“It’s not about you,” Stuart said.
I blurted, “Then what is it about?” and hoped it wasn’t as biting as the truth behind it.
“What do you mean?”
I said slowly, “We spend all our time together. I can’t help thinking that if you’re agitated, it might at least be in part to how much stress my… situation has caused you.”
“No, no…” he began. Always, no, no.
“Yeah, but if you need to, you know, take some space, I understand.”
“Sammie,” he said, stern. He repeated, “It’s not about you,” and the sharpness in his voice took me by surprise.
“Well,” I said. “I was trying—”
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly.
“I don’t like to be interrupted,” I said. I took a deep breath. “I was trying to find out. But I’m glad I can eliminate our situation as a possibility.”
“Yes,” he said, his voice softer. “It’s just going to be a big reality check. Parents and agent and everyone all in one week.” He lifted his hand to my cheek.
I took his hand and kissed it. “Have a milk shake for me,” I said.
“I will,” he said, and we kissed.
“Tell everyone at NYU I won’t be able to make it.”
“Oh, Sammie.”
“I’m sure they’ll be heartbroken. All the people I’ve invented over the four years I’ve pretended to live there.” My voice cracked. It appeared my brain was cracking, too. Insane to think that if I got on the bus, in eight hours I could be there with him, with everything I’d wanted. What if I just got a job waiting tables? What if I just showed up?
“Hey,” he said gently. “We should go sometime.”
“But not now,” I said, watching the second-to-last passenger board, a college student going home after summer school had ended.
“Soon,” he said, and stepped onto the bus without me.
COOP’S GCHAT ATTEMPT TO MAKE ME THINK LOSING MY MEMORY IS NOT SO BAD
Cooper: hey!
Me: Hey
Cooper: hey i was just thinking about you Cooper: about your npc task force thing Cooper: and how you wanted to meet someone with npc Me: Yeah?
Cooper: do you remember my grandma?
Me: I remember she was very nice.
Cooper: yes, she is very nice, but she has dementia, unfortunately, and i was thinking if you wanted we could go talk to her. it’s not npc but it is similar and i thought it might be nice for you to see that she hasn’t lost herself completely Cooper: she’s still happy, i mean Me: Yeah, I think that would be good!
Cooper: cool Cooper: well let me know when you want to go Cooper: i know how you like to pencil things in :) Me: Yeah, I do, haha Me: But
Me: You know what?
Me: How about now?
Cooper: okay!
FRIEDA LIND, 87, AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION FROM A VOICE MEMO I RECORDED ON MY PHONE:
Frieda: The McCoys? Oh yes, of course I know the McCoys. They’ve been here for about as long as the Linds have. They came around the same time, migrated from Boston to set up farmland. Our families have lived around the mountain from each other for almost one hundred years. The best story is their shared, well, stewardship of an albino goat named Francis.
Sammie (snorts, to Cooper): Is that how you got your middle name?
Cooper: My mom says no but the coincidence is unsettling.
Frieda: I believe this was around the turn of the century. The story goes that… let me think. Francis was an albino goat, and he was such an oddity that people came from all around town to look at him, and I believe it was one of the McCoys who had the idea to charge people to see him.
Cooper: Of course it was the McCoys.
Sammie: Hey!
Frieda: A penny a peek or something like that. The difficult part of this was, ’scuse me. (coughs) The difficult part about this was that the goats roamed the backyard freely between the two pieces of property. One of the Linds, I think it was Geoffrey Lind, claimed that the McCoys had no right to make money off Francis because Francis was born of their goats. Then Patrick McCoy, of course, said no, absolutely not, Francis was his goat Freddie’s kid. What was funny was that Francis wasn’t even a kid anymore. He was a fully grown goat! So the whole life of this goat they didn’t even care whose he was, but now that they found out they could make money off him, they both claimed him. They were still fighting even when there was a line of people outside to see Francis, and finally Colleen McCoy, who was a religious woman…
Sammie: No surprise there.
Cooper: Ha!
Frieda: Colleen McCoy had this high-and-mighty idea in her head that was just like the story in the Bible with the wise King Solomon. You remember that, Jerry?
Cooper: It’s Cooper, Grandma.
Frieda: Oh, you look just like Jerry.
Cooper: Jerry’s my dad.
Frieda: Of course he is!
Sammie: So you were saying about the wise King Solomon…
Frieda: What was I saying, sweetheart?
Cooper: Francis the goat. Colleen McCoy.