The Memory Jar (15 page)

Then
(To Eric)

I remember the moon. There wasn't a full moon, but it wasn't far gone either. There were shadows, you know? I want to believe that I remember riding on the back, my face buried in the back of Scott's down vest, but I also have a possible memory of learning to work the throttle. But I can't tell where that memory fits, which one is true and which is one I only want to be true.

I remember the cold. I remember the moon. I remember begging him to let me drive, but I can't remember his answer. Again this haunting image lingers around me like a cloying smell, the press of handlebars against my belly, the blood in the snow. It was a lot of blood. And none of it was real. But what if, like everybody thinks, what if that image was my dream, my wish? What if it
was
me who crashed the machine, and what if I did it because I imagined myself dying, of course my belly bearing the injury—the pregnancy I wanted to be rid of.

I remember the moon, the sparkle of snow in my eyelashes, the deep blue-black of the sky. I remember a crunch. Or nothing. What if I did this?

Now

“You don't need to worry about what ifs,” says Eric, but he has no idea how many what ifs I can worry about at once.

“Would the police use that kind of social media post in their crash investigation? If they ruled it an attempted suicide, does that mean insurance won't cover the bills?” This is ridiculous.

Eric drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “I don't think they can base their investigation on hearsay or whatever. Internet gossip.”

“But they could take me in for questioning. They could ask me if I tried to kill myself. Or they could find this mystery person who seems to know so much about my life and my mental state.” I remember those cops, and I wonder if they're still investigating. What do they know about the cause of the crash? He doesn't say anything for a while. I think about texting Celeste, and my tongue gingerly pokes at the jagged tooth, and I wonder whether Eric will tell anyone about my situation. I realize that I don't really care if he does—on a scale of one to boyfriend-in-a-coma, more rumors barely register.

“I don't think anyone's going to be looking to interrogate you, Taylor. Everyone knows this is a terrible time. Everyone's praying for you, and sending good vibes, whatever, you know? Even the drama talk at school is couched in the language of concern. Everyone is
so worried about you omigod.”
He makes his eyes wide and concerned.

“You're a really nice guy,” I say, and if I didn't have my hand over my mouth I'd even smile at him. “Thanks for bringing me home.”

“Good luck with the dentist,” he says, and he waits until I fit the key into the lock of my kitchen door and even a moment after I close it behind me and turn on the bright yellow light of the kitchen. He backs out onto the street and leaves in the direction he came from originally, and I shed my winter gear and pull a chair up to the counter, my head heavy in my hands, delaying the moment I'll have to wake up my mother.

Then
(Memory Jar)

I remember the time I came home from school to find my mom and Scott sitting here, drinking coffee in my kitchen. The pot was still burbling, little hisses on the hot plate to let me know that they hadn't been sitting there long—maybe long enough for the pot to brew but not enough to linger over their second cups, not enough to talk about anything serious.

So this is a thing, one thing I navigate. My mom. She's good to me, and she loves me fiercely. Like she would fight for me. But she also fights against me, there's the rub.

“She's so irritable,” said Scott, “so angry all the time,” and that was true, especially the pieces of her that he saw, at least partly because he irritated her. He didn't know how to read her, and he would keep on pushing, asking questions. I knew how to listen for the sound of her key rattling in the lock, a stomping of snow off her boots on the mat, all these clues to what I needed to do—who I needed to be.

“Hey,” I said, walking in the kitchen door. It was surprising to see them together, but worse, my mom's face was unreadable, the laughter clearly fake but concealing an expression I couldn't get a fix on. Something that was turning into angry. “What's going on?”

Mom shot me laser-beam eyes. “I suppose you think this is funny,” she said.

I wasn't even smiling, not really, or at least I wasn't trying to. My face only betrayed me when she yelled at me, the corners of my mouth twisting up every single time even though I knew how much it pissed her off. “What's funny?”

“Because I know I find it
hilarious
,” she went on, holding her phone screen in front of her, “having to work twelve hours a day and coming home to find that you not only neglected to leave out money for the cell phone bill, but that you have
seven hundred
text messages this month. That's four hundred over our plan, Taylor.”

Scott and I exchanged a look, and then he winked at me in a way that made it impossible to stop the smile creeping over my face. I hoped she couldn't
read
the messages in addition to counting them. “Is that what the two of you were discussing? My phone bill?” It was typical for her to be worried about bills, but I had the money saved up from babysitting every Saturday night and watching the psycho-sisters next door while their mom gave piano lessons in the basement. “I forgot to put the money on the counter, that's all.”

Mom rolled her eyes, took a sip of her coffee. “Of course we weren't talking about your damn phone bill,” she said. “We were talking about sex.”

She watched my face, waiting for the shock. She loved to shock me in an attempt to gain information from me, but I was good at keeping my secrets. I raised an eyebrow.

“Whatever.”

“No, really, I think we kind of were,” said Scott. “In a roundabout kind of a way.”

“Gross,” I said. “More Planned Parenthood stories?”

Mom laughed, and I could get a better grip on her mood. Not as angry as she seemed at first. “There was a protest,” she said, and then paused to take another drink of coffee, giving me a chance to be appropriately intrigued, which I was. “Scott and I were talking about this woman, a part of the protest, who kept talking to me like I was someone going into the building to have an abortion. She was pleading with me and trying to shame me, showing me pictures of fetuses. It was awful.” She shook her head. “It's not like anyone's performing abortions in the office building, good grief. The clinic doesn't even have a bathroom of their own, much less facilities for … medical waste.”

“Does that kind of thing happen often?” asked Scott.

“Protests?” Mom set her cup down. “Sometimes. That one church does a monthly sign-waving event, but they mostly stay out by the street with their signs, nothing you have to walk past while they yell at you about god and babies. No weird women with severe faces and gory photographs actually touching you as you try to get by. She grabbed hold of me, Taylor, like this.” My mom dragged on my arm, and I flinched at her touch. I couldn't imagine what would possess someone to take hold of my mother like that. “These people were different from the Joyful News people,” she went on. “I didn't know any of them, which means they came from somewhere else, on a bus full of Life Riders or some such.”

Scott shook his head. “I don't agree with their methods, but I understand the sentiment.” He shuffled through some papers on the counter. “I mean, look at this stuff. It makes me feel terrible to even read it, and the pictures … ugh.”

“Yeah, look at this, Taylor, look at this propaganda.” She took the papers out of Scott's hand and shoved them into mine. “This is the kind of thing that woman was sticking in my face, and I'm just trying to get to work, which, you know, has no effing connection to abortions.” She stabbed her finger at the diagram of the incision on the back of a fetus's head and the gory text describing this procedure and made a sound of disgust. “As if it isn't depressing enough to be a receptionist in the office of a failed therapist.”

“Failed?” I pushed the awful brochures away, no longer hungry for an after-school snack, that's for sure. “What do you mean by that?”

Mom sighed, nodded to Scott like he already knew about this part. “This is the other part of what we're talking about,” she said. “The practice is closing at the end of March.”

“Whoa.” This was big news. “Were you planning on telling me?” Nice that she was telling my boyfriend secrets that affected my future without telling me.

“It's not like it's tomorrow,” she said, and then shook her head. “I mean, the only reason I know this far in advance is that I'm in charge of making all the arrangements for notifying our long-term clients to find a replacement. We'd close immediately, but it's not fair to the kids who need us.”

Scott shifted on his stool, and the leather seat made a particularly loud sound, breaking into the tension. We all laughed, a little halfheartedly.

“Anyway,” said my mom, “there's a lot going on right now, and I'd really appreciate it if you would remember to pay your phone on time.” She finished her coffee and left her mug on the counter when she went upstairs.

Now

Thinking about those brochures makes me think about that woman at the protest or whatever, the woman who grabbed my mom's arm. Would it be possible for an organization like that to hack into phone numbers of people in the Planned Parenthood building somehow? Or maybe it's more random than that—I don't know how all that big data works. Maybe the texts aren't related to my mom working in the same building, maybe all of this is simply a part of increased protest activity in the area. It could be a complete coincidence that I'm pregnant. Maybe a lot of people are getting spammed with pro-life texts. I scroll through them, wincing at the images, noting that none of them include my name or any other specifics. I take a deep breath, and the air passing over my tooth fills my whole head with pain.

I need to go to the dentist. The dentist is going to need to do reconstructive work, probably requiring some kind of anesthesia. I spend a minute or two searching “pregnant and dental work” on my phone, which I probably should not do again, and for whatever reason the term “crosses the placental barrier” makes me so queasy I nearly throw up. I would throw up if I weren't afraid of losing the rest of my tooth in the process. Instead I perch on the stool and write out my memory for the jar, even though I can't really figure out how such a memory is going to help me remember the crash and who caused it. Maybe that's not even the point of the jar, but all I know is that it's helping, in some way, all this remembering.

The dentist is going to need to know that I'm pregnant, right? I mean, all the medications they might give me, even the oral numbing stuff, can apparently affect the baby, and I think I'll have to sign something, or my mom will, that says I'm not pregnant. Even if I don't plan to stay pregnant. Do I? I think about those pictures, that awful pro-life propaganda my mom showed me that day, and I wonder what she thought of it, really. Not of the protest, but of abortion. Not the awful pictures of babies with the brain incisions either. This isn't like that. I'm barely over eight weeks, probably less, since I took the test right after I missed my period. It wouldn't be like that. This baby isn't a baby yet. It's just a glob of cells. The
potential
of a baby.

And then there's this Kendall situation
.
For a millisecond, let's consider this to be true, that Scott and Kendall were really
close
, that he went to her and told her about the pregnancy and she told him about her sister—or maybe he already knew, if they were so close—would he ever have offered the baby to her family without telling me? Even if it seemed like a brilliant solution, would he have promised her that and then kept it a secret from me? And
then
asked me to marry him? And who
is
she, even?

Once again I flip back to the string of mystery texts, thinking about what Eric said, the person who posted the rumors about me attempting suicide. Is it
her
? And if Scott told this Kendall person, who else did he tell? It's disturbing. What if Scott wakes up and doesn't remember? What if he never wakes up to say, one way or another? Why do I have to deal with all of this without him?

I hold my phone in front of me, switching from one app to the next, like something is going to change. Some magical post will make everything—chipped tooth, fetus, coma—disappear. Instead it only becomes immediately apparent to me how visible it is. Maybe not the baby, not yet, but my whole feed is choked up with people telling me how much they care about me, how much they want me to get better, inspiring quotes about depression, a few posts blaming me and calling me selfish, telling me if Scott dies I will be his murderer. I wonder if Dani is seeing this. There's no way she's the one who told, absolutely no way. But that's the thing, the one thing that presses my heart into a corner, because I thought there was no way Scott would ever betray me either, and now there's no way to find out.

They say there's a limit on the number of decisions you can make. I guess even small choices can add up all throughout your day and then you get this thing called decision fatigue. It affects your ability to be rational, essentially. Sugar fixes it for a while, but of course sugar doesn't have the best track record when it comes to endurance, so you run out of logical choice by the end of the day. Choice—this is the word I grapple with right now—and it begins with whether or not I can tell my mother I am pregnant.

Time slows, syrupy thick and scary, and the house makes night sounds, the furnace kicking in from somewhere deep beneath me in the basement, in the bowels of our home. I wait for a sound from my mom, for a sign that will tell me what I should do, what I should choose. It's too late for this shit, you know? I chipped my fucking tooth, I can't even believe it. I stand up, and on a whim I pull open the junk drawer in the corner where the counter turns from dining room into kitchen. The pamphlets are still there, full-color and gruesome. Designed to make this choice equate to being a murderer. For a moment I can't move, but then I pull them out, slow and deliberate, and I stack them into a neat pile in my hands, aligning their edges just so. The paper is thick and waxy between my fingers and I hold it for a little while, pinched between my thumbs and fingertips, and then I twist and tear, top to bottom. I spin the pages and tear again and again, until the paper babies cannot be further dissected—until I cannot quite get a full breath in my lungs. It's too late, and I am fatigued, and I broke my tooth and now I have to go in there, to her bedroom, and pull her back into this world to say—what? What will I tell her?

I can't throw away the pieces, so I place them back into the drawer. The hall is painted a pretty midnight blue, with silver sparkles painted into the wall going up the narrow wooden stairs toward my room in the attic. It's one of my favorite places, our entryway, and I linger here longer than I should. My feet drag across the hardwood toward her bedroom, but before I get there, the knob turns and she faces me.

“How was pizza?” she says, and it's hard to read her, despite all my practice.

“Mom?” I'm waiting, stalling. I need more information. I tip my head a little to see what kind of show she was watching. There's a lot of difference between lying in bed watching reality TV about wedding dresses and lying in bed watching one of those made-for-TV movies aimed at making people cry
.
My tongue can't stay away from the crack in my tooth, and I fight the urge to hide behind my hand when I talk to her.

“I'm glad you got out for a while, something normal,” she says, with a long sigh. She's sad, then, kind of mopey but not angry. This will work.

“Mom?” I'm not sure what I'm going to tell her until the words are out of my mouth. “I've got a little problem.”

Her mouth pulls in a bit but her eyes are still soft, concerned, and dismal. “What's the matter?” She doesn't reach for me, but she doesn't pull away either.

I could say anything. I could tell her, and I think she would hear me.
I'm pregnant. I'm suicidal. I might be a murderer.
“I … chipped my tooth,” I say. “I haven't looked at it yet, but it feels bad.” My lungs still struggle for oxygen.

“Oh, Taylor,
honey
. Let me see.” She leans into Emergency Mom mode, and it's exactly the mom I need right now. It's going to be okay. I breathe out, and I feel so much anxiety exit my body with that air, it's unreal. Her hands gently pull open my mouth, and her reaction is controlled, professional. “It's pretty bad, but don't worry. I've got this,” she says. “I'm going to check first with this new dentist I heard about.” She hesitates a moment, then scrolls through the contacts on her phone.

“Instead of the regular dentist?” It seems like someone with my records and stuff would make more sense.

She doesn't look up. “I've got this,” she says again. “Dr. Zimmerman will be great, trust me.”

Trust her. She's managing all of this so well, I'm ready to tell her about the pregnancy and go along with whatever she tells me to do, that's how tired I am of making decisions. But then I let that thought roll in the bowl of my brain, colliding with the thought of once again giving up my free choice, which makes me angry at myself, which makes me come to my senses again and say no way in hell am I going to tell her. I'm not going to leave my future up to the whims of a woman who once confined me to my room because I refused to remove all the Oxford commas from my English essay. I'm not going to decide what to do with my potential baby based on what Kendall says or on the random chance of Scott's recovery or under the influence of creepy dead baby pictures from a person too chickenshit to sign their texts with their name. I am going to make the best decision for my life, and for this potential person's life, too.

Dani said not to worry. She's working on a way to get around the parental notification issue, and as soon as she does, I'll be done with this. Before ten weeks, before those awful little feet. I can't have a baby, and I can't give my baby away to a girl who probably slept with my boyfriend. I can't let my mother decide, no matter what she seems like right now. I want more for my child, when I'm ready to have one, than a life of wariness.

I can't have a baby. I'm going to medical school and becoming a renowned writer, simultaneously. I'm going to break up with Scott and never have sex again. At least, not in a car. Not without candles and music and soulful gazing into each other's eyes. Not with fries dipped in fucking mayo, that's for damn sure.

She chose to have me. Because that's the other argument, right? If my mom had an abortion, I wouldn't be here. And aren't I a gift to this world? A
life,
right? But really, what would be different if I weren't here, if my life had been scraped out before I had a chance to become an individual who would regret not being around? Maybe my dad wouldn't have taken off. Maybe they would have stayed together long enough to develop into emotionally mature people who could someday have raised a functional family, or maybe they would have split up in a completely normal way and gone on to have a number of possibly-positive and possibly-unhealthy relationships with unknown outcomes and maybe my mom would have gotten her degree in whatever she was interested in before getting pregnant and wouldn't have ended up being a receptionist who sits and watches teenage girls carry their pee down the hall to the Planned Parenthood and then, even if I, by some chance of fate or through intelligent design of our universe, were to be born to my mother in a different future, I would have been able to get on birth control like everyone else and would have avoided having to make this decision myself.

They'll call me a slut. I know, it's not an original insult, and it's stupid that the word “slut” becomes the default insult for any girl for any reason, but they'll call me a slut, and I can't help it if that's hard for me to face. They'll talk about me and get quiet when I come close, and by next spring, I won't be able to hide it … is it so terrible of me, as a teenager, to be scared of that?

“So, okay.” Mom waves her hand in front of my face to get my attention. “Doctor Z is going to open up for you right away in the morning, but she said if you're really hurting, we could put some dental cement on it, which we'd have to pick up from the drug store. Do you think that's necessary?” She gives me a look that says, “It's not really that serious, right?” and I shrug. It hurts, but there's no way I'm making her run out in her pajamas for something that isn't an actual emergency, according to the dentist.

“I'll be fine,” I say, and she nods crisply, turning away from my eyes. Emergency Mom is folding herself up and filing herself away for next time, leaving me with Exhausted Mom, a less-stable model but we'll be okay as long as she doesn't morph into Martyr Mom, which is always a possibility when she's extra tired.

I take my aching mouth into my room and think about how to fill the hours.