Thanks for the Memories

by Cecelia Ahern

  “Ah, love, you know I don’t know…”

  “I was going to call him Sean if it was a boy,” I hear myself finally say aloud. I have been saying these things in my head all day, over and over, and here they are now, spilling out of me instead of the tears.

  “Ah, that’s a nice name. Sean.”

  “Grace, if it was a girl. After Mum. She would have liked that.”

  His jaw sets at this, and he looks away. Anyone who doesn’t know him would think this has angered him. I know this is not the case. I know it’s the emotion gathering in his jaw, like a giant reservoir storing and locking it all away until absolutely necessary, waiting for those rare moments when the drought within him calls for those walls to break and for the emotions to gush.

  “But for some reason I thought it was a boy. I don’t know why, but I just felt it somehow. I could have been wrong. I was going to call him Sean,” I repeat.

  Dad nods. “That’s right. A fine name.”

  “I used to talk to him. Sing to him. I wonder if he heard.” My voice is far away. I feel like I’m calling out from the hollow of a tree, where I hide.

  Silence while I imagine a future that will never be with little imaginary Sean. Of singing to him every night, of marshmallow skin and splashes at bathtime. Of chubby legs and bicycle rides. Of sand-castle architecture and football-related hotheaded tantrums. Anger at a missed life—no, worse, a lost life—overrides my thoughts.

  “I wonder if he even knew.”

  “Knew what, love?”

  “What was happening. What he would be missing. I hope he doesn’t blame me. I was all he had, and—” I stop. Torture over for now. I feel seconds away from screaming with such terror, I must stop.

  “Ah, love.” Dad takes my hand and squeezes it again, long and hard. He pats my hair, and with steady fingers takes the strands from my face and tucks them behind my ears. He hasn’t done that since I was a little girl.

  “If you want my tuppence worth, I think he’s in heaven, love. Oh, there’s no thinking involved—I know so. He’s up there with your mother, yes he is. Sitting on her lap while she plays rummy with Pauline, who’s robbing her blind and cackling away. She’s up there, all right.” He looks up and wags his forefinger at the ceiling. “Now, you take care of baby Sean for us, Gracie, you hear?” He looks back at me. “She’ll be tellin’ him all about you, she will, about when you were a baby, about the day you took your first steps, about the day you got your first tooth. She’ll tell him about your first day of school and your last day of school and every day in between, and he’ll know all about you so that when you walk through those gates up there, as an old woman far older than me now, he’ll look up from rummy and say, ‘Ah, there she is now. The woman herself. My mammy.’ Straight away he’ll know.”

  The lump in my throat, so huge I can barely swallow, prevents me from saying the thank-you I want to express, but perhaps he sees it in my eyes. He nods in acknowledgment and then turns his attention back to the TV while I stare out the window at nothing.

  “There’s a nice chapel here, love.” He breaks into my thoughts. “Maybe you should go visit, when you’re good and ready. You don’t even have to say anything, He won’t mind. Just sit there and think. I find it helpful.”

  I think it’s the last place in the world I want to be.

  “It’s a nice place to be,” Dad says, reading my mind. He watches me, and I can almost hear him praying for me to leap out of bed and grab the rosary beads he’s placed by the bedside.

  “It’s a rococo building, you know,” I say suddenly, and have no idea what I’m talking about.

  “What is?” Dad’s eyebrows furrow, and his eyes disappear underneath, like two snails disappearing into their shells. “This hospital?”

  I think hard. “What were we talking about?”

  Then he thinks hard. “Maltesers. No!”

  He’s silent for a moment, then starts answering as though in a quick-fire round of a quiz.

  “Bananas! No. Heaven! No. The chapel! We were talking about the chapel.” He flashes a million-dollar smile, jubilant he succeeded in remembering the conversation of less than one minute ago. He goes further now. “And then you said it’s a rickety building. But honestly it felt fine to me. A bit old, sure, but there’s nothin’ wrong with being old and rickety.” He winks at me.

  “The chapel is a rococo building, not rickety,” I correct him, feeling like a teacher. “It’s famous for the elaborate stucco work that adorns the ceiling. It’s the work of French stuccadore Barthelemy Cramillion.”

  “Is that so, love? When did he do that, then?” He moves his chair in closer to the bed. Loves nothing more than a lesson.

  “In 1762.” So precise. So random. So natural. So inexplicable that I know it.

  “That long? I didn’t know the hospital was here since then.”

  “It’s been here since 1757,” I reply, and then frown. How on earth do I know that? But I can’t stop myself, almost like my mouth is on autopilot, completely unattached to my brain. “It was designed by the same man who did Leinster House. Richard Cassells was his name. One of the most famous architects of the time.”

  “I’ve heard of him, all right,” Dad lies. “If you’d said Dick, I’d have known straightaway.” He chuckles.

  “It was Bartholomew Mosse’s brainchild,” I explain, and I don’t know where the words are coming from, don’t know where the knowledge is coming from. Like a feeling of déjà vu. I think maybe I’m making it up, but I know somewhere deep inside that I’m correct. A warm feeling floods my body.

  “In 1745 he purchased a small theater called the New Booth, and he converted it into Dublin’s first lying-in hospital.”

  “It stood here, did it? The theater?”

  “No, it was on George’s Lane. This was all just fields. But eventually that became too small, and he bought the fields that were here. In 1757 the new lying-in hospital, now known as the Rotunda, was opened by the Lord Lieutenant. On the eighth of December, if I recall correctly.”

  Dad is confused. “I didn’t know you had an interest in this kind of thing, Joyce. How do you know all that?”

  I frown. I didn’t know I knew any of that either. Before I have time to even ponder my response, the door to the room opens and the nurse enters.

  “Visitors here to see you, Joyce,” she says delicately, as though a raised voice would break me. “I’m sorry, Mr. Conway, but we can only allow two guests at a time. You’ll have to wait outside.”

  Dad is delighted to be ejected from the room, so violent is the look I’ve thrown him. I had already informed him, quite firmly, that I wasn’t in the mood for visitors of any sort. His face is pink, revealing his guilt, if not of arranging this visit, at least of the failure to prevent it. He flies out of the room, up and down, down and up, like a fly that’s lost a wing.

  As soon as he’s out of the room, two faces poke around the edge of the door. Kate and Frankie, my oldest and best friends. They enter the room like two virgins approaching a gigolo; Kate’s hands clasped across her front, Frankie’s lips pursed, both their eyes wide and concerned. I feel my body tense, rejecting their presence, and they instantly know not to greet me with their usual hugs and kisses. Like the game of musical chairs that we so often played as children, they race for the armchair next to my bed, and their bums fight for space. Frankie wins, as usual, and relaxes in the seat, smug and lazy like a cat. Kate, momentarily caught in a time warp, glares at her childishly, and then finally, remembering the passing of thirty years and where she is, decides to perch on the armrest instead. She wobbles a few times on thin wood, searching for the correct place to place her backside. She can’t be comfortable, but she stops squirming to fix her gaze upon me. Her look is similar to the consistency of the food she spends her days making at home; puréed and organic, soft enough to squeeze through the gaps of baby teeth, the sounds from her kitchen not dissimilar to the Dublin roads ripped apart by roadworks, endless drilling and pounding. Her
eyes melt down into her cheeks, her cheeks into her mouth, everything downward, sad, sympathetic.

  “You didn’t have to come,” I say. My politeness valve isn’t working, and the words gush out mean and cold; they sound more like “I wish you didn’t come.”

  Kate is momentarily taken aback, and then compassion oozes back onto her face, like a slow mush.

  “With the kids and everything…,” I add lifelessly, an attempt at damage control, but the words are limp and hang in the air and then slither down to the ground in the silence that follows.

  “Oh, the kids are outside, on their best behavior.” She smiles.

  Behind her, I see a solo wheelchair race by with a teddy bear strapped inside. Seconds later, Dad runs after it in a panic. I’m glad I don’t see Sam, Kate’s baby. I couldn’t take that. Only adult life-forms to pass my eyeline from now on.

  Frankie remains uncharacteristically quiet from her place in the armchair, looking around the room like a child in a waiting room, bored and uninterested, waiting for Mother to finish her adult duties so that the fun of life can begin again.

  My eyes fall to her lap.

  “What’s that?”

  Realizing it’s her turn, she looks at me. “Oh—” She bites her lip and looks at Kate, whose expression has quite dramatically altered to one of extreme anger. “Oh, this.” Her voice goes up a notch. “This is, um, it’s a…” She angles her head left and right, examining it. “It’s a gift,” she finally says and lifts it up so that I can see. “For you. From us.” She gives me her best, cheekiest, broadest smile.

  I look at Kate, whose mushy face has now tightened with anger. Words are bubbling beneath her lips, jumping to get out like heated kernels exploding in her mouth.

  “Okay, so I made a bit of a mistake.” Frankie tries to hide her smile now.

  “I told you to get her flowers,” Kate finally explodes.

  “I wasn’t too far off,” Frankie defends herself. “It’s a plant.”

  “It’s. A. Cactus,” Kate spits.

  I smile at their usual bickering, surprised they managed to last this long without going at each other. They’ve been carrying on like an old married couple ever since they were six. While they snap at each other, I gaze at the cactus, a small green prickly ball in the center of a cracked plastic pot. A few balls of dried soil fall into Frankie’s lap. The plant is nothing short of ugly, but it seems familiar, and its presence comforts me.

  “You got me one of these before.” I interrupt their debate on the meaning of “something appropriate.”

  “We most certainly did not,” Kate says with disgust.

  “I have one at home?” I ask, studying it further.

  “Unless you mean Conor, there’s nothing else in your house prick-related—ow!” She rubs her ribs from where Kate had elbowed her.

  “Porrúa,” I say, holding out my hands and taking it from Frankie.

  “Huh?”

  “I’m going to call it Porrúa.”

  Silence. Their confusion, at least, agreed on.

  “Named after the Porrúa Bookshop stone that was found embedded in the wall of the Librería Porrúa in Mexican City,” I explain, running my fingers along the thin thistles. “It was a giant Aztec barrel cactus carved from basalt rock, a powerful symbol of their tribal roots and quite rare because in Aztec art, they rarely sculpted plants, more often animals, rulers, and gods.” I smile at them, my darkness lifting with each sentence.

  Kate’s eyes widen; Frankie’s lips part in a smile.

  “Are you on morphine?” Frankie asks, a glint appearing in her eye. “If you are, can I have some? Pass me that tube thing, quick before the nurse comes. What do I do, inhale or stick it in my arm?”

  “Frankie—” Kate’s elbow meets her ribs again, and her voice softens toward me, as though I weren’t a witness to her violence. “I wanted to get you something prettier than that,” she apologizes, taking the cactus from my hands and placing it by the bed beside the seeded grapes and mineral water. “Something with flowers, you know. Petals”—her words are more aimed at Frankie now—“soft and delicate. You know? Appropriate.”

  I study it again, feeling my head heat up. I have seen this cactus before. I see it on a windowsill in some distant memory, but it’s not a windowsill I have at home. Where is it? I swallow hard, feeling out of sorts, uncomfortable with the words coming out of my mouth, wondering if a kind of dementia has set in. I’ve seen it in wildlife programs, mothers who’ve lost their cubs, going crazy without their child. Perhaps that’s what was happening. I realize they’re looking at me for an explanation.

  “Oh, don’t worry, she’ll flower all right.”

  Frankie looks pleased by the news in an I-told-you-so kind of way. “With some cacti, the flower will open toward the evening and die the following morning,” I add, and Frankie’s smile quickly fades.

  “How do you know so much about cacti, Joyce?” Kate asks, in the same tone with which a cop would talk down someone from a rooftop.

  “It’s not necessarily cacti that I’m interested in. Cacti can be found repeatedly in pictorial representations and drawings among the remains of the Aztec civilization.” I finish that statement with a shrug. I have no idea what I’m saying.

  “Are you seeing an Aztec behind Conor’s back?” Frankie jokes nervously.

  Kate is silent, and our eyes lock momentarily. I’m as concerned as she. Where on earth is this coming from?

  “You should rest,” Kate says quietly, and I close my eyes, not needing to be told twice.

  When I open them again, the two of them are gone, and Dad has replaced them beside me. He pours my mineral water into the cactus.

  I sit up, and he smiles at me. “Hello, sunshine.”

  “Do you have a cactus on a windowsill at home?”

  He frowns and shakes his head. “No, love.”

  “Who has one, then?” I close my eyes and study the image embedded in my memory. A sunny day, a cactus on a windowsill, white voile curtains billowing out an open window. I smell a barbecue, I hear children laugh outside the window and the sound of a ball bouncing. I move closer to the window and see a girl with white-blond hair looking up at me. There’s a look of horror on her face, and then I see the ball headed toward me. It flies through the window, knocks the cactus from the sill and to the ground. I jump with fright in the bed.

  “What’s wrong, love? Should I call a nurse?”

  “No, it’s just—” I feel beads of sweat breaking out on my forehead. I feel dizzy and confused, madness setting in, a mother without her cub. Suddenly frustration overwhelms me, and I shake my head aggressively. “I want a haircut,” I say angrily, blowing my fringe off my forehead. “I want to get out of here.”

  “Okay, love.” Dad’s voice is quiet. “A little longer, is all.”

  Chapter 7

  GET A HAIRCUT! JUSTIN BLOWS the mop out of his eyes and glares with dissatisfaction at his reflection in the mirror.

  Until his image caught his eye, he was packing his bag to go back to London while whistling the happy tune of a recently divorced man who’s just been laid by the first woman since his wife. Well, the second time that year, but the first that he could recall with some small degree of pride. Now, standing before the full-length mirror, his whistling stalls, the image of his Fabio self failing miserably against the reality. He corrects his posture, sucks in his cheeks, and flexes his muscles, vowing that now that the divorce cloud has lifted, he will get his body back in order. Forty-three years old, he is handsome and he knows it, but it’s not a view that is held with arrogance. His opinions on his looks are merely understood with the same logic he applies to tasting a fine wine. The grape was merely grown in the right place, under the right conditions. Some degree of nurturing and love mixed with later moments of being completely trampled on and walked all over. He possesses enough common sense to recognize he was born with good genes and features that were in proportion, in the right places. He should be neither praised nor bl
amed for this. It’s just how it is.

  At almost six feet, he is tall, his shoulders broad, his hair still thick and chestnut brown, though graying at the sides. This he does not mind; he’s had gray hairs since his twenties and has always felt they give him a distinguished look. For Justin, moving on and change are what he expects. He is not one for pausing, for becoming stuck in life, though he didn’t expect his particular philosophy of aging and graying to apply to his marriage. Jennifer left him two years ago to ponder this, though not just this, but for a great many other reasons too. So many, in fact, he wishes he had taken out a pen and notepad and listed them as she bellowed at him in her tirade of hate. In the dark lonely nights that initially followed, Justin wondered if his solid, tight philosophy could make things all right. Would he wake up in the morning and find Jennifer in their bed; would the light scar on his chin have healed from where the wedding ring had landed; would the list of things about him she hated so much be the very things she loved?

  Through strands of the long hair hanging over his eyes, he has a vision of the man he expects to see. Leaner, younger, perhaps with fewer wrinkles around the eyes. Any faults, such as the expanding waistline, are partly due to age and partly of his own doing—he often took to beer and take-out for comfort during his divorce process.

  Repeated flashbacks of the previous night draw his eyes back to the bed where he and Sarah got to know each other intimately. All day he definitely felt like the big man on campus, and he was just seconds away from interrupting his talk on Dutch and Flemish painting to give details of his previous night’s performance. Only three-quarters of the class, first-year students in the midst of Rag Week, had shown up after the previous night’s foam party, and he was sure those who were in attendance wouldn’t notice if he launched into a detailed analysis of his lovemaking skills. He didn’t test his assumptions, all the same.

  Blood for Life Week is over, much to Justin’s relief, and Sarah has moved on from the college, back to her base. On his return to Dublin this month he coincidentally bumped into her in a bar, one that he just happened to know she frequented, and they went from there. He isn’t sure if he will see her again, though his inside jacket pocket is safely padded with her number.