Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac (3 page)

“Are you Ace?” I asked, remembering what Dad had said about my having a boyfriend.

Will removed his black rectangular-framed glasses and wiped them on his pants. I would later learn that removing his glasses was something Will did when embarrassed, as if not seeing something clearly could in some way distance him from an awkward situation. “No, I most definitely am not,” he said. “Ace’s about six inches taller than me. And also, he’s your boyfriend.” A second later, Will’s eyes flashed something mischievous. “Okay, so this is deeply wrong. I want it on the record that you are acknowledging that this is deeply wrong before I even say it.”

“Fine. It’s wrong,” I said.

“Deeply—”

“
Deeply
wrong.”

“Good.” Will nodded. “I feel so much better that you don’t remember
him
either. By the by, your man’s a dolt not to come.”

“Dolt?” Who used
dolt
?

“Tool. No offense.”

“Leave. Right now,” I said in a mock stern tone. “You go too far insulting Ace…What’s his last name?”

“Zuckerman.”

“Right. Zuckerman. Yeah, I’m really outraged about you insulting the boyfriend I don’t remember anyway.”

“You might be later and if that’s the case, I take it all back. Visiting hours only started a minute ago, so he’ll probably still come,” Will said, by way of encouragement I suppose.

“Dad said he was still at tennis camp.”

“If it were my girlfriend, I would have come back from tennis camp.”

“Who’s your girlfriend?” I asked.

“I don’t have one. I was speaking hypothetically.” Will chuckled and then stuck out his hand for me to shake. “Introductions are in order. I am William Landsman, the Co-editor of
The Phoenix.
Incidentally, you’re the other Co-editor. Your dad said you might have forgotten some things, but I didn’t think it was possible
I
might be one of them.”

“Are you
that
memorable?”

“Pretty much. Yes.” He nodded decisively.

“And humble.” I didn’t need to remember him to know exactly how to tease him.

“And also your best friend, if you haven’t already figured it out.” Will cleaned his glasses again.

“Really? My best friend wears a smoking jacket?” I nodded. “That’s very interesting.”

“It’s
ironic
. Seriously though, you can ask me anything. Honest to God, Chief, I know everything about you.”

I looked in his eyes, and I decided to trust him. “How does my face look?” Since they’d stitched up my forehead, I’d been basically trying to avoid my reflection.

He examined me from both sides and then from the front. “A little swollen around your left eye and cheekbone, but most of it’s covered by the tape and gauze.”

“Look under the gauze, will you?”

“Chief, I am not looking under the gauze for you! It’s completely unsanitary and probably against the rules! Do you want me to get kicked out of here and not be able to visit you?”

“I want a report before I have to see it for myself. I want to know if I’m, like, disfigured.” I tried to say this casually, but I was scared. “Please, Will, it’s important.”

Will sighed heavily before grumbling, “I said I’d tell you anything, not that I’d do anything. I want it on the record that I, William Landsman, did not want to do this, and am furthermore not trained for medical procedures.” He went into my room’s doll-house W.C. and washed his hands before returning to my bedside. He placed his left hand gently on the right side of my face before using his right hand to slowly remove a section of surgical tape from the left side near my hairline. “Tell me if I’m hurting you. Even a little.” I nodded.

When one of my hairs got pulled in the tape, I winced what I thought was imperceptibly, and Will stopped. “Am I hurting you?”

I shook my head. “Go on.”

Ten seconds later he had removed enough of the tape so that he could lift up the gauze and look under it. “There are nine stitches, and a raised knob right below that, probably the size of a brussels sprout, and a larger bruise spread out across your forehead. None of it looks permanent. You’ll probably have a tiny scar from the stitches.” He refastened the gauze as delicately as he had removed it. “You’re still insanely, unfairly, torturously beautiful, and that’s the last I’m gonna say about it, Chief.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You are welcome,” he said jauntily. “Glad to be of service.” He tipped an imaginary hat. “Don’t think I’m unaware that you were really just fishing for compliments.”

“Yup, you see right through me,” I said.

Will leaned in close and whispered, “Come on, admit it. You really do remember me. All this amnesia crap is so you can get a break from
The Phoenix.
”

“How’d you know? I just didn’t want to hurt your feelings, Landsman.”

“That’s real considerate of you.”

“So, what’s my boyfriend like?” I asked him.

“Let’s see. Ace Zuckerman is an awfully good tennis player.”

“You’re saying you don’t like him.”

“As he’s not my boyfriend, I don’t think I’m technically required to, Chief.”

“What about James Larkin?”

“James Larkin. Larkin comma James. Yeah, we haven’t really met him yet. He’s new this year, which is unusual for a senior. I think he might have gotten kicked out of his last school or something.”

“A delinquent?” That was interesting…

Will shrugged. “I only met him this morning when he dropped off the camera at
The Phoenix
and he was polite as anything. FYI, the kid is nothing like Ace Zuckerman.” He paused. “Or me.” He reached into his messenger bag and pulled out his laptop. “You have your headphones with you, right?”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure.”

“You always do. Where’s your bag?”

I pointed to the closet in the corner of the room. Will opened the door and started digging through my backpack, which probably should have bothered me, but it didn’t. It seemed like someone else’s bag anyway. He pulled out an iPod, presumably mine, then plugged it into his laptop. “When I heard from your dad, I decided to make you a mix. Don’t worry. I burned it for you, too.” He handed me a CD and a playlist entitled
Songs for a Teenage Amnesiac
, Vol. I. “It’s not one of my best. Some of the selections are a little broad,” he continued, “but I was under time constraints. I promise that Volume II will be better, as it is with, for example, the second record of the Beatles’
White Album
or the Godfather movies.”

Will handed me my headphones and put away his laptop. He started speaking really fast. “It’s hard to make a good mix. You don’t want anything too cliché, but you don’t want to make the songs too obscure either. Plus, you can only fit about nineteen tracks on a CD, and you want each one to say something different, and you want a balance of slow and fast songs, and then there’s the added pressure of making sure each track organically leads to the next. Plus, you’ve got to know the person for whom the mix is intended really well. For example, on yours each of the songs means something. Like the first one is sort of how we met freshman year. I thought it might jog your memory.”

I read the CD liner. “‘Fight Test,’ the Flaming Lips?”

“Yeah, I was on the fence between that and ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Part I.’ And also ‘To Whom It May Concern’ by John Wesley Harding. I eliminated that one first ’cause I had another of his songs I wanted to use and it’s bad form to duplicate artists. The one I used instead is called ‘Song I Wrote Myself in the Future,’ and it’s the next to last track.”

I was about to ask him how we
had
met, but I was interrupted by the arrival of someone who made me forget the mix and William Landsman for the time being.

“Hi, Mrs. Miles,” Will said to my mother.

“Hello there,” she replied uncertainly.

Will laughed. “We’ve never met before, but I’ve seen your picture. I’m William Landsman, Will.”

“Could we have a moment alone?” my mother asked Will.

Will looked at me. “You’ll be okay?”

I nodded.

“I should be getting back to yearbook anyway,” Will said.

“There’s yearbook in the summer?” I asked.

“It never quits.” He took my hand in his and shook it rather formally. “I’ll call you,” he promised. “Don’t forget to charge up your cell phone.”

After Will closed the door, neither my mother nor I spoke.

My mother is beautiful, and since I’m adopted you can know I’m not saying that as some sort of backhanded way of telling you how pretty I am. Besides, everyone says so. And she isn’t beautiful in any of the clichéd ways. She’s not tall and skinny and blond with big boobs or something. She’s little and curvy with wavy light brown hair halfway down her back and almond-shaped ice blue eyes. It felt like I hadn’t seen her in forever. I almost started to cry, but something kept me from doing it.

Mom, however, did not hold back. She burst into tears almost as soon as she got to my bedside. “I told myself I wasn’t going to do that,” she said. She mock-slapped herself across the face before taking my hand.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“Your dad told me not to come, that you didn’t want me. But how could I not come?” She looked at my face. “Your poor head.” She ever so gently stroked my brow, and then she leaned over to hug me. I pulled away. I needed to know a few things first.

“You and Dad are divorced.”

She nodded.

“But why?”

Dad came into the room then. His voice was hard as bricks. “Yes, tell her, Cass.”

“I can explain.” Mom’s eyes started to tear again. “You were twelve when I ran into Nigel. It was just by chance.”

“Who’s Nigel?”

“Her high school boyfriend,” Dad answered for her.

“Just by chance,” Mom repeated. “I was waiting for the subway, and it was the most random thing in the whole—”

I told her that I didn’t want a story, only facts.

“I…” she began again. “This is so hard.”

I told her that I didn’t want adjectives and adverbs, only nouns and verbs. I asked her if she could handle that. She nodded and cleared her throat.

“I had an affair,” she said.

“I got pregnant,” she said.

“Your dad and I divorced,” she said.

“I married Nigel and moved back to the city.”

“You have a three-year-old sister.”

“Sister?” It was a foreign word on my tongue, gibberish. Sisters were something other people had, like mono or ponies.

“But I thought you couldn’t have children,” I said.

Dad whispered to my mother something about how he had been trying to break this to me slowly, how I had already been through
a lot
. He had never mentioned my sister or Mom’s pregnancy, which seemed odd, especially when you consider all his list-making. I wondered what else he’d been holding back.

“Sister?” I repeated. It felt even more made up the second time.

“Yes. Her name is Chloe.”

“Are we close?” I asked.

“No,” Mom said. “You refuse to see her.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“It’s probably a lot to hear all at once,” Dad said.

“How are you feeling, cupcake?” Her voice was high and whispery. She sounded like she was floating away.

How did I feel?
“About what? Which part?”

“About everything I’ve just told you, I suppose.”

What I felt was that all of these were very good reasons for us not to be speaking. It was one thing for Mom and Dad to have gotten divorced, but for Mom to get together with her high school boyfriend and have an affair and a daughter and a whole new family…“I feel like”—her eyes were wide and expectant—“I honestly feel repulsed. I honestly feel like you’re a slut.”

“Naomi,” Dad said.

“What?” I asked. “She is. Women who cheat on their husbands and get pregnant are sluts. Why don’t you add that one to your list, Dad?”

Mom stood up and started backing away from my bed, not quite able to look me in the eye. “I understand,” she said, “I understand. I understand.” Finally, Dad said that he thought she should go, which was funny because she seemed to be heading in that direction already.

“What happened to the Wandering Porters?” I asked after Mom had left.

“They wander no more.” Dad tried to make a joke out of it. “The last book was Iceland. Do you remember that summer we went to Iceland?”

I did. We had left right after Mom’s show, which may have even made it my last memory. I was twelve, and it had pretty much been fifty degrees all summer long, the coldest summer of my life. My mom and I used to say that it was the summer without any summer.

“What do you do now?” I asked.

“Your mom still takes pictures. I still write books. We just don’t do it together. And the Wandering Porters are still in print mostly.”

“What are your new books about?”

“Um…well, the last one was about…I’m not good at describing. It was about lots of things really,” Dad said. “But the jacket copy said it was about ‘the end of my marriage as seen through the prism of larger world events.’”

I interpreted. “It’s about the divorce?”

“Basically. You could say that. Yes.”

I asked him if I had liked it. He said that I hadn’t even read it, but that the reviews had been pretty decent.

“Maybe I should read it now?” I said. “If my memory doesn’t come back.”

“Yeah, you could just skip through the parts about the Middle East,” Dad suggested. “There’s quite a bit about that, too. Not that you shouldn’t be informed, but even I think it gets a little dry. Naomi, are you crying?”

I guess I was. “I’m sorry,” I said. I turned onto my side, away from Dad. I didn’t want him to watch me cry. In all likelihood, the reason he hadn’t already told me about Mom and Chloe was because he hadn’t wanted to discuss it himself.

Whenever Dad said anything serious, he would usually undercut it with a joke. That was his style. When he and my mom used to throw parties, he always had a funny story and could make everyone else laugh. My dad certainly wasn’t what anyone would call shy, and yet he was. By himself, he was always a bit stingy with saying certain things. Like, he rarely said “I love you.” I knew that he did love me. He just didn’t say it a whole lot. My mom was the one with all the “I love you’s.” But I understood what Dad was like because I was like that, too. This was why I couldn’t look at him.