Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

by Gabrielle Zevin

  “Yes, Dad.”

  Five seconds later, “Kiddo, are you okay?”

  In an amazing display of restraint, I managed to reply Yes, Dad three more times even though I had no earthly idea if I was. On the fifth or sixth time, I finally just snapped, “Where’s Mom?” She was better than Dad in these types of situations.

  “In the city,” he said. He kept pacing the room and looking up and down the hallway. “Christ, is anyone ever going to help us?”

  “Is she working?” Mom was a photographer and she sometimes had to go into New York City for that.

  “Working?” Dad repeated. His head was sticking out the door like a turtle, but he pulled it back inside so that he could look at me. “She’s…She…Naomi, are you trying to worry me?”

  “Dad, are you screwing with me?” Knowing my dad, this was not an unlikely scenario.

  “Screwing with you?”

  I assumed he hadn’t liked my use of the word screw, though Dad was not normally the sort of parent who cared much about swearing. He always said that words were words and the only reason to ever eliminate any of them was if they were either hurtful (and you weren’t meaning to be) or inexpressive. I figured that the anxiety of the situation must be getting to him, so I rephrased. “Sorry. Playing with me, whatever.”

  “Are you screwing with me?” Dad asked.

  “So you can use screw and I can’t? That doesn’t seem fair,” I protested.

  “I don’t give a damn if you use the word screw, Naomi. But is that what you’re doing?”

  “I’m not screwing with you! Just tell me where Mom is.”

  “In N.Y.C.” It sounded like slow motion. EHNNNNN. WHYYYYY. SEEEEE. “New York—”

  “City. Yes, I know what N.Y.C. stands for. But why?”

  “She lives there. Since the divorce. You can’t have forgotten that.”

  I’m sure you’ve already figured out that I had.

  Everyone always says how much I look like her—my mom, I mean—which is ridiculous because she is half-Scottish and half-Japanese. We both have light blue eyes though, so I guess this accounts for the misunderstanding. No one ever says I look like Dad, which is ironic because he is actually part Russian. The rest of him is French, and all of him is Jewish, though he’s not observant. All this makes everyone sound much more interesting than they are—my mom’s really just a California girl, and my dad was born in D.C., and they met in college in New York City, where we used to live until I was eleven. If you’re a wine-drinking type, you might have heard of them. They wrote a series of travel memoirs/coffee table books called The Wandering Porters Do…and then fill in the blank with the exotic locale of your choice, somewhere like Morocco or Tuscany. My mom took the pictures, and my dad wrote the text, except for the occasional footnote by Mom. Her footnotes were usually something mortifying, like “2. At an Edam cheese factory, Naomi vomited in an enormous wooden clog.” Or “7. Naomi was particularly fond of the schnitzel.” As for my contribution, I made a series of increasingly awkward appearances in their author photo on the back jacket flap above the caption “When not wandering, Cassandra Miles-Porter and Grant Porter live in New York with their daughter, Naomi.”

  That’s what popped into my head when Dad said they were divorced—all those Wandering Porter books and me as a kid on the back flap. In a strange way, I didn’t feel like their divorce was happening to me, certainly not the “me” in that moment, the person lying in the hospital bed. It was happening to that little girl on the book jackets. I felt sad for her, but nothing yet for myself.

  “Did it just happen?” I asked.

  “Did what just happen?”

  “The divorce.”

  “It’s been two years, eleven months, but we’ve been separated close to four years now,” Dad said. Something in his tone told me he probably knew the precise number of days, too. Maybe even minutes and seconds. Dad was like that. “The doctors, they said you weren’t sure of the year before, but…Well, do you think this is part of the same thing?”

  I didn’t answer him. For the first time, I allowed for the possibility that I had forgotten everything from the last four years.

  I tried to remember the last thing I could remember. This turns out to be an incredibly difficult task because your brain is constantly making new memories. What came to mind was uselessly recent: my blood on James’s collar.

  I decided to make a more specific request of my brain. I tried to remember the last thing I could about my mother. What came to me was her “Sign of the Times” show, which was an exhibition of her photographs at a Brooklyn gallery. She picked me up on the last day of sixth grade, so that she could give me a private showing before anyone else got there. The show had consisted of her pictures of signs from around the country and the world: street, traffic, restaurant, township, movie theater, bathroom, signs that were painted over but you could still make them out, signs handmade by homeless people or hitchhikers, etc. Mom had this theory that you could tell everything about people (and civilization in general) from the kinds of signs they put up. For example, one of her favorite pictures was of a mostly rusted sign in front of a house somewhere in the backwoods. The sign read NO DOGS NEGROS MEXICANS. She said that, regardless of the rust, it had communicated to her clear as anything “to take the picture quick and get the hell out of town.” Most of her exhibit was more boring than that, though. As we were leaving, I told her I was proud of her because that’s what my parents always said to me whenever they came to see a dance recital or attended a school open house. Mom replied that she was “proud of herself, too.” I could remember her smiling just before she started to cry.

  “So is Mom on her way, then?” I asked Dad.

  “I didn’t think you’d want her here.”

  I told him that she was my mother, so of course I wanted her.

  “The thing is”—Dad cleared his throat before continuing—“I have called her, but since you haven’t really spoken to each other for a while, it didn’t seem right that she come.” Dad furrowed his brow. I noticed that he had less hair on his head than my brain was telling me he ought to have. “Do you want me to call her back?”

  I did. I longed for Mom in the most primitive way, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby or not like myself, whatever that meant. And Mom and I not speaking? It seemed so unbelievable to me and like more than I could even begin to figure out in my current state. I needed time to think.

  I told Dad that he didn’t need to call Mom, and his brow unfurrowed a wrinkle or two. “Well, that’s what I thought,” he said.

  About a minute later, Dad clapped his hands together before taking his pad and pencil out of his back pocket. He always carried them in case he should be inspired. “You should make a list of everything you don’t remember,” he said, holding the pencil out to me.

  Although my dad writes mainly books for a living, what he loves writing most are lists. Groceries, books he’s read, people he’s angry at, the list goes on. If he could write lists for money instead of books, I think he’d be a happier person overall. I once said that to him, and he laughed before replying, “What do you think a table of contents is, kid? A book is just a very detailed and elaborate list.”

  My father is one of those people who believe that anything can be accomplished, the ills of the world cured, so long as it’s written down and assigned a number. Maybe it’s genetic, because I am most definitely not one of those people.

  “So how about it?” Dad was still holding the pencil out to me.

  “If I can’t remember it in the first place, how’ll I remember to put it on the list?” I asked. It was the most absurd thing in a day of absurd things, as ridiculous as asking a person who has lost her keys where she had last seen them.

  “Oh. Good point.” Dad tapped on his head with his pencil. “Brain’s still working better than your old man’s, I see. How about, as you hear things you don’t remember, you tell me, and I’ll write them down for you?”

  I shrugged. At le
ast it would keep Dad occupied.

  “Things Naomi has forgotten,” he said as he wrote. “Number one, Cass’s and my divorce.” He held up the paper to show me. “Just seeing it written down, doesn’t that make it all so much less frightening?”

  It didn’t.

  “Number two,” he continued. “Everything after Cass’s and my divorce. So that would be 2001, right?”

  “I don’t know.” I knew Dad was trying to be helpful, but he was really starting to annoy the crap out of me.

  “Number ten. Your boyfriend, I’m assuming?”

  “I have a boyfriend?” I thought of what James had said.

  Dad looked at me. “Ace. He’s still away at tennis camp.” He made a note.

  My dad was up to nineteen (“Driver’s Ed? No. Driving? Maybe.”) when a nurse came into the room to wheel me away for my first of many tests. I remember feeling relieved that I didn’t have to hear twenty.

  I was in the hospital for three more nights. A rotating coven of evil nurses would wake me up every three hours or so by shining a flash-light in my eyes. This is what they do when you’ve had a head trauma: all you want to do is sleep, and no one will let you. Besides not sleeping, the rest of my time was occupied with taking boring tests, ignoring my father’s incessant list-making, and wondering if James Larkin might take it upon himself to visit.

  He didn’t.

  My first visitor was William Landsman. Visiting hours began at eleven o’clock on Fridays, and Will showed up at 10:54. My dad had gone outside to make a few phone calls, so there was no one around to even tell me who this teenage boy in the maroon smoking jacket was. “Nice save, Chief!” Will said as he entered the room.

  I asked him what he meant, and he explained about my rescue of the yearbook camera. “Not a scratch on it. Really going above and beyond the call of duty there,” he added.

  Despite his questionable clothing choices, Will was not the least bit fussy or wimpy. When I asked him about the jacket, he claimed to wear it ironically, “as a way to entertain myself in the face of the daily monotony of school uniforms.” He was compactly built, about my height (five feet seven inches), but solid-looking. He had wavy chestnut hair and dark blue eyes, sapphire or cerulean, a deeper shade than either mine or my mother’s. His eyelashes were very long and looked as if they had been coated with mascara even though they hadn’t been. On that day he had light dark circles under his eyes, and his cheeks were flushed. If he seemed loud or cavalier about my condition, I suspect now that it was a way of masking his concern for me. In any case, I liked him immediately. He felt comfortable and broken-in like favorite jeans. It probably goes without saying that James had had the opposite effect on me in the brief time that I had known him.

  “Are you Ace?” I asked, remembering what Dad had said about my having a boyfriend.

  Will removed his black rectangular-framed glasses and wiped them on his pants. I would later learn that removing his glasses was something Will did when embarrassed, as if not seeing something clearly could in some way distance him from an awkward situation. “No, I most definitely am not,” he said. “Ace’s about six inches taller than me. And also, he’s your boyfriend.” A second later, Will’s eyes flashed something mischievous. “Okay, so this is deeply wrong. I want it on the record that you are acknowledging that this is deeply wrong before I even say it.”

  “Fine. It’s wrong,” I said.

  “Deeply—”

  “Deeply wrong.”

  “Good.” Will nodded. “I feel so much better that you don’t remember him either. By the by, your man’s a dolt not to come.”

  “Dolt?” Who used dolt?

  “Tool. No offense.”

  “Leave. Right now,” I said in a mock stern tone. “You go too far insulting Ace…What’s his last name?”

  “Zuckerman.”

  “Right. Zuckerman. Yeah, I’m really outraged about you insulting the boyfriend I don’t remember anyway.”

  “You might be later and if that’s the case, I take it all back. Visiting hours only started a minute ago, so he’ll probably still come,” Will said, by way of encouragement I suppose.

  “Dad said he was still at tennis camp.”

  “If it were my girlfriend, I would have come back from tennis camp.”

  “Who’s your girlfriend?” I asked.

  “I don’t have one. I was speaking hypothetically.” Will chuckled and then stuck out his hand for me to shake. “Introductions are in order. I am William Landsman, the Co-editor of The Phoenix. Incidentally, you’re the other Co-editor. Your dad said you might have forgotten some things, but I didn’t think it was possible I might be one of them.”

  “Are you that memorable?”

  “Pretty much. Yes.” He nodded decisively.

  “And humble.” I didn’t need to remember him to know exactly how to tease him.

  “And also your best friend, if you haven’t already figured it out.” Will cleaned his glasses again.

  “Really? My best friend wears a smoking jacket?” I nodded. “That’s very interesting.”

  “It’s ironic. Seriously though, you can ask me anything. Honest to God, Chief, I know everything about you.”

  I looked in his eyes, and I decided to trust him. “How does my face look?” Since they’d stitched up my forehead, I’d been basically trying to avoid my reflection.

  He examined me from both sides and then from the front. “A little swollen around your left eye and cheekbone, but most of it’s covered by the tape and gauze.”

  “Look under the gauze, will you?”

  “Chief, I am not looking under the gauze for you! It’s completely unsanitary and probably against the rules! Do you want me to get kicked out of here and not be able to visit you?”

  “I want a report before I have to see it for myself. I want to know if I’m, like, disfigured.” I tried to say this casually, but I was scared. “Please, Will, it’s important.”

  Will sighed heavily before grumbling, “I said I’d tell you anything, not that I’d do anything. I want it on the record that I, William Landsman, did not want to do this, and am furthermore not trained for medical procedures.” He went into my room’s doll-house W.C. and washed his hands before returning to my bedside. He placed his left hand gently on the right side of my face before using his right hand to slowly remove a section of surgical tape from the left side near my hairline. “Tell me if I’m hurting you. Even a little.” I nodded.

  When one of my hairs got pulled in the tape, I winced what I thought was imperceptibly, and Will stopped. “Am I hurting you?”

  I shook my head. “Go on.”

  Ten seconds later he had removed enough of the tape so that he could lift up the gauze and look under it. “There are nine stitches, and a raised knob right below that, probably the size of a brussels sprout, and a larger bruise spread out across your forehead. None of it looks permanent. You’ll probably have a tiny scar from the stitches.” He refastened the gauze as delicately as he had removed it. “You’re still insanely, unfairly, torturously beautiful, and that’s the last I’m gonna say about it, Chief.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You are welcome,” he said jauntily. “Glad to be of service.” He tipped an imaginary hat. “Don’t think I’m unaware that you were really just fishing for compliments.”

  “Yup, you see right through me,” I said.

  Will leaned in close and whispered, “Come on, admit it. You really do remember me. All this amnesia crap is so you can get a break from The Phoenix.”

  “How’d you know? I just didn’t want to hurt your feelings, Landsman.”

  “That’s real considerate of you.”

  “So, what’s my boyfriend like?” I asked him.

  “Let’s see. Ace Zuckerman is an awfully good tennis player.”

  “You’re saying you don’t like him.”

  “As he’s not my boyfriend, I don’t think I’m technically required to, Chief.”

  “What
about James Larkin?”

  “James Larkin. Larkin comma James. Yeah, we haven’t really met him yet. He’s new this year, which is unusual for a senior. I think he might have gotten kicked out of his last school or something.”

  “A delinquent?” That was interesting…

  Will shrugged. “I only met him this morning when he dropped off the camera at The Phoenix and he was polite as anything. FYI, the kid is nothing like Ace Zuckerman.” He paused. “Or me.” He reached into his messenger bag and pulled out his laptop. “You have your headphones with you, right?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure.”

  “You always do. Where’s your bag?”

  I pointed to the closet in the corner of the room. Will opened the door and started digging through my backpack, which probably should have bothered me, but it didn’t. It seemed like someone else’s bag anyway. He pulled out an iPod, presumably mine, then plugged it into his laptop. “When I heard from your dad, I decided to make you a mix. Don’t worry. I burned it for you, too.” He handed me a CD and a playlist entitled Songs for a Teenage Amnesiac, Vol. I. “It’s not one of my best. Some of the selections are a little broad,” he continued, “but I was under time constraints. I promise that Volume II will be better, as it is with, for example, the second record of the Beatles’ White Album or the Godfather movies.”

  Will handed me my headphones and put away his laptop. He started speaking really fast. “It’s hard to make a good mix. You don’t want anything too cliché, but you don’t want to make the songs too obscure either. Plus, you can only fit about nineteen tracks on a CD, and you want each one to say something different, and you want a balance of slow and fast songs, and then there’s the added pressure of making sure each track organically leads to the next. Plus, you’ve got to know the person for whom the mix is intended really well. For example, on yours each of the songs means something. Like the first one is sort of how we met freshman year. I thought it might jog your memory.”

  I read the CD liner. “‘Fight Test,’ the Flaming Lips?”