The Memory Jar (16 page)

Then
(Memory Jar)

This doesn't count. This isn't a memory, but I have a feeling Celeste isn't going to take off points for not following the rubric, you know.

My face hurts like hell, and it's the smallest problem I have. I can't sit still—I don't have much room but I'm pacing, prowling like a lion even as I write. Scribble a line standing, walk to the closet door and pivot, massage my jaw. Prowl my way back, write another line.

Line lion line.

Sorry, no. This isn't a good space for poetry, and this isn't a good place to be alone. I can't leave, though, even if I could manage my pain and appear to be a normal human. Mom is sleeping but her mood is unstable. Dani is out with the cheer squad and I'm pacing with my phone open to the contacts screen, forcing myself to scroll past Scott's listing without dwelling on the panic and regret and the other hundred thousand feelings that cluster around that number.

I keep stopping at Joey's name, but what exactly am I going to say?

Okay, I have a memory for real. Something about Joey to put in this jar and never come out. I remember when it was just me and him, awake after that disaster of a spring break party Scott had while their parents went on that anniversary cruise.

“I'll wash, you dry?” said Joey, holding up two beer bottles in each hand. He was as drunk as anyone else, but somehow still on his feet and ready to clean.

“I'll hold the bag open,” I said, bending down to get a garbage bag out of the cupboard under the sink. My head swam, and I had to sit on the floor for a minute. I traced the pattern on the linoleum with one finger. It was a curling filigree pattern, and I no longer cared about cleaning. Above me I could hear the tinny sound of music coming out of Joey's silly speakers built into the hood of his sweatshirt, which was loose against his back.

“Sorry about Jess,” I said, thinking about how I should get up and cover Scott's legs with a blanket. They stuck up onto the arm of the couch that separated the dining room from the living room, his feet uncovered like always but so far away. “She wasn't good enough for you.” I didn't know if that was true, but it was the right thing to say when a guy's date leaves the party with another guy. Jess was this waif of a girl with thick eye makeup and pink hair the shiny consistency of plastic. “You're lucky you're single, really,” I went on, leaning my head against the cupboard to get a better view of Joey's face. “You still get to fall in love and feel all those fizzy feelings for the first time. That's still ahead of you.”

Joey tipped back a glass of something clear sitting on the kitchen island. I hoped it was water. “I'm not meant to fall in love,” he said, and the effort of shrugging was enough to make him stagger back a small step. “But hey, at least I'll have a smart, gorgeous sister-in-law, even if it's totally unfair that I didn't get to you before he did.” He nodded toward Scott. “I'd be better than him, you know. I'd be better for you,” he said, and I didn't answer, but I followed his gaze and focused all my attention on Scott's exposed feet.

There was too much silence then, but Joey passed out soon enough, and we pretended afterward that the conversation had either never happened or that neither of us remembered it, but I wonder if he still feels that way, and what it might mean that at times, like right now, I kind of wish that he did. Oh, hey, looks like I've got another page to burn.

Now

I scroll past Joey's number and stop on Celeste. She told me to call. But again, what am I looking to say? I think about her making a call of her own, admitting me. Committing me. I imagine myself sitting in a rocking chair in a quiet room for a week or two. If I typed out the words,
I've thought about killing myself,
would she come running? Didn't I just decide to stop letting other people decide?

I've thought about killing myself. True enough, but I
didn't
. It doesn't seem like throwing myself into a mental hospital to avoid having to make a difficult decision should be the reason why I saved my own life.
Enough.
It has to be worth something, being alive, being in control of my brain. I scroll back to Scott's number and I can't help it, this time I dial, hold the phone up to my ear. I haven't tried to call him since the accident, so I'm unprepared to hear his voice, recorded a million years ago, a lifetime ago. “Hey, it's me, Scott. You can leave me a message if you want.”
I want
. What do I want? The beep, and then I'm silent, barely a whisper of breath. I hang up. I feel full, too full of everything serious.

I'm dialing Joey before I can prepare myself, and when he answers all I can say is, “I hung up on his voicemail.”

“I did too,” he says.

“What if everything I thought about him was a lie?”

He doesn't answer, but the silence on the other end changes, like he's holding the phone away from his mouth, like he doesn't want me to hear.

“Hey,” I say. “I chipped a tooth on a bottle of root beer and now I have to go to an emergency dentist appointment tomorrow, early.”

He's back, a noise of empathy on the other side. “Oh, shit, Tay. That sucks.”

“It really hurts.” There's far too much whine in my voice.

“Do you want … ” Joey trails off.

“What?”

“I don't know. I could come over. Keep you company?” His words tumble out, shy and apologetic, but I don't know. It sounds nice.

“I could sneak you in the bathroom window.” It's Dani's preferred method of entry in the summer, but Scott's climbed through in the winter before. The hallway makes a nice L shape right before my mom's room, and the bathroom window is hidden from her window by this enormous cedar shrub. She might see the footprints, if she cared to wade through the snow around the side of the house, which is unlikely to begin with, but even so, she'd probably assume they were Dani's.

This is a bad idea, probably. Or even a stupid one, I don't know. It doesn't seem to matter when everything hurts.

Ten minutes later my phone buzzes and I direct him to the wall outside my bathroom window. I slip down the attic stairs in my socks, checking to make sure my mom is still in her room. All's clear, so I help him climb in the window, lithe like a little cat. He makes almost no sound until we're safely up in my room with the door closed.

“That was sort of exciting,” he says, and he sits on the end of my bed without seeming to focus on the fact that he's sitting on his comatose brother's girlfriend's
bed.
“Are you going to tell the dentist about the baby?”

“It crosses the placental barrier,” I say, my hand clamped over my mouth. I still haven't looked in the mirror.

He nods. “Probably better tell, then.” He pats the bed next to him, and I sit. “Can I see the new wound, Scarface?”

I smile, but I keep my hand up over my mouth until he wrestles it out of the way, or at least he tries, but I'm laughing and pushing him away and then nothing is funny and his fingers are gripping my wrist so I can feel his pulse and he can feel mine, and we're both breathing hard and I'm suddenly certain he's going to kiss me, and I know it's shock and grief and all kinds of other stupid things. But I've pretty much decided I'm going to kiss him back, and that's better than jumping off a cliff, you know?

My hand drops and my mouth falls opens a little. He sees my tooth and pulls back in dismay. He drops his hands from my wrists. “That looks like it hurts.”

I turn away, my face hot. “I miss him,” I say. It's as good an explanation as anything for whatever just happened, for what might happen later. For everything.

Joey gently takes off my glasses and sets them on my bedside table. “Close your eyes,” he says, and his fingers dig into my scalp in a way that actually pulls my attention away from the pain in my jaw for a second. They climb up to the crown of my head like expert mountaineers, then trail lightly down to the nape of my neck and settle in a base camp there, loosening the muscles of my neck.

“Emily swears he said my name,” says Joey. “I wasn't in the room, but Emily was reading to him. Some dumb thing from a cooking magazine, probably, I didn't ask. I didn't want to know.” He pushes his thumbs into the space between my shoulders and everything inside me collapses. “But, you know, anything can sound like Joe.”

I slump over until I'm lying on my side, my head at the foot of my bed. I can barely listen to his voice; his hands are all that exists. No baby, no brother, no boyfriend, no brain injury. No bottle, no broken tooth. I feel my consciousness start to slide off of me, like a heavy blanket in the middle of the night. “Joe.” I don't have anything else to say.

“I don't believe Emily,” Joey says, his hands falling still on my back. “He's not going to wake up and be normal.” He speaks so softly I almost don't believe that I hear him. “But I want you to know I've made a decision, Taylor. I'm here for you and this baby, no matter what happens with my brother.”

Everybody's making decisions for me and this baby. I curl my body slightly away from him, and all I want to do is pretend that I didn't hear. “You fixed it,” I say. I make my voice thick and sleepy.

“Shhh,” says Joey, pulling a patchwork quilt that my grandma made over me. “You go ahead and tell them in the morning, Tay. Tell the dentist, not your mom.”

“Okay.” I agree with a meaningless word and then I'm floating, no thoughts for whether Joey will be there when I wake up or no.

Then
(Memory Jar)

I dreamed you tried to read my mind

that in fact you claimed complete legal ownership to all

my insides via some complex copyright tangle that I had once

agreed to with a glance or breath or something spoken

all in some other tongue—

witnessed by nothing

and judged

I dreamed I called you up

and swore at you

and asked you to sit beside me

thread your fingers in my hair

and worry but when I unclose

uncurl

undream—

you are quite gone.

Now

My phone buzzes, wakes me at three a.m., the blue light flashing on and off. It's Dani, texting the second she got home.

You need anything? I'm home now. Saw that stupid mess online. You know I would kill someone before telling your secrets, right?

My room is pitch black and I'm facing the wrong way, my head all thick with an aching pain and memory—I reach my hand out, looking for Joey, for Scott, for anyone. I switch on the desk lamp, blinking away the brightness, fumbling with the dimmer. Nobody is here. I pull on my glasses and text back. The mess online. My mouth.

I'm good now but chipped my tooth at pizza. Dentist tomorrow.

It's not like I expected him to stay with me. That would be weird, right? This whole thing is weird. I do a mental status update—do I feel pregnant? The thing Joey said, right before I fell asleep. Did he really say it? See? Completely weird. My bladder is screaming at me, and my scar itches, but there's no nausea and there's no other reminder that my life is situated along a fault line that is rapidly sliding toward destruction. I wrap my patchwork quilt around me and tiptoe downstairs to the bathroom, checking to see that Joey closed the window all the way. It's weird to think of Joey here, in my bathroom, where I'm peeing. The thought of him escaping alone, leaving me asleep on my bed where he'd touched me. My chest feels strangely tight, the air in the house too thick for comfort.

You chipped your tooth???!!!?!?!?!!!

A giggle escapes. This is why I need Dani. I should have texted her hours ago, cheer squad be damned. I know she needs to have some time away from my drama, but the fact remains that it's three in the morning and I'm in pain and in crisis, and her fourteen separate bits of alarmed end punctuation are the one thing guaranteed to make me feel an intense relief.

It will be okay.
I pause, thinking for a moment too long about Joey calling me Scarface, about the moment I might have let him kiss me.

She sends me back a string of emojis that make me know I'm loved, and then a little sleepy panda that lets me know she's going to bed, and I fall back on my pillow and allow myself to go to sleep, hoping for no more dreams, no more poetry.

Then
(Memory Jar)

I had another stupid dream, but this time when I woke up there was something I could remember, something I could write here and really mean it. In the dream I was sitting beside Scott in some indeterminate place, like a bus station or maybe an actual bus, I don't know. We were sitting next to each other and looking straight ahead, and I held on to the side of his arm but he didn't act like he noticed. We didn't talk at all for some time, but there did seem to be movement, and gradually I became aware of this sound, a sort of humming crescendo. It was a mechanical sound, which is where my mind maybe got the idea of a bus from, but it didn't sound right. It was high-pitched and too steady—too steadily
increasing
, actually.

“It's wrong,” I said, and I pulled at Scott's arm, but the skin of his hand pulled off like the little flappy armchair covers, the kind that grandmas have crocheted on the arms of all their chairs, and stuffing came pouring out of the hole. “Oh, shit,” I said, in the dream, and I think the shock of swearing out loud is what woke me, looking around in the dream world to see who might have heard. Funny that the shocking thing was a stupid word and not the fact that my boyfriend's arm was apparently a pillow that was tearing apart beneath my fingers or that there was this deadly crescendo of sound ringing in my ears.

That sound. That's what I remember. It was wrong, the tone of it and the steady build. It was an engine sound, and there was something wrong, and I remember a kind of panicked pulling, too, and the urgent thought,
slow down
. I remember that, but then it gets all fuzzy with pillow-arms and disintegrating and then we're back to various blood-red puddles in the snow, only some of them real.