cooking. I find that lists help me keep my head on straight these days, but even after all my efforts, I kept forgetting where I had unpacked the peas or the baking soda or the lemons. More often than not, the thing I was looking for was only two inches away from my nose, and I would blush, locating it, embarrassed in front of an invisible audience. I always hear Charlie’s voice in my head these days: For God’s sake, Claire, the book is right where you left it. Just lift up the damn magazine.” I would lose patience with me too; in fact I am always losing patience with my unreliable brain, and trust me, it doesn’t feel good to misplace one’s entire life. But I’ve learned to keep my questions to a minimum, write them down, and save them for later or at least for when Charlie or Rachel are in better moods.

  When Sophie knocked on the door in the middle of the afternoon, my hands were covered in mashed potatoes, so I just waved her in from the window. She was dressed as if she had come from the office, a straight tweed skirt and a perfect little blouse with capped sleeves and those same pretty shoes with her pretty toes peeking out of them. Despite all the images and memories and questions that flash and disappear through my brain, I always remember Sophie’s pretty, painted toes. I can conjure them up in a moment, and here they were in the entranceway to our house. This was how my misfiring brain worked. Years retreated into a fog, and yet an image could appear to me so clearly, so precisely, it was as if a glossy picture from a magazine had been tacked onto my mind’s eye. I wished these isolated, precise memory snapshots could add up to something, but instead they appeared unpredictably and without a workable map to get me out of the maze of my brain.

  Sophie carefully hung her coat and purse on our coat rack, stepped out of her heels, and shook her hair out from under her hat. She smiled as she approached me, arms outstretched, ready for a hug, and I was pleased to notice a run forming on the heel of her stockings.

  “You smell delicious,” Sophie said as she pulled away from me. “What are you making?”

  “Come on into the kitchen,” I told her. “I’m wrangling with some samosas, but the dough for the wrappers is doing me in.” I reached out to help her with her grocery bags, but she waved me off.

  I took a step back to watch her. How well did she know this house? I wondered. How many times had she been here before? It was easy to find one’s way to the kitchen, so that would tell me nothing. I followed her through the living room and watched her unpack a bundle of lemons, sugar, and flour onto the kitchen counter.

  “Would you like a drink?” I walked over to the stereo. “Help yourself to wine or water, or I think we have a few beers and ginger ale in the fridge.”

  I turned the stereo on. Charlie’s CD started playing—something Scandinavian and electronic. It sounded like static bubbles to me. “Do you like this all right?” I asked Sophie.

  “It sounds a bit futuristic. I kind of like it.” Sophie smiled at me from the kitchen. I watched her reach toward the cabinet to the right of the sink and grab a drinking glass. First try, I thought to myself. Could be a lucky guess.

  Of course I had invited Sophie over so I could observe her in our house. I figured her presence here would offer up some clues: How comfortable was she in this space? Would she know where the measuring cups were? Had she baked Charlie his favorite cake before? I don’t like feeling suspicious, havi
ng a gut sense about something with no tangible proof, so I hoped Sophie might reveal what Charlie was so good at hiding.

  Sophie smiled again. “I might get started with the cake unless you needed help with the appetizers.”

  Despite my best efforts, I had left the kitchen in a fair bit of chaos. Most of the counter was dusted with flour, there were onion skins lacing the floor, a few peas had scattered here and there. “You should get started. Despite what it looks like, I’m almost done with these creatures.” I looked at my misbegotten samosas, pinched and mangled on the baking sheets.

  “All right then,” she said. “Do you have an apron I can wear?”

  “I have no idea, actually.” I laughed. And then I looked at myself: my pants were patterned with my handprints, and my fingernails caked with dough. “I’m a mess,” I said mostly to myself.

  “You look like you’ve been cooking.” Sophie was now standing next to me. She smelled minty and I admired how pretty her skin was up close. She had a delicate spattering of freckles over her eyebrows—something I didn’t think I’d ever noticed before. “Something tells me that Charlie would have an apron,” she said, beginning to rummage. From a low drawer, she pulled out a Colman’s mustard apron, bright yellow with red lettering. And in a strange, almost hallucinatory image, I saw Charlie in our old kitchen in Rachel’s house, a spatula in hand and a ski hat lopsided on his head. He had a ritual of making Sunday brunch for us every weekend. He loved pancakes, which he claimed were rare in England, and he made all different kinds—oatmeal apple, blueberry cranberry, honey buckwheat, pumpkin cinnamon. I could smell our old kitchen suddenly, bacon frying on the stovetop. Charlie in his Colman’s apron from the mustard shop in Norwich, one of the few things he had brought from home. In fact, Rachel might have had a matching one. Rachel and Charlie always appreciated breakfast more than I did. At least I think that’s true. Another half-formed memory of me nibbling on a banana while Rachel and Charlie feasted on syrup-drenched pancakes. How is it that I can remember this when I can’t keep track of the movie Charlie and I went to see last week, or what my computer password is, or what my apartment in Mumbai looked like?