Blank

by Trina St. Jean

  “Thank you for coming,” he says, like he’s hosting a dinner party. “Make yourself comfortable.” Mother, Father and I sit stiffly on the orange chairs and look at him.

  “I’ve got some good news,” he says. Mother reaches over and grips Father’s hand. She reaches for my hand too, but I pretend not to notice and keep my fingers intertwined.

  Super Doc smiles that relaxed grin of his, and we all take a breath. “I’ll get right to the point,” he continues. “Jessica, I’ve carefully studied your file and I think you are ready to go home.”

  Mother lets out a little gasp—of happiness, I think—and Father nods slowly. “Wow. That’s great, just fabulous,” he says.

  “I thought you’d be happy,” Super Doc says. “It’s a big step for sure. Jessica’s rehabilitation has gone so well, I don’t think staying here is in her best interest anymore. She’s healing up nicely, and her motor skills are nearly back to normal.” He leans forward and nods in my direction. “Of course, you will continue seeing Dr. Kirschbaum, to help with the transition.”

  Mother lets go of Father’s hand. “So the CT scan results were good then?”

  Super Doc leans back again, running his hands through his hair. And that’s when I know. Here comes the bad news. He flips open the file in front of him and glances down. “It was difficult to say earlier, because of all the swelling. But now we know. Unfortunately, the scan showed that there appears to be some residual damage to the medial frontal lobe, and potentially a bilateral hippocampal lesion.”

  “Didn’t you say you were going to get right to the point?” I say.

  Mother doesn’t even flinch at my rudeness. Her shoulders sag suddenly, like the air has been let out of her.

  “Well,” Super Doc says, unfazed, “it means that the memory loss you are experiencing is not only a result of emotional trauma. It likely has a physical cause. The brain is a very delicate, complex organ and nearly impossible to predict. The damage may repair itself slowly over time. But we have to consider all the possibilities.”

  “So I might stay this way forever,” I say.

  Super Doc looks directly into my eyes. Although he’s calm, I see a shimmer of a struggle there. Being a doctor must suck sometimes. “Maybe. To be honest, your situation is extremely unusual. Most patients with a traumatic brain injury have other serious cognitive issues as well, like an inability to speak clearly. The rarity of your situation makes it impossible for me to predict the outcome. We’ll continue to monitor things with tests, and therapy will help with the anger and memory loss. But other than that, as hard as this is to hear, all we can do is wait and see. I’m sorry. I really am.”

  A slight buzzing begins in my head. I get to go home. But there is something seriously wrong with me, something that won’t go away by sheer will and determination. Even Super Doc can’t save me this time. I should be angry at God and the universe for cursing me this way, maybe grab a picture frame from the desk and smash it against the wall. But, surprisingly, this news doesn’t piss me off. In a strange way, I feel a sort of release.

  A physical problem. It’s not my fault I can’t remember things. I can’t just snap out of it by trying a little harder.

  Mother sits up tall. “But,” she says, “why would you send her home when she’s not ready? Why does she remember how to walk and talk and the names of famous people, but she doesn’t remember her life? It doesn’t make sense!” Her voice grows louder. “She needs your help, isn’t that obvious?”

  I realize then, looking at this woman, that she has been strong, taking care of her family and her banged-up daughter, struggling to keep all these questions inside. Putting her trust in the experts. And now what Super Doc is saying is not fitting into her plan of how things should turn out. I close my eyes as I listen to him try to explain in his usual patient tone about procedural memory, which is how to do things, and how it’s different from declarative memory, which is recalling past events. Everyday things like walking and eating and even the taste of foods, he says, are familiar to me. But the events of my life are not, because they are stored in a different part of my brain.

  When I open my eyes again, I can see it in Mother’s face: she feels ripped off. My thoughts spin so fast—going home, physical cause, extremely unusual—that I can’t decide how to feel. The Girl, wherever she’s hiding inside my mind, must be celebrating. Home at last! Out of this cold and impersonal place! But, as usual, she’s not communicating.

  We wrap up the meeting and walk in silence back to my room, where Mother sits in the armchair and gazes out the window. Stephen tells Father and me knock-knock jokes. Who’s there? Orange. Orange who? Orange you going to let me in? Mother pops up from the chair and mutters something about the washroom as she scurries out the door.

  Father fiddles with a strand of my hair. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice husky, “that your mother is acting like this. She’s not herself these days. She just—” He clears his throat. “All she wants is for things to go back to normal.”

  “I understand,” I say.

  He lets my hair fall and gives me weak smile. Stephen says, “Hey, did you hear the one about the lion and the monkey?”

  Stephen goes on telling his jokes, and Father and I give our courtesy laughs.

  Mother wants normal. If only I knew what that was.

  Brush Off

  Today is the big day. I will walk out of this place, go to the place I belong. I will sleep in a real bed, eat real food and have a real life. This is good news, and the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach will pass. Super Doc says I can go back to school when I feel ready, maybe part-time at first. I try to picture my high school, but the building could be brick or wood or made out of ginger-bread for all I know. I can imagine, though, the stares I will get, the uncomfortable silences that will follow me when I can’t find my locker.

  Mother, Father and Stephen show up before noon. Father must have convinced Mother not to worry, because she looks happier. They offer to help me pack, but I tell them it’ll only take a few minutes, and they should go down to the cafeteria for lunch. Really, I want to do it alone.

  The clothes are easy. I throw them in a suitcase. Now there are the pictures on the bulletin board. I grab a bag, and the vacation shot, the first one Mother and Father showed me, comes down first. This family no longer exists, I think. Next is a photo of the Pink Posse, laughing on someone’s bed among colorful cushions. I’m shoving it deep into the bag when I hear someone behind me.

  “Yo, hot mama.” Tarin stands, arms crossed, by the doorway. Her hair is in pigtails, making her look like some kind of punk Pippi Longstocking. It’s weird seeing her here, in my space.

  “Hi.” I turn back to the wall and let my eyes wander across the row of remaining photos. Almost every stage of childhood is represented here.

  She saunters up beside me. “Wow, your very own wall of shame.” She points to the shot of the Girl in the cowboy hat. “Now that’s one to burn.”

  I pull the pin off the photo, grab it and slide it into the bag.

  Finger to her bottom lip, Tarin surveys the rest of the pictures, and when she’s done she watches me as I pull photo after photo down and put them with the others. When she finally speaks, her voice is higher than usual, like she’s trying to sound casual. “I came to find you because I heard that you’re ditching this Popsicle stand. And it appears to be true.”

  I nod. “I’m going home.”

  “That’s great,” she says. “Happy day.”

  I nearly say that she thinks having crummy amnesia is lucky, but then I remember that she doesn’t know why I’m here. Like how I don’t know why she wants her past erased.

  “I guess,” I say. She raises her eyebrows but doesn’t ask what I mean.

  Only a few pictures remain on the board, and my hands move fast. I had wanted to let each picture sink in and somehow fill me up, give me some substance to face my first day on the outside, in my real home. But now that she is here, the spell is broken,
and I simply want the job done. I finish and place the bag on top of my suitcase.

  “Well,” she says, “it’s been a smash. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

  I try to picture seeing her outside this place. She doesn’t exactly fit in with my vision of getting back to “normal.” I concentrate on zipping up the suitcase. Nervousness is building inside me, and I feel like making eye contact with her will only make this day harder somehow. That I might fall apart. “Yeah,” I say. I glance up, and the usual sharpness in her face has been replaced by something softer.

  She moves slowly toward the door, and I know I should say something friendly, maybe give her a high five or something. But I only stand there, stiff and awkward. “Take it easy,” she says.

  “You too.” A final zip and the suitcase is closed. I nudge it gently with my foot.

  “Good luck,” I say, but it’s too late. She’s slipped out the door. I’m pretty sure she’ll be all right though. She’s tough. It’s me, Jessica Grenier, who needs luck the most.

  My mother steps into the room seconds later. “You know that girl?” Mother asks. “She’s our neighbor Mrs. Meyer’s granddaughter. Small world.”

  I shrug. “Met her in the TV lounge.”

  Mother puts her arm around my shoulder. “Can’t believe this day is finally here. Are you ready?”

  I don’t have much of a choice. But I nod and smile and act as normal as I can.

  When Father and Stephen arrive from the cafeteria, Super Doc and Dr. K. and a straggle of nurses follow them into the room. “Surprise!” they shout, and Super Doc hands me a bouquet of flowers.

  “For my favorite patient,” he says with a wink. “What are we going to do without you around? You’ve kept us on our toes this past month.”

  “You’ll find someone else to torture,” I say, but actually I am touched. They give me high fives and wish me luck, and my parents thank them for everything they’ve done. Dr. K. says she looks forward to seeing me soon for our first regular session, And then, as quickly as they came into my life, they go back to their jobs.

  With the bulletin board down and all my cards and magazines in a box, the room looks empty and sad. I am on autopilot, laughing at Stephen’s story about talking worms even though I’m distracted. How will I make it out there in the real world? I want to throw myself at my parents’ feet and beg, Please, give me more time here; I’m not healed. But I can’t bring myself to burst their bubble.

  “Okeydokey,” Father says, suitcase handle in his grip. “Time to hit the road?”

  I nod, but my feet don’t want to move. “Can I go pee first?”

  They laugh, though I don’t get why it’s funny, so I bolt into the bathroom and close the door. I don’t need to pee at all, but I need to see Her. She looks back at me from the mirror with a somber expression. I lean closer.

  “I’m crapping my pants,” I whisper. Her eyes are cold and hard. No compassion there. “That means I’m scared, dorkface.”

  The corners of her lips curl up in the flash of a grin, but then she is serious again. “Are you as freaked out as I am? Or are you happy to be going home?”

  Her eyes soften, and I see then what the hardness was: a disguise. She’s trying to be tough, trying to hide her fear.

  “Hey,” I say, “you’re coming with me, right, Girl? I can’t do this alone.”

  We eye each other, she and I, and my mind races: she had something I no longer have, a connection to the life she had built, a feeling that she belonged. And now she is trapped on the other side of that life, watching me try to recapture what used to be. It must be frustrating, watching some wannabe try to fill your shoes. She probably wishes she could reach across that glass and give me a good smack in the head. The longer I look at her, the more her glare looks like one of disgust.

  A sudden knock on the door makes the Girl flinch.

  “Jessie? You all right in there?”

  “I’m fine,” I croak. Now the Girl’s eyes are narrowed, her forehead creased. She’s got to be worried, like me, and maybe I need to cut her some slack.

  “Let’s do this,” I say. And I open the door to the beginning of the rest of my life.

  Part II

  HOMECOMING

  The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.

  —Vladimir Nabokov

  “The Art of Literature and Commonsense”

  The Next Contestant

  It happens so quickly. Father puts the suitcase in the bed of a silver supercab pickup, then I am in the back-seat, watching the brick walls of the hospital grow distant through the back window. It hits me that I’m clueless about “home.” It’s in the country, I guess, since we have bison, and certainly not around the corner from the hospital. My family has been traveling a long way to see me, obviously. I am an inconvenience.

  Father clicks on the radio, and cowboy music plays while we drive what feels like forever down the long stretch of highway. Stephen sits in the back with me, and whenever I glance over at him he makes a goofy face. An image comes to me, clear as day. A little boy—Stephen?—his face painted with a fire-breathing dragon that stretches from one ear to the other, the red and orange flames shooting across one cheek. “You’re just jealous,” says the boy, and tears suddenly start to trickle down, streaking across the scaly body of the dragon.

  The real boy, the ten-year-old, slaps his knees suddenly. “I can’t believe you’re finally coming home. It’s been so weird without you.”

  I wish I could reach over and touch his cheek, but I don’t want to creep him out. So I survey the scene outside, the hay bales, the fields, the occasional herd of horses or cows. We drive and drive, until we slow down near a green sign that reads Winding Creek, Full Services. A water tower pokes out of the trees, and a wooden board with the words Rosie’s Café hangs on the side of a rusted piece of farm machinery by the road. That’s all I catch, and then it’s empty fields once again.

  “Was that our town?” I ask.

  Stephen nods. “You blink, you miss it.”

  We really are country bumpkins. Father turns on his signal light, and we turn off the highway and onto a gravel road. We go over a hill, rocks making dinging noises against the underside of the truck, and when we start down the incline, the other side is a mess of ruts and puddles that look large enough to swallow us up.

  “The joys of spring,” Father announces. The truck fishtails, and water splatters the windows as he navigates through the puddles for a few miles. Then it slows down, and we turn into a driveway edged by towering pines.

  “Home sweet home,” Mother says.

  We bump down the driveway, the trees on either side swaying slightly under the pale blue sky. We reach the end, where the trees open up to a circular drive. I want a memory to come to me, a glimpse of some happy moment like a water-balloon fight on the lawn or anything fun and light, to cut through the thick blanket of tension in the air. But my mind is empty.

  The house is made of wood, with some stonework on the front and a large deck. It fits well with the surroundings—neither big nor small—and there are a lot of large windows and a matching garage off to the side. The truck lurches to a stop and we sit there, quiet, no one moving.

  “Welcome back,” Stephen says, breaking the silence. Everyone is unbuckling and opening doors, and Father comes around and opens the back door for me. He offers his hand and I take it as I step out of the truck. Somehow my wobbly legs carry me up the front steps. Stephen waves me into the entranceway.

  Frames filled with photo collages hang on both walls: a baby girl that must be me, a baby in blue who must be Stephen. Chubby toddlers on tricycles and in blow-up pools, both of us with dogs and kittens—all kinds of cuteness. Stephen pulls my arm. “Want to see your room?”

  Mother is taking off her coat, her face flushed. “Don’t rush her, Stephen. Take your time, Jessica.”

  I gaze up at the staircase a few s
econds, then take a hesitant step. Closing my eyes, I let my feet try to remember the spacing of the stairs. They stay firmly shut as I ascend, my hand running up the smoothness of the railing. I listen to my body, read the signals that tell me when I have arrived at the top. When my eyes open, I am on the landing. My grip tightens on the railing.

  This is it. Our home. My home. Where I grew up. It seems like a nice, cozy place. The kind of place where teenagers run down the stairs on the way to school, their mother calling after them not to forget their lunches. A hint of spice lingers in the air—cinnamon maybe—mixed with a lemony cleaning product. Letting go of the railing, I turn to my left.

  Three doors, all half closed so I can’t see what lies behind them. Nothing hangs on the door fronts; no clues reveal which one was mine. My family stands behind me. Waiting.

  I imagine myself on a stage with spotlights, three doors in front of me. The crowd is hushed, and a man in a dark suit says softly into a microphone, “What will it be? Door number one, two or three?”

  “So?” Stephen says, but Mother shoots him a dirty look.

  “Let me show you around,” she says, but I shake my head.

  Father clears his throat like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t.

  I will go with my first instinct. I will allow no thinking about it, no speculating on where the room of a teenage girl would most likely be positioned in relation to bathroom, parents’ room, brother’s room etc. I step forward, reach for the door of the middle room. It doesn’t necessarily feel right, but it’s too late now. I don’t check for the family’s reaction when I push the door open and step inside.

  The first thing I see, covering the entire wall but for the window, are three shelves. On them sit what must be fifty or so little figurines, in different positions. Another step, and I see what the knickknacks are. Frogs. Porcelain, glass, plastic, all shapes and sizes. Some are cartoonish, wearing clothes and riding bicycles or carrying fishing rods. Others look realistic, painted in muted natural colors.