by Hugh Breakey
We turned to the bags she’d brought over, and the prospect of breakfast. ‘Those are for me. I’m cooking us omelettes again.’ Then she gestured towards the other plastic bags, while fishing around in her handbag. ‘Those are for you. You’re doing lunch.’ She produced a small battered notebook. ‘Here.’
I took it from her. No title, just a sturdy cloth cover, frayed at the corner and stained in several places. I flipped it open: a recipe book. My recipe book. The different pages discoloured with use and inked with different pens. The writing shifted from one recipe to the next, some printed carefully in blue pen, others scribbled in pencil, with cross-outs and edits. But each had the same handwriting. Mine.
I skimmed through page after page, my imagination firing so much it insisted it could create the memory of each one. It was a treasure to rival any of the mementoes. A user’s guide for my own self.
Julie smiled as she looked on. ‘I’ll look through it all later,’ I said. ‘Let’s get the groceries put away.’ The little piece of history took its place among the collection on the table.
‘What are those?’ Julie nodded at the mementoes as she sorted her groceries.
‘I thought you could tell me.’ Odd she hadn’t immediately recognised them. ‘They’re everything I have from the past—all the keepsakes from my life. The letter didn’t explain anything about them, so…’
Julie came over to the table. ‘I thought you’d lost everything from back then…’ She frowned as she studied my treasures. ‘What’s this stuff?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘I don’t recognise any of it.’ She turned the objects over. ‘It looks like someone walked into a gift shop and grabbed a handful of the first knick-knacks they saw. All except this.’ She picked up the key. ‘What’s this open?’
I shrugged. ‘No idea.’
‘It’s got a number on it.’ She smeared the grime away. ‘An apartment, maybe? It looks a bit big for a locker… maybe a post office box?’
‘Two eight nine.’ I’d memorised the number months ago, when the mementoes had loomed with great significance. In three days the proudly recalled number would be gone again. ‘We never had one of those? A PO box?’
‘No. This isn’t from our time together.’
‘From earlier then? Back before we met.’
‘We’ve been together seven years. Why would you hold on to some useless key?’ She ran her finger along it. ‘Besides, it’s not that old.’
‘It looks old.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s just dirty. Feel it. The teeth are sharp. It’s barely been used.’
Julie held the key out, and I ran my finger along its jagged edge. She was right.
She tossed it back with the other mementoes. ‘I don’t know. I guess it must have been important to your predecessor for some reason. But it’s not from any earlier. Not from our time.’
‘Maybe it was something you never knew about.’
She scoffed. ‘You’ve never been a secrets kind of guy. Anyway, you weren’t home when that forgetting struck. The third one, when we were separated. All you had was the clothes you were standing up in. You would have had no way of bringing things with you. I’m sorry, but if you want your history, it’s up here.’ She tapped her head. ‘And in here.’ She pointed to the recipe book. ‘Anything you want to know, just ask.’
Disappointed, I put the mementoes back into their box. I couldn’t think of any reason Julie would lie to me. Yet the letter described them as precious pieces of my history. It made no sense. I shunted the box back to its place in the bench of cartons.
Julie started on the omelette. I offered her a coffee.
‘You don’t have coffee.’
I gave her a look.
‘Oh. In that case, white with two.’
Soon enough the smells and sounds of cooking filled the kitchen. It was kind of fun. We ate breakfast and drank our coffee as I leafed further through the recipe book. Julie had a story about every recipe. The pages were stained with use and life. A real prize.
I cleaned up the plates after breakfast with Julie’s help. As she passed me her coffee cup, her other hand reached up to hold the top of my arm. The movement looked effortless and instinctual. It felt supportive, not sensual. ‘You know, I’m—’ She smiled, shaking her head. ‘I just meant to say I’m glad you’re here, and okay.’ She dropped her hand. ‘I got this panicked feeling yesterday on my way home that the forgetting had struck you on your way up the stairs. I wanted to call and check you were okay. You should never have gone out by yourself so close to the date. It’s a medical condition, not a program. You can’t be sure when it’s going to strike.’
‘I protect myself. I take a letter to myself and a map with me everywhere I go.’
‘Good.’ She smiled, approving. ‘That’s smart.’ Coming from Julie, that was perhaps the ultimate compliment. ‘Well, you won’t have to worry about that in the future. Once we’re back together I’m planning to use industrial staples to join us permanently at the hip.’
I shook my head as I wiped my soapy hands on a tea towel. ‘Do you joke about everything?’
‘Sorry.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I once knew a guy who loved my sense of humour.’
‘I know we’re spending the day as husband and wife.’ I hesitated, not sure of how the words were going to come out. ‘I’m just not sure what exactly that means in terms of—’ My voice trailed off, spluttering into a silence.
Julie frowned. We still stood a little too close. Realisation dawned, and she backed away. ‘Oh. You mean…?’ Her turn to avoid mentioning the unmentionable.
‘Right.’ Then it occurred to me she might be thinking I meant something else. ‘Oh, not, you know, that,’ I hastened to assure her. ‘I just meant the way you’d see couples out in public when they’re…holding hands, whatever.’ Conversations about sex with parents were less awkward.
We both started speaking at once.
‘I hadn’t actually meant in any—’ she began.
‘It’s just you’d said how I needed to make an honest effort—’ I said.
‘—physical sense. Not that I meant to rule it out. Or in. I mean—’
‘—and of course I want to make the effort because you’re right that I’d only be cheating myself if I didn’t try but—’
Our babble stumbled to a halt.
The subsequent silence managed to be more excruciating than the prattle it replaced.
‘Wow,’ Julie said. ‘I think between us we’ve managed to totally purge any possible spontaneity from—’
I kissed her, leaning forward and tilting my head to enter her space. For an exquisite moment her lips responded with the mix of life and desire from the last time I’d kissed her. But I felt her melting back. Her lips left mine and she stepped away.
What had I done?
‘O-kay,’ Julie said. ‘First, that was the nicest weird awkward kiss I’ve ever had. Second, that was weird and awkward. When I said we should be open, I didn’t mean we had to…’ Her eyes looked up at me with a newfound vulnerability. And her vulnerability made sense. After all, how could she really know for sure if I was being open and keeping my promise? Come to that, how could I really tell if I was being open and keeping my promise?
‘What is it?’ asked Julie.
Total honesty. I could do this.
‘Come with me.’ I reached out to take her hand. No hesitation this time.
I led her into the dominoes room, and over the stepping stones until we arrived at one of the two incomplete platforms. Only about a quarter-filled with dominoes, it sat a fair way from the ground, but not too high for my purpose. Hand in hand, we stood before it. With my free hand, I reached out and plinked a domino on the outside corner. In a flash, the adjacent tiles started falling.
Julie stiffened, her fingers clenching against mine as the chain reaction accelerated. ‘What are you doing?’
The platform had only one bridge spanning from it. I plucked out a couple
of standing dominoes and the racing cascade came to a stop almost as soon as they’d started. The whole thing was over within seconds. When dominoes fell, they fell fast.
‘This platform’s yours.’ I turned to Julie. ‘You set them up.’
‘What? No.’ She backed away, her feet feeling for the nearest foothold behind her. ‘I’d just muck it up. It would interfere with everything you’ve done. Like you said. The flow and the timing.’
I shook my head. ‘This is where it begins. You can do this platform however you want. Once it leaves this bridge, then it will be all mine.’
‘It’s meant to be all yours. You said that yesterday about the dominoes. That it’s meant to show you who you are and what you’ve done.’
I nodded. ‘Who I was, what I did, and what I wanted. And I want this.’
‘What if we do it together? The two of us.’ Trust Julie to come up with a strategic compromise.
‘Done.’
We worked almost until lunch. Julie took the design seriously, quizzing me about different types of arrangements, and the speed and rhythm of their fall. Piece by piece the platform came together. If she had any continuing concerns, they faded away as we built together. We worked side by side, shoulders and hands occasionally bumping off one another. It felt comfortable. Happy even. Perhaps this was what she meant about showing me what it was like when we were together.
The tables turned as we moved back into the kitchen. Julie had suggested that I make lunch, and I was curious to attempt something from one of my old recipes. So now it became my turn to stumble through an unfamiliar job, with her occasional guidance. I didn’t have ingredients for many of the recipes. Julie had just brought over what she could. But she insisted it didn’t matter, and I should just improvise. That was how I used to do it, apparently.
I struggled to settle on one or another recipe. The book itself was too exciting. More than the journal, it felt like a living document. A how-to guide for survival. Or better yet, for living. Page by page, it reached back through time to forgotten skills and knowledge.
In the end, I opted for a stir-fry. Julie had brought over most of the ingredients, and the method seemed straightforward. The smells and sounds of cooking soon filled the kitchen. My hands and eyes seemed to half-remember how to cut and measure—islands of memory that had survived unnoticed when the forgetting swamped my mind—but much of my expertise was gone. At the start of cooking I let the oil overheat and Julie had to throw open all the windows to blow the smoke away.
‘Not to worry,’ she said with a grin. ‘The fire brigade knows the address.’
By the time the meal was ready, the kitchen had become sticky with sweat and steam and smoke. We ate on the balcony. The breeze was hot, but dry. Julie sat in her normal spot in the sun. The stir-fry didn’t taste too bad, since I’d tossed out the burnt oil and started again, and Julie seemed happy enough. I suppose she’d been on the receiving end of better cooking efforts on my part, though.
After we finished, Julie stayed out on the balcony to smoke while I cleaned up the kitchen. In all the bustle of cooking, the envelope on the bench had been half-buried. I brushed it off and put it back in clear view.
When Julie came in, I suggested a walk down to the river. Even though I was in charge of the day, it didn’t feel right to just ask Julie to work inside with me on my project the whole time.
I pulled on my sneakers while Julie stepped into her thongs. Outside the sun was high and hot but the air freshened as we approached the river, and a few scudding clouds provided some relief.
Julie walked beside me. Her shorter steps should have had to almost double-time it to keep up. But instinctively my steps slowed and shortened. That was not the only instinct flickering back to life. Julie’s hand almost brushed mine as we walked. My fingers itched to take it. How many miles had I walked beside her over the course of my life? And how often in those miles had I reached out and scooped her hand into mine?
For all I knew, Julie’s hand felt the same itch.
Soon we arrived at the river. The water glistened in the sunlight, transforming the day’s belting heat into a thousand sparkles. A green lawn sloped down to the rock wall at the water’s edge, almost deserted, with few people around on a Thursday after lunch. A large fig tree offered some shade, and we sat down on the grass.
We must have looked for all the world like any other young couple enjoying each other’s company. For a while, we sat in silence, enjoying the view and the breeze. Then Julie picked up her phone, plugged one earbud in her ear, and offered me the other. The music drove into my head, not tinny—as it sounded from a distance through those tiny speakers. Injected directly into the head, the music sounded rich and full.
Julie muttered something. A band name. I nodded. For once I didn’t have to wonder if it was the sort of thing I should pretend to know. There were some benefits, at least, in being with a person who knew my secrets.
My foot started tapping along. Maybe it was the peacefulness of the water curving around us on its way out to the ocean, or the feel of the grass under my body and the shade on my face, but the music felt less intimidating than the time Julie had played it on her birthday.
Correction: not her real birthday.
Julie lounged back on the grass, looking out across the water, her chest rising and falling in rhythm with her breath. She had to lie close because of the earbud cord connecting us. We weren’t touching, but I could feel all the places where we almost were. I took a deep breath. It was one thing to try to be open. Quite another to be in thrall. No wonder Julie seemed so confident she would convert me.
She took out a cigarette. ‘I’d thought I wouldn’t like the heat, coming up here into the summer.’ She smiled. ‘But it’s not so bad.’
‘Was this what it was like? The two of us, together?’
‘Less close calls with fire alarms, as I recall.’ She turned to look at me. ‘Those days aren’t gone. No matter what happens, we’re always just a moment away from happiness. Look at us now. We’re like we were on Monday, happy and together. You’ll see. In no time, we’d be back squabbling like a married couple.’
Like we were on Monday? I smiled, but inside her words stung. Today I was aware and in control; back then I’d been her dupe. The two states were not comparable.
‘I never asked you how you got the delivery job.’
‘It wasn’t my first choice.’ Julie leaned back to rest on her elbows, her voice a little louder than usual, speaking over the music. ‘My first plan was to get an apartment on your floor, or at least in your building. But there weren’t any vacancies. I was scoping that out when I noticed your deliveries coming in every few days.’ She turned to look at me. ‘This wasn’t Frank’s fault at all.’
‘You mean Mr Lester?’ For some reason, it bugged me that she used his first name.
‘Yeah. He just wanted to do the right thing. None of this is on him.’
‘You got him to let you do his job? How?’
She shrugged. ‘The truth.’
I must have looked sceptical, because she sat up and folded her arms defensively. ‘I don’t know why that’s so hard to believe. If the situation becomes desperate enough, I’m altogether capable of resorting to honesty.’
A snort of laughter almost escaped me, but I pushed it down.
Julie glared at me. ‘You will ultimately succumb to my sense of humour, you know. I have history on my side.’
I kept my lips pressed shut.
‘Once Frank realised we were still married, and saw how much I wanted to get you back, he decided to help. He’s old-school Catholic, so he took the marriage thing seriously. Also, he cares about you.’ She smiled grimly. ‘As it panned out, I had a lot more success convincing him we belonged together than convincing you. Once he was willing, I explained what I wanted and how it would all work. He’s not on holidays, of course. He’s servicing his other customers as normal.’
‘But it wasn’t just me. You knew Mrs Davis, too. Th
e lady from the second floor. You had other deliveries.’
‘Well, I had to take over the other two deliveries in your apartment block.’ Julie shrugged. ‘The jig would have been up if you’d seen him delivering to someone else while he was meant to be off on holiday.’
I stayed silent. The whole thing was beyond anything I could imagine. ‘What did you plan to do next? If I hadn’t panicked and kicked you out last Monday?’
‘I don’t know.’ She lounged back on the grass. ‘I just wanted to make you like me again. For you to remember how it felt when we were together. I hadn’t thought much beyond that.’
‘Here I was thinking you had every piece of this planned. You’ll lose your reputation for deviousness.’
A smile tugged at the corners of her lips. She rested back on the grass, knitting her hands behind her head. The movement stretched the old T-shirt tight across her body, making it clear the Saturday morning couch ensemble did not include a bra.
I wrenched my eyes away, angry at the sudden rush of desire.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘people always talk as if Machiavelli was this evil guy. But he wasn’t. He just wanted peace for his country. He was devious, but not for himself. For the greater good.’ Her eyelids flickered, almost closing.
‘I guess if I had fallen for you, and asked you to stay in my life, there would have been no need to bring up the history at all. You wouldn’t have had to go through any of this.’
‘We would have been together.’
Heat burned my cheeks. ‘Why dredge up the history so long as you’ve saved the future?’
There was a moment of silence, and then her eyes flashed open, suddenly suspicious. She flicked the earphone out of her ear. ‘Where are you going with this?’
‘You weren’t planning to tell me. If I’d fallen for you, and hadn’t pushed you away, you’d never have had to reveal the truth. Not until after the forgetting, when you could tell me whatever you wanted.’
She twisted to sit cross-legged, her eyes fixed on me. ‘And you never would have got to choose.’
I met her gaze in silence.
‘I know what it’s like to forget. And to hate those parts of you getting torn away.’ She tapped out a cigarette and lit it. ‘It didn’t happen at first, not until after I found you up here last time, all angry and scared. After that, it seemed like some part of my mind decided it was just too painful to live with all those happy memories. They started disappearing, like in some sort of unconscious self-defence. All these events I knew had happened, but stripped from my memory. Just gone.’ She shifted her weight, until she sat on her knees before me. ‘So I started to look over all the photos, every night, curled up with my head on your jacket. To keep the memories alive.’