Remind Me Again What Happened

by Joanna Luloff

  When I hand her the paper lately, she takes it as if it’s her punishment. She scowls at the headlines and contemplates her ink-stained fingers. All the while, she keeps her notebooks near her, and writes down the names of politicians, and documents a running list of conflicts, organized by region and then by country. She sits with her feet tucked up under her and a pen sucked between her teeth. She is still recognizable to me, even if she feels like a stranger to herself. She has sat like this, contorted and in deep concentration, for all the years I have known her. All her pens have bite marks on them. She has always worn trousers under her skirts so she can sit at any angle she wants. I point these things out to her, in the hope that the continuity, even if it comes only from my memories, will soothe her, but she seems to resent my knowledge of her. Who am I to tell her who she has been over time? This is our present tug-of-war; the line in the sand is our shared past, and each of us wants to tug the other across to see it our way. I admit that I do have the upper hand these days.

  She distrusts my answers, and yet she keeps asking these questions of me. Where was her last assignment? When did we last visit my parents? Where does her cousin Charlotte live these days? When did the two of us last go on vacation together? I come to her with proof in my hands: I give her the article about the fight over the Cauvery River in India, the first half of which was printed only weeks before she became ill. We have been over to see my parents only once, on the way home from our honeymoon. I show her the pictures; she is tan and I am sunburnt, and my parents smile awkwardly at the camera on its timer. Charlotte lives in Tucson these days; I hand her the Christmas card of her family, an infant whose name I forget and a small dog whose name I remember—Yapper. We have not gone on vacation together for a long, long time. My hands are empty; there are no pictures to offer her of broken plans. When she looks at me with that flash of impatience in her eyes, I want to tell her, You think I know all these things about you, Claire, but you have left me too much in the dark. I could make a long list that would rival the current events listed in your notebook of all the ways you have kept me ignorant of what was really going on in your life.

  The doctors tell us to be patient, because little bubbles of memory may rise to the surface. The brain is mysterious and unpredictable, they say. They warn us that we shouldn’t count on Claire’s filling the black hole completely, but that we should keep trying. Claire keeps her journal and I answer questions. I have questions of my own, but I keep them to myself. I learned a long time ago what a coward I am. There have been so many times I would have liked to punish her, but now I wait for her to remember the slights and the deceit and the silences. I wait, for now, to see if she might feel a greater responsibility to me the second time around.

  Perhaps because I have always let Claire direct things in our lives, I am not very good at being in charge, now that she is back home with me. Even when she still lived here, her daily calendar was always scribbled full of notes for conference calls, lunch dates, visits to UVM’s library, and interviews with scholars in residence. I don’t recognize the old Claire in this new version, confined to a chair, half-read books with broken spines spilled at her feet. She waits for me to tell her what the day’s plan is, looks deflated when I tell her that we haven’t much scheduled but that we could go for a quick stroll through the woods if she’s up for it. We could meet Rachel in town, where she is finishing some edits on a textbook. On a daily basis, I thank God for Rachel. Without her, Claire and I would have strangled one another weeks ago. She is a quiet, patient presence around here, and I try to model myself on her kindness as much as I can. When she takes her rental car into town, as she does from time to time, I have to swallow my panic.

  Our days revolve around Claire’s pills. We mark time by her medicine box, two pills before breakfast, one midmorning, two more during lunch, in midafternoon, at dinner, and before bed, and suddenly the day is over without much to speak for it. I have limited my time at the paper to two days a week for now, but I think for all our sanities, I should increase it to three as soon as possible.

  Our trips to the hospital break up some of the monotony. She has visits with physical therapists, occupational therapists, neurologists. I used to accompany her at these visits, but they are too depressing for me and too embarrassing for Claire. I used to try to protect Claire from whatever shame she might have been feeling as I watched her fight against elastic resistance to strengthen her atrophied muscles. Or when the neurologist asked her to walk in a straight line, toe-to-toe, as if she were a drunken teenager meeting the demands of the police officer who had pulled her over to the side of the road. The doctor would then ask her to list the names of the presidents from the present back through the past, and there was that black hole that spread open wide again, swallowing Bill Clinton and the first Bush and, lucky for her, Ronald Reagan. But now I retreat to the waiting room or take a walk to the nearby café to wait out her appointments. My presence seems to be a constant nuisance to her.

  In the early visits, when pushed, she would occasionally catch a spark of memory, describe the argument her parents had over whether to vote for Jimmy Carter or the Independent candidate, Anderson, and how her mother blamed her father and people like him who voted for Anderson, and who, as far as her mother was concerned, were responsible for Reagan’s taking over our sad, frightened country. She would tell me these things after her visits, her energy reawakened by the doctor’s questions, until I forced her to lie down for an afternoon rest, which the doctors all urged on her, at least for the next few months. She swallowed her pills dutifully and always thanked me with careful politeness. “Thank you for taking such good care of me, Charlie,” she whispered just the other day. Was there sarcasm in her voice, or have I just conditioned myself to detect it in our conversations?

  “Don’t be silly, Claire,” I answered. I looked at her face for any kind of clue to what she was truly feeling.

  “Dr. Stuart thinks my motor skills are improving.”

  She rested her water glass on the table and all I could see were the little tremors coursing through her fingers. I nodded.

  “What do you think, Charlie? Do you think they might let me drive again soon?” Her eyes held my gaze. She was—is—so striking. Eyes that change color in the light, set far apart from each other. A slightly too-big nose. The softest fuzz along her earlobes. Crooked bottom teeth. Looking at her makes me want to weep. Or shout something awful.

  I sat on the bed beside her. I hated this feeling, of somehow being the gatekeeper to her independence, even if it really was the doctors determining when certain freedoms could be offered again. “Let’s just hope the seizures keep themselves at bay, and perhaps, yes, soon, we will know more about driving.” A catalog was developing in my mind, of all the other things Claire hadn’t mentioned, things that had always been important to her, things now forbidden. Swimming. Cycling. Long-distance travel. Bourbon with ginger ale. Late nights of animated discussions. Did she even remember any of these things enough to miss them? I must have been silent a long time.

  “You can’t keep me trapped here forever, Charlie,” she said. I think she was joking. “I’ll find a way to escape even if they don’t give me my driver’s license back.”

  “And where shall you escape to?” I asked, not quite joking myself.

  “How about first to Rachel’s—I will steal her away with me—and then who knows from there. You’ll have to come hunting for us. It will be like a game. Perhaps we will leave clues, or perhaps you will have to find clues on your own.” Claire laughed. She had no idea what she was saying to me. I patted the bed and turned off the light and held my tongue as usual.

  Last week, after her fall, when I managed to calm myself enough to bring her evening meds and a cup of tea, she asked me why all her things were packed up in boxes. She didn’t turn away from the computer when she asked this. A forlorn-looking horse was eyeing her from the screen, and I was struck by his relentless gaze. “What is he standing in?” I asked as
I bent closer to the image. Claire smelled metallic, of dried sweat and iodine.

  “A water basin, I think. It was empty. Do you think I embarrassed him?”

  “He does look a bit accusatory in this shot, now that you mention it.”

  “That’s what I thought too!” Claire laughed at the horse. “I think I humiliated him. Somehow it would have been okay if there had been water in the basin, don’t you think?” She turned to me. “That way, it might have looked as if he was trying to cool himself off. But with its emptiness, he looks as if I caught him in a clumsy mistake.” She turned back to the photo. “If only I could have explained to him how embarrassed I was too, unsure of my way to town.”

  I put the tea on the desk and placed my hand on the back of Claire’s neck. She was warm and I worried that she might have caught a chill in the time it took Mrs. Culver to find her. “You feeling all right? You seem a bit feverish.”

  “I’m fine.” She put her hand on top of mine and patted it once before peeling it away. She swiveled in her chair. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her face had grown so thin over the past weeks. “You didn’t answer my question, Charlie. What’s with the boxes?”

  Sometimes, in these days since Claire left the hospital, she will get a knowing look in her eyes. I can’t explain it exactly—just a small glint of teasing or mischief that will set me off, wondering all over again if she might be pretending, if she has built up a secure wall of innocent ignorance, of emptiness, and she has been fooling us all. And there, in front of the computer, the look had appeared again, a flicker of awareness that she was putting me in an awkward position. She was forcing me to answer a question I didn’t want to confront, or, worse yet, perhaps she was making me tell her a truth she already knew, a truth she had in fact created.

  “They hold your things,” I answered blankly. “You and Rachel labeled them yourself, so you should know.”

  “I know that, Charlie. What I mean is, why are all my things packed away in the garage?”

  “Part of a spring-cleaning frenzy,” I said, lying. “Anything that hadn’t been used or looked at in over a year went into a box. That was the decision.”

  “Yours or ours?” There was that smirk again.

  “I believe it was your decision, Claire,” I said. I looked into her face for some kind of reaction, but she just wrinkled her nose and shrugged. I sat down in the other desk chair and watched the back of her neck as she returned her gaze to the computer.

  The doctors have urged us to keep Claire as calm as possible, to keep her in familiar settings, to keep company to a minimum, to keep her from troubling thoughts or confusion. She should be stable, they have told us. The medicines will help. But she has brain damage, they remind us, as if we are small children. Returned swelling is a danger; she should remain as still as possible for now. They have no sense of what an impossible task this will be for us. Claire has no familiar setting. She was always off and away, two weeks in India, followed by three in Iraq, followed by a few days in Turkey. She had taken a position at the Globe’s South Asia desk two years ago, and for her few trips back to the States she had rented a studio apartment in Manhattan rather than choosing to return to our home. It was just too much of a hassle, traveling all that way north, she’d say by way of explanation or complaint, depending on her mood. She’d insist that I come to her, and when I protested and reminded her that I couldn’t leave my job at the drop of a hat, she’d say, “Suit yourself,” and a few days later, she’d be off again into a distant time zone, starting her day as I’d be drifting off to sleep.

  The doctors insist that Claire can’t be alone, so the closest thing she has to a familiar setting, her studio, is out of the question. I’ve thought about subletting it—Claire probably wouldn’t know the difference—but it feels like a trespass all the same. All her former possessions and autonomy are now in my hands: her apartment key, her mailbox key, her bills and doctors’ appointments and medicine vials. Her work folders and office files—her editor has sent all these things here and I have stashed them in the garage. I could go hunting if I chose to, search out the silences that have built up between us over the years, the smaller and larger lies, but for now, I’m waiting. As I said, I’m a coward.

  “Doesn’t seem like something I would do, put all my things in boxes. Rachel tells me I’ve always been horribly messy. That you and she were always cleaning up after me. She said you both used to complain about it, but you didn’t really mind because I was the one who used to do most of the cooking and plan the parties and instigate late-night drinking games around movie trivia.” She pointed to her notebook and tapped it with her finger. “Rachel says that you would have been bored out of your minds without me around, so you didn’t mind scrubbing the dishes or dealing with the laundry.” She turns the chair and smiles at me. “Looks like I’m providing entertainment for the two of you again.”

  And for the hundredth time that day, I tried and failed to smile at her in return.

  “Charlie, please.” Claire nudged me in the side. “The boxes? Were you kicking me out or something?”

  “That’s an interesting theory.” I imagine my smile looked more like a grimace. “You hadn’t been home for a while.” It was all I could muster.

  “Where is all my stuff, then? Where have I been?”

  “An excellent question.” I was still good at sarcasm when I wanted to be. But Claire’s mischievous expression had faded away and I immediately felt guilty. “Do you remember your apartment in New York? I was talking with you about it a week or so ago? You kept most of your things there so you could grab them between assignments.”

  “Why couldn’t I just come back here?”

  “It was more convenient for you to stay in New York. Your editors were there, the main office, and your colleagues.” This was too much for me. Claire’s old explanations coming out of my mouth so that I could try to make her feel better for never returning to me.

  Claire nodded her head, but I could tell she was drifting into confusion. Perhaps it was lucky for us both that she looked so momentarily helpless and lost in the absence of her own memories.

  I leaned over her and turned the monitor off. “You look tired, Claire. We can talk about this more tomorrow, if you’d like. Do you think you might be ready for bed?” I never imagined that I would ever address Claire as if she were a child. I waited for a look of scorn or a roll of the eyes or anything that could point out our shared embarrassment and throw us back into our own flawed version of equilibrium.

  But instead, Claire wrote something in her notebook and then held out her arm to me. “All right,” she said. “You coming along too?”

  “I’ll help you get settled and then I’ll join you a bit later, after I finish up some work.”

  “I know you and Rachel stay up late, playing cards and gossiping about me over several glasses of wine. I’m jealous.” Claire leaned her body against mine as we shuffled to the bedroom. She stepped out of her clothes and left them in a bundle by her feet. She has never been good at putting her things away at the end of the day. She creates piles wherever she goes. When we first moved in together, I grew used to the mountains of discarded outfits that would build and build in the corners of our bedroom. And finally one day she would open her bureau drawer or stand in front of the closet, sigh into the emptiness, and then methodically fold and straighten and hang all the clothes from her piles, only to start the process all over again. She baffled me, even then, and I was amazed at the differences between us as much as I was awed by the desire that drew me toward her.

  But now I can’t even get used to her in my bed, the bent angles of her body taking up the space where I am accustomed to sprawling. She’s right: most nights, Rachel and I stay up beyond midnight at the kitchen table. I always let Claire fall asleep before me, and when I return and watch her there in my bed, I feel like running away. Instead I grab my pillow and the flannel blanket and head for the downstairs couch. I wake before her, and when she app
roaches me in the morning, still bleary, and asks when I finally came to bed, I tell her that I slipped in after midnight and that she had been sound asleep. Over the years, I have become quite good at lying too.

  That night, after her fall, I stood there, watching her uncertain presence as she stood in the center of our room, her clothes at her feet, and contemplated how shrunken she had become, her belly dimpled and her socks scrunched down at her heels. I tossed her one of my old T-shirts, and as she put it on and her breasts disappeared under the BU letters, I wondered if we might ever desire one another again. These days, she looks at me with curiosity when I get out of the shower or change my clothes, but I don’t sense any longing in her eyes. And as for me, I am still too twisted up with old angers and hurts. More than anything, I want her to really remember me, to encounter me with a look of real familiarity and recognition, and perhaps even regret, and maybe then I will be able to approach her again and call her to me. My Claire.

  Rachel

  It has been over ten years since Claire, Charlie, and I lived together. After my parents died, the two of them swooped in and took charge and helped me put my life back together. I will always be grateful to them both for getting me upright again. It is not an exaggeration to say that they saved my life.

  When I returned to graduate school in Boston, my parents offered me the attic of their old brownstone to make into my own apartment. I argued with them about it, saying things like, I’m an adult now and need my own place. I needed my independence and my space. I was stubborn and ungrateful until I saw how far my stipend would go in the city, and then I reluctantly unpacked all my college things and moved into a bedroom one floor above the one I had grown up in. I was relieved and resentful at the same time, and I still feel haunted by my coldness to them when I first moved in.