All That's Left of Me

by Janis Thomas

  Had I said I wish Colin never owned a pipe in the first place, the scenario would be different. He wouldn’t ransack the house for three days straight, wouldn’t snap at Katie and Josh and me, wouldn’t slam doors and yell for no reason and storm into his office and hide there for hours at a time with Louis Armstrong playing at full volume. He would never have had a pipe to lose.

  The next night, I wish the damned thing back, but I know, just as I suspected the morning in the smoothie shop when I saw that boy, my original wish cannot be undone. The pipe does not magically reappear.

  By the end of the week, I’m so fed up with Colin’s childish tantrums that I buy him another pipe, not an exact replica of his father’s, but close enough in size, shape, and color. He doesn’t want it at first, tells me it isn’t the same, doesn’t have the same history, doesn’t have the same taste or smell. But he takes it. In order to reestablish the feel and flavor of his father’s pipe, Colin starts smoking again. Outside only, and only until the pipe is well cured, he claims. I don’t believe he’ll stick to his promise.

  So this wish backfires. Clearly. But I learn a valuable lesson. My wish must be concise and specific and well worded.

  The second and more important rule I learn is that I cannot wish something back that is gone. Like the pipe, yes, but also things that were already lost in the past and not lost as a result of my requests.

  After my experiment with Colin’s pipe, I plead for my mother’s return. I wish Mom was still alive. This wish feels akin to some desperate appeal made by a character in a Stephen King novel, and afterward, I’m plagued by nightmares of my mother’s corpse rising from the dead, her flesh eaten away, her mouth a toothless, tongueless cavern, screaming accusations at me while jabbing a finger of bones into my chest. Thankfully, the nightmare does not come true, but neither does my wish.

  I try it several ways, changing the words, hoping against hope that I might stumble upon the magical combination that will unlock the chains of her demise and rewrite the past. My intention is so strong that on the morning after my final attempt, I think I hear her voice whispering into my ear. Let me go, she says. To which I respond, Never.

  On that same day, I take out the notes I made in the hospital and study them closely. I reason that all the wishes I’ve made that have come true involve subtractions. The additions to my life—my beautiful daughter restored, my high-powered position at work—these are products of the subtractions.

  I test the theory over the course of a week. I wish for the reappearance of a ring I misplaced two years prior, I wish for more money in my checking account, for designer furniture in my living room; I wish that Colin’s second book was a huge success, that he still had his job with the JC, that our backyard had a gazebo, which I’ve always wanted. None of these wishes materialize.

  I then begin to wish things away. Little things. I wish there were no cracked tiles downstairs. The next morning, I inspect every inch of the first floor but can find not a single fissure in any of the tiles. I wish the banister wasn’t broken. The following day, I behold a sturdy railing with no loose screws. I wish I didn’t have crow’s-feet or that horrible wrinkle between my brows. Upon waking, my reflection reveals a face out of a dermatologist’s pamphlet. I discover later, through my Google calendar, that in this new version of my life, I see a nurse practitioner three times a year for Botox and filler.

  I wish my stupid protuberant belly, from two larger-than-normal babies, was smaller. This, I realize, is a stupid wish, because I am a size eight and have a good body and when I awake the following morning, I feel an exquisite ache in my abdomen. I find a wide swath of bandaging around my middle and discover from the conversation with Colin, as he brings a tray of food to my bedside, that I underwent liposuction the day before. Even though I know it’s futile, I try to unwish the procedure. I spend a few days in bed, telecommuting to work and cursing myself for my vanity and my ill-placed priorities.

  Another rule: my wishes must be about me and my life. I learn this after the lipo debacle when I attempt to be selfless and philanthropic by deleting miseries from the world at large. I try to eliminate famine, war, crime, disease. The daily news broadcasts remain unchanged.

  Next, I wish something silly, just for fun. I write myself a note and set it on my nightstand, then I wish I never saw the movie All That Jazz.

  When I was a teenager, growing up in a decidedly middle-class home, with a father who drank and disappeared regularly and a mother who desperately tried to make up for his absences, I fell in love with motion pictures and the escape they provided. I couldn’t sing particularly well or dance like a gazelle, but when I saw All That Jazz at a girlfriend’s sleepover party, I was swept away. I didn’t understand the minutiae of the film, the underlying theme, or the main character’s misbehavior, but the idea of total dysfunction creating greatness, the profound and eerie imagery of death as a desired beauty, the unctuousness of success—these things struck me. This was a movie I watched again and again, until I knew every line by heart, could mimic every movement of every character. I wanted to see it with fresh eyes.

  The next day I find my note, and that night, after Josh is put to bed by Lena and Colin retires to his office and Katie kisses me good night and heads upstairs to read pamphlets on UPenn, I rent All That Jazz on demand. The experience is revelatory. I remember snippets from seeing it in my old life, but they form a trailer of sorts, and watching it anew has a dual effect on me. I feel both like a teenager witnessing something fantastic and innovative, and also like the Roy Scheider character in the film, frenzied, frantic, determined to exercise control even as his life spirals out of his grasp.

  I make a wish that I never read Gone With the Wind, then spend three days furiously absorbing Margaret Mitchell’s prolific words.

  I wish that Colin didn’t work all hours at home. As I say the words in my head, I’m not sure why I make this wish. Perhaps I have grown tired of being greeted nightly by Ella Fitzgerald and Cole Porter and Cab Calloway, or possibly I’ve come to resent how complacent my husband has become, strolling into his office in his pajamas even as I style my hair and don my appropriate ensemble and do my makeup and squeeze my feet into professional-looking, bone-crushing shoes. The next day, he ambles off to the local library for his daily writing session, inspired, he tells me, by all the books and authors around him.

  I am careful at work not to make grandiose requests. None could be so catastrophic as obliterating a person’s existence. But I’m wary. I wish we no longer had the decades-old Mr. Coffee machine in the break room. The next morning, I’m greeted with a shiny new Keurig. I wish Valerie didn’t wear cloying perfume, and from that wish on, her scent is subtle, lovely. I wish that Golly Polly Wally Holleran didn’t have such an offensive wardrobe. The next day, and for the foreseeable future, he shows up for work absent the horrible bow ties, sporting fashionable blazers and chic collared shirts instead. I wish away the furniture that decorates my office, because although the desk and the chairs and the couch were carryovers from Xander’s time, they remind me of Richard Green. On that Friday morning, I enter Canning and Wells to find that the spirits have whisked away his desk and couch and chairs and replaced them with cozy, inviting pieces out of my imaginings.

  During this period of time, which I have deemed my trial phase, I’m like a little girl again, filled with awe at the world around me and my own omnipotence. Children are like that. They live in egocentric universes, which is their right. I am an unfulfilled middle-aged woman with a disabled son, and for the past decade, I’ve been defined by my limitations and the challenges life has placed in my path. But with my new ability to delete that which I abhor, I am also eradicating that which feeds my unhappiness. And although I don’t, for a single minute, trust my powers, I use them like a child would, freely and without inhibitions. Without stopping to consider the ripples. Anyway, my wishes are small and not greedy.

  The greatest challenge I face is that my memories are inconsistent and incompati
ble; the new recollections obscure the old but do not completely erase them. And often there is a definitive lag time between the new reality and the formation of coinciding memories, so for a while I am stuck in a kind of amnesiac limbo. I’m forced to keep my mouth shut and my ears open and let the conversations around me clarify the situation.

  To help with this conundrum, I’m keeping a journal. The first entry is about the beginning of this odyssey, transcribed from my hospital notes—Charlemagne, the tree, my boss. I write in it every night. I record my wishes as I make them, along with the events of the day and the consequences of said wish.

  The journal has a lock and I keep the book tucked in the back of the drawer in my nightstand to guard against prying eyes. Anyone who reads it would instantly banish me to a psychiatric ward. But it helps me keep my thoughts straight, helps me preserve the fading memories. I often wonder whether holding on to the memories of a life that no longer exists will, at some point, cause me to have a psychotic break. How can so many memories coexist? But I’m not ready to let go of any of my lives, not completely, not yet. I’m not even certain these new realities will last. What if, suddenly, I awaken back in my old life? Without my journal, without my records, I’ll be completely lost, a life raft at sea with only a sheet of blackness overhead, no stars to guide me.

  On the positive side, I don’t have to drag myself out of bed in the morning. I no longer have the impulse to bury myself beneath the covers and avoid my to-do list. My duties and responsibilities are still present, but I have an urgent motivation to get up, get going, get dressed, to see whether or not my wishes have come true. I now greet the day with eager expectation.

  If Colin or my children have noticed a change in me, none of them have commented. If my new self is the old self to them, the mom and wife who jumps out of bed and carpes the diem, then they wouldn’t know the difference. To them, this is the way I’ve always been. They’ve never seen the woman who clutched her pillow over her face, contemplating suffocation as an escape to her life. They’ve never heard the mother who sobbed in the shower in the morning, grieving her horrid existence.

  Sometimes I wonder about their memories—Colin’s, Kate’s, Josh’s, even Valerie’s and Wally’s. My wishes have altered and modified their lives. Do any of them have residual memories of BW (before wishes)? Does Colin ever wake up with the urge to enlighten a roomful of students? Does he harbor any resentment that his home office remains empty, unused, and quiet every day, his stereo silent, his computer unbooted until his return from the library? Does Katie dream of a black-haired boy with an earring sparkling from his left lobe and a cheeky swagger? Does Valerie fantasize about being my equal, or superior, as she was before my Richard wish? Does Wally cry out in the night, scraping his way out of a nightmare in which a horrid, demonic power castigates and criticizes and humiliates him? I think of Delilah Clayton, too. Does she ever jerk into consciousness with the residual panic from the shadow of a lecherous abuser?

  Of all of them, I wonder about Josh the most. Occasionally he looks at me strangely, as though he’s puzzling out an answer or working through a hypothesis. He doesn’t ask the question. But I know it’s there. Josh is intuitive and senses things other people miss. Does he know, on some fundamental level, what’s happening to his mother? Does he relive BW in his mind? Is he aware of the shifts, some subtle, some cataclysmic? I push my own questions away when they surface, but on the odd morning, I find myself wanting to share all that’s happened with my son, get his take, his impressions, his advice, on the paranormal and impossible occurrences. He would provide solid counsel, I think.

  Ever since that night at the hospital with Josh, when I realized my wishes were coming true, I’ve had an ever-present urge to make the one wish I desperately want to make, the wish that would cataclysmically change the course of my life. The words of this wish sit anxiously upon my tongue in the dead of night, waiting for me to give them voice, but I resist. I keep them unsaid because I’m terrified. What would the outcome of such a wish involve? I fear the consequences would not be ripples, but rather a tsunami. Every molecule of my being wants to make this wish, but I cannot, will not make it. Not yet. Not. Yet.

  In my new life, or lives—as every wish I make impacts the world around me in some way, large or small, and creates a different me on some level—I am a participant in social media. I have a Facebook page, a LinkedIn profile, a Twitter account. These online outlets fill in some of the gaps in my memory banks. I scan Facebook daily now, beginning with my home page.

  Some of my own posts are foreign to me: my family on an outing to the shore, Colin and Josh laughing as Katie tries to wrap her mouth around the famous triple-decker lobster roll; Katie receiving an award at the end-of-the-year high school banquet, smiling into the camera as she clutches a gold trophy announcing her prowess in creative writing. Some images are familiar—cheers for a job well done, posted by Valerie when I landed the SoundStage account; a picture of my smiling son, flanked by Lola and her daughter at Mimi’s after his successful haircut, posted by me. Regular updates from a page called CP Parents, on which people share stories, concerns, and questions about their lives with children who have cerebral palsy.

  At some point I liked this page, although I have no recollection of doing so. I’ve never been the kind of woman who reaches out to strangers or discloses my personal challenges to a faceless, nodding crowd. From the looks of things, I don’t post regularly on CP Parents, but I like other parents’ posts.

  One night, when the house is quiet and Josh’s breathing wafts through the air in the family room, I read through the timeline of CP Parents. And I become the nodding crowd, covering my mouth with my hand when certain passages hit close to home: the struggles, the conflict, the endless battles. I’m surprised by the candor of these men and women. They admit to feelings of inadequacy, of resentment, of unendurable fatigue. I relate to them, but I’m not strong enough to admit to those emotions I consider flaws, those feelings I have but despise myself for having, not even anonymously on an open forum.

  On this same night, when I can’t read any more war stories from faceless CP families, I do something about which I have only fantasized up till now. I move the cursor to the search bar on the top of the Facebook page and type in two words.

  Dante Forgionne.

  There is only one match. Of course.

  I click on his timeline, and for the first time in twenty years, I am gazing at the beautiful face of my first, and perhaps only, true love.

  Dante’s sleek black hair, previously shaggy and unkempt, is now cropped short, but he counterbalances the lack of hair on his head with a scruffy beard, more salt than pepper. There are deep grooves at the corners of his sky-blue eyes, and I can tell these lines were etched through years of smiling and laughing. A prick of bitterness pokes at my chest. Laughter, smiles, joy, irreverence. Had Dante and I stayed together, I would not have my two children, but also, I would not carry that thing that happened, would not bear its burden like a sack of bricks. He has climbed mountains, Dante, and gone on safaris and helped to produce wells for peoples in third-world countries. He has jumped out of planes and cliff dived and bungee jumped and sampled exotic meals all over the globe.

  How could this man, whom I loved so desperately, have gone on to live such a happy life when, all the while, unbeknownst to him, his ex-lover went on to suffer tragedy and misery? The lines carved into my brow and forehead, only recently smoothed cosmetically, were forged not by laughter but by grief and supplication.

  I move the cursor to the box that indicates a friend request, for although my heart aches at the idea of our opposing outcomes, something deep within me wants to connect with this man again. And now that I have a respectable position, an enviable career (regardless of how I obtained it), I could reconnect with Dante with a sense of confidence and self-assurance. My finger hovers over the mouse, twitching and ready.

  On the baby monitor, I hear Josh stir. I move the cursor away from the friend r
equest box and close the Facebook window.

  Another day. Perhaps.

  “Maah?” The monitor crackles with Josh’s whispered voice.

  I shut down the computer and go to my son.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Friday, August 5

  During my trial phase, I didn’t think of Charlemagne at all, unless I happened to reread that first passage in my journal. And even at those times, the puppy, or the image of the puppy, was obscured by a gauzy film of surrealism, as though he only ever existed in my mind. And he did, didn’t he? Who is to say whether that reality, in which Charlemagne inhabited my neighbor’s home, is more real than the present? I’ve tried not to allow my thoughts to idle over this riddle.

  But on this unseasonably cool August morning, I make a detour into downtown on my way to work. I pull to the curb at a meter, the very same one I stopped at so many weeks, so many lifetimes ago.

  Several storefronts down, I spot Lettie Barnes unlocking the main door of her building. I crouch in my seat until she disappears inside the brownstone. I never called her back. I don’t want to see her. She will only confirm my insanity, and I no longer need that confirmation. I am well beyond that.

  I wait a few minutes, then I get out of my car and step onto the curb. I drop a quarter into the meter, then walk down the sidewalk toward Paw-Tastic Pets.

  Four weeks. Surely that adorable little creature has been adopted by some enthusiastic and optimistic family. I can just imagine a tribe of frenetic, energetic wee ones rolling around on a carpeted floor with Charlemagne/Charlie, offering their rosy cheeks to be kissed by that sandpaper tongue. They probably have named him something pedestrian like Fluffy or Duke. But they love him, even as their mother entertains second thoughts while she scrubs his urine out of the carpet.