The reminders, p.4
The Reminders, page 4
And now, again, coming upon this ancient band poster on Ollie’s wall. There were still parts of me that Sydney hadn’t experienced.
“Do you still have copies of our album?” I ask.
Ollie walks to the mirrored closet. He slides it open, revealing rows of CDs and vinyl records. Dozens of copies of everything he’s ever worked on. “Take as many as you want,” he says.
But I have no use for it now. Actually, I can’t stomach most music these days, all the songs of longing. On the ride over, Ollie was playing something folky and harmony-laden, and I so badly wanted to turn it off. If I had, though, I’d only be reinforcing the idea that he should be worried about me.
“In the mood for a drink?” Ollie asks.
“Yes.” I turn and notice Paige leaning against the door frame, as if she’s been watching us this whole time. She abandons her post, throws her arms around me. People seem to want to hug me extra-hard now.
She lets go of me, makes a full-body assessment. “You look really skinny.”
“It’s called camera-thin.”
“I’m jealous.”
“There are moms in Beverly Hills who pay large sums to have a body like yours.”
“Don’t call me a mom.”
She’s kidding, I realize, but the fact that I have to think about it for a second underscores how long it’s been since we’ve spent quality time together.
I take a good look at Ollie and Paige, the two of them together. I hardly remember them at the funeral, almost a month ago. I hardly remember being there myself. But I see them now. They were one of those meant-to-be couples back in college and still very much in love all these years later. Ollie remains gaunt and disheveled and striking; Paige with that wariness in her eyes even when she’s smiling. We look older—I can see it, but I don’t feel it. I’d believe it if you told me we were back in our freshman dorm right now.
“Thanks for having me,” I say.
“We’re so happy you came,” Paige says.
Ollie reaches into his pocket for a set of keys. “The door to our apartment is always open. But if you go out through the front door, just make sure you lock the dead bolt. It’s the ground level.”
“He’s paranoid about the equipment,” Paige says.
“I bet,” I say. “It’s like a little musical heaven down here. I think I had one of those old Casios as a kid.”
“Yeah, they’ve become pretty sought-after,” Ollie says.
“I’d love to hear what you’ve been working on.”
“Definitely.”
Instrumental music, which is what Ollie does, I can handle. I’m half expecting him to crank up the speakers now. Usually he can’t wait to share. But tonight he’s subdued, perhaps on my account. Little does he know I’d much rather hear about his life than have to talk about mine.
“I’ll pour us that drink,” Ollie says, leaving Paige and me in the bedroom.
“He showed you where everything is?” Paige asks.
“Yeah. I’m all set.”
Alone now, Paige and I have trouble meeting eyes. Maybe it’s just me who’s finding it difficult. The more I study her—the unfading smile, the frequent deep breaths, the way she’s hugging herself despite the room being plenty warm—the more I’m reminded of my own feeble attempts to hide the underlying angst.
“I really didn’t expect you to come,” Paige says.
“I can go back.”
She tilts her head, studying me from a new angle, and then she closes in for another hug. “Ollie will be gone in the morning. I have a few students coming for tutoring sessions, but I’ll be around.”
“You’re not going to join us now?”
“Another night. I’ll let you two catch up.” She’s already in her pajamas: a pair of sweatpants and a worn-in tee. “Oh, and I don’t know if Ollie told you, but when you use the shower you have to turn the faucet all the way up to get it hot. Something’s wrong with the boiler.”
She backpedals to the door and regards the space with bemusement, as if she’s seeing it only now after living here so long. “It’s really weird,” she says.
“What is?”
“Sydney was here when the studio first opened, and now you’re here when it’s closing.”
“Closing?”
Paige nods, eyes low. “Ollie’s going to be working for his father.”
That explains why he was wearing that shirt, a baby-blue button-down with Sully & Sons over the heart. I assumed he was sporting his own surname in an ironic gesture. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t keen on sharing his newest creations. Maybe there aren’t any.
Paige bids me good night and now I’m alone.
But not really. Sydney slept in this same bed. He stared up at this same poster. I flew more than three thousand miles and I’m still in his shadow.
I look away from the poster, open my bag, and start unpacking. With no idea how long a trip this would be, or where it would lead, I figured a week’s worth of clothes would suffice. I slide my blazer off, hang it up in the closet. It’s not unlike the Ted Baker suit jacket that Joan mentioned Syd wearing on one of his visits.
I remember when Syd first modeled the suit for me in our bedroom. Distinguished was the word, the way it complemented his salt-and-pepper beard and silver temples.
I can specifically recall his Ted Baker suit only because Syd had such a limited wardrobe. His closet was as barren as a SoHo boutique. I envied his restraint. I also loathed it. It only highlighted my clutter.
I try to recall more about that particular day. Try to visualize Sydney posing in front of our floor mirror, but the picture’s too blurry. That one day doesn’t stand out from the others. Nothing abnormal or extraordinary happened. It was just a regular day and those are the easiest to forget.
And now I’m doing it again, allowing myself to be sucked into the past. For what purpose? It’s true there’s a brief thrill that comes with digging up what’s been lost, like the strange joy one feels when poking a tender wound. But when the thrill passes, the wound still remains.
7
The next morning, after I’ve written down twenty good song titles, like “Time Traveling” and “A Song to Dance To,” and after I’ve filed down my crooked pointer nail so that my chords sound smoother, and after I’ve hopped onto the computer to check where the walrus is swimming (Hilton Head, South Carolina), I walk into the kitchen and see Mom and Gavin sitting at the table.
I slap my journal down so everybody knows I’m here and I open the cabinet because I’m thinking it’s another English muffin day.
“Gavin bought bagels,” Mom says.
Gavin reaches into a paper bag and pulls out a fat bagel. “Your mom said you only like plain.”
I can’t lie, it feels pretty exciting that Gavin knows which kind of bagel I eat. I give him a thank-you nod and pop one bagel half in the toaster oven. I notice Mom touching my journal and I grab it off the table.
“Relax,” Mom says. “I was just looking at it.”
I take the journal with me to the bathroom. As I’m leaving the room, I hear them talking about me.
“Ever since Arizona she’s been keeping a diary,” Mom says. “She goes through a new notebook every month. Apparently it’s pretty common for people with her condition.”
The doctor I saw in Arizona, Dr. M, says I’m the only kid he’s ever heard of who has highly superior autobiographical memory, or HSAM. The rest are grown-ups, about thirty of them, and Dr. M thinks that makes me pretty special. Most of the time I don’t feel special, just lonely. I’d rather everyone in the world have HSAM, especially my parents and my friends, so we could all see the same memories.
When I’m finished in the bathroom, I stop in the hallway because they’re still talking about me. “I remember Syd saying you were reluctant to have her see someone,” Gavin says.
“It’s true,” Mom says. “But I’m glad we did it. It’s just now we have to deal with all the phone calls.”
“Phone calls?”
“I made a mistake.”
“What do you mean?”
“When we got back from Arizona after Joan was diagnosed, I posted something about it on Facebook. It was an innocent thing. I was just relieved to finally have a name for what she had. But then the study she took part in was published and HSAM started getting attention in the news, and even though they never released her name, I guess someone found my post online. Suddenly strangers were trying to friend me and I was getting random phone calls from universities, pharmaceutical companies, you name it. It’s still out of control.”
It’s true our phone rings a lot, but I never knew those calls were about me. Mom said it was people trying to sell us stuff we don’t need.
“I wish I’d handled it better,” Mom says. “Ollie and I just want her to have a normal life.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Gavin says. “She’ll be fine. There’s no such thing as normal anyway.”
It gets quiet for a minute so I come back into the kitchen and rush over to the toaster before my bagel burns. I take a seat at the table next to Gavin and I realize I’ve never once sat next to a person who’s been on TV.
Gavin looks at me. “I like your outfit.”
Mom thinks I dress like a gypsy. I hate wearing the same thing twice because it reminds me of another day when I wore the same thing and then I get stuck thinking about that day instead of living the day I’m in. Since Mom doesn’t want to keep buying me new clothes, I have to come up with different versions of the stuff I already have. Today I’m wearing a T-shirt that I’ve worn before (June 11, a Tuesday, when I smeared almond butter on it at lunch), but I’ve never worn it with this black vest (April 26, movie Friday) and these jean shorts (June 24 and June 25). But it’s okay because Dad says the guitarist for the Rolling Stones looks like a gypsy, and he’s a rock god.
I notice that Gavin is wearing the same bracelet Sydney used to wear. Now he’s looking down at my plate. “No butter or cream cheese?”
“I hate cream cheese.”
I want to tell him why I hate it—because it smells like shit—but I’m not sure how Gavin feels about cursing. Dad’s rule about cursing is this: If it’s been in a song, it’s okay, as long as the song is good. Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd say shit in good songs, and Johnny Cash says son of a bitch in a good song, and John Lennon says the worst curse in a great song called “Working Class Hero.”
Mom slurps the rest of her coffee, which she has in a travel mug even though she’s not traveling anywhere. She picks up Gavin’s regular mug and says, “More coffee?”
Gavin is busy with his phone. “Sorry, I have to take this.”
He stands up and he’s wearing shorts and the hair on his legs doesn’t have a color, which is spooky. He opens the front door and walks down to the studio.
The bagel on Gavin’s plate has only one small bite in it and Mom takes it away so she can make room on the table for her big textbooks, which means she’s got students coming today. You would think she loved kids because she spends so much time with them, but actually she gets very annoyed when we’re out somewhere like a restaurant and there are kids around. She’s always talking about needing more adult time.
What I need today is writing time, so I stand up and grab my journal.
“Excuse me,” Mom says. “You left your plate.”
I guess she was pretending to be my waitress only for yesterday and now she’s ready for everything to go back to normal, which is okay by me if it means Dad will keep the studio and we won’t be going on any vacations. But the way she’s smiling I don’t think she’s ever going to shut up about Costa Rica until we’re on the plane and the lady tells us to put away our iPods for takeoff.
“Where are you going?” Mom says.
“Downstairs.”
“Just stay out of his hair, okay?”
That’s what she tells me when Dad is busy with something, so I’m wondering what type of something is keeping Gavin so busy.
Gavin’s bedroom door is closed and I’m down the hall strumming the Gibson on the studio couch. I’m putting my chords in a new order and the sound makes me feel heavy and that’s when I know I’m writing a crying song.
Normally when I’m strumming a few chords I can turn to Dad and ask him how they sound. Without him here, I decide to turn to the next best person: John Lennon.
John Lennon’s Ten Rules of Songwriting is a set of rules I came up with after listening closely to John’s forty best songs. I’m not sure yet what I want my song to be about but it should probably follow rule no. 4, which is Use First Person Unless You’re Writing “Nowhere Man.” That means the lyrics to my song should use I instead of he or she or Bungalow Bill.
I grab my iPod and record myself playing my new chord pattern and humming a quick melody that comes into my head without me having to do anything. I put on a pair of Dad’s big headphones and walk around the studio listening to the recording over and over. I’m thinking about Arizona because Mom mentioned it at breakfast.
It was last year, on the third Sunday in July, that I met Dr. M at the college in Tucson. He knew all about my certain kind of memory, how it isn’t “photographic,” which means I can’t fit everything in my brainbox, just memories. When it comes to remembering facts and trivia like the name of the eleventh president or how many sides there are on a trapezoid, I have to study like everyone else. And if Mom says, “Shut the light when you leave the room,” I’ll remember she said it, but sometimes not at the exact time I’m leaving the room, so I’ll “forget” to shut the light. But that kind of small forgetting doesn’t bother me. It’s the other kind, the big kind, when people forget what happened in their lives, that gives me the blues.
I asked Dr. M, “Does HSAM hurt?” He asked me, “Are you in any sort of pain?” I didn’t know what to say and that’s when he told me, “Many HSAMers find it helpful to keep a journal. They find it provides some relief. A way to unload.”
Thinking about Arizona and Dr. M gives me an idea. I open my journal and write down a few lyrics.
I went to Arizona
To meet a smart man
He told me not to worry
He could understand
There are lots of songs about California by artists like the Beach Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Katy Perry. But I can think of only one song that talks about Arizona and that’s “Get Back” by the Beatles. That makes me feel like I’m on the right track with my song.
I wonder if Gavin has ever been to Arizona because I know it’s pretty close to California, which is where all the actors live. When he comes out of his room, I’ll ask him. I also want to know why he was standing still in front of that giant fire instead of running away, which is what I would have done, unless that fire was just special effects and Gavin was only acting. An actor seems like a fun thing to be, but more people listen to old music than watch old TV shows, which means music is remembered more. Also, Dad is a songwriter, so that’s what I want to be.
I think of the hundreds of songs Dad wrote and recorded down here in his studio. I can hear the songs in my head and I can also see the things that took place here, like the string quartet that Dad hired, and the picture that fell off the wall when Dad was playing his drums too hard, and the blackout that erased one of his songs and made him have to go back and record each instrument a second time.
It’s hard to think about what’s going to happen to the studio next. I see it every school year when we change classrooms or when a restaurant closes down at the shopping center and a new one opens up in the same spot. Soon Dad will clear out his things and this apartment will look empty and the new people will want to fill it up with all their stuff. But this place will never look empty to me, it’ll always be full, because everywhere I turn, all around me, I see what no one else sees: the memories.
8
“So, wait, you’re in New Jersey?” my sister asks.
“Yeah.”
“Does Mom know you’re there?”
“Not yet.”
I pull the phone away from my ear. I can hear someone strumming faintly through the wall. I count only two musicians in the house and one of them left before the sun came up. It must be Joan.
“You could’ve come here, you know,” Veronica says.
She says it in her nonchalant way, but I worry I’ve broken some sacred law in the sibling handbook. She’s right, I could’ve flown down to Florida. Veronica moved to Key West from Miami about a year ago and I’ve yet to visit her new place. But then I would’ve had to hang with her boyfriend too, and that would’ve required more energy than I can muster right now.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Don’t be sorry.”
Such a simple request and yet most thoughts of my sister begin with an apology. She was just a baby when our father died and ever since I’ve felt an obligation to her, never met, that goes far beyond the normal duties of an older brother.
“I’ll come visit you next,” I say.
“Only if you want to.”
“Of course I do. How are you? How’s island life?”
“I see what you did there,” Veronica says. “Don’t think I’m letting you get off the phone without telling me what happened.”
Veronica never seems to experience anxiety about her own life, but she isn’t immune to worrying about mine. “I told you I would’ve stayed after the funeral,” she says.
“I’m sorry I made you worry. I’m good now. I’m with friends here and I’m taking it one day at a time.”
“One day at a time? Did you really just say that to me? Now I definitely don’t believe you.”
She’s right. It sounded scripted, a go-to phrase for mourners. It’s just so damn taxing thinking up fresh ways of assuring people that I’m all right. Besides, it happens to be true. I am very much taking it moment by moment, ignoring what will and won’t happen tomorrow.
