The reminders, p.18
The Reminders, page 18
I tell Felicia to send the paperwork to our family e-mail address. I say good-bye and I’m about to go on the computer to get Felicia’s e-mail, but just as I’m hanging up, Dad walks into the kitchen. I’m worried that he heard me on the phone, but probably not, because he hasn’t had his coffee, which means he’s not totally awake yet.
“I thought you’d be working today,” I say.
“I’m going in late.”
“Where’s Mom?”
“She had to run out.” He pours a big glass of water and drinks all of it. “Have you had breakfast?”
“No.”
“How about crepes?”
I miss Dad making breakfast, but I can’t stick around. “No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”
I try to leave the room.
“Joan,” he says. “Sit down.”
It takes Dad almost twenty minutes to get breakfast ready, because he’s still waking up and also because he takes his crepe-making very seriously. He fills my crepe with Nutella and strawberries that he cuts paper-thin. Then he folds the whole thing up, sprinkles powdered sugar on top, and puts it in front of me. Before he’s had a chance to sit down at the table with his own crepe, I’m already halfway done with mine, that’s how good it is.
“So,” he says, putting down his coffee mug and cutting his crepe with the side of his fork. “Are you going to tell me what you were doing in the studio last night?”
I didn’t plan to, but I fell asleep in the Quiet Room. Dad and Gavin just kept talking and I was too scared to leave the vocal booth. Then somebody said my name and the door pushed open and Dad carried me to my room and covered me with a blanket. When I opened my eyes, my journal was waiting on my nightstand.
“Writing in my journal,” I answer.
“Why down there?”
“I like it there.”
He stops chewing his crepe, which is filled with yucky bananas and some type of gooey cheese. “I know you do.”
He watches the table and I watch too, thinking there might be something to see, but the movie he’s watching is playing only in his head. I know how that is.
“When I was your age,” Dad says, “Uncle Nick and I asked Grandpa to make us a tree house. He wanted us to build it ourselves. He did most of the work, but we had our hands on the tools. We held the wood in place. We felt like we were building it. At the end, we had this thing that we helped make. We could put our hands on it, touch it. You don’t get that from a song. It exists in the ether.”
“What’s the ether?”
“The air. You can’t see it. It’s mostly in our minds. Music involves a lot of faith.”
Memories are that way too. That’s why I like keeping a journal. It makes all my memories feel more real.
Dad’s arm is resting on the table and his Monkey Finger tattoo is staring right at me. “I like it better when you’re home,” I say.
He takes his thumb and wipes Nutella off my cheek. Even after the Nutella is gone, he keeps staring. “I know it’s hard, Joanie. It’s hard for me too. But when you go back to school in September, you won’t even notice I’m gone.”
But that’s not true.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013: I walk in the front door after school and I drop my book bag on the floor and grab an apple out of the fridge and I walk down to the studio and Dad is at his computer. I grab the Gibson off the rack and I start playing and Dad is working and I’m working too and we’re not even talking to each other but it’s perfect.
That school day is pretty much like every other school day, except the songs are different and our clothes are different and sometimes it’s a nectarine in my hand and not an apple and sometimes I’m not even playing music because I’m doing my homework instead, but I’m still down in the studio with Dad.
And now Mom comes through the front door wearing her sunglasses. I look at her hands, thinking she might have gone food shopping or maybe she got her nails painted at the salon. But her hands are empty and her nails look dull and clear. She’s not even carrying her purse, which is weird, and her hair is up in a ponytail, which is even weirder. Mom hates her ears, so she puts her hair up only if she’s really hot, like when she’s exercising. But right now she’s in her normal clothes, not her workout clothes.
“Where were you?” I ask.
“I went for a walk,” Mom says, which for her is even weirder than not having her purse or wearing her hair in a ponytail. “Is Gavin still sleeping?”
“I think so,” Dad says.
Mom opens the studio door and heads downstairs.
Dad and I watch her go and then Dad turns to me in his chair and reaches out his arms. “Come here.” He pulls me in and the hug makes me feel even worse because it only reminds me how happy I am when he’s around. Sometimes I forget things too.
“I’m sorry about the whole Mindy Love thing,” Dad says into my ear. “I’m just trying to do what’s right for you.”
I’m trying to do what’s right for me too. And while I’m doing that, I’m also trying to do what’s right for him.
26
In the dark, a familiar voice calls to me, whispers my name. I lift my head, open my eyes, squint against the light. A figure stands in the doorway. I wonder, for just a moment, if it might be him. Have I finally woken up from this long nightmare?
“You awake?” the figure says.
It’s not Sydney. Of course, it’s not Sydney. It’s Paige.
I drop my heavy head back to the pillow. “Yeah,” I answer.
“Get up. Get dressed.”
“That may take a while.”
“Please,” Paige says. “We need to talk.”
She leaves and shuts my door.
“This was his favorite spot,” Paige says.
We’re in Riverview Park, just a few blocks from the Sully house. We’re seated on a concrete foundation that used to be the floor of a gazebo. According to Paige, the gazebo’s top blew off during last year’s superstorm.
“I don’t think he thought much of the neighborhood,” Paige says, “but he loved the view from up here.”
Our legs dangle off the side of the foundation, our eyes forward. The concrete is warm under our thighs. Out ahead, a blinding sun rises up over Manhattan.
“There’s something I haven’t told you,” she says.
My heart revs up, adrenaline focusing my mind. I had wondered, after some of the things Ollie said to me last night about Paige’s uncanny recall, if it was possible she knew more than she was letting on.
“I didn’t think it would do you any good. But I see now you’re never going to let it go and I don’t blame you. If what you were saying yesterday is true, then Sydney was keeping things from me too.”
I didn’t want to be right about this. I desperately wanted to be wrong.
“Did you know Sydney asked me for my eggs?” Paige says.
“No.”
“A few weeks before he visited in January, he called me up and sprang it on me. I didn’t know what to say. I told him I’d think about it and get back to him.” She pauses. “I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the response he was hoping for.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Why would he ask you? We were going to use my sister. That was the plan.”
“I know,” Paige says, staring ahead. “But that plan didn’t work out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Syd reached out to Veronica on his own.”
“What? When did this happen?”
“Around New Year’s.”
I think back to that night in December, how frustrated Syd was with me for wanting to put the brakes on parenthood.
“Veronica said she’d be happy to do it,” Paige says. “But there was a problem. She had just started dating this guy and she thought it might go somewhere. The timing wasn’t right. Syd didn’t want to count on that relationship going sour, so he began working on a backup plan. I guess that started with me.”
I still can’t get past the first part. “I was the one who was supposed to ask my sister. I was going to.”
“He knew that,” Paige says, adopting a motherly tone. “He knew you’d come around eventually. But he also knew how involved the whole process would be. He wanted to get started while you were figuring out whatever you had to figure out.”
“It’s so patronizing.”
“No, it wasn’t like that. He didn’t want to rush you, that’s all. He wanted to give you the time you needed, but he also knew he couldn’t wait forever.”
Syd’s sense of urgency about the future had often felt obsessive and irrational. And yet the way Paige describes him makes him sound clairvoyant. It’s like he carried an hourglass in his pocket and knew exactly when his time would be up. In truth, it’s simply a matter of Syd’s fears being as influential for him as mine are for me. The difference being his fears propelled him forward while mine continue to hold me back.
“What does this have to do with all those trips he took to New York?” I ask.
“I’m not sure.” She stands up. I watch her pace around the concrete foundation. “What I’m about to say is just a theory, okay? It’s just a hunch. I didn’t want to tell you this from the start, because I’m not even sure it means anything.”
I stand up with her and cross my arms, bracing myself. “Go ahead.”
“When he visited in January, he never brought up what we spoke about, the possibility of using my eggs. I had been giving it a lot of thought. I was seriously considering it. But he was already on to the next thing.”
“Which was what?”
“Another woman. I didn’t know who she was, but he swore he felt a connection with her. I told him I didn’t think it was a good idea. You can’t go up to a woman, basically a stranger, and just ask her for her eggs. I told him he should go home and talk it over with you. I thought you guys would be better off going back to the agency and finding a donor that way. But I don’t think he was hearing me. We were right here, looking out at the city, just like we are now, and I swear I had this feeling like whatever I was saying just wasn’t sinking in.”
“What did he do?”
“I don’t know,” Paige says, letting out a long sigh. “Maybe nothing. I have no proof that anything came of it. But knowing Syd, he might have decided to go for it anyway. If he came back two more times and it wasn’t for work, then… I don’t know. Whatever it was, after I discouraged him, I guess he didn’t feel like confiding in me anymore. I’m sorry. I never meant to keep it from you.”
Syd hated the agency process. The large majority of egg donors prefer to remain anonymous and understandably so; they don’t want their offspring coming to find them later in life. But Syd couldn’t understand how we were supposed to make such an important life decision based on a list of stats and a couple of images. He insisted on “knowing” the person.
“Who was she?”
“Some kind of artist. That’s what he was showing me on the computer that morning. He wanted to know what I thought of her work.”
“Do you remember her name?”
“Yes,” Paige says, knowing full well what I’ll do with the information but unable to stop it now. “Marigold Hallowell.”
We return to the house and I assure Paige that I’m not angry. I understand. With Syd, if you refused to get on board, sometimes you got left behind.
She goes upstairs to the apartment and I head in through the studio, where—surprise, surprise—Joan is waiting for me on the couch.
I ask, “Have you ever heard the name Marigold Hallowell?”
“No,” Joan says. “So you’re babysitting me tomorrow morning, right?”
“I am?” I say, heading off to my bedroom.
Joan follows behind. “My mom says you guys talked about it last week.”
“Right. What about it?”
“I just wanted to double-check that you remembered. Are you sure you still want to go solo?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Joan.”
“I’d rather be a duo, but it seems like you’d rather go solo. I really have to know because I have a very important gig coming up.”
We’ve reached my door. My brain is worthless. I can barely keep up with my own thoughts, let alone hers. “I don’t know what you mean, Joan. What gig?”
“I can’t say. It’s a secret.”
I don’t have time for any more riddles, not now. I excuse myself as gently as I can and close my bedroom door. I’m about to do a search for the name Marigold Hallowell, but I never reach my phone.
I spot something on my dresser. It’s Sydney’s forest painting, the postcard version that I bought at the arts fair. It’s been here the whole time, right in front of me. I destroyed the original, but the painting somehow found a way back into my life. I didn’t know why at the time, but I see it now. How could I forget? The gift Sydney mentioned in his text message, the one he was supposedly bringing home from New York. I remember now. He didn’t actually have anything with him when he landed at LAX. It came in the mail about a week later. It was the forest painting. I had never heard of the artist. He called it an investment.
I flip the postcard over. The artist’s name is Marigold Hallowell. Mara.
All her contact info is listed. Brooklyn, New York, is crossed out. Above it she’s handwritten a new address in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
Mara’s website shows all her work, including the forest painting. The piece is actually called Woods. She has other paintings. Among them: Wolf Den, Breakfast Time, D&D.
At first I plan to hop on a train, but I opt for a rental car instead. I plug the address into my phone and let the GPS guide me.
I haven’t driven a car since I arrived in New Jersey. It’s a relief to be behind the wheel again, moving at whatever pace my heart dictates. In this case, it has me racing down the left-most lane of the turnpike. My arms are stretched out ahead, the bracelet swinging from my wrist, the eagle staring at me.
My instincts were correct. He was lying to me. Just not for the reason I suspected. He was looking for an egg donor.
I don’t know if all of this ends with Marigold Hallowell or if it involves others. All I know is that Mara was the one Syd was meeting in Brooklyn in January. He acquired a painting from her and had it shipped home, where it hung proudly on our wall until it was thrown into a fire. The rest is a mystery, including what else he was doing in New York in February besides checking out properties and what he was doing there on an April trip that I’ve yet to learn anything about.
I’m startled when the GPS orders me to take the next exit. I’ve been on the road for ninety minutes, but it feels more like twenty.
I’ve left behind the skyscrapers, industry, and congestion. I take a ramshackle bridge over a sleepy river and pass through a modest downtown. I’m winding along a country road, arching trees casting shadows onto the pavement.
I turn onto a side road. The house, according to the GPS, is still up ahead, but I stop here and exit the car. Birds and bugs make animal music around me. I peer up, hoping to put a face to a chirping sound. A blackbird is perched high above. My spirit animal, according to Joan. Finding it here, in the middle of a journey like this, feels like a good omen. But upon closer look, I see it’s no bird at all, just a shadow. I search the trees for other melody makers, but all the musicians are invisible.
I reach the mailbox by the curb and confirm the address. I start up the driveway, which is occupied by a single car, a hatchback. Somebody is home.
As I approach, I hear a low roar, constant and steady, something man-made. It’s coming from the detached garage situated some thirty feet from the side of the house. The overhead door is lifted. Inside are canvases propped against a wall.
I walk closer. In the garage, someone squats over a can, stirring with a stick, back turned to me. A large industrial fan blows against a white T-shirt; long hair is tucked under a cap. My shoes crunch as I leave the driveway and start down the gravel path to the garage. She turns her head and rises.
She’s not entirely surprised. There’s a sense of reckoning in her creased forehead.
She drops the stick into the can and wipes her hands on her stained jeans. After adjusting her hat over her pile of hair, she opens her arms to everything around her, the makeshift studio, the woods, the whole world, and says, “Welcome.”
27
We’re shuffling through hangers, looking for something special. I’m also listening to the music playing through the store and I’m not feeling very impressed. Mom thinks we’re here to shop for school clothes but the real reason I need a brand-new dress is that I’m going on television tomorrow.
Mom reaches her hand into a rack and she pulls out a dress. I feel like I’ve done this exact same thing before. I think I’m having déjà vu, which is when you feel like you’ve got a memory of doing something but the memory isn’t actually real. I’ve never actually had déjà vu before, so I wasn’t sure at first, but now I’m definitely sure, because I know this is the first time Mom has ever taken me to shop at this store.
Mom usually shops at the kind of store that has lots of different things to buy, like clothes and notebooks and toilet paper and furniture and food, and you put everything you want into a shopping cart. But this store sells only clothes, and none of the clothes have fallen onto the floor or been put back in the wrong rack or been thrown into a sloppy pile on a shelf. Everything is perfect. And also, there are no shopping carts.
The dress Mom is holding up has stripes, which I like, and it’s sleeveless, which I also like. I close my eyes and picture myself on television, and the dream is almost perfect except that my partner isn’t by my side. I open my eyes and Mom shakes the hanger and makes the dress dance in the air. “Well?”
“I like it.”
“But do you love it?” Mom says.
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s keep looking.”
I had to think of something to do today because today was feeling like the longest thing there ever was, longer than the lines for roller coasters at Six Flags and longer than the black-and-white movie Dad makes us watch every year at Christmas.
