The Memory Jar (6 page)

Then
(To Joey)

So right after my mom caught us not going to the car show, Scott and I had our first fight. Maybe it was my sunburn that gave me away, the sand in my sheets or in the bottom of the shower. Maybe it was my friends; maybe they gave too many details when they lied for me. Maybe it was
her
friends—spies who didn't see me at the show, or who did see me in a tipsy canoe with a boy three years my senior. Probably it was the fact that I still didn't really know what a car show was when Scott dropped me off at home that evening, and the fact that I was still a little shaky with the sun and the sand and the falling in love, when she met me at the door to smell my breath for alcohol and wait for me to slip up in a lie.

When I'm telling you this, it feels like you're seeing me differently, you know? Like I'm a girl whose mom abused her, I suppose. At least that's how Scott saw it, which is why we fought. I don't know. It's not like she was hitting me. I mean, besides an occasional slap across the face because I can be a real smartass. And look, I know parents shouldn't hit their kids, like ever. I know that, and I'm not saying she's perfect, but I am saying there's more nuance to things than you know.

The morning after our escapade to the island, Scott came over to pick me up. We were really going out with friends that time. We were on our way to a picnic and Frisbee golf match at the park near Sterling Lake. When Scott pulled up, Mom ran right out to the car and opened the driver's door before Scott could even take off his seat belt. She stood there loudly berating him in front of the whole world. I stepped into a pair of flip-flops by the door and chased down the driveway after her.

“Mom, what the hell?” I grabbed for her arm, which was greasy with sunscreen.

“You lying piece of trash.” She yelled at me and shook me off—maybe she pushed me, I don't know. I told Scott I tripped on my stupid flimsy shoes, and that might be the truth, but I don't really know. I lost my balance and fell to the driveway, skinned my elbow and bruised my hip. She cried when she saw the blood and instantly we had apologies, a string of explanations, attempts at hugging, endless explanations—she'd been so worried, I could have been killed, what if she'd died of a heart attack and nobody knew where I was? She was stressed, and I had lied to her. I was embarrassed, though.

Anyway, so she tried to hug me, and I shrugged her off, and she tried to say Scott and I couldn't possibly go on our picnic, but he was still sitting there, buckled into his stupid seat belt, his face all stony and hard. “Mom, seriously, I'm not a little kid.” I hopped into the passenger seat and rolled down my window as Scott drove away. “You can ground me when I get home,” I shouted. She folded her arms.

See, though? Scott didn't wait for me to buckle my seat belt before he spun tires getting out of my mom's driveway. He wasn't always Mr. Safety, not when he was angry. It was tense for like three blocks, and we didn't talk. Scott slammed on the brakes at each stop sign and then accelerated equally aggressively when crossing each intersection. Finally, he pulled to a stop and parked, stomping on the emergency brake.

“Why are you freaking out?” I said. I mean, sure, my mom yelled at him, but she yells at everybody—at the kids at the beach who are throwing stones, at the people letting their dogs run in the park without a leash. And anyway, it wasn't like she was his mom. “It's fine, honestly. I'll deal with her when I get home.” I reached for his hand, but he pushed it away—not angrily, but like my hand was a sad moth in the window and he was setting it free.

“I'm not freaking out. Taylor, that was not okay.” He put both hands on the steering wheel.

I sat there for like a minute without saying anything, pulling the shoulder strap of my seat belt over me and then letting it retract, again and again.

“What do you want me to say?” I didn't really understand what was making him so angry—me or my mom.

“She can't treat you like that,” he said. He was still gripping the wheel, still looking straight ahead with his jaws clenched tight. “I want you to tell me she's never acted like that before, that you're traumatized a little by that, maybe, or at least upset about what just happened.”

We got caught
, that's what happened. “I'm not sure how you expected her to respond.”

Now

When the police officer mentions the reporter, all I can think about is the ring I left lying on Scott's hospital room floor. I picture all kinds of stupid scenes out of movies and TV shows, the badass investigative reporter throwing me curveball questions that will somehow crack my façade, pull repressed memories out of my psyche like candy from a piñata. Joey walks away from the hospital with a purpose, and I follow because I have a small suspicion that he may be walking to the gas station to buy some cigarettes, and if he does, I'm going to make him give me one.

“Your mom sounds like a piece of work,” Joey says. He walks with his hands stuffed into his jacket pockets.

“Shut up.” If he can listen to my story and that's all he can come up with, who can waste time and energy talking to him? Get some layers, Joey.

“I get it,” he says. We pick our way across a patch of slush that's frozen into a treacherous icy mess on the sidewalk, and I wonder what he gets. He gets that I want him to shut up?

“That stuff I said was true, about my brother.” He stops walking. “People with brain injuries can be impulsive, aggressive, depressed, forgetful—” He stops, his mouth sort of hanging open, his eyes on mine for the first time more sad than angry. I nod. Yes, that stuff is true. “It doesn't add up,” he says, narrowing his eyes. “He wouldn't try to kill
himself
.”

I step back. No, of course not. Scott wasn't suicidal. Would he try to kill himself to avoid having a baby with me? That seems a little extreme. Like, what did he have to lose? He could have walked away at any time, and he could have gotten away with nobody ever knowing, probably, and even if his parents and everyone found out, what hardship was he going to face? His parents would love their golden boy no matter what, and besides, he was in college—it's not unheard of for college-aged boys to have sex. I shake my head.

“No,” I say. “There's no way. Scott wouldn't be that irresponsible.” It was far more likely that I tried to kill Scott than for him to kill himself. I dismiss the possibility.

We walk a little more quickly for the last half block to the gas station, and Joey won't let me wait outside because he says I might breathe in toxins from the gas fumes.
The baby
might breathe in toxins from the gas fumes, is what he doesn't say. Inside the station, Joey makes us linger in the candy aisle until there aren't any other customers, and then he pulls his hat down as low as it goes and tries to act nonchalant as he asks for a pack of those hipster cigarettes that are like eight bucks a pack. I hold my breath as the clerk's eyes bounce over in my direction before he reaches up for the cigarettes and asks Joey if he has any ID. “The girl, too,” he says, nodding in my direction.

Joey leans in with his desperate eyes, holding up his driver's license that shows he's only sixteen years old. “Look, my brother's in intensive care right now, banged up real bad, and he might not make it. That's his girlfriend, right? We need a smoke, that's all.”

I step out from behind the candy rack on the end of the aisle and the clerk takes a long look at my face, at my lacerations. He makes a show of checking Joey's ID and slides the pack across the counter with one quick motion. Joey makes them disappear like a magic trick, up his sleeve.

A block away from the station, he hands me a cigarette and a book of matches, frowning a little. “You shouldn't smoke, with the … ” He gestures vaguely with his own cigarette. “I can't believe … ” I wait, but he doesn't finish the sentence. He walks really fast.

“The clerk was staring at me like I'm some kind of freak,” I say on my first exhale. I get a little dizzy, and my stomach lurches unpleasantly as the nicotine hits. Stupid baby is even ruining my one cigarette. Just let me have this one and then I'll stop. Maybe.
Stop talking to the fetus, Taylor.

Joey makes a scary face and holds his arms out like Frankenstein's monster, staggering toward me. “Auughhhhhrrrrauughhh,” he groans.

I push him away, but he keeps coming, driving me off the edge of the sidewalk into a hedge. “Not fucking funny, asshole,” I say, but I'm also sort of laughing. “I'm going to burn you with this cigarette, Joey, seriously. Get off me.”

“I'm sorry,” he says, his face falling back into that dark, hopeless place it's been since the rage faded. “You're going to have an awesome scar, though.”

“Truth.” I appreciate that Joey gets me enough to know that an awesome scar would be something I'd value, that having an interesting face might be more important to me than having a blandly beautiful face. Not that I want to carry a reminder of this on my face for the rest of my life, but it's not going to screw me up like it would some girls. I take one more dizzy puff on my cigarette before throwing it to the ground and stepping on it. Joey bends and fishes the butt out of the slush. We round the corner to the hospital.

“Ready to face the press?” He nods his head toward the hospital entrance.

“With this monstrous face?” I step through the automatic doors, the antiseptic smell of the place mingling with the smell of wet entryway carpet. We wipe our snowy sneakers and face the bank of elevators. “I'll break their cameras.”

Then

Dani and I always played this game we called Instant Vacation. The premise was pretty simple. One of us would shout out randomly, something like “Instant vacation to Washington DC!” and then we'd pretend that's where we were. Maybe I'd be like
Hey, let's climb up on the Lincoln Memorial
, and she'd be all
Look! From up here we can see into the First Lady's private chambers!
and I'd go
Let's go tell her all about our plans for world domination!
It was silly and sometimes really stupid, like one time when Dani was like
Instant vacation to Mr. Fowler's intestinal tract!
and she started talking about all the nasty stuff floating around in there and I still can't walk past him in the hall without gagging.

So Scott had been around us for a while. He knew what Dani and I were like together and he'd heard us go on lots of instant vacations. But it was our thing, between Dani and me, and Scott never participated except once. That was the thing about Scott. He didn't have to spend his time hoping and dreaming because his life was really great. He loved his family, he loved rambling around, hunting and exploring the shore of the lake along the south side of their property. There was enough money to send him to college, even without declaring a major or getting scholarships or making it onto the hockey team. He never complained.

“Instant vacation to Idaho,” Dani said, tipping back her hot chocolate. Whipped cream on the tip of her nose. “I think there's a grizzly behind you.”

“Retired cops,” said Scott with a shrug of his shoulders. “With short tempers and big fists.” He shook his head, and that's all he said. I knew he'd once spent a summer in Idaho with his great aunt and uncle while his parents were dealing with transitioning his granny into assisted living, but the few times he'd mentioned it, all he talked about was the good fishing and how much he loved the mountains.

“And potatoes,” I said. I didn't know what else to say. What should I have said? There was a long silence, and Dani wiped the cream off her face and avoided both our eyes. It was awkward and drawn-out, and I was going to call out the next instant vacation, but my brain was empty of new places and all I could think about was the cops in Idaho, wondering if they had anything to do with how angry Scott had gotten at my mom and her moods.

“Instant vacation to my deer stand,” Scott said at last, and his voice was low, his eyes on his hands, which were spreading butter on some kind of pastry. “It's November, and chilly enough this early in the morning to see your breath. Chilly enough to appreciate the wool jacket under your blaze orange shell.”

Dani tipped her head, her hair falling in black, ironed sheets. “The sun is coming up,” she said.

“The sun is coming up,” Scott repeated. “It's still gray everywhere, but the sky is getting pink between the poplar trees, toward the field.” He cleared his throat.

“The deer congregate in the field,” I said, because I've seen them there, a herd of them. Sometimes I've watched their eyes shining in the dark when Scott pulls into the lane in his truck and turns the headlights toward the far woods.

“The first ones will walk through here before it's light enough to shoot,” he said. “A doe with her two fawns, and I wouldn't shoot them anyway. I'll watch them walk beneath me. I'll see their steamy breath.”

He smiled, then, and shoved the entire pastry into his gaping mouth.

Now

Joey takes my hand when I'm finally ready to go up in the elevator. I don't know if he's still angry or what, but if it's possible to hold someone's hand defiantly, he does it. We ride to the fifth floor with his fingers gripping mine, and then the elevator swoops to a stop and he drops my hand, his face setting like sullen cement.

I breathe through the queasy moment and step over the threshold, turning right and pushing my way through the double doors. No cell phones, no noise. No idea what my boyfriend will be like when he wakes up, or what the hell his brother is thinking, holding my hand like that. It's grief, that's all. I shake my head.

The ring. The reporter. I've got to get in there, have to get into Scott's room without anyone else, but how do I get rid of his mom, of Understanding Emily? This hospital smells, and I feel like Joey and I completely reek of cigarettes, like our breath is dangerous, the air trapped in the folds of our coats. It is, actually. It's called something like third-degree smoke, and it can make people sick, babies and little kids. Once again I feel vulnerable, protective, and again I push that feeling aside.

“I've gotta … ” Joey nods in the direction of the waiting room, and then he's gone. I make a beeline for Scott's room, walking silent as a nurse in my sneakers, and for three quarters of the way into the room I think I'm in luck, but then—

“Oh,” says Emily, stepping out from behind Scott's IV. “I didn't hear you.” She sits back down on the guest chair, the more comfortable one by his side. She holds a magazine in her lap with one hand. “The doctor gave him pinpricks in his feet,” she continues, her kind eyes on my face, “and he reacted, sort of. A little movement, a little change in his facial expression.”

I nod, but my face must be too blank because she rushes to explain. “He's making good progress up the Glasgow scale, Taylor. His scores are climbing in every category. This is a really good sign.” She smiles a different kind of smile than usual, a smile that jumps rather than tiptoes. I smile too. A really good sign.

“Joey and I went to lunch—” The end of that sentence is complicated.

“Joey's not easy in the best of times,” Emily says. “He doesn't really blame you, Taylor. None of us do. But it's hard when there are so many unanswered questions.” She gets up from the chair and ushers me into it, looking deep into my eyes with that new hopeful spark. “The police came to give Mom and Dad an overview of their investigation.” Something flickers across her face. “The
accident
investigation.”

We're both quiet, looking at Scott. I can't easily connect this swollen, bruised, and sleeping face to the Scott in my memory, and I can't really remember what it felt like to love him. I mean, I
care
about him, I'm not a complete horror of a person, you know. I feel kindness for him and sorrow over his pain and injuries and hope for him to recover, but I don't really feel what it means to desire him, to yearn for forever together with a kid tethered between us and that ring around my finger.

I try not to look too shifty as I peer at the floor behind Scott's bed. I can't see anything. I twist in my chair a bit to get a better view.

“Are you all right?”

My chance. Her eyes on mine are so soft, and once again I'm afraid she knows. I need her to leave the room. “Maybe … ” I trail off, pressing my hand against my face as though I'm suddenly flushed, hot. “Oh, it's okay. Unless you could get me a cup of water. I'm sort of … ” I leave it open-ended.

Her eyes are wide. “Oh!” She smiles and picks up a small cup off the bedside table, still wrapped in plastic. “I'll get you some from the drinking fountain in the hall. It tastes a little better.”

“That's perfect, thank you so much.” I'm going to have to be fast. As soon as she's past the edge of the curtain half drawn around Scott's bed, I duck down, wedging myself into the space between the wall and the machinery that checks his vitals. I see nothing, so I glance up to make sure Emily isn't coming and then I push the chair back with my ass and get all the way down on my hands and knees, pushing the cords to the side carefully, searching for a glint of gold, zirconium flakes shining against the off-white tile. Nothing.

This is so uncool. My hands skitter across the floor in all directions, reaching around the bottom of the bed. I crawl to the foot of the bed and around to the other side, hazarding a glance up at the door, hoping that Emily takes a while with the water. It's still clear, but I don't have much time so I quickly search the floor around the bottom of the curtain and climb to my feet, straightening up just as Emily enters, closely followed by a young Asian guy in a shirt and tie. The news. He carries a camera, but it's not a still camera like a person working for a newspaper would have. It's a video camera.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I distract myself from the intensity of Emily's kindness by pulling it out and reading the text.

I frown. The number isn't in my contacts, and the message is brief but it takes me by surprise.
Abortion is MURDER.

“Are you all right?” Emily can clearly see I'm not, but I nod and slide my phone back into my pocket. Who would send me such a thing? I run through the list of everyone who knows, and it's a short list. Joey? Could it be him? We haven't even mentioned abortion.

Emily turns to introduce the guy behind her. “This is Tom Baker, from channel seven.” He waves and gives me this little smile that manages to instantly communicate an idea of kindness, of empathy. He's also gorgeous. I look away quickly.

I stuff my hands into my hoodie, search the floor out of the corners of my eyes for the stupid ring that I don't even want, my mind fully consumed with the awful text. Can I call the number back? The thought makes my stomach lurch in a way that feels unexpected, and I give the guy a little nod, figuring there's not much more expected from the girlfriend of a boy in a coma.

“I'm doing a piece on the crash,” says Tom, a thin tripod expanding like magic beneath his hands. “I mean, not all about the crash, I'm sorry if I'm being insensitive. I'm doing a series on traumatic brain injuries. So far we've talked with a couple of soldiers, and I was reading about Scott on the update site Emily set up.” He's casual, non-threatening. He holds out his hand to me.

I look down. A microphone, a tiny fly to clip onto my sweatshirt, hangs between Tom's finger and thumb. I shake my head. “I don't know—”

“We don't have to show your face,” he says. “Can I just … ?”

My face. I allow him to attach the mic and then it all seems inevitable—the questions, interrogations. Guilt blooms in my chest, and I don't know, I don't remember. “I can't.” I try to tug the mic off but my hands are heavy and numb, my heart erratic. Panic? What is this?

Tom stands beside the camera, and he has a nice smile. I focus on that, on his straight white teeth, and I breathe in, breathe out. I will not have a panic attack on television. Tom speaks, or at least his smile moves into the shape of words, but my brain snags on the sound and doesn't quite translate until a half-second later. Everything is jumbled. I look up into Tom's eyes, and he nods encouragingly at me to answer the question.

“I'm sorry, what?” I turn back to look at Scott, and Tom scoops up the camera and tripod and moves around toward the foot of the bed.

“That's great, I can get Scott in the frame and then I'll pan off of you,” he says. “I was asking about how long you've known each other, maybe get you to describe Scott, the way he was before the accident, maybe what the two of you were doing on the lake, if you can talk about it.” Tom gives me a small nod, lets me know he understands this is personal and a bad time and all that, but, you know, it's his job. The camera looks like something you'd see at the back of a high school play.

“We've been together for two years,” I say, and then I pause. My left hand moves up on its own volition to rest on the lacerations on my face. “Scott is … he's a wonderful guy. He loves the outdoors, especially that island on Grave Lake. In the summer he fishes from his kayak or takes me out to the island in his canoe. In the winter we take the snowmobile, and he's always careful, he always drives so safely.”

“You have no memory of the crash?” asks Tom.

I shake my head. “It's all dark. I lost consciousness for a while.”

“Speaking of consciousness, Scott's sister said that he's progressing as the doctors work on bringing him out of the coma.” Tom leans forward. “Do you think he can feel you here? Can he hear what you say?”

“I don't know. The nurse said he can maybe smell things. I put some of his favorite candies under his nose to help him remember.” I shrug and sit down on the wheeled chair, scooting Scott's bedside table out of the way so I can lean in closer to take his hand. “I've been telling him stories.”

“Would you tell him one right now?”

“On camera?” My breathing has settled, my heart still fast but steady, and at least it doesn't seem like he's accusing me of anything. In fact, I might cooperate just so I can continue to look at him, to see him looking at me through a stranger's eyes. Beautiful eyes.

“Yeah, maybe you could tell a story about something hopeful, something that could help us understand what kind of person Scott is, what he hopes for and dreams about.” Tom's grinning now, little scrunchy spots on the outside corners of his eyes. He's a good guy, just out of college probably. It might not hurt to tell a little story, only one. And what if I could wake him up right now, say the magic words?