The Art of Forgetting

by Camille Noe Pagan

  We both laugh. Phil makes a good living as a mechanical engineer, and my mother’s marriage to him is nothing if not a wellcalculated business relationship. Although she does seem to love him, he also provided a meal ticket that allowed her to quit both of her jobs and live a cushy life that she’d previously only read about in her beloved romance novels. After the way my father left her without so much as a second thought, let alone money to raise his children, I can’t exactly blame her.

  “How are things with you and Marcus?” I ask Sarah, referring to her husband, who’s out shooting hoops with his friends.

  “Eh.” She drains the last of her wine. I am not expecting her to elaborate, but she continues. “We’re not you and Dave, that’s for sure.”

  “But you guys seem so happy,” I say, secretly pleased that my sister thinks of my relationship as ideal.

  “We did,” she corrects me. “Lately he’s been weird. Distant. I’m afraid he’s got something going with this woman at church.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yep.” She nods, and makes a disgusted face. “It’s the assistant pastor’s wife. How gross is that? I doubt they’re sleeping together—something tells me Marcus is too afraid of God to drop his pants—but I’ve caught them making nice one too many times after service.”

  She looks at me wearily. “The thing that kills me is that this woman is frump-yyy. I mean, if she were gorgeous, I’d be jealous, but I’d understand. But if he’s in love with someone who can’t be bothered to pluck her eyebrows, it’s so much worse. That means it’s more than run-of-the-mill male lust.”

  “Ugh,” I say, because that is worse. Still, I have a hard time picturing my benign brother-in-law, who has worshipped Sarah since the day they met, so much as thinking about cheating, and I tell her as much.

  We end up chatting for another hour before turning in for the night. As I wash my face and pop my contact lenses out, I think about the fact that Sarah and I talked more this evening than we have in ages. Obviously, I’m not glad she’s having a hard time with Marcus. He’s a good dad, and having grown up without a father myself, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, especially not Ella. But my sister confiding in me—and in the process, actually admitting that her life’s not flawless—is a refreshing change. And, I realize as I drift off to sleep, our conversation was one of the very, very few I’ve had over the past couple of months that wasn’t about Julia.

  The next day, I borrow Sarah’s car and drive to the Ferrars’, which is just a few miles away. Unlike my sister’s neighborhood, where houses are within striking distance, the Ferrars’ place is nestled in woods along the Huron River, and the houses are hidden from passing cars and each other. Even so, I know the area like the back of my hand, and I don’t have to check the street numbers on the roadside posts to know which driveway to pull into.

  I press the shiny bronze button on the door’s molding and hear a chime. It feels strange to ring the doorbell after letting myself in through the side entrance for so many years. Through the window, I see Jim padding over to the door.

  He greets me warmly. “Marissa, come on in. Julia is excited to see you.”

  “Thanks, Jim. I’m excited to see her, too,” I say, and mean it. In spite of my conflicted emotions about her e-mails to Nathan, I miss my friend terribly, and can’t wait to see if she’s doing as well as her parents have told me.

  “Grace here?”

  “Nope. She ran to Whole Foods to get a few things. Should be back soon,” Jim tells me, and motions for me to follow him into the living room.

  I am nervous. I sit on the Ferrars’ white Ultrasuede sofa, but as soon as I do, I wonder if the indigo dye from my jeans will rub off on the upholstery. I decide to switch to a smudge-proof leather Barcelona chair.

  “Well, now that you’re no longer on the white couch, I’ll offer you something to drink,” Jim jokes.

  I laugh, grateful for the diversion, and tell him I’m fine.

  “Okay. I’ll go get Julia.”

  “Marissa! Hiiii!!” Julia says with delight when she sees me.

  “Jules, you look great,” I say, walking over to her. And she does. Her hair is longer than it has been in years, and it flatters her. Her face no longer looks puffy, like it was after the accident, and I see that she’s even wearing a little lip gloss.

  I give her a hug, and she hugs me back. Then she holds me at arm’s length and looks at me as though she hasn’t seen me in years. She touches my hair softly. “Still so pretty,” she says.

  “Still such bad eyesight,” I joke, but immediately regret trying to make light of the situation. Plus, I don’t even know if she gets humor or not. There are so many things I’m unsure about.

  To my relief, Julia laughs. “My eyesight is fine, thank you very much. The doctor says that I’m almost as good as new. My limp is even gone!” she says, referring to a hip problem she developed after the accident. Her specialists couldn’t seem to tie it to an actual injury, and concluded that it was a result of her brain trauma. “Think of the brain as the body’s control panel,” one of her specialists explained. “Even if your hip is just fine, something in your brain isn’t getting the message that that’s the case, so it’s affecting the way you walk. It might be permanent, but it might go away as quickly as it came.”

  “Come on,” Julia says, tugging on my arm the way that Ella does when she’s trying to get my attention. “Let’s go to my room. I want to show you something.”

  I am more than a little surprised to find Julia’s childhood bedroom redecorated. “Wow, Jules,” I say, looking around. The walls, last a pale shade of gray, have been painted lavender, and her bed is covered with a violet quilt that would be sort of cute if it weren’t surrounded by nearly a dozen matching pillows and a lavender throw. It is completely and utterly un-Julia, who’d always had an unwavering devotion to neutral colors.

  “It’s really . . . purple.”

  “I know. It’s a little overkill, isn’t it?” she says, raising an eyebrow and surveying the room as though she, too, is taken aback by it.

  “A little,” I admit.

  “The doctor told me that I might get hung up on stuff. Colors, certain foods, words. Nothing I can do about it. At least this makes me happy.” She starts singing Sheryl Crow, “If it makes you haaaappy, it can’t be that baaaaad” . . . which makes me smile, because breaking into song is such a Julia thing to do. See, there are good signs all around, I tell myself. You just have to look for them.

  But my optimism is quickly squashed by the presence of a small wad of fur emerging from under her bed.

  “Snowball!” Julia squeals, spotting the white kitten. She grabs the animal and hugs it. “This is what I wanted you to see. My new cat!”

  Julia hates cats. Correction: hated. “Snowball?” I ask, warily eyeing the mass of fur that’s clawing at her as though he intends to open a vein. “You named it Snowball?”

  “Well, yeah,” she says, as though I’m dense, and I realize that the cat’s name is not meant to be funny. “Just look at him. What else could I call him? Isn’t he adorable?”

  Now, I am the first to admit that I’m not a cat person, but I’ve seen cute-enough cats before. This creature does not make the cut. Although fluffy and soft, he has a flat, wrinkly face and mean yellow eyes that make me suspect that a small alien has decided to use him as its host. Snowball hisses and launches off Julia’s frail-looking arm, but she just giggles as he runs back under the duvet edge.

  “So do you miss work?” I ask Julia, surveying the dozens of getwell cards scattered around the room, many of which are undoubtedly from her colleagues.

  She looks at me quizzically. “Work?”

  Come on, Julia. You love your job. You can remember this, I silently plead.

  “At the Ballet?” I say gently.

  She doesn’t take the bait, and my optimism instantly evaporates. “No ballet. The doctor says I can’t dance anytime soon. Maybe even never,” she responds in a singsong voice. Sudd
enly, she sits on the edge of her bed and her voice drops. “Ohhh. Ow. I think I feel a migraine coming on.”

  “Crap. Should I get your parents?” Julia has been suffering from headaches since the accident, and instead of getting less intense, they’ve been escalating; last week, she told me she had one so severe that she passed out. This terrifies me far more than I let on, because based on an article in one of many medical journals I’ve permanently checked out of Svelte’s research library, I recently learned that migraine sufferers are at an increased risk for “silent brain damage.” Normally, this type of damage doesn’t cause any symptoms—but given how sensitive and addled Julia’s neural tissue already is, I have to wonder if the migraines will make it even worse. Increased risk doesn’t mean it has to happen, I remind myself. And most people with brain injury suffer from headaches and still manage to recover.

  “No, it’s okay,” Julia tells me. She gingerly leans back and squeezes her eyes closed. “I’m going to lie down for a bit. Will you just close the shades before you leave?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thank you,” she whispers. “Come back tomorrow?”

  “You know I will.”

  I find Grace in the kitchen, putting groceries away.

  “Julia’s got a migraine,” I tell her. “Should I bring her some medicine?”

  “Oh goodness.” Grace sighs. “No. The migraine meds aren’t doing a thing. I’m going to start her on acupuncture this week to see if it won’t help a little.” She puts a tub of berries in the fridge. She closes the door, then puts her hand on my arm. “It’s wonderful of you to be here, Marissa. You know the doctor said it’s really good for her to be around familiar faces. People she trusts.” Grace looks at me. “Are you sure you won’t take her apartment?”

  “I’m sure I’ll regret saying this later on, but I really think I should stay put for now,” I tell her. “Plus, Julia might be ready to move back at some point. Her boss did say that they’d hold her position open, after all. I think it will be easier if I don’t take over her space.”

  “Marissa, we need to be straight with you,” says Jim, walking into the room. “You should know that we’ve spoken with Julia’s new neurology team at length about this, and as much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, they think it’s highly unlikely that Julia’s going to be on her own anytime soon. The headaches aren’t a great sign.” He rubs his temples. “And let’s face it. The elephant in the room is that she’s not the same person she was before. The mood swings, the memory loss . . . there’s no telling what she is and isn’t capable of.” His words bring all of the fears I’d just suppressed flooding back.

  “Jim, don’t say that,” Grace says sharply.

  “It’s true,” says Jim quietly. “I hope as much as you do that she doesn’t live here forever. That she’ll be able to go out and make a life for herself again at some point. I mean, I love her, but she’s a grown woman and returning to the nest is not what you wish for your daughter.”

  “No,” says Grace with resignation. She dabs at her eyes with the dish towel she’s holding. “It certainly isn’t.”

  “Well, at the very least, she seems happier now,” I tell them, because, well, someone has to try to look on the bright side. “Not so depressed and hopeless like after the accident.”

  “I suppose that is progress,” admits Jim.

  “Julia’s happiness is a nice surprise,” agrees Grace. “She was so unpleasant there for a while that I was truly concerned that she’d stay that way.”

  On my drive home, I wonder if there’s any truth to my theory, or if it’s just something I’ve concocted to make the Ferrars—and myself—feel better. Julia said she was happy. But I know that three months ago, if my fiercely independent friend saw herself now, living in a purple bedroom in her childhood home with a cat named Snowball, she would be horrified. And that makes me deeply, exhaustingly sad.

  At the same time, it makes me furious. I want to shake my fist at the universe and say, “Why not pick someone else?” Julia has made mistakes, just like anyone else. She’s not perfect. But she’s a good person, and she doesn’t deserve the hand she’s been dealt.

  I grip the steering wheel tight and let the feelings of rage wash over me. Because the angrier I get about the accident, the easier it is to let go of the resentment I’ve been harboring against my best friend for going back on our promise.

  Nine

  After my dad left, we stopped celebrating Thanksgiving. Instead, my mom would take us to the local IHOP for a late pancake breakfast, and then we’d spend the afternoon seeing a double feature at the discount cinema. Some years, if Sarah and I begged enough, my mother would let my grandmother drive out to pick us up so we could spend the holiday with her and my grandfather in Grand Rapids. Most of the time, though, we were too worried about leaving Mom alone. She refused to go to Grand Rapids, so it was the three of us, stuck in Ypsilanti, pretending like it was any other day of the year.

  This is why Sarah and I find my mother’s elaborate Thanksgiving spread, which looks straight from the pages of Martha Stewart Living , to be so bizarre. “After seven years of Mom channeling her inner domestic holiday goddess, you’d think I’d get used to this, but it still seems so . . . freaky,” Sarah whispers to me as I stare incredulously at the fifteen-pound turkey, seven side dishes, pumpkin, pecan, and apple pies, assortment of cookies, and buffet table covered with bottles upon bottles of wine and sparkling cider. Clearly, my mother has our family confused with Overeaters Anonymous members who’ve fallen off the wagon and decided to stay there. The irony of the situation is that I don’t dare help myself to seconds because I’ll hear about it from her for the next month.

  “I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to have my girls here!” my mother says, emerging from the kitchen with a lace apron tied around her waist. She is even more done up than usual: Her short blond bob is freshly dyed, her burgundy dress fits her like a glove, and she is wearing new Fendi rhinestone-embellished eyeglasses. “Hi, Mom,” I say, kissing her cheek. “I like the glasses. Very hip.”

  “Thank you, my love. You look nice, too,” she says unconvincingly, giving my red turtleneck sweater and jeans a once-over. “I hope you know that I really appreciate you sacrificing your holiday with Dave to be with Phil and me.”

  My mother the martyr, I think, but say, “I told you I’d spend this year with you guys. And it gives me a chance to see Julia.”

  “Oh, I am so broken up about that,” she says, frowning into her pinot grigio. “She was such a lovely young lady. Such a nice figure.”

  “Mom, she’s still alive, you know,” I balk. “And not that it’s important, but she looks the exact same.”

  “I know that. Don’t be morbid, Marissa,” she scoffs. “Let’s just thank God her face wasn’t smashed in. Beauty like that doesn’t grow on trees.” I nod, and slowly turn to roll my eyes at Sarah, who tries not to spit her drink out. Although my mother barely paid attention to Julia and me in high school, she’s since come to “adore” Julia so much that I suspect she’d replace Sarah and me with her in a heartbeat. As for Julia, she’s so familiar with my mother’s many quirks that she refers to her as “Susan the somatic narcissist”—yet she still feels compelled to win her over at every turn. Put the two of them in a room and it turns into one big nauseating love fest (“You look amazing!” “No, you do!” “But I love your shoes!” And so on).

  “How is your friend doing?” asks Phil, shaking my hand hello—even after all this time, we’re still essentially acquaintances.

  I don’t mind giving him an update, though, because I know he’ll only chat with me as long as the commercial break lasts; then he’ll be right back to the sofa to catch the rest of his PGA tournament. “She’s so-so,” I tell him. “Physically, she has no broken bones or anything like that. But she has some memory loss and she gets really bad headaches. She never talks about her job or her dance group anymore, either.”

  “No ballet?” my mother asks, ag
hast.

  “Well, she hasn’t brought it up once without being asked, not even when her dance friends came to see her in the hospital,” I tell her. “It’s kind of weird. And she just seems . . . different,” I say, unsure about how to explain how odd Julia has been behaving lately, or whether it’s even worth the effort.

  “Man, tough break,” Phil says, shaking his head. “Let her know we’re thinking of her, and if there’s anything we can do . . .” He gestures with his beer bottle instead of finishing his sentence, and walks back to the TV.

  “Near-death experiences do have that effect on people,” my mother tells me after he leaves. “I saw it on Dr. Phil.”

  “That’s the thing, Mom. I don’t even think she realizes she could have died. She doesn’t really remember the accident, and although she can recite what her doctors tell her about the changes she’s been through, she doesn’t seem to realize that she’s different at all. Like, she’s obsessed with purple and is bringing up people from our past that we haven’t talked about in a decade.”

  “Wow,” says Sarah. “That’s got to be hard on you.”

  “It is,” I say, and feel a surge of gratitude toward my sister for acknowledging this.

  “That happened to a buddy of mine,” says Marcus. Sarah gives him a quizzical look, so he elaborates. “In college, my friend Trevor was out drinking one night and decided it would be funny to climb over this fence that was blocking off a construction site. It was dark, so he couldn’t see that there was a huge ten-foot hole on the other side of the fence. He fell in it and hit his head really bad.”

  “Marcus! That is so not okay! It’s just like people telling me horrible labor stories when I was pregnant with Ella,” Sarah scolds.

  “No, it’s all right. I want to hear this,” I say. “So what happened?”