The Memory Keeper

by Jennifer Camiccia

  Gram hands me the clean dishes and I dry them. The mindless rhythm we develop feels effortlessly efficient, like so many other things with Gram. When the last dish is done, she turns to me.

  “Yakov called,” she says. “I think we should talk, yes?”

  33. Myelin

  Around the axon is a fatty white substance called myelin. Its job is to protect the axon—kind of like a phone charger cable that has plastic around the wires. This protection helps the electrical signal travel way faster. The signal may still get through without the myelin, but it takes longer to get there. People who don’t have enough myelin get diseases that make it hard to walk or think clearly.

  We all do better with a little protection around us. Without it, we might be so afraid we’ll make a wrong choice that we refuse to make any at all.

  * * *

  Gram’s eyes are so soft with love, it takes me a moment to grasp her question. “I believe you have something of mine?”

  My skin goes hot. I imagine my blood bubbling like when Gram makes soup. I’m a serving of guilt soup ready to be poured out.

  I hurry to my backpack and pull out the journal, handing it to her, my cheeks burning bright. “I’m sorry, Gram. I know it was wrong to take it.”

  She holds it against her chest. “I promised to give it to you one day, didn’t I?”

  I swallow past the tight grasp of my throat. How does she remember telling me that but not remember how to use the dishwasher?

  “Yes.”

  “Did you take it to help me?” She flips through, stopping to read one section more thoroughly.

  “I took it before you started telling me your stories,” I try to explain, but it sounds lame even to my own ears. “I wanted to help with your memory. I thought… It doesn’t matter what I thought.”

  “You thought if you could find the bad memory I was trying so hard to forget, that it would help me, yes?” She looks up from the journal, the tired droop of her eyelid nearly covering her eye.

  “I did.”

  Gram smiles gently. “I know you worry about me,” she says. “I promised Yakov that I would go see a real doctor this time. He is making me an appointment with someone he knows who is a specialist with this kind of thing.”

  Click. The air shimmers with a memory of Gram taking me to the hospital. I had croup. Each breath was such an effort, it was like breathing through a heavy blanket. Gram kept me calm, made sure I took my medicine, sang me songs until I finally fell asleep in a steam of cold air permeating my lungs. She never left me alone.

  “I’ll go with you,” I say, blinking past my tears. Logically, I know tears are a hormonal response from my endocrine system. Knowing this still doesn’t stop them from overflowing.

  Gram takes my face in her hands. “Oh, my sweet girl. You have been worried. I’m so sorry you’ve carried this for so long. I think you must have questions for me?”

  I sniff and wipe my face with the palm of my hand. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth about your dad?”

  She drops her hands to her sides and sighs. “It seemed easier to tell you about it if it wasn’t about me. I didn’t want you to think of me sad or in danger. I didn’t want to scare you.”

  I snort.

  Gram nods with a small, worried smile. “Yes, I can see now that all I did was scare you. By keeping things from you, I’ve made it worse. But I think that for many years I lied to myself, too. To keep safe—to not think about those horrible times—I pretended it had happened to Jacob. Even in my journal I said it was Jacob’s papa. I said it so much, I started to believe it.”

  “You believed your own lie?” I ask, eyes wide.

  Gram nods. “If I believed it, then it wasn’t a lie, you see?”

  I think about this. How we can even lie to ourselves.

  “Did Mark help you escape because he loved your mom?”

  She looks past me. “I think he must have. My mama didn’t think of him that way at first. She was too worn and tired when we first moved here. But I think his kindness finally won her over. She wasn’t used to being treated as if she mattered.”

  I can’t imagine what Gram must have seen. I hate to think about it. My dad might work too much, but he’d never hurt Mom, Clay, or me. I always feel safe with him.

  Why have I been afraid to tell him about Gram? Or about me and my memory? I’m treating him like he’s the enemy, and he’s not.

  “When Mark and my mama were first married,” Gram says, so softly I can barely hear her, “I used to walk in and find them dancing. Sometimes without music. And the way Mark looked at her? It’s how she always deserved to be loved. It made all my homesickness seem small and unworthy.”

  “Did you think of Mark as your dad?” I ask. I can’t imagine having any dad other than my own. I don’t want to.

  “Eventually, yes,” Gram says, stifling a yawn. “It’s getting late, though. One more question and then bed for you, sweet girl.”

  I have too many questions firing through my neurons. I bite my lip as I think about which one to ask. I remember Max’s earlier question.

  “Do you remember a time when I was a little girl and we were in Samuel P. Taylor Park and a man yelled at you in Russian? Was it Yakov?”

  34. Nodes of Ranvier

  The nodes of Ranvier are the gaps between the myelin on an axon. You would think a gap would slow the nerve signal down, but the signal leaps along each gap and supercharges for the next leap. This makes transmission faster. It’s like using a ramp to make a jump on your bike.

  Sometimes we have to jump over things in our way—hurdles that may seem like they’re slowing us down, but they actually get us there faster.

  * * *

  I’m curled up in a ball on my bed when Olivia FaceTimes me later that night.

  She sighs dramatically. “I’ve been thinking—”

  “The Russian man I saw at Samuel P. Taylor Park was Yakov,” I interrupt in a rush. “He was telling Gram she couldn’t run from love forever. That she was betraying them if she did.”

  She leans closer to the phone, her eyes huge. “Your gram told you?”

  “Yeah, we talked. She wants to answer all my questions.” My pillow is wet with tears. Just when I think I can’t cry any more, they start all over again. I know the truth about everything, but none of it matters. I can’t fix anything.

  “I’m so sorry, Lulu. Did she tell you why she hid her passports?”

  “Yeah. I guess Mark smuggled them out through France. It was their backstory here if anyone asked where they were from. Because of that, Gram and her mom were legally French citizens. Gram hid the passports because she’d never told my dad the whole truth and she didn’t want him to stumble across them.”

  “Wow! You could totally write a book about this one day,” Olivia says with a shake of her head.

  “I just want to sleep. Maybe when I wake up, this will all have been a bad dream.”

  Olivia nods, and her mouth pulls down. “I know exactly how that feels.”

  “I know you do,” I say, wiping my eyes. “You’re going through so much, and this whole day has been about me. I’m the one who should say ‘I’m sorry’ to you.”

  “Nope, don’t even go there. You’re my best friend. I love you. You’re there for me, and I’m there for you.”

  “I love you too. I don’t know how I would have gotten through today without you and Max.” I prop my phone against my pillow and smile as she rolls her eyes.

  “Yeah, Max is okay, I guess,” she says. “He was really worried about you.”

  My heart does the dance of a hundred butterflies. “That’s nice of him.”

  She snorts. “Yeah, right, it’s because he’s so nice. Whatever you need to tell yourself. Okay, then, I’ll text you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow, yep.”

  I hang up and cradle my phone. With Olivia gone, sadness mixes with a smattering of hope in my neurotransmitters.

  The room dims and I close my eyes. I drift off slowly w
hen something triggers my hypothalamus. It fires up and kicks me with a healthy dose of adrenaline.

  I sit up in bed with a gasp, my chest heaving like I’ve run out of air. Silence fills the night with darkness and shadows. What woke me? I grab my phone. The glowing clock shows me it’s too early to be up. I slip out of bed. The hallway is quiet, but the rumblings of Dad’s snores filter through the walls.

  I head down to the kitchen for a snack, pausing at Gram’s room. Her door is wide open.

  “Gram?” I keep my voice low in case she’s sleeping. She always shuts her door. I can’t recall a time when she’s left it open at night.

  I walk closer, listening for the light whistle of her snores. The quiet is eerie. Every part of me strains to hear a sound. But all I hear are the quick gasps of my own breathing.

  “Gram,” I say again, louder this time.

  I push open her door. The crumpled mess of her covers shows in the dim light of her bedside clock. Her bed is empty. The room is empty. The bathroom is dark and empty.

  My heart clunks painfully against my ribs. Where is she? I’d read that people with Alzheimer’s might be more disoriented at night than during the day, and I flash back to the night I found her crying in her room. It even has a name: sundowning. They aren’t sure why it happens, but it might have something to do with emotional or physical stimulation during the day.

  Today had been filled with a buttload of emotional and physical stimulation.

  I check the kitchen and am on my way to the living room when I notice the front door wide open. Fog dampens the air and blows a cold breeze into the house.

  I grab my coat out of the closet and shove my feet into my boots. All the cars are parked in the driveway, and I let out the breath I was holding. At least she isn’t driving around in the middle of the night. A gust of air slams the door behind me.

  The air chills my bones. The fog is thick against the dull light of the streetlamps. I call for her, softly at first, but louder as I make my way down the road.

  “Lulu!” Dad’s voice comes from the direction of the house. The weak gleam of a flashlight shines in my direction.

  “Dad?” My voice breaks. Water drips down my nose and cheeks. I’m not sure if it’s fog or tears.

  “What are you doing outside?” he asks, each word clipped like when he’s trying not to yell.

  My silence stretches out despite any effort I make to talk. Nothing comes out of my mouth but gulping sobs.

  He stops a foot away, the flashlight on my face like he’s making sure it’s really me.

  “I… I’m looking for Gr-Gram,” I explain.

  “Why are you looking for Gram? Is she gone?” His voice is rough and stark, stripped bare of his usual confidence.

  I wave my arm around, trying to find the right direction. “She’s not in her room. I think she’s out here somewhere.”

  He steps closer, aiming the flashlight past the bushes and driveways lining the streets. He holds his arms out for me, and I fly into them. He squeezes me so tight I can barely breathe.

  I pull away. Every second is important right now.

  “I woke up and Gram was gone. I think she’s been gone for a while.”

  He stares down at me, trying to process what I’ve said. “Why would she go outside in the cold and dark?”

  “We, um, had a really big talk about her past,” I say. “I think that might make her more forgetful or something.”

  “Forgetful?” he says with a quick shake of his head. “As in she doesn’t remember things? But the doctor cleared her. He said it was a vitamin deficiency.”

  “She never really went to the doctor. It was a friend who pretended to be one.” I hang my head and stare at the dark shadows playing across the street. Guilt slices through my bones and guts me. “I’ve done research, and if it is Alzheimer’s, then she’s still in the early stages. Each case is different, though, so she may have episodes like this, but it doesn’t mean she needs to be in a home. She can still function.”

  Everything I’ve been afraid of is happening. Will he send Gram away for this?

  “Lulu, sweetie, Gram doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. I think I would notice if her memory was that bad.”

  “Not if I covered for her.” I say the words like they are slivers of glass in my mouth.

  35. Saltatory Conduction

  The word “saltatory” means to jump. The nerve gets the signal, the signal hops from node to node, and the signal arrives at its destination.

  Saltatory conduction helps nerve impulses travel faster and take up less space. This helps us think and act faster. Right now I need to think and act fast—I need to make Dad understand how important Gram is to our family.

  * * *

  Dad stares at me as if I’m someone he doesn’t know. “What do you mean you covered for her?”

  “I was afraid of losing her,” I explain. “I didn’t want her to go to a retirement home, so I didn’t tell you when she got lost or couldn’t remember something. I was trying to find a way to fix her. I thought if I could find out about her past, I could help her.”

  He shakes his head. “Who said anything about a retirement home?”

  “I found the brochure in your office.”

  He looks at me, his brow furrowed. “Gram gave me that. She said she wanted her own space.”

  The flashlight shines on the sidewalk. I think about how the cracks fanning out in the concrete are what my heart feels like. “When did she say that?” I ask slowly.

  “About a month ago. I noticed she didn’t seem herself, so I suggested she see a doctor. She came to me with the brochure and said this might be something we should look at, and I told her not to be ridiculous. When she said she went to the doctor, I believed her. She just said he told her to rest a little more.”

  He starts walking, sweeping the flashlight back and forth as he searches. “Mom,” he calls out. “Where are you?”

  I hurry to catch up to him. There’s movement down on the street corner. I point. “Over there.”

  Dad trains the flashlight to where I’ve pointed. He exhales in relief. “There she is.”

  I run to her. She turns to me, her mouth rounded in fear. “Lulu, what are you doing out in this cold?”

  “We were looking for you.” I throw my arms around her. Her skin is icy to the touch. “You’re so cold, Gram.”

  “Nonsense,” she says, patting my arms. “I’m from Moscow. We thrive in this weather.”

  Dad walks up behind me. “Ma, what are you doing out here? It’s freezing. Let’s get you home.”

  “I was taking a walk. No need for all the fuss.”

  Dad shrugs out of his jacket and wraps it around her. I notice for the first time that she’s wearing only a thin nightgown. “You had us worried, Mom.”

  She touches a hand to his cheek. “How sweet of you.”

  “Why were you out this time of night?” he asks gently.

  Gram doesn’t answer. She seems to shrink inside herself as we walk home.

  Once we’re home, Dad turns to me. “Why don’t you help Gram to bed, and I’ll make us a snack so we can talk.”

  I nod, tightening my grip on Gram’s hand so she doesn’t slip away.

  “Lulu,” he bites out, then stops. He takes a deep breath and continues in a calmer voice. “I’m sorry you felt you couldn’t come to me.”

  I make myself look at him. He gives me a half smile before bending down to kiss Gram’s cheek.

  Gram pats his face. “You need a shave.”

  He laughs and ruffles my hair before I lead Gram to her room and settle her in bed. “Gram, you can’t leave the house at night. It isn’t safe.”

  She squeezes my hand a second before letting go. “I think I owe you a story, Lulu. Have I told you about my friend Jacob? He loved to play chess with me. But I always beat him.”

  My smile freezes like the Russian lake in Gram’s story. I pull the covers up over her shoulders and fold them neatly. “Tell me tomorrow, Gram.
Right now you need to sleep.”

  Click. All the memories of Gram tucking me in. Each kiss forever accessible in the movie of my life. I take one out and let it play as I tuck her in now. I kiss her forehead as she always did with me. I mirror her actions back to her, and my heart cracks all over again.

  “Good night, Gram,” I say softly before I close the door.

  “Good night, my sweet girl,” she whispers.

  The worry of what to do no longer seems like a problem I’ll never solve. Mom and Dad are in the kitchen. Their voices reach me, low but warm as they wait for me to join them.

  It’s not always easy to know what the right thing to do is. When you love someone, you try to protect them. Like Mom and Dad did with each other, like Yakov and I did with Gram. Like Gram did for Clay and me.

  My parents have made mistakes. But so have I.

  Mom turns to me when I walk into the kitchen. She brushes the hair out of my face and leans her forehead against mine. “Your dad told me. I’m so sorry you thought you had to figure this out on your own.”

  Dad comes over, and we make it a group hug. Their embrace is safety and love. It’s the way I used to feel with them. It’s the way I can feel again. The electricity humming in my brain quiets, and the picture of this moment clicks into place. If I trust them with Gram, then I know I can trust them with me, too.

  I take a breath. “I need to tell you something about my memory.”

  36. Von Economo Neurons

  Our insula would be nothing without von Economo neurons, or VENs. These are slug-shaped cells found mostly in the insula. Without these cells, we would never turn our feelings into actions.