“This is a little embarrassing,” I said, trying not to seem ungrateful and covering up how mortified I was. “But very thoughtful. Just a little too much ‘me,’ you know? I mean . . . this is a whole lot of me.”
“It’s time you rediscovered ‘me,’” Cat said. “You should do more for ‘me.’ This night is a ‘me’ fest, and on the menu, tonight’s special entrée is ‘me.’”
“We’re talking about this me, right?” I asked, pointing to myself.
“Unless you turn out to be boring,” she replied, kissing me on the cheek. “Then we’ll transition it to me at about ten-thirty.”
In no time, the entire place was filled with strangers, who were supposedly all very important to me at one point or another. I was surprised, and secretly pleased, by how many people came. My place was packed. Cat was pointing out the blown-up pictures to me, trying to jog my memory.
“Look at that one! Do you remember that? That was the summer of sixth grade. You were going away to summer abroad and you and your boyfriend at the time, Warren, slow danced to ‘New York, New York’ and you both cried! It was so sad!”
“Jeez,” I said. “Sad, all right. Young love, huh? Dramatic.”
“He’s here!” She beamed.
“Who?” I asked.
Cat pointed to a guy and started waving him over. “Warren!” she said. The years had not been good to poor Warren. He was overweight, had a receding hairline, was pretty dorky, and had a mouth full of food when he spotted Cat waving. He waved back and started to make his way over.
“Please don’t do this,” I said. But there he was.
“Hi, Warren,” Cat said.
“Hi,” said a barely audible Warren with his mouth full of food still not swallowed and crumbs all over his face and collar. “Hi, Jordan. You look terrific.”
“Thanks, so do you,” I fibbed.
“Do you remember him?” Cat asked, eyebrows raised. Nothing like putting the pressure on, Cat. I strained. Looked at him, long and hard. Which wasn’t easy because he was starting to drool. Thankfully his tongue darted out and he slurped it up. I shuddered.
“No. I don’t . . . think so. I’m sorry. I wish I could say I did. I was only saying, you know, how terrific he looks, not compared to before but just, compared to—to . . . nothing.”
“Actually,” Cat said, in a voice low enough that only I could hear, “in a direct comparison, ‘nothing’ might just come out on top.”
“That’s okay,” Warren said, and then leaned in and whispered loud enough so everyone could hear, “I fingered you the night before you went away.”
“You don’t say . . . ?” I managed to get out amid the shock and horror. He nodded a very self-satisfied nod, and I wanted a Jordan-sized section of my parquet wood floor to open up and swallow me.
“Good thing she ended up with amnesia, then,” Cat said to him, smiling broadly.
Luckily, or unluckily, my sister walked over.
“Hey,” Sam said. “These pictures are classic. Love the Domino’s uniform.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but I don’t look very happy somehow.” My hat was down, nearly over my eyes, and my arms were folded tightly across my chest.
“Jordan worked there one summer,” Sam said to Cat and anyone in listening range, “during the thirty-minutes-or-less campaign. I used to make crank calls from my friends’ houses and give her the wrong address, then my friend would wave her over from the next house and we’d get free pizza and she’d get in trouble.”
“How . . . mean,” I said. I know she said she’d been jealous of me, but this girl was a nightmare!
“It was all in good fun,” she said. “We were bulimic back then anyway, so there was no point in paying for food we were just going to throw up.”
“That’s horrible,” I said.
“Jordan was bulimic too,” Sam tossed out.
“I was?” I asked, surprised and saddened by the revelation.
“You were?” Cat said—tilting her head to the side, looking like she found that hard to believe, since she’d been around me practically since birth.
“Well, a failed bulimic,” Sam said with a laugh. “She had the eating part down but forgot to exercise or throw up.”
“I knew it wasn’t true,” Cat said. “You never change, Sam. Bless your little black heart.”
“I gotta go . . . check something,” I said. “Could you both excuse me, please?” And I made my way over to Todd in a hurry. He was standing next to an elderly woman and I couldn’t imagine how she fit into this picture.
“Hey, Jordy. Good turnout,” Todd said. “How are you doing?”
“Better now,” I said. “My sister isn’t the nicest person, is she?” I asked.
“She’s wretched,” he confirmed. Then we stood there, not saying anything for a little while.
“I met my sixth grade boyfriend,” I said.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Uh, plenty! But, no, I don’t remember him.”
“Well, I was just getting caught up with Ms. Oakmin, our fourth grade teacher,” he said. “Say hi.”
I felt a little like a child, the way everyone was parading me in front of people and telling me to “say hi.” I felt like any minute I was going to be asked to play “Heart and Soul” on the piano and then curtsy.
“You have grown so lively,” Ms. Oakmin said in a thick German accent, “such nice breasts.” This is the first thing she says to me after not seeing me since the fourth grade?
“I do?” I said, not knowing what the correct response to that would be. “I mean, okay. Thanks.”
“You used to be flat like ironing board,” she said.
“I was nine years old,” I said, and found myself crossing my arms in front of my chest. As if it all wasn’t humiliating enough without discussing my finally having grown some breasts with my fourth grade teacher?
“You were a very good writer. Do you write still? I hope you do.”
“She does write,” Todd said. “She’s brilliant.”
“Of course she is,” Mrs. Oakmin said.
Among the fifteen or so people they’d heroically assembled (heroic considering that the phrase “three’s a crowd” may have been coined in that very room) were other faces from the pictures. But I couldn’t recall a name or a single moment with any of them—I was the literal embodiment of shallow. It was getting to me. So I pushed my way past all of the strangers/close friends. Everyone was tugging at me and trying to get me to talk to them and I just wanted to be alone. Then I spotted Travis. God, he was cute. I wondered what his deal really was. Was he the terrible person that Dirk and my family described or was he the great guy that Cat described? Or both? Was I really two-timing Dirk? Did Travis know? Did they both know? These were questions that I felt I couldn’t ask anyone for fear of spilling the beans. Even though I didn’t know if there really were any beans. I found myself gravitating toward him anyway, imagining that if I got close enough I might start to understand what we had between us by a kind of relationship osmosis.
Then Travis walked up to me. “How you holdin’ up?”
“Do you think maybe you guys went a little overboard? I mean, sixth grade boyfriends? Fourth grade teachers? How far back are we going here?”
“You see that man over there?” Travis asked as he pointed to an older man in a tweed jacket and glasses.
“Yeah?”
“He delivered you.” He paused for effect. “I’m kidding.”
“None of these people are familiar to me,” I said.
“I’m sorry. I’d hoped this would help.” He looked around as if he was trying to think of something else that might trigger a memory. “Slide show?”
“Please, no!” We laughed. Now I felt more comfortable with him, more like he belonged among us.
Then Dirk walked over to us. I hadn’t seen him at all and wondered if he’d just arrived.
“There’s my beautiful girlfriend,” he said as he picked me up and twirled me around.
“And there’s my boyfriend,” I answered back at last, and it was so exhilarating being spun—or perhaps my equilibrium just got fouled up—that I fell against him and laughed when he released me. Discombobulated as I was, with my past moving all around and so little of it familiar, I felt a little tingle of happiness, the first unadulterated glee I could remember in those weeks of recovery. I wanted to let them know. And so I did.
Todd’s mouth fell open. Travis and Dirk looked at me too, and I thought I’d done something wrong. Then Dirk seemed to recover, but the other two didn’t.
“Isn’t she a sweet thing,” he said, encircling my waist to pull me close again. Then he cocked his head and his eyes grew wide. “‘Why do birds suddenly appear, every’—c’mon, you remember what I taught you—‘every time . . .’”
I did remember. A few nights before, he’d said we used to lie around singing to each other. And he’d rehearsed one of our favorites with me, because he said those were his favorite times in his life, and he didn’t care if I ever got my memory back—no, he almost hoped I didn’t—because we had all the time in the world to create new memories.
“‘Every time, you are near,’” I answered back in song, though I didn’t know the melody. And we sang together, probably not getting any closer than a mile or two to the melody: “‘Just like me, they want to be, close to you.’”
Travis’s mouth had joined Todd’s in the open position. I couldn’t tell whether they were impressed or what.
“I’m going to be sick, right here on this floor,” Todd said. (Or what, apparently.) He stuck his tongue far out and made a sour face. “I literally need a mint right now.” He stepped around Travis, one step closer to Dirk. “First of all, it’s ‘they long to be.’ If you’re going to fabricate a precious moment, at least get the fucking words right.”
Dirk also moved, squaring his shoulders to Todd. It was beginning to smell like trouble between them, and small as the space was, any odor quickly drew attention. A few heads turned over a few shoulders and drinks were suspended just short of lips.
“If you think I’m going to stand here while you try to brainwash Jordan into thinking you two were somehow close, that you’re now somehow joined at the . . . unhip, you’re an even bigger asshole than I gave you credit for.”
Now, Dirk had about four inches, forty pounds, and half a foot of chest circumference on Todd. But maybe Todd had the edge in crazy, because surely as I thought Dirk would haul off and throttle him, he only smiled.
“I’m here about Jordan, as I think most people are tonight,” Dirk said. “So I’m gonna let that slide. But don’t make the mistake of thinking you know better than we do where this road is taking us, because we’ve never been down it before, and you wouldn’t even know it if you had.”
That stopped everyone for a moment, as we searched one another’s faces for signs of comprehension. Todd was clearly overheated, but Travis said something to him I couldn’t hear and they looked back at Cat.
“C’mere. I wanna talk to you about something,” Dirk said close to my ear. He took my hand and dragged me away from Travis and Todd. I looked back at them, and I was struck not by Todd who had turned away, but by Travis, who now had the most heartbreaking look on his face. It was helpless and frustrated and just plain sad. Dirk saw me looking back and grabbed my chin. He planted a kiss on me and started to pull me into my bedroom, but then I felt another arm grabbing at me—more like a claw, attached to Cat.
“Jordy, I got it!” she said.
“What?” I asked.
“Your journal. You totally kept a journal.”
“Okay . . .” I said. “Where is it?”
“I never saw a journal,” Dirk said. “I cleaned the entire place—stem to stern.”
“Well she kept one . . . and it probably told the truth about you about a thousand times,” Cat hissed.
“Then I hope we find it,” he said earnestly, actually looking left and right.
“Cat,” I said, surprised by her freak-out. “Calm down, it’s okay. If there’s a journal, it’ll turn up.”
“I don’t think there is one, sweetie,” Dirk said.
“Yeah, because he probably burned it,” Cat spouted.
“Can you excuse us,” Dirk said, the picture of calm amid her accusations, and pulled me into the kitchen.
“Baby, I’m sorry about that,” he said.
“I don’t know why she hates you,” I said.
“I do,” he said. “Cat’s interest in undermining our relationship is selfish and sad. I didn’t want to tell you this because you’ve been friends for so long and I’d hate for you to lose a lifelong friend, but Cat . . . I’ve rejected her repeatedly.”
“You have?”
“You and I have been together a long time, baby. And in that time, she’s come on to me more times than I can even remember.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “That’s really surprising. She’s married . . . and pregnant!”
“She’s hardly the first married woman who’s tried, and I’m sure she won’t be the last. It’s not just sex she wants. She’s claimed to be in love with me. That she’d be better for me. That she’d leave her husband for me. But don’t worry. I could never love Cat. I love only you.”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling even more confused—if that was possible.
“But . . . speaking of loving only you, before we got interrupted, I was trying to steal you away to ask you something.”
“Shit,” I thought. He knew. He knew I’d been a cheating, lying, backstabbing girlfriend and he was going to ask me about Travis. I wasn’t going to lie. I’d be honest. I’d tell him what I knew—that Cat told me I was seeing him but that I hadn’t since the accident.
“Okay . . .” I steeled myself. “Shoot.”
“I think we should get married,” he said.
Not exactly what I was expecting.
I didn’t know what to do. Was that a proposal, or was he throwing out a topic for discussion? “I don’t have a ring yet, but I’ll get one. And that’s just a formality anyway. What matters is that we love each other and want to be together.”
“Wow,” I said, blown away. “Wow. Wow.”
“I know,” he said. “You’re surprised. I am too. But it feels right.”
“But I don’t even have my memory back yet. I’m a wreck. I’d be a lousy bridge partner.”
“I don’t care. I know that I want you. I know you wanted me. We dated for two years and barely a day went by that you weren’t hinting for a ring on your finger.”
“Really?” I looked at my finger, trying hard to summon that feeling of naked-finger shame.
“Hell, yes! You were a one-woman Tiffany’s campaign.”
“At least I have good taste,” I said.
“Well, you picked me, didn’t you?” he said with a cocky smile. “Trust me. You were dying to get hitched.”
“I was, huh?”
“Big-time. So, fine, I give in,” he said, playfully twisting his arm behind his back. “Uncle. I wanna marry you too.”
“Are you sure?” I said.
“Of course I’m sure.” This was huge. I didn’t know what to do. Here was this guy telling me I loved him and wanted to marry him, and my family I’m sure would corroborate it all, but I didn’t even know who I was. I didn’t know what to do. If I said yes, then I guessed eventually my memory would come back and I’d be overjoyed and we’d live happily ever after. If I said no, then what if my memory came back but he’d already abandoned the pursuit out of bitter disappointment and I’d lost my one chance at happiness? I wondered if I could ask him just to hold off until I got my memory back. But that would seem insulting. Like I didn’t believe what he was telling me we had together. What if I said yes and my memory came back and I remembered that I really did like Travis? I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just say I’d marry this man. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know me.
“Okay,” I said. Getting ready to give him the spiel.
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br /> “Okay what?” he exclaimed. “You’ll marry me?”
“Well, you didn’t really ask, actually. You just said you thought we should.”
And then he got down on one knee. “Jordan Landau . . . will you marry me?”
“Yes,” I said.
I know. I said I wasn’t going to, but he was down on his knee. And he said that I wanted to. In that condition, my system didn’t recall how to generate an impulse like doubt.
“All right!” Dirk said and he put up a hand to high-five me. I obliged, and as his hand cracked into mine, I had the strangest sense—almost like vertigo—that I was watching him do this with someone else, not a solid object but a ghost or someone just out of frame in a photo, with Dirk dressed differently and seeming different, and the whole moment very unlike now.
Just then my mother walked over with a Hispanic man and woman. They were probably in their late forties, early fifties.
“Hi, Mrs. Landau,” Dirk said. “Or should I call you Mom?” Travis and Todd were standing within earshot and turned at this. “Jordan and I just got engaged!”
“Oh my God!” my mom yelled. “I knew it would happen!”
“Oh . . . my . . . God,” Travis and Todd said in unison.
“That’s wonderful,” my mom said and then hugged us both.
“Jordan,” Travis said, “I think you should think about this before you give a final answer.”
“Why are you even here, dude?” Dirk asked.
“Why are you here?” my mom added.
“Because I love her,” Travis said.
My heart was pounding. Two men fighting over me. But it didn’t seem like me at all, and I didn’t remember either of them. It was confusing as hell.
“Not sure she’s into bigamy,” Dirk said to Travis.
“What?” I asked.
“Your loverboy here is married,” Dirk said.
“He is?” I asked. “You are?” I said directly to him.
“Yes, Jordan,” my mom said. “He is. We found that out at the deposition.”
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