by Karma Brown
“Maybe we can meet up later?” Jenny didn’t respond, and I realized her focus had fully shifted to Thomas, and whatever was currently happening between them. “Listen, I’m going to go, okay?”
“Oh, sure. But I can chat more if you want. Just a lazy Sunday over here.”
“Go enjoy your lazy Sunday,” I said pointedly, which made her laugh. I was jealous of Jenny, with her overnight guest and undamaged memory. What I wouldn’t give to switch places, even if only for one afternoon.
“Call me later?” she said, and then we said our goodbyes and I hung up.
I sat for a few moments, stretching my screaming hamstrings while I worked out what I wanted to do. I scrolled through my recent calls, found Matt’s number and let my finger hover over the call button until the screen went black again. I tried to imagine how that conversation might go. If I’d been braver, I would have called and asked him. If it was a false memory, it would be an awkward exchange, but then I would know, and we could go back to whatever this current state of things was. But if it was real...
So what if it is real? What then?
My breath came faster, because getting confirmation Matt had proposed was almost more terrifying than not knowing if I could trust the memory. We were not in a good place at the moment, and I didn’t know how to fix things between us. And no matter how many ways I rolled the memory around in my mind, I kept coming back to the fact Matt had said nothing about being engaged. There had been no diamond band in the personal items bag from the hospital. No evidence anywhere of his proposal. It was almost like it had never happened.
Exactly, Lucy. Exactly.
Paralyzing depression soon crawled its way through me, replacing the antsy, breathless feeling, and in the end I called no one and asked no questions—even if Matt and I had gotten engaged, I was not the same person I had been back then. The moments that had brought us together were no longer shared. You would think the memory of his proposal would have unearthed all the right feelings, too. And to some degree it had—I loved Matt for the dependable and devoted boyfriend he was, for everything he’d done for me, for being there when I needed him, for sticking by me...but I wasn’t in love with him. God, I wanted to be, but the truth was it was hard to be in love with two people at once. And Daniel—regardless of what I’d told him the day before, of Margot’s shattering news, of the mystery that continued to surround the end of our relationship—was still inside me, taking up precious space I wished I could have given to Matt instead.
Sadly there was no list of experiences I could memorize to put Matt and me back to where we had been and send Daniel packing, no data chip I could load into my brain to reboot what had been lost. I wanted to shed the old Lucy, like a tissue-paper-thin snakeskin that would blow away with a stiff breeze. The life I used to know was gone.
Then I remembered Matt was in California for the weekend, visiting his parents and sister, and so realized our place was empty. Two hours later I had looked through every drawer and closet and cupboard, twice, but didn’t find the ring. But what I did find, tucked behind a shoebox full of old receipts on a shelf in our bedroom closet, was a stack of save-the-date postcards that took my breath away, proving, once again, I had no idea who I was.
40
“We were engaged.” My tone was matter-of-fact so it was clear I wasn’t asking a question. It was late Sunday night and Matt had, moments earlier, walked in the door from his trip to California, back from visiting his family. I wondered what he told them about me, about us. I hoped it helped him, seeing them, having people to talk to who would always look out for him first.
Still in his coat, his overnight bag strap slung across his chest, Matt stood in the front hallway looking stunned to see me there as my words hung between us in the room.
“You’re here,” he finally said. Then with a sigh he took his bag from his shoulder and set it down against the wall, but he left his coat on. I was impatient for him to respond to my statement and repeated myself. Matt was silent for another long moment as he watched my face. I wondered what he saw there. “Yes, we were engaged.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. It was like I was swimming and drowning all at once. I now knew for sure my memory hadn’t completely failed me. Matt had put a ring on my finger and I had been happy about it. All that was good head-above-water kind of stuff. But what I didn’t know was why we had kept it a secret? Why hadn’t Matt said anything about it after I came out of the coma? That was the part dragging me down below the depths.
He shrugged, his face haggard. “At first I didn’t want to overwhelm you. You were having such a hard time keeping things straight and obviously didn’t realize we were...engaged.” He didn’t need to mention Daniel; we were both thinking about him and I hated how he was still right here between us. “But then everything happened, and I wasn’t sure if you would ever...” He paused, cleared his throat and looked away. “I didn’t know what would happen with us, so I decided not to make things harder for you.”
Then he looked at me, surprise registering on his face. “Wait...how did you find out?” When I didn’t answer immediately, he kept talking. “You remember.” He said it quietly, reverently. “No one else knows, so you must have remembered on your own.”
I nodded, my arms tightly crossed over my chest. One of the save-the-date engagement party cards I’d found was in hand, tucked up under my armpit.
In a rush he was in the living room and standing in front of me, the space between us gone. “Oh, my God, Lucy, it’s finally happening. I thought maybe, maybe if we went back to the beginning, started over, it might help you... Luce, this is exactly what I’ve been waiting for—”
I took a small, but telling, step back and his face registered confusion and then hurt. “Wait. Matt, I need to explain something. I do remember the proposal, everything about that night. But that’s where it ends.”
He tilted his head slightly, his confusion deepening. I hated what I had to say next, but it needed to be said.
“It’s hard to explain, because I know how important it is that I had this memory,” I began, stalling. He nodded for me to continue. “And I do remember it happening and I remember how happy I was in the moment, but my feelings for...” I paused and looked away, unable to hold his gaze.
He knew what I was trying to say; I could tell from how his face changed when I looked up at him again. Hardened against the hurt I was inflicting. I wasn’t trying to be cruel, but I needed him to fully understand that while getting my memory back was significant, it was still complicated. “You remembered it, but not me, right? Not how you felt about me?”
“I know in that moment I was the happiest I’d ever been, Matt. But the person who said yes to you, well, I don’t know her anymore. I only remember the versions of her that came...before. Am I making any sense?” I was trying to be gentle, but I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression.
“I see,” he continued, grasping the full picture now. “Do you love Daniel, Lucy?” His words were blunt and he was frowning, any joy at hearing I remembered his proposal long gone now.
“I’m still...confused about how I feel,” I replied, being as honest as I could. Matt deserved more, but it was all I could offer. “Yes, my memories of Daniel haven’t disappeared. But I don’t want to have those feelings, Matt. Believe me.”
“So you feel something for him you don’t feel for me. Is that it?”
“I never wanted to hurt you.” It was answer enough, and he acknowledged it as such. “I’m trying to figure things out, I am.”
He seemed to be sorting out his response but then pressed his lips together and sat down hard on a kitchen table chair. “But Daniel’s married, Lucy. So tell me. How does that work? You know, with this whole figuring things out piece.”
I didn’t want to talk about Daniel anymore. It was a conversation that would get us nowhere, and Matt was too hurt and angry
to have a rational discussion about things—rightfully so, even if I’d never meant to hurt him, that was exactly what I had done.
I uncrossed my arms and held out the card. “I found this.” He looked at it but didn’t say anything.
“The date is only four weeks after my accident,” I said. “So I have to ask. Why hasn’t anyone said anything? Not my parents, or Alex, or Jenny, who told me she had no idea we were even engaged.” I expected him to say this was yet another case of them trying to protect my now-delicate nature, not wanting to overwhelm me with details of a life I no longer recognized.
“It wasn’t an engagement party, Lucy,” he said, his voice low and slow, as though the effort to speak was too much.
With a frown I looked at the card, which clearly stated it was, in fact, an engagement party. Then I looked at the wording more carefully. We’re getting engaged! Not We got engaged!
He shook his head. “I know that’s what it says, but we were...” He stopped, lowered his face into his hands and rubbed at his cheeks and forehead. “We were going to get married.”
Still I stared, frown in place. “I know. I remember the proposal.”
“No,” Matt said, looking up at me. “We were getting married that day.” He gestured to the card. “It wasn’t a party to celebrate our engagement. It was our wedding day.”
My legs started to tingle and I had to sit down, too, worried I would collapse if I didn’t. Now we faced one another at the table. “What?”
“The reason no one knows we were engaged is because we didn’t tell anyone. Your mom had started dating Carl and your dad was struggling a bit, and Alex was still fairly anti-wedding after what happened with Paolo, and Jenny was frustrated by her single status, and you said you didn’t want to ‘rub our perfect happiness’ in their faces.” He used air quotes and smiled, but it wasn’t on his face for long.
“Plus, having done the whole engagement thing before, you said you wanted to skip the year of fussing and fawning before the wedding. You didn’t even want the white dress. You were going to wear the same dress from my parents’ anniversary party.” The canary yellow A-line I had looked so cheerful in.
I glanced at the card, which was now crumpled on one side from me squeezing it too hard. I released it onto the table, where it unfurled.
“It was your idea, and it was superspontaneous. Like, you came up with it the morning after I proposed before we had the chance to tell anyone. But I loved it. The plan was for me to mail these cards out with a note saying the party was a surprise—I was going to tell you it was an anniversary dinner or something to get you there—and I would propose in front of all our friends and family.”
I tried to wrap my head around the idea that if everything had continued on as expected, Matt and I would now be married. We would be newlyweds, and ecstatic about it—in stark contrast to how we felt right now, both of us with sagging shoulders and long faces.
No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t see the line leading from where Matt and I were now back to the couple we had been. Too much was different, even if much had stayed the same: Matt loving me, Matt wanting to marry me, Matt believing we could make it work if we tried hard enough. My accident broke us right down the middle, with no apparent way to stitch the frayed ends back together.
“But of course you were in on it, though no one else would know that. And then when everyone showed up for the ‘Matt is popping the question’ party, we were instead going to exchange vows.” He sighed deeply, leaned back in his chair. “That was the plan.”
“We were so, so close,” I whispered.
“We were.”
Sadness engulfed me as my fingers smoothed the creases on the save-the-date card’s crumpled edge. “And then I hit my head.”
“And then you hit your head,” he said.
41
“Are you feeling better?” Dr. Kay asked. “It’s a bad bug going around.”
I had canceled my appointment the week before, begged off sick even though I wasn’t. I couldn’t face talking about Brooke or Daniel or Matt and my goddamn memory confidence, so tired of the drama and sorrow that surrounded all of it.
“I am. Thanks,” I replied.
“So, Lucy, tell me—how have the past two weeks been?” she asked, settling deeper into her chair. My intention today had been to tell her everything. I needed an opinion from someone who had no stakes in this game. It was all in my notebook—carefully documented day by day so I could know for sure what was real and what wasn’t, in case my memory went haywire again. But for whatever reason I couldn’t pull my notebook out, wanting to keep it tucked away so I didn’t have to deal with the fallout of recent events.
I knew at the very least I should mention the proposal—it was, after all, the game changer, wasn’t it?—but it stayed stuck in the back of my throat. I didn’t want to share it quite yet, to analyze how I was feeling about knowing Matt and I would have been married already if I hadn’t slipped. Of all the memories that could have flooded back, this one felt the cruelest, because it was both critically important and useless. If I wasn’t in love with Matt in the present, what difference did it make that I remembered saying yes to his proposal in the past?
I opted to focus on the work issue instead. “It was...interesting,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows behind her tortoiseshell eyeglasses, finely tuned into my tone. “Care to elaborate?”
“Well, work was going well, until it wasn’t,” I began, sighing deeply as I told her about Brooke and what had happened with the press release. How I was sure she was trying to undermine my position at the firm by using my memory against me. And finally I admitted, for the first time out loud, how I was most worried Brooke wasn’t completely off base.
“How so?” Dr. Kay asked.
“I thought my work life was secure. My recollection of it, I mean, because I remembered everything correctly. But it turns out I was planning to let Brooke go. The same week I had my accident. And I didn’t remember a single thing about it.” I rubbed my temples, pressed my fingertips in deeply.
“Would you like a glass of water, Lucy?”
I let my hands drop. “No, thanks. Just thinking things through.”
“I’m not at all surprised there are a few gaps with work,” Dr. Kay said. “We would expect that in a case like yours, where large chunks of your memory have been wiped out or altered.”
“But it all seems so random. What I remember and what I don’t,” I said. “Like, I know I don’t like wearing wool because it itches—I remember my grandmother knitting me a sweater when I was a kid and my mom making me wear it when we visited her despite the rash I would get. I remember all my passwords, and how to write a press release, and the names of every one of my colleagues. I also remembered why I don’t like slices of lime in my drinks, but forgot I never stopped eating meat.”
I was ramped up now, my words spilling out. “And apparently my body remembers I’m a runner, because I went for this unplanned jog on the weekend and it was like my feet knew exactly what to do, you know?” Dr. Kay nodded. “But I would swear on my life I had never run farther than half a block.” Now I held up three fingers. “Matt told me I’ve run three half-marathons. Three!”
“I’m impressed,” Dr. Kay said. “I once signed up for a Couch to 5k program and never made it off the couch.” She smiled.
“Well, I can’t remember a thing about any of the races, so did I do them?” I shook my head. “Am I a runner if I don’t remember running, even if my feet do? Am I good at my job if I can’t remember the very valid reasons I was going to fire my coworker? Am I a meat eater or a vegetarian, because my brain can’t seem to make up its mind? Oh, and apparently I like eggs again, after hating them for years because of a food poisoning incident I can’t remember. So, which is it? Do I like eggs, or don’t I?”
My questions came out quickly, my voice r
ising with each one. I tried to breathe into my belly but was too hopped-up to bother with the simple relaxation technique Dr. Ted had taught me in the hospital months ago. Dr. Kay watched me, stayed quiet as I took another ragged breath.
“Can I have a boyfriend if I don’t remember being his girlfriend? Can I feel married even if I’m not? Who am I now if I can’t remember who I was? The life I used to have doesn’t exist anymore, and I have no idea how to get past that.”
Dr. Kay allowed a few moments of silence to fill the room, giving me time to catch my breath, before she spoke again. “Those are tough questions, Lucy. Not because there aren’t answers to them,” she said. “But because it’s not for me to say.”
Tell me what to do! I wanted to shout at Dr. Kay. Your job is to help me figure out who to be. She shifted forward on her chair, leaning toward me. “Look, Lucy, you’ve made fantastic progress in the short time we’ve been seeing each other. And I do understand it feels like you have little control over your life at the moment,” she said. “You’ve mentioned before feeling like you’re a passenger in a car, versus the driver.”
I nodded. That was exactly how it felt many days.
“So what happens if you step back from everything? Stop holding yourself responsible for everyone else’s happiness so you can focus on your own? Put your memory confidence list away, and think about what you want. Not what preaccident-Lucy wants, but what you want, right now. Today.” She put her hand up, stopping my inevitable argument that I obviously had no idea. “Don’t think too hard about it. What’s the first thing that popped into your mind when I asked the question? What is the one thing you want, right now, more than anything else?”
The answer came to me fully and completely, no hesitation, and I quaked with the force of it. “I want to remember being in love with Matt.”
“Okay. Good. And now the harder question,” she said. “What if that memory is locked away forever? Then what will you do?”