Back to the deer, Mom’s last “Important Choice”—a choice to lie.
Deer running out from the oak and cedar into the streets in Lakehaven were a real threat. There were more deer than coyotes, and despite the growth in Lakehaven and beyond as Austin’s population boomed and real estate prices soared, deer bounding across major thoroughfares, especially at night, were a problem. A few DVCs a year resulted, usually not fatal except to the deer. (DVC means “deer-vehicle collision”—I looked it up online—nationwide, on average, a couple of hundred people die in them a year, and they result in a billion dollars’ worth of property damage, which seems awfully high to me.) There had not been a fatal DVC accident in Lakehaven in twenty years.
Until me and David—according to my mother, the storyteller, who could not sell this story to Lakehaven.
“You just tell people it was a deer,” she told me in a strict voice. It was my fourth day back from the hospital. The first three I’d spent alternately resting and walking and picking up things because Dr. K said my memory could be prompted by physical contact with reminders from my life. We had lived in this house since I was really little, so Dr. K was hopeful that I would have a wealth of physical reminders to help my memory. I didn’t see how that was supposed to work if my brain was physically damaged. But then I didn’t question Dr. K—she was a neurologist, and she was right: already I had started to remember times from my early childhood. They came, at times, like a rush of dreams inside my head. I would have to stop and focus and then the memory, like a scratchy film, would come. Playing flag football with David, a Christmas with Mom and Dad opening presents under the tree, running through the house laughing, singing along with Disney Channel musicals with Kamala. We knew every word, every inflection.
“I don’t remember a deer,” I said. She had made me lunch, a ham sandwich she claimed I liked, but I was not so sure. I was wondering if my taste buds could have been changed by amnesia. “Did I say there was a deer?”
“Yes,” Mom said, voice booming with certainty, rinsing a dish. “While you were in your coma. You opened your eyes and you said, ‘It was a deer running in front of us, Mom,’ and then you closed your eyes again. You woke up the next day.”
“Was a nurse or a doctor there when I said this?”
“No. Just me. Dr. K had just left.” Her gaze held steady into mine. “There must have been a deer and you swerved to avoid it. That’s the logical explanation. Your brain knows it’s true.”
“What difference does a deer make? David is still dead. And that note…”
“You did not. You could not. I see one thing you haven’t forgotten is your argumentative attitude.” But she folded me in a hug when she said it.
“Mom. OK, if you said I said it was a deer, then I believe you.” I said this because I wanted to believe her.
“Yes, and I am going to post it to my Faceplace page. And my blog, which I haven’t written in a few weeks, since you asked me to stop for a while. I am going to tell people at church, and some of the more sympathetic parents, and I’m going to tell the Halls so they will stop this campaign against us.”
“Campaign?” I didn’t like the sound of that word; it seemed so organized.
“Oh, they’re upset. I understand. David was their son. But…obviously, honey, there has been some bad-mouthing of you. Not so much by them. By friends of theirs, but it’s like wildfire, it spreads so fast. Whole group texts going over days and days, forwarding lies and misinformation. I feel the Halls could stand by us and put a stop to it.”
“But I don’t remember anything, and yet I’m going to remember this deer?” I felt a cold panic.
“Of course. It was the last thing you remember. Memory is selective.”
“Mom. I don’t know if people will believe us.”
“But it’s true.” [A note added in blue ink: Reading back on this, I am sure Mom convinced herself that this was true. She believed it, heart and soul, rather than believe I would have killed myself and left her alone, with no family remaining.]
“Is this because of Dad?”
“You’re being silly. Two different accidents.”
“I can’t lie about this, Mom, I can’t.”
“They will crucify you at that school. David was a very popular boy, Jane, and they’ve already buried him, so the grief is turning to anger. Real anger. I saw it when I went to the grocery store. People staring at me. One mother told me it should have been you…well, never mind. I got asked to resign from every volunteer position I’m in. Your circle of friends is close, but, forgive me, honey, it’s small. And David was a big deal. I wasn’t like you in school, I was popular, I would have known how to cope. But people are going to believe the worst of you.”
“Why was I with this superpopular boy if I’m such an outcast, Mom?” This was the first I was hearing of our respective social standings.
“You didn’t run in the same circles anymore. And you withdrew from your friends, a lot, after your dad died. You changed.” She coughed, as if those final two words choked her.
“Changed?”
“You stayed away from people. You dropped out of extracurriculars. You didn’t hang out so much with your friends.” She gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “I’m going to go post this about the deer on Faceplace. I’m going to make some calls.”
“Mom, I won’t be able to keep the story straight.”
“Of course not, you have brain damage,” Mom said, as if it were an advantage.
I wanted to cry, and really, I was so sick of crying. I was cried out. I just felt dazed and frightened and tired, all the time, and it was starting to scare the hell out of me. I couldn’t sleep. The whole world seemed alien to me. I felt I didn’t know the rules. When you are sick, aren’t people supposed to be kind to you, support you? I was sick and Mom said people hated me. A fear from deep down inside me, curled along my spine, a realization of how much my life had changed. “No, Mom.”
Mom leaned down close to me. “You remember that flash at the moment of the accident. The deer, running out in front of you and you trying to avoid it. Repeat it after me.”
I said it. “There was a deer. It ran in front of us. I don’t remember anything else.” The whole time I felt like a noose was slipping around my neck.
“Yes. You tell that to Kamala. She’ll tell the kids who matter.”
“Mom…”
She sat down at her computer and brought up Faceplace and wrote this short status about the fragment of deer-filled memory that magically absolved me from suicide. She tagged me so it would appear on my Faceplace page.