The Life Lucy Knew

by Karma Brown

  “So what happened?” I looked at Dad this time, held eye contact until he looked down at the paper he was grading, clipping his pen to the page and setting it down beside him.

  “Your mother had a bit of a spell, but she’s fine,” Dad said. “As you can see. Perfectly fine.”

  Mom put her glasses back on her face, smiled brightly. “I was at the St. Lawrence Market with a friend buying some fish for dinner and I got a bit faint. My friend overreacted and called an ambulance. It was incredibly embarrassing. But like Dad said, I’m fine, love. Good as new.”

  “What friend?” I asked, frowning. Everyone knew Mom was diabetic, and all her friends knew what to do in case of an emergency.

  Mom did look fine, but she also seemed uncomfortable—she wouldn’t look at me straight on. And neither would Dad, I realized. He was fiddling with the stack of essays, running his thumb along the edges and letting them fan out one way, then the other.

  “No one you know.” Her tone left little doubt she was no longer interested in this line of questioning. She got up from the couch, came over in front of me. “Darling, please settle down. It isn’t good for you to be so worked up,” she said as she tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “How about a nice cup of tea? I got a gorgeous oolong at the market. Matt?”

  “Sure,” Matt said, taking off his suit coat, realizing we’d be staying for a little while. “That sounds great.”

  They all started to move, heading up toward the kitchen, but I was rooted in place.

  “Lucy? Are you coming?” Mom said, pausing on the bottom step. Everyone turned to look at me.

  “Would someone please tell me what’s going on?” I said. “Is this about the house? Are you selling it?”

  Dad, who was the closest to me, cupped my elbow and spoke gently. “Sweetheart, let’s go have that tea.”

  I pulled away, took a step back. I wanted to settle down, to drink tea and be happy Mom was okay, but I was struggling against the anxiety threatening to overtake me. My fuse was shorter since my accident, my ability to stay calm in situations that felt stressful diminished. “I don’t want tea, Dad. I want you all to stop treating me like I might break if you say the wrong thing! Yes, my brain is a bit of a mess, and if I’m being honest, I am, too. But if you think keeping things from me is going to help, it isn’t.”

  Dad and Mom exchanged a glance. Matt looked down at his socked feet.

  “So. What are you not telling me?” I asked again, hands clutched together to hide the shaking.

  Mom pulled her shoulders back, stood as tall as her five-foot frame would allow and glanced briefly at Dad before looking back at me. “Okay, Lucy.” She sighed. “Your father and I are separated.”

  All the frustration and anxiety left me like a wave going back out to sea. “Sorry...what?” I swiveled between them, feeling weak-limbed, similar to how I’d felt on the street when Alex had told me Mom was at the hospital. “But...how? When? You had your anniversary, like, six months ago. We had a party!”

  “No, we didn’t,” Mom said. Matt now stared at the ceiling, his hands on his hips. Dad watched Mom.

  “Yes. We did.” I was sure of it. It was one of the memories I’d managed to retain from the past few years. “It was at that restaurant you and Dad love. What’s the name of it again?” I snapped my fingers impatiently, trying to recall the name. “You know, the one with all those twinkle lights running across the ceiling.” No one said anything. “The food was amazing. Remember the mini Caesar salads in bacon cups?” Now I looked at Matt, held my hand in a cup as though I was holding one of the little salads. “You were there, right? Remember those salad cups? How good they were?”

  The corners of Matt’s mouth were downturned, and he watched me worriedly. “I do remember—”

  “See! Matt remembers! How can we go from there—” I used my hand to cut through the air in a chopping motion “—to here, in only a few months?”

  Matt cleared his throat. “I do remember, Lucy, but, uh...” He glanced at me, then at my parents. They all looked terrible, and a sick feeling settled into my stomach. “That anniversary party was for my parents. In California, last fall. Remember? I showed you the pictures.”

  “What? No. No.” I shook my head repeatedly. “It was here, in Toronto, with my parents. It snowed, I remember. I wore that...” I paused, trying to remember back to what I had worn for the party. Came up blank.

  Matt cleared his throat again, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. I could see he had a small hole in one of his socks, by his big toe. “You wore a yellow dress. And you’re right, it did snow. But not at the party. At Heavenly Mountain Resort, where we went skiing for a few days later.”

  The picture with the yellow dress, the champagne toast with his parents and sister, the ski selfie. I stopped breathing when I realized the truth. My parents were splitting up and I didn’t remember anything about it.

  “Lucy Bear, your mom and I told you and Alex about this only a month or so before your...your accident. But when you didn’t remember after you woke up, well...” Dad said, throwing his hands up. “We decided to wait. Hoped you might remember on your own.”

  “So that’s it, then? You’re separating?” I asked, stunned and upset by the news and the fact they’d all kept it from me, once again.

  “Separated,” Mom said quietly, correcting me.

  “Is this why you’ve been meeting with the Realtor?” I asked, my voice breaking. “You’re selling the house because you’ve split up?” I wiped a tear away hastily, frustrated to be so emotional. But while I understood we’d already done this once before—when they told me the first time—I couldn’t help my reaction to the news my parents’ relationship was over.

  “We’re looking at our options,” Dad said, sitting down on the stair he was standing on, letting his bent elbows rest on his knees. He looked tired, and sad. “That part is true.”

  “Where are you both living now?” I asked them, thinking back to our interactions over the past month. Realizing how little time we’d all spent together, and understanding now the reason why.

  “I’m staying here,” Dad said. “Your mom is staying in the west end with a friend.” There was something in the way Dad said “a friend” that gave me pause.

  “Is this the same friend you were with at the market today?” I closed my eyes and rubbed my hands over them. The headache was only getting stronger and I wished I could lie down. Pretend like this moment was actually a confabulation—and in reality my parents were as happy together as they’d ever been.

  A pause, then, “Yes. His name is Carl. He’s an artist I met at my watercolor class.” Good grief, not only were my parents separated, my mother had a boyfriend.

  “Did I know about this Carl? Before my accident?”

  Mom nodded, and I had a very clear sense everyone was holding his or her breath as I tried to digest what I’d learned this afternoon.

  “We understand this is a lot to accept all of a sudden, but imagine it from our side, pumpkin. We already had this difficult conversation,” Dad said. “We’ve hashed this all out, have been living with it for months now.”

  “You have all been living with it for months.”

  “Lucy, I’m sorry you had to find out like this, honey. But you have to know we didn’t mean to hurt you, or to keep it from you,” Mom added.

  “Of course you meant to keep it from me,” I replied, my voice weary. “Otherwise, why wouldn’t you have told me right away?” I’m sure it was hard enough the first time, certain they thought they were doing the right thing. But it didn’t make this moment any easier.

  Heaving a big sigh, I walked over to the couch and sat down, pulling out my notebook and pen from my purse. Then I leaned back into the cushions, crossed my legs and rested the pad on my knee, flipping to a blank page. I set the point of my pen on the paper and pressed down hard to c
reate a bullet point. “Okay, then. Here’s what we’re going to do. No more secrets or surprises. Everyone sit down, right now, and tell me every single thing I’ve forgotten about in the past four years.”

  26

  That evening Matt caught up on work and I read through emails and project notes Brooke had sent to prepare me for Monday’s return to the office. We didn’t speak again about my parents’ separation, which I suspected made Matt uneasy by how often I caught him glancing my way.

  I could tell he expected something from me around today’s revelation. Either to lash out, or be upset, or maybe to drone on about what a shock it had been. But I had no interest in doing any of that, and so I chose to act as though none of it had happened. Pushed it to the back of my mind, where things were cobwebby and convoluted. We had dinner, watched mindless television and went to bed far earlier than normal, under the guise of exhaustion, but I think we were both tired of playing the game. Matt was soon asleep, but I knew it would be hours before I drifted off, my mind swirling and confused.

  There are no distractions in the quiet dark of night, so your mind can get the better of you. Slipping out of our bedroom, I closed the door softly so as not to wake up Matt, then grabbed my memory journal from the coffee table. Boiling the kettle for tea, I read over the most recent pages of questions and added a couple of notes about what had transpired today so I wouldn’t have to second-guess myself later. I flipped to the page where I’d planned to capture any other big revelations my family and Matt had to share, but the paper was blank aside from one lonely bullet point.

  After I’d sat on the couch and demanded they tell me everything, there had been silence. Then some stammering followed by blank looks, and finally assurances there was nothing else. I’d pushed, reminding them these sorts of “surprises” weren’t helpful. Were in fact detrimental to my mental health and well-being and eroded my trust—at a time when I needed to be able to trust them the most. But the three of them claimed there was nothing else they could think of, and in the end I had no choice but to believe them and so the page remained empty.

  I wasn’t upset about my parents’ separation; I was upset about everything. And, maybe irrationally, I was most upset with Matt. We had been doing so well—his reminiscence therapy efforts so sweet, the date night exceeding expectations, especially because it triggered an important memory of the two of us. But then we sat in my parents’ basement and I learned they had split up and no one had bothered to tell me—including Matt. Especially Matt, who had a million opportunities to give me the truth and who had the most up-close view of how much I was struggling.

  Maybe it was juvenile for a grown woman to be upset about her parents splitting; maybe it was unfair to expect Matt to be the one to tell me about it. He would probably say it hadn’t been his news to share, and there was truth in that. Hell, any of them could have told me—and I should be equally pissed with my parents, and Alex (and I was). But even if my rational brain told me Matt was doing the best he could in a situation with no rulebook, I couldn’t help the simmering anger, the relentless burn of disappointment that he’d let me down.

  Still restless and frustrated two cups of tea later, I picked up one of the novels on the table—a book I had apparently been reading before the accident, the bookmark at page 132. I read that page, and the few before it, but there was no memory jog and soon I set it down with a frustrated sigh. Checking my phone, I scrolled through social media, then decided to search for Daniel so I could finally “friend” him. A few seconds later I had found his profile and sent a friend request, ignoring the lingering humiliation that he’d stood me up on Monday. Expecting I wouldn’t hear anything until the morning (if at all, because it didn’t appear he was active on the social media site), I was surprised when a notification popped up saying Daniel London had accepted my friend request. A moment later a message box appeared with a note from Daniel.

  Hey, Lucy, how goes it tonight?

  I typed back, Good! Can’t sleep, though. You?

  Messenger showed me he was typing, the three little dots dancing while I waited for his note to load onto my screen.

  I’m studying. Going to be a late night. Any chance you want to meet for a drink? Give me a break from these books for an hour?

  A drink? This was unexpected, and I had no idea what to do. I shouldn’t go. It was well after ten. Matt was sleeping and would be worried if he woke up and I was gone. Plus, it was Daniel. What about Margot?

  I shouldn’t go.

  But my fingers typed back my answer before I considered it too seriously.

  A drink is exactly what I need to cure this insomnia. Where?

  We made plans to meet at Goods & Provisions, a restaurant and bar only a few blocks from my place. I wrote a quick note to Matt, left it on the kitchen table and hoped he would find it if he woke up and wondered where I was.

  Out for some fresh air. Back soon. —L

  It was vague (I never went out for “fresh air” at 10:00 p.m., especially alone), but I had weighed the level of his worry for both scenarios—him waking up, finding me gone but having no clue where, or seeing the note and at least knowing where I was, even if it meant he’d probably come looking for me—and decided at least some information would be wise.

  I went back to the note and added Don’t worry—I’m fine to the bottom of the page and then set out to meet Daniel. It was chilly, April not yet providing the consistent springlike weather the city was pining for after a bitterly cold winter, and my breath came out in curled wisps of frosty air as I walked.

  With every step I considered canceling, wanted to race back and rip up the note to Matt and get back into bed, where I knew I should be. When I arrived at Goods & Provisions, cold fingers gripping the door handle and standing under the brown-and-beige-striped awning, I gave myself one final chance to turn around and go home. But seconds later I pulled open the door and walked in, the dark wood paneled walls and dim lighting adding to the tiny bar’s charm. Shaking my hair out after taking off my toque, I saw Daniel a few feet away at the narrow bar, his own hat and gloves stacked beside him.

  “Hey,” I said, coming up beside him and taking a seat. I tried to act casual, like meeting my married ex on a Friday night while my boyfriend slept in our bed at home was a perfectly acceptable thing to do. But my heart raced inside my chest. Daniel. I still had a visceral reaction to being near him, like all the cells in my body were straining to get closer. I felt awful thinking it, but the truth was I wanted to kiss him. Press my chilled lips against his and close my eyes. I knew I was blushing, but I hoped with the dim lighting it wasn’t obvious. “I’m surprised you beat me here.”

  “I really needed the break,” he said, smiling, lifting his drink. Damn, that smile. Another rush of longing shot through me and I busied myself with the menu.

  “What are you drinking?” I asked, eyeing his glass, now only half-full. A semicircle of lime lay discarded on a napkin on the bar in front of him, a swizzle stick holding a piece of sugared ginger beside it.

  He lifted it up and smiled again. “Dark and Stormy.”

  A memory flooded my mind, and I inhaled sharply as it did. The night I met Daniel, that was what I had been drinking. I considered whether the memory was real, but I felt fairly sure it was. Things were mostly intact from that time of my life. It was only the past four years or so that were muddled. “Since when do you drink those?” Daniel was a beer drinker. Maybe some Scotch, here and there.

  He glanced at me oddly, took a sip and set the glass back down. “Since the night we met.”

  The bartender appeared in front of me. “What can I get you?”

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” I said, gesturing to Daniel’s glass.

  “You got it,” she said, adding, “Another? No lime this time?” to Daniel. He nodded, murmuring thanks.

  “So how’s school going?” I asked, settling onto my stool a
nd trying to clear my mind so I could focus on our conversation. I clasped my hands together, wishing I already had a drink to hold.

  “Pretty good,” Daniel said, shaking his now-empty glass a little, making the ice rattle against its edges. “It’s not entirely different from law actually, which has made the transition easier.”

  “What exactly are you studying? You said it was grad school and something to do with education?”

  “Social justice education,” he replied. “I’m hoping to get my doctorate. Teach, eventually.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I said. “That’s great. Sounds perfect for you.” I had no idea why I said that last part. I had never known Daniel to be interested in teaching in any way, and a doctorate in social justice education didn’t line up with the Daniel I knew—who had been following in his dad’s footsteps as a personal injury attorney.

  Which also forced me to admit the truth: I didn’t know this version of Daniel. I also had to wonder how much influence Margot had had on his decision to leave law and become an educator, which lined up nicely with her own professional ambitions. I thought about asking what Margot was doing—not tonight, but in general—but also didn’t want to bring her name up. I wanted to drink and pretend for a while.

  Our drinks arrived, and Daniel cocked an eyebrow and pointed at the lime wedge on the rim of my glass.

  “What?” I asked, glancing between him and my drink.

  He chuckled, then shook his head. “I thought I had more power than that.”

  Confused, I frowned. Felt the uncomfortable prickle of understanding that my memory had failed me again. Daniel could see I was getting upset, and quickly changed tact.

  “Hey, sorry. I’m kidding around, Lucy. But...” he began, gesturing to my drink. “I was surprised to see you back on the lime.”

  “‘Back on the lime’?” What in the hell was he talking about?