The Memory Jar (17 page)

Now

Mom is overly worried about the condition of my face, given the circumstances. “It hurts to the touch,” I say, but she's insistent and dab-dab-dabs at my sore face with a wet cotton ball. I can't tell if she's wiping off new blood or trying to scrub off the scabs from the accident.

“Doctor Zimmerman is seeing you on a Saturday as a personal favor,” she says, and I don't understand.

“You know the dentist?” Mom's had a half cup of coffee and is somewhat anxious, but not super irritable, this morning, so I don't mind pushing her a little. I think about what Joey said, about telling Dr. Z but not telling Mom. The hospital privacy policy had been pretty specific about the things they were required to reveal to a parent/guardian, and I imagine the dental contract couldn't be that different. But will Mom's friend tell her, as a personal favor?

“There's more to it than that,” says my mom, after a pause. She pulls away from my face at last and tosses the cloth across the spout of the sink. “We're sort of behind on our insurance.”

“I thought we were good until March.” I know getting us insured after the office closes is something my mom's been stressing about, but it's only January.

“Well.” She sighs, and the weight of this shows. “My employer seems to have dropped the ball on meeting our premiums, and, well, they're going bankrupt anyway, so they haven't been all that concerned with this.”

“What about our health insurance? What about the bills from the crash?”

She stands up and finishes the second half of her coffee in one long swig. “No need to worry about what we can't control,” she says. “Some of it depends on the insurance investigation, what they determine to be the cause of the crash, but probably all the hospital bills will get paid by Scott's parents' insurance.”

Probably, depending on the investigation? What does that mean, even? Is there an outcome that would make us liable? “We can't handle all those medical bills.” I offer this thought as though it's something that won't have occurred to her. “Didn't the insurance company tell you this was happening before we got dropped?”

“Look, Taylor. Just rinse your mouth out carefully one more time, and we'll take care of this dental thing.” She bends over to toss the cotton balls into the garbage can. “They sent us a note, but I didn't read it or understand it very well. I was stressed, and there's so much piling up all the time.” She takes a quick breath, and I can tell we're done talking about this—about anything—for the time being. “It doesn't matter. Doctor Z and I will work it out as soon as I've got coverage again.”

The dentist is a friend of my mom's. She's totally going to make sure my mom finds out if I tell her I'm pregnant, even if the privacy policy says she can't. I know, I should tell her. Last night, it might have worked. This morning, maybe before she brought up the insurance thing, but now? No. Maybe after my therapy appointment this afternoon. Maybe I can practice by telling Celeste.

The dentist looks remarkably put together for an early, unexpected Saturday, but she doesn't smile much all the same. There's no receptionist and no assistant, and Dr. Zimmerman searches through three places before she finds the patient consent and privacy form. I watch my mom's pen skip across the boxes, checking
no
,
no
,
no
. No heart disease. No current medications. No autoimmune disorder. I watch her fill out my height (correct) and weight (um, yeah, when I was twelve, Mom). No history of allergies. No alcohol or drug abuse. She doesn't even pause as she checks the
no
box for the question of pregnant or nursing, doesn't even look up. In her head I
am
twelve, and she carefully records the date of my recent concussion and an explanation of the accident.

“Thanks, Jen,” D
octor Zimmerman says, smiling at my mom and glancing at the page quickly before tucking it into the clipboard and ushering me into the exam room. “I'll stop out once I have an idea how long it will be.”

“We really appreciate this,” says my mom, sinking into a chair in the waiting room.

“Let's take a look-see, Taylor,” says Doctor Zimmerman, and then she nods toward the clipboard. “That was quite a crash you were in, wasn't it. I read about it in the newspaper, saw there was an update site for the boy. How's he doing? Was he your boyfriend?”

“He is, actually,” I say, but then she's got all this crap in my mouth and I can't really tell her anything.

Then

There were things I didn't tell him, even that actual night, like the breaking up part. But the idea that there could be another girl, that it could be this ponytail-swinging Kendall person telling me they had a “relationship,” that he'd made such a bizarre promise? Even though it can't be true, I'm pissed that he left me alone with nothing but my memory to deal with all of this crap. The only thing is, I'm not really sure how to be pissed at him, right now.

So I'm thinking about keeping secrets, and I'm thinking in particular about hiding your friendship (or whatever) with another person, especially a female person, from your girlfriend, even your “back home in high school” girlfriend, and I'm thinking that's worse than neglecting—or delaying—to tell your mom (and your dentist) that you're pregnant. It's lying, you know, the slippery kind of lying that involves leaving out all the relevant details. He never once talked about Kendall's hard times, or Kendall's sister with cancer. There was no hint of her, other than one brief introduction and those few whiffs of soap. I was about to break up with him, but was it all distance, or was some of it his disinterest? Worse, did it go so far as secrecy and lies? Was he actually cheating on me with her? And even if they weren't hooking up, did he go to her for emotional support instead of me? Did he confide in her, complain about me? How much of my business was he sharing with this other person? Did he tell her I almost jumped off “a bridge or something,” and if so, why are the facts just a little bit off? If he was going to let her have the baby (as if he had the right to do that), why did he ask me to marry him? None of it is right, and my brain worries the issue like a puppy gnawing on a rawhide. So if I could talk to Doctor Zimmerman and answer her question properly, here is what I would say about
how the boy is doing
:

The boy is lying. He's lying in a bed in a hospital and he won't tell me what the hell is going on or what I should do or what this all is or anything. He's got some kind of secret life he didn't tell me anything about, and I'm having his baby. I almost broke up with him, and I have his engagement ring sealed in a little cellophane packet in the pocket of my hoodie. His little brother has decided to be my noble savior or something and, equally strange, I'm finding myself sort of attracted to that idea even as I'm repulsed by how messed up it is. Also, my boyfriend's in a coma, and nobody really seems like they have any idea when or if he'll ever wake up.

Now

When I enter Scott's room, Kendall jumps up like someone guilty of a crime, one hand raised in a kind of greeting or a kind of surrender. “I'm so sorry,” she says. “I couldn't leave things like they were.”

“What are you even doing here?” I can't believe she came back. I can't focus on this right now. The world feels less real with my mouth all numb and puffy from the anesthesia I wasn't supposed to use—
“crosses the placental barrier”
—and my mom arranged for me to see Celeste in like twenty minutes even though it's Saturday, and here is this girl, coming at me with her mouth running about things I don't want any part of.

“I know it was hard for you to hear about the adoption idea from me,” she begins, and I hold my hand up.

“Kendall, stop—” Nobody needs to remind me that this whole situation is ill-advised at best. Instant vacation to anywhere else right now, preferably somewhere without any connections to anyone else in my life. I don't feel pregnant at this moment. Does this conversation, this emotion, this
feeling
have an impact on the kid-thing's brain? Does awkwardness cross the placental barrier? Does distraction? Am I giving my future kid ADHD right now by having numbing medicine at the dentist without telling her I'm pregnant and by looking at Kendall right now and actually, vividly,
wanting
to kill her? Can your mother's murderous impulse screw you up in utero?

“Taylor!” Emily rushes into the room, a burst of apology. “She just showed up!”

“Listen,” says Kendall, ignoring Emily's fluttering protests. “I know we only met that once, at the game, but I tried to get him to let you down easy. He was sweet on you, of course. There was a lot of fondness there, but I told him he shouldn't lead you on anymore. I couldn't see him throwing away his future for you, for a
marriage
that wouldn't last.”

“A marriage?” says Emily, perking up. Her face is so hopeful, so confused. So fucking sad, like all of us, all the time.

“I wanted him to be happy,” says Kendall.

I hold her gaze. “But not with me.” Happiness. Is this a thing we're going to talk about right now? I wouldn't
really
murder her, you know. But what does she mean when she claims they talked about me all the time? What did he tell her about me? And why didn't he tell
me
about her?

“He loved me,” says Kendall.

“I think you might actually be crazy,” I say, and I want Scott to wake up, right this instant. I want him to sit up and see me, the set of my chin as I face her. I want him to sit up straight with that lazy smile of his, and he'll remember everything, and his first word will be “Sweetness,” and Kendall will swing her athletic ponytail out of our lives, and we will show her what happiness looks like.

Well, I may only be the high school girlfriend, but I have a pretty good idea that happiness is some kind of irrational-number emotion. I mean, I don't know what I'm talking about mathematically—my calc tutor would surely tell you about my abysmal understanding of numerical concepts—but even though I don't always know what every theorem or whatever is called, I still feel like I understand some things about math, especially the parts that are sort of like poetry. Anyway, I think happiness is like the math problem where there's a point, you know? And you're always approaching it without ever arriving, always managing to split the distance in half, but you're still only halfway there. And maybe that's okay. Maybe there's a value in stopping, you know? In getting close enough.

“Please,” says Kendall. “Let me explain.”

As far as I'm concerned, she's explained enough, but clearly she's not going anywhere without saying her piece. Emily squeezes my hand. “I'll be right out in the hall if you need me,” she promises.

Then
(Kendall)

I only want to explain. I met Scott at the practice arena. I play on the women's hockey team, and Scott refereed at a few of our scrimmages. My roommate was in his sociology class, and my other roommate was his comp instructor. We were kind of on the edges of each other's circles. We talked a few times, only a few minutes here and there, standing in skates, you know, but we kept running into each other. On campus, all over. We had coffee a few times, studied together. As friends, I swear. He was easy to talk to, okay? And it was so … it was just random, but we had a lot in common.

There's more than I've told you, okay? More about my family, my sister's cancer, all of that, but also more about me. He was a good listener, okay? That's all. I talked, and he listened, at a time when I really needed someone to listen.

Maybe you can't understand. I know you never wanted this baby, but my sister—she was born to be a mom. She raised me and my younger brother after our own mother died, also cancer. Stupid cancer. She had a miscarriage once, like five years ago, and it broke her, okay? Being a mother, caring for babies, it's what she was made for. Every month when she didn't get pregnant, I could see more and more of her slipping away, and I couldn't stand to see her despairing. When the cancer came—it was so cruel. She was so strong.

This is where my plan came in, okay? I just want you to understand. Okay, so this is the part. Hear me out? I decided to try to get pregnant for her—like, she would adopt and I could be the baby's aunt? And Scott, well, I asked him if he would … no, Taylor, wait. Oh my god, this is so random. I'm blushing. But wait. He was supposed to talk with you about this, months ago, but then you came down and you told him about the baby and, well, we thought it was the perfect solution, okay?

I'd do anything for my sister, but you know. Being pregnant, I'd have to give up hockey and probably my whole scholarship. I mean, even though this was a choice I was making out of love for my sister and wanting to give her something she couldn't have for herself, it wasn't easy. And Scott understood. The hockey thing especially, okay?

Taylor, when he found out about the baby—when you came down and told him you were pregnant—
oh, by the way, never mind that I've known for a few weeks already and I've decided to get an abortion, la-dee-dah
—when that happened, and then when you sped back up north to your little high school friends, who do you think he called? Who do you think was there for him?

The only stupid idea he had for convincing you not to do it was to ask you to marry him. He came to my apartment that night, I guess right after you left. He was crying. He wasn't even there, do you know what I mean? Like his eyes were open but his mind was missing. I mean I know that sounds awful, given what's going on now, but I hadn't ever seen him like that. I know it's awful, and I mean nothing against you, but you're in
high school
, for god's sake. I told him no, marrying you was not the solution. The real solution was so simple, and it would make everyone happy. You say I don't know what would make him happy, but he liked my idea. It's what Scott would have wanted.