Everything I Don't Remember (6 page)

“Once he said that his greatest wish was for his name to be Patrik, and I teased him because I thought Patrik sounded so fucking lame.”

Samuel nodded, he didn’t ask any further questions, and in his silence I started telling him things about my brother. There was no logic to what I said, I just told him that my brother had
always wanted a video-game console, but he had to settle for a Gameboy, and his favorite turtle had been Leonardo at first and Raphael later, and his turquoise pajama bottoms had a bad waistband
and they were constantly crooked because he always hiked them up on one side, and once when we were eating chicken he said that it was good but it was too bad about all the cute little chickens who
had to die so we could eat them up, and the whole family paused their forks and looked down at their plates but my brother kept happily eating and his hair wasn’t as kinky as mine and when he
was little he teased me about my hair but when he was older he asked me if there was some way to make his hair kinkier and as revenge for his teasing I made up that bananas are good for kinking
hair and he ate bananas nonstop until Mom noticed that the weekly fruit bill had sky-rocketed and I revealed my joke and once when it was New Year’s Eve and the city was rumbling with
firecrackers my brother woke up and came rushing out of his room in his crooked pajama bottoms with two toy pistols, shouting that he had to shoot back. I sat there for an hour saying things I
remembered but had never told anyone. Samuel listened and nodded and ordered more beer. He didn’t say: Is your brother the one who died? Or: How did it happen? He just sat there looking at
me. And when he didn’t ask any probing questions it somehow made it easier to keep talking.

*

I said he had been twelve years old when it happened. And that we were relatively new to Stockholm.

“Mom had gotten a job in sales at a company that manufactured kitchen fans, my brother was with two friends and the big sister of one of the friends, they were going to go bowling, they
were crossing a parking lot by Kungens Kurva, there was a lot of snow, they got run over side-on by a tanker truck, the friends survived, the sister too, but my brother died.”

Samuel looked at me. He didn’t tilt his head to the side. He didn’t look sorry for me.

“Did they catch him?”

“The driver? Mmhmm. There were witnesses and everything. But they let him go. He said he didn’t notice that he had run them over. He said he thought he had hit a shopping
cart.”

I thought, here come the questions, he’s going to ask me how it felt and what happened to our family, if the divorce was because of my brother, if that was why Mom decided to quit her job
and move back. But no. Instead he said:

“You’re lucky you have such an awesome memory.”

“Why?”

“Because it means you still have him. He’s not dead. He lives on. Thanks to you.”

We sat there in silence. When the bill came, we never split it. One of us covered it all. Sometimes it was him. Pretty often it was me.

*

Panther says that Samuel insisted on calling his grandma’s dementia “confusion.” He told her about all the things his family had done so she wouldn’t
have to move out of her home. They printed out pieces of paper with clear instructions for how to turn the burglar alarm on and off. They put colorful sticky notes on the remote so she could
remember how to change the channel. They bought a landline phone with buttons the size of sugar cubes because she always forgot to hang up the cordless phones and it made everyone worry when the
busy signal beeped for over two hours, and someone had to hop in a taxi and go out to the house only to find her sound asleep in front of the TV. One time Samuel told me that he had called her home
phone and when she answered the TV was so loud that she said “wait a second.” Then the TV went off and his grandma tried to continue her conversation with Samuel via the remote. I
laughed when he told me that, and Samuel laughed too, but then he added:

“It would be funny if it weren’t so fucking tragic.”

I never understood why he was so upset by his grandma’s illness. For me, aging was a natural part of life, you get old, you forget, you need other people to help you. But Samuel seemed to
have a hard time accepting it.

*

One evening Panther stopped by. Or. First came Panther. And then her hair. And last, her perfume-slash-cigarette smell.

“Christ, what a lively bunch,” she said when she saw us sitting there in silence.

She was wearing a pair of army pants and a jacket with a purple peacock pattern that made her look like a drowned pom-pom (it was raining out—her jacket was dripping dark thready patterns
on the floor). This time we said hi to each other. I thought, Panther? Why Panther? If there was any animal this person did not resemble, it was a panther. Drowned Turkish hamster, maybe. Kurdish
marmot, definitely. Oversized Syrian meerkat, possibly. Stoned Persian peacock, yes, but only because of the jacket. Instead of asking why she was called Panther I asked what she wanted to drink
and went to the bar to order.

*

Panther said that Samuel sat there in the waiting room at the hospital and told her that he had taken a bunch of nostalgic things from his grandma’s house. Photo albums
and CDs, perfumes and Christmas cards and old clothes his grandfather had worn. All to try to bring back his grandma’s memories.

“Is it working?” I asked.

“Don’t know. It comes in waves. Sometimes she’s perfectly lucid. She sat there in the car humming along with the music and asked how Vandad was. Then three minutes later she
thought I had kidnapped her. It’s so fucking bizarre.”

He said it in a gravelly voice. Then he cleared his throat.

“When she doesn’t recognize me I usually put on my grandpa’s old fur cap. That makes her cooperative. But you have to keep your distance because sometimes she wants to lean in
for a kiss.”

As we spoke he stood up and walked around in the hallways, twice I heard him ask about a coffee machine, and then a nurse said he could find one “over there” and then he walked over
and poured a cup. When I asked how Vandad was he was quiet for a few seconds before he responded.

“Vandad’s fine,” he said. “I think.”

“What, did something happen?”

“No, not really. He’s fine. I’m fine. Everyone’s fine.”

“Okay.”

As usual, Samuel was very bad at lying. All I had to do to find out the truth was not say anything [making her hand into devil’s horns and listening to her index finger].

“No, I mean, we haven’t talked for a while.”

Short pause.

“And we don’t live together anymore.”

Pause.

“I’m subletting again. By Gullmarsplan.”

Long pause.

“But it’s good, it really is, I like it. I’m thinking of buying a place of my own soon.”

I’m not sure what happened between Samuel and Vandad. Do you know? Did it have something to do with Laide? Was it something about the house? You’ll have to ask Laide if you get hold
of her because I have no idea.

*

From the moment Panther entered the room, it was like Samuel was transformed. I thought that Samuel with Panther meant Samuel became less Samuel, because he stopped talking and
started nodding and looked at Panther like she was his idol and asked questions with the efficiency of a tennis machine spitting out balls. Panther was talking ninety miles a minute. She told us
about some schoolfriends who had started up a project about “diversified recruiting” and I never figured out whether she thought it was a good idea or a bad one because she told us
about the project and dissed everyone who was part of it and then she said:

“But it is a good thing that it’s being done because all the art schools—including ours—are so segregated it’s sick. It’s not exactly Berlin.”

Then she talked about all the awesome things she’d found at an art bookstore in Söder that was having a liquidation sale.

“It was so incredibly cheap—like, Berlin prices.”

Then she told us about a Norwegian curator who kept calling her twenty-four-seven and wanted to do an exhibition of her stuff in Oslo.

“It’s super cool,” she said. “Even if Oslo isn’t exactly Berlin.”

I felt like I ought to say something, I had been quiet far too long, here was my chance.

“It sounds a little sketchy,” I said.

“What does?”

“Why would a curator want to do an exhibition?”

“Maybe because it’s his job?”

We looked at each other. A quick smile fluttered across her face. I had misunderstood something. I didn’t quite get what. I prepared myself for the mockery and laughter and being told I
was an imbecile. I could picture how Samuel would high five and pinch me on my side and call me “Mr. Curator” for the rest of the night. But it didn’t happen. Instead Samuel asked
what the theme of the exhibition would be and whether it was
Time Pieces
or maybe
Notre Dame
that he was interested in showing, and Panther seemed grateful that she could finally turn
the focus of the discussion back onto herself. I didn’t say much more that night. Samuel didn’t either. But I remember thinking about it afterwards, that in front of a friend he had
known for more than ten years, Samuel took my side. Instead of mocking and demeaning he smoothed things over and had my back. That was a sign that our relationship— Erase that. A sign that
our friendship was real.

Then we went out and one of us owned the dance floor (Samuel) and one of us bought cocaine (Panther) and one of us sat in a corner keeping an eye on the drinks (me). On the way
home, after we said goodbye to Panther and it was just me and Samuel in the taxi, I said things I’d never said to anyone. I talked about my nightmares, I described the pillow when I woke up
and the sound of screaming that somehow lingered in the room after I woke up, as if the air molecules had changed and were still vibrating when I opened my eyes. I said all of this in a taxi even
though the driver was in the front seat and I wasn’t even worried that Samuel would start laughing and use it against me. Instead he said:

“I know the feeling.”

And even though he didn’t explain it any more and even though he didn’t have a dead brother, I believed him when he said it.

*

Panther says that before they hung up they talked about her for a bit. Samuel asked a few questions and I answered them. I gave him a short summary of everything that had
happened since last time we talked, though since so much had happened the summary took a pretty long time. But I want to make it clear that we didn’t spend our entire last conversation
talking about me. We were interrupted by a nurse. A female voice said something in the background.

“Okay,” Samuel replied. “She’s done now. I have to go.”

We hung up. Our last conversation was over. It had lasted forty-five minutes. It was a few minutes before noon. I thought about how quickly the time had passed. Far too quickly. I’m sorry,
it’s starting again, I don’t know what to do about this, how many tears can a body hold, anyway? I don’t even feel all that sad right now, you know, this is just a physical
reaction [reaching for the roll of toilet paper].

*

We had been friends for a few months when Samuel said that Panther was moving to Berlin.

“When?” I asked, and I felt happy.

“In a few weeks. She’s just going to take off. Leave me here.”

We didn’t say anything for a few minutes. I didn’t quite understand why he looked so sad. He drained his glass, signaled for a refill, and asked if I wanted to go somewhere else.

“There’s an end-of-term party at her art school tonight. I was planning to go. Want to come?”

I wasn’t sure, I liked it better at Spicy House.

“Come on. It’ll be fun. Think of the Experience Bank!”

“Experience Bank?”

“No matter how boring it is, we’ll still remember it. And that makes it all worth it, don’t you think?”

One hour later we were standing in front of an old building that looked like a boat factory. Bouncers were checking names against the list, Samuel had RSVPed for him plus one.
But the bouncers were no typical bouncers. They greeted everyone with a smile and instead of black flak jackets and headsets they were wearing terrycloth playsuits—I mean like the kind that
babies wear, but adult-sized, and one of them had a giant lollipop in his front pocket.

“What the fuck was that?” I whispered to Samuel as we were on our way in.

“Oh, I’m sure it was part of the art.”

But he wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t either, because at that party, absolutely anything could be art. We went from room to room and Samuel nodded at guys that looked like girls and girls
that looked like little boys. Everyone’s clothes were either really colorful or entirely black. Some of them gave me sideways glances, they noticed that I didn’t fit in, my skin
wasn’t pale enough, my muscles were too big, my leather jacket too black, and I smelled like cologne instead of sweat and rolling tobacco.

*

Panther ponders the question for a long time before she answers. Do I regret anything? Of course I regret some things. Everyone does. Anyone who says they don’t is lying.
Everyone walks around with feelings of loss and sadness and shame. It’s perfectly normal. And I get that his family is trying to convince themselves that it was an accident. After all, they
were the ones who were on him like bloodhounds at the end, with a thousand calls about insurance clauses and renovation money and loan qualifications and inheritance distributions. In the end he
couldn’t take it anymore. He made up his mind. He was ready. He made the decision. We’re the ones who have to live with it.

*

Panther’s room was full of people and the art was hanging on the walls, it was mirrors painted over with different texts and headlines. Panther herself was wearing an
American flag like a toga, with a knot over one shoulder, she hugged me and Samuel, she said that she had been waiting all night for us and then she disappeared to say hi to some other people.

“What do you think?” Samuel asked as we stood in front of a piece of art, each with a plastic glass of red box wine in hand.