After All I've Done

by Mina Hardy

  “Well,” she says, “I suppose I can count my blessings that at least I have you.”

  Harriett beams and moves toward me to offer one of what I think of as “Harriett hugs,” an all-encompassing, thoroughly comforting embrace, but stops just short when I make a warning noise. “Oh dear. I keep forgetting not to squeeze you. How’s the pain?”

  It’s worse than it was twenty minutes ago, but I don’t want to tell her that. “It’s bearable.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to take any pills? I really think you should.” Her eagle-eye gaze snags on the book I left on the kitchen table, and she’s distracted. “Where did this come from?”

  “It’s a library book.”

  I got the overdue notice in my email yesterday. I couldn’t remember that I’d checked out that book, but I finally found it on an end table with a bookmark three-quarters of the way through it. I couldn’t bring myself to renew it, not even to find out how it ends. It’s the stupid little things that sting the worst.

  “I’ll return it for you,” Harriett says.

  “You don’t have to. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Don’t be silly, Diana. You don’t want to get a fine.”

  “I already owe a fine,” I tell her tightly. “I’m going to take the book back tonight. My friend Trina’s coming to get me in a few minutes.”

  Harriett looks confused. “Where are you going?”

  “I have an appointment with Dr. Levitt. Trina is picking me up, and we’re going to grab a drink afterward. It’s trivia night.”

  “Trina? Driving you? But you didn’t mention an appointment.”

  This gives me pause because I most certainly did. “I told you last week.”

  “You didn’t,” Harriett insists. “After all, I’ve been the one taking you to all your appointments. You see that doctor on Wednesdays. It’s not Wednesday. I definitely didn’t know you had an appointment with Dr. Levitt today. I would have written it down if you’d mentioned it.”

  “She’s going on vacation, so she asked if we could switch to earlier in the week.” I give a guilty look at the large whiteboard on the kitchen wall. Harriett has been so diligent about keeping it updated for me with all of my various doctor appointments and medicine schedules. I hardly ever look at it, and I certainly haven’t ever written anything on it. Writing hurts too much, and anyway, I keep my own lists. “I’m sorry. I thought I said something to you.”

  “I’m sure you thought you did, but just … well.” Harriet presses her lips together.

  Unlike her son, Harriett won’t actually say the word. Forgot has become a curse word. I’m not sure how to respond to Harriett about that. My amnesia is localized between two points in time. The first, several months before the night of my gallbladder surgery, and the second, when I woke in the hospital after it. Yes, my recollections of that first week after the accident and my surgeries are fuzzy, but they’re not completely blank. To my knowledge, I haven’t been any more forgetful about my daily life than I was before.

  “Are you all right? Not having any new … trouble?”

  “You mean mentally?” I ask and watch her mouth twist. I know she doesn’t approve of me seeing a psychiatrist, but Harriett would never say so out loud. She’ll drop comments about it, of course. Ask pointed questions. But just say what she means? Never. “I’m fine. It’s just a little rearrangement of the schedule, that’s all. No big deal. I promise.”

  “Not … remembering?”

  “No,” I answer curtly. “I’m not remembering anything.”

  I wish I could check my phone to see if Trina messaged me that she’s running late, but it’s in my purse. I’d have to have Harriett dig it out for me, maybe even enter the passcode to unlock it, since the exercises really have me aching. She has, and she would, but I’m trying hard not to ask her to do that sort of thing for me anymore.

  “I wish you’d told me, that’s all. I can still take you. I need to go to the drugstore and pick up your prescription refills. And run some … errands.” Harriett is already looking around for her coat.

  I know errands means cigarettes, although she won’t admit it. You won’t ever catch her smoking. She does it in secret, like you can’t smell it on her clothes and breath. I don’t judge her for it. We all do things we don’t want anyone else to know about.

  I glance toward the kitchen cabinet. Through the glass doors I can see the lineup of pill bottles. I have always hated the glass-front cabinets. They put everything on display, so everything has to be neat and tidy all the time. It stresses me out.

  “I thought you said you already got—?”

  “Oh yes, well. Of course. I’m just all flustered now.” Her hands flap as she frowns. “I’m just all discombobulated, Diana. Let me grab my coat and keys.”

  I’ve never said a word to Jonathan or Harriet herself about possible memory issues on her part. Feels too close to home, I guess. Anyway, we don’t talk much about anything anymore, Jonathan and I. At least not anything important, and in this moment I wonder, did we ever?

  Gently, I say, “I’ve already made plans with my friend.”

  “But I was just about to put the roast in the oven—” Harriett falls silent when I shake my head.

  “Don’t worry about it. I appreciate it, but you really don’t have to make anything.”

  She presses her lips together. I’ve hurt her feelings. “I was only trying to help.”

  “I know. Thank you. I do appreciate it.” I’m not lying. I’d have starved without her cooking these past weeks.

  “I’ll just text Jonathan to make sure he’s going to be late.”

  “Be my guest. I’ve still got plans.” I snap the response, not meaning to sound so nasty, but I don’t want to be the one to tell my husband’s mother that he’s messing around, and every time he misses dinner, the likelihood grows that I’ll have to. If I have to tell her, I will have to tell him that I know, and after that … I’m not ready to think about what happens after that.

  I can see this throws her. When I first met Harriett Richmond about twelve years ago, she was the volunteer contact for Sunny Days Adoption Services, the children’s charity my company supported. I’d been tasked with updating their office’s ancient security system, so I spent a lot of time working with her. Jonathan’s father had died long before I met her, but I’d always known that Harriett’s life had been built around taking care of her husband and son. I understand that it would never have occurred to her that she could go out with a girlfriend and leave her husband at home to fend for himself, but this woman has known me for a long time. At no point in my marriage have I ever given any indication that wifehood was the reason for my existence.

  “He works so hard. He was late yesterday too. Last week, I don’t think he made it home before seven any day except Friday. And then he’s always going out to the gym so late at night too.”

  “He works as hard as he has to,” I say cryptically, but fortunately his mother doesn’t take it as anything but praise.

  Harriett sighs and purses her lips. “Have you thought about when you’ll go back to work?”

  “I haven’t.”

  I don’t have to go back to work, not for a while at least. I took the early retirement package and payout I was offered when my company underwent restructuring, and that happened, conveniently, only a couple weeks before the time when my mind goes dark. Jonathan had encouraged me to take the summer off and spend as much time as I could at the beach house. Back then, I’d thought it was generous. I know the truth, now, about why he wanted me gone as much as possible.

  “No wonder he has to work late so often, paying all the bills.” She mutters this, not quite soft enough so I don’t hear it.

  Anxiety and anger knot my stomach, but I draw in a breath to keep my voice steady when I answer her. Yelling at Harriett is like chastising a kitten. Even if it’s being naughty, you hate yourself for doing it. “I love your pot roast. You know what would be great? If you left it for me i
n the fridge. Can you try to remember to slice it up first?”

  “Well. My goodness. I suppose I certainly could. Even if you won’t be home to eat it at dinner time, and I was making it especially for you.” Harriett can’t hide the trembling of her chin.

  I’ve still managed to hurt her feelings. Great. Now I feel guilty again. I guess that will give me one more thing to talk to Dr. Levitt about. If I’d known wrecking my car was going to be what drove me into therapy finally, I might have started reckless driving sooner.

  I know I can be a bit standoffish, but I am not a monster. I can’t hug her with both my arms still in slings, but I try to sort of press myself against her so she can hug me. Gently.

  “I’ll let you know next time if I plan to go out, so you don’t expect to make dinner,” I promise.

  “Of course you want to spend time with your friends. I understand. Don’t you worry a second about it.” Harriett pats my back. “I’ll just finish up the pot roast and leave it for you. But you text me when you get home, all right? Or else I’ll worry.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  My phone buzzes from my purse. I assume it’s Trina, telling me she’s in the driveway. I get up from the small kitchen table and use the tips of my fingers to snag the strap of my purse. At only an inch over five feet tall, everything about Harriett is petite, tiny, delicate. Standing beside her, I’m gargantuan, even after the weight I’ve lost. I’m bumbling, clumsy. There’s no way I can get a coat on, and November in Pennsylvania can be more than chilly. They’re calling for snow before Thanksgiving this year.

  “Can you help me with my shawl?”

  I wince at the minor weight of my bag, a tiny clutch with a thin strap, just big enough to hold my phone and wallet. I can’t carry my usual tote-sized bag. Still, I always feel like I’m forgetting something—well, I am. Almost half a year of my life.

  Harriett helps sling my shawl over my shoulders, taking an extra minute to tuck it closed at my throat. I have become the child she seems to wish I would be. Maybe we both wish it. Such a simple gesture, but I feel it deep inside. The caring. The concern. It’s good to feel loved, and if sometimes, just sometimes, Harriett’s love also feels a tiny bit like I’m being strangled … well, nothing good comes without a catch.

  She goes with me to the front door and waves goodbye as Trina helps me with the passenger door. Harriett lingers, watching from the doorway as Trina buckles me in with a laugh. I shift to help her, both of us giggling at the absurdity of how difficult it is to situate me.

  “Thanks for this,” I say. “I really needed to get out.”

  “Hey, what are friends for?”

  Trina’s words are meant to cheer me, but I have to turn my face to the window to make sure she doesn’t see the tears I’m certain glitter in my eyes. That’s how I see that Harriett watches us until the curve in the driveway takes us out of sight.

  Trina catches me up on the small-town gossip as we drive. She even runs the library book inside for me, along with the money for the fine. She drops me at Dr. Levitt’s office, promising she’ll be back in an hour.

  The office is outfitted with a low leather couch. Such a cliché. I’ve never lain on it, even though the pillow and fuzzy throw blanket look comfortable enough; it’s just too hard for me to get up and down into a prone position. At home I have to use a huge wedge pillow to sleep, and getting in and out of bed requires an entire rigamarole.

  Instead, the doctor and I usually sit in the overstuffed chairs facing each other. She always offers hot tea served in a delicate teacup, but that would mean taking an arm out of the sling to drink it, and today I’m saving up all my aching and paining for those glasses of wine with Trina.

  When I tell her this, Dr. Levitt chuckles. “Can’t say I blame you. A glass of wine with a friend is usually worth more than a session with me.”

  “I haven’t been out in forever. I always thought I was a homebody until I couldn’t leave on my own. I was really glad she called me.”

  I don’t mention that Trina and I had become much closer over the years that Val lived away. When Val moved back to good old Lebanon, Pennsylvania, to take care of her dad and then stayed because she lost her job in New York City, I’m ashamed to admit that Trina and I stopped getting together as often.

  We talk a bit about my forced convalescence. Dr. Levitt says to focus on my progress instead of the setbacks. I can text now, carefully, if I don’t overdo it. I can read books on my tablet since I only have to tap the screen instead of turning a page. I can feed myself if I’m careful to eat things that don’t require a lot of cutting and I take it slow. That’s a lot better than the first week or so, when I mostly ate soup or drank milkshakes through a straw. Every day, I’m closer to being out of the slings and back to my independence. We talk a lot about how important that is to me. Being able to take care of myself.

  We haven’t really started talking about why relying on others is such a hardship for me. To do that, we’re going to have to delve deeper, and since I’ve only had three appointments so far, Dr. Levitt’s barely had time to scrape the surface of what seems to be a disturbingly deep well of psychological issues. I mean, we all have them. You don’t get through life without baggage. I’m sure it’s all going to come up, but so far we’ve been focusing on the present.

  Eventually, Dr. Levitt steers the conversation to my memory loss. There’s not much she can do to help me regain my lost memories. Anesthesia-induced amnesia is a medical condition, not the same as a trauma-induced memory loss, even though the circumstances surrounding the loss were traumatic. She’s here more to help me with my emotional reactions to finding a sizable blank space in my brain, to teach me how to cope, and to monitor the meds I’m on as part and parcel of all of this.

  And to talk about the dreams.

  “I didn’t have the nightmare last night,” I tell her. “That’s three nights in a row without it. Maybe they’re going to stop.”

  “Maybe.” Dr. Levitt inclines her head toward me as she takes down a note or two on the pale lavender legal pad in her lap. I want to ask her where she got it. It looks just right for making a lot of lovely lists—once writing with a pen is no longer the equivalent of tearing myself to pieces.

  My chuckle lifts on a sigh. “You don’t think so.”

  “I think your nightmares are part of your emotional reaction to the stress and trauma of what happened. Even if your mind can’t actively remember the night of the accident and the surgery, your body does. It can scarcely forget, after all. You’re still in pain every day.”

  “But I’m also getting better every day. Do you think when I stop hurting, I’ll stop having the dream?”

  “I don’t know,” Dr. Levitt says. “It would be out of line for me to even guess at that. But I do think, Diana, that dreaming about burying someone in your back yard is a reflection of your frustration with your physical condition and your inability to remember such a significant portion of time. Now, I don’t put too much stock in dreams as a whole. But in your case, it seems fairly obvious to me.”

  Oh, it’s obvious, all right. Dreaming about having killed someone? I know exactly why I dream that. Just not why I’m dreaming about it now.

  “I just feel like, if I only try harder …” My fists both clench, and I wince, making sure to relax my hands. “My memories are in there. If I can just get to them, I’ll be able to remember.”

  “Your condition was caused by the anesthesia you were given for the surgery, not any head trauma.” Dr. Levitt says. “You may regain them someday, but it might help you to stop thinking of your memories as being buried. The harder you try to dig for them, the farther away they’re going to feel. Instead, perhaps try to think of them as being covered by water. Give them time to float up of their own accord.”

  “Great—then I’ll start dreaming about drowning.”

  She laughs. “We’ll deal with that when we get there. Okay? Anything else you want to talk about?”

  There’s al
ways something, even if I haven’t managed to bring myself to talk about it yet. But we started this therapy to help me figure out how to deal with my memory loss, not to negotiate the scorched wasteland of my childhood and adolescence or the current shambles of my marriage. Most of the time, Dr. Levitt reminds me that everything that happened in my life brought me to this point, and so whatever is going on with me now will always be tied to what happened to me then, much like anything that happens to me moving forward is likely to be affected by my amnesia and how I’m reacting to it. Memory loss is traumatic. It leaves scars.

  “It’s hard. Feeling so dependent on Jonathan. I mean, he’s always made more money than I do.”

  She wrote something on her pad. “You weren’t completely dependent on him before—you had a career and your own income. You even kept your own name, Sparrow, when you married. But now you feel as though you need him more than you want to. It’s been rough on you, having to rely on someone else to do what you feel you should do for yourself. It would be hard on anyone.”

  “He’s the one who really encouraged me to leave GenTech during the restructuring. It was supposed to be supportive. You know, giving me the chance to ‘retire’ early, so to speak. A chance to find out if I wanted to do something different. He’d take care of all the money, you see, so I didn’t have to worry …” I stop myself from straining to see what she’s writing.

  “And you don’t feel it was?”

  I’m silent for a moment or so, struggling to put my thoughts into place. “I guess I’m just feeling stuck. That’s all. And yet it’s lucky I’m not working right now, because of all of this. The injuries would be bad enough, but I’m pretty sure amnesia would really mess me up at work.”