This is about my first night home in my old room. It was like sleeping in a hotel where you have never been, and the walls are weighted with pictures from someone else’s life. But it’s your life. So they tell you. But do they edit the story for you?
I remember there was a reporter named Vasquez, a young, geeky man from the Austin newspaper waiting for us outside the house, asking if I had remembered anything more about the accident that had killed my next-door neighbor, and Mom got out of the car and screeched at him that he was trespassing and she would file a restraining order, and my head hurt so bad suddenly, I thought I would have to crawl to the door. The pain was blinding. I’d just made a brief reentry into this world and now I was going to leave it. I went to my knees. Vasquez said to Mom, “Ma’am, your daughter is fainting,” so then she had to stop yelling at him and help me. She kept bellowing at Vasquez, although it felt like nails in my brain when she did that.
Vasquez asked her about the suicide note. That had become a story because they hadn’t found it right away, the police had only found it the next day. It was in police custody as evidence and not to be discussed, but then the story leaked. This crash had been all over the news. Lakehaven kids. Kids of parents prominent in the high-tech community, Austin’s business jewel. A famous so-called “mom blogger” who had once drawn hundreds of thousands of daily readers a few years ago. Next-door neighbors. Childhood friends. Vasquez ended up writing three articles about me, a newspaper series he would call “The Girl Who Doesn’t Remember.” This was when all these book titles with “girl” were big and I guess he was trying to ride the wave. Or score a book deal off my misery. I’m sure he’s nice, to the people who know him.
We went inside and Mom slammed the door. More nails in the brain. I didn’t recognize anything. It was terrifying. My memories of my early life had only just begun to return, rising like scant bubbles to the surface of my mind. I (sort of) knew my mother now, and she had told me my father had died—after I had remembered him and asked for him twice.
I stared at the stairs, and the walls. This was just a new place that wasn’t the hospital. Mom started babbling. “This is the window where you used to wait for your father and me to come home from our jobs. We had an au pair then; she was from Sweden. Do you know that there’s a country called Sweden?”
I probably nodded.
“And here was where you fell down the stairs and bumped your head…I wrote a very popular piece about that on the blog when it happened…oh, gosh, do you think you hurt your brain then, maybe that’s why your memories aren’t coming back now, oh, I need to tell that to the doctor, I completely forgot”—like she was the one with amnesia—“so does any of it seem familiar?” So much expectation in that last word.
“A little,” I said, because it seemed to mean so much to her. Dr. K warned me not to lie about memories, but she needed to try living with this “Mom” person, who was constantly demanding that I test my memory, which was like catching smoke. Mom went to the window and looked outside, peering past the curtain to see if the reporter was still there.
“I don’t like him. Not at all,” she said quietly.
I wanted to ask about the note. I decided to wait until we were settled.
I stood in the den. Looked around. Suddenly I could picture toys on the floor and a Christmas tree in the corner, a hazy image…but I didn’t know where my room was.
I wandered into the kitchen, to the breakfast nook. This seemed more familiar—the smells of food, me sitting at the dinner table while Mom typed in her office—yes, there it was, through the French doors, her antique table and her computer. I remembered her office. A little swell of joy opened in my chest.
“Do you still write the mommy blog?” I wasn’t asking from memory; she had talked about it while I lay in the hospital bed, working it into conversations with an odd pride.
“You always called it that. Never just ‘the blog’ or by its title, Blossoming Laurel.” An edge in her voice.
“Sorry. The blog.” I thought the title a bit too cutesy, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
“Not since the accident. Too many people felt I hadn’t been a good mother…” Then she stopped. “I’m tired of writing it. Of writing about you. You didn’t like it as you got older.”
I felt a vague unease when I thought of her blog, but I didn’t know why. That was for worrying about later. I went back to the front; the reporter was still out there, but standing away from our yard.
I took a step toward the stairs and Mom realized, maybe, that I should be the priority. I looked at her and wondered if she’d slept at all in the past week.
She enclosed me in a hug. “You remember your room, I’m sure. Let’s go see it.” I followed her up the stairs. I paused at the family photos on the wall. Me, as a baby, as a toddler, as an elementary school student. And a man.
“Is that Dad?” I asked. She hadn’t yet shown me a picture. She didn’t have one on her phone, hadn’t brought one to the hospital.
She nodded. “Do you remember him?”
“I knew it was him. Before I asked. But…I don’t see him, like in a movie of my memories, doing anything yet.”
My dad. He had a blondish beard in some and was clean shaven in others.
“Jane? Do you remember me yet, or do you call me Mom because I told you to?” Her voice was tense.
“I remember you, Mom,” I lied, because it seemed to matter, and she was all I had right now, and with time, little moments of the past with her were beginning to take shape, to clearly appear. Her office, the smells of dinner in the kitchen. But only scattered bits.
“Tell me something you remember.” She sounded insistent.
I grabbed at the smoke in my brain and came up with: “You sitting at your desk and writing Blossoming Laurel on your computer while I ate dinner.”
It was vague, but it was enough. And apparently accurate. Mom tried a bright smile, and then trudged ahead, determined to get me to my room.
You’d think the place I spent the most time would send a resounding boom of memory through my head. It didn’t mean much. The room was medium-sized, with a bed and movie posters. I remembered where the bookshelf was. The movie posters on the wall meant nothing to me.
“You like movies,” Mom said. “You said you might want to be a screenwriter one day. Or write for video games or television. You’re a very gifted writer, Jane, like me, and you will be again.” As if any gifts I had might be lost along with the memories.