“He never wore socks.” He presses his back into the couch cushion like he’s ready to get comfortable. “Did he say anything when he walked into the house?”
“He says, ‘Hello, Miss Joan. I’ve heard so much about you. Paige, you said she had horns. I don’t see any horns. Would you mind, dear?’ and then he touches the top of my head to see if I have any horns and I say, ‘I have a book about a unicorn,’ and Sydney says, ‘I love books and I love unicorns. How about you read the book to me after dinner?’ and I say, ‘I can only pretend-read,’ and he says, ‘I’ll do the reading and you can be my page turner,’ and then Dad comes into the room and Sydney starts talking to him.”
“That’s unbelievable,” Gavin says, scrunching up his forehead like he’s trying to figure out a very hard riddle. “That’s really how he talked.”
I feel like smiling, so I do.
“Did he read you the book?” Gavin says.
“Yes, and I don’t even have to remind him because he remembers by himself and I love when that happens. First he reads a page and then he makes a throat noise that means it’s time for me to turn the page. When the story is over he tells me that he’d love to see a real unicorn one day and I tell him that that’s impossible because unicorns aren’t real and he says, ‘How do you know?’ and I say, ‘People told me,’ and he says, ‘That’s what I hear too, but what if they’re wrong?’ And that keeps me thinking for a while and I’m still wondering if there really is such a thing as a unicorn who lives far away where no people go and it makes me excited to think that maybe I’ll see a unicorn one day.”
Gavin nods like he’s not surprised by what I’m saying.
“But all this happened after dinner,” I say. “I’m jumping ahead.”
I wait for Gavin to ask another question. I notice he’s not like Sydney because he’s wearing socks and his socks have three different color stripes—gray, green, and yellow. I like them and I want to borrow them.
“Hello?” I say, because the quiet is lasting a long time.
“I’m trying to picture his face,” Gavin says with his eyes closed. “It’s hard.”
“Do you want me to draw it?”
He opens his eyes. “You can do that?”
I turn to a new page in my journal and begin to draw.
“People think I’m pretty good at drawing,” I say, “but it feels like cheating to me since I’m only tracing the memories in my head. John Lennon drew pictures in his journal too.”
Faces always take me the longest, so I stop halfway and ask Gavin, “How does it look so far?”
He sits up and takes my journal and lifts it to his face. He looks at it so long that I start to worry that I’ve drawn the wrong person. Then he places his hand on the page and he touches the side of the drawing’s face and moves a finger over to the ear and he says one word in a low, low voice:
“Sydney.”
10
Sydney had told me all about Joan, how uncanny it was that she could store so many details in her head, the monumental and inconsequential taking up equal space. I heard the amazement in his voice, but there was no way to truly appreciate her powers from afar. Now, sitting across from her, I finally understand. She is something close to miraculous.
We’ve been talking for over an hour, re-creating Syd’s first visit five years ago. When we started I was wary, then enthralled, and now, as we’re finishing up, I’m reluctant to stop.
“One more thing,” I say.
Though Joan started us down this path, I doubt she knew what she was getting herself into. As she guided me along, my curiosity grew more intense until I was almost interrogating her. I didn’t intend to push her so hard. I just kept asking questions and she kept having the answers.
My last question has to do with Paige and Ollie’s attempt at matchmaking. “When your mom and dad were telling Sydney about me, did they say anything else? You said something about movies.”
“Yeah, Sydney wanted to know what kinds of things you were into, like books and movies and stuff. Dad said you guys watched some movie in college and you’d always imitate someone named Zoro or Toro.”
“Benicio del Toro.”
“That’s it.”
In the film The Usual Suspects, Benicio del Toro would mumble so terribly, no one knew what he was on about. My impression of his character was always good for a laugh. Joan doesn’t realize it, but this last detail feels like a tiny piece of gold.
She stands up to leave.
“Thank you,” I say.
She smiles and picks up her journal. “I’ll let you know when I come up with some good lyrics.”
“Right, sounds great,” I say, having briefly forgotten the agreement we made.
Part of me wants to end it here, since I know full well that I’m willingly stirring up feelings that should remain unstirred. But there’s another part of me that just can’t leave the past alone.
“I’m curious,” I say. “How many more memories of him do you have?”
“He came back in 2009,” Joan says, starting a count on her fingers, “and again in 2010. There was nothing in 2011. Then he came back in 2012 and once more in 2013.”
“You saw him only once this year?”
“Just January twenty-sixth.”
“I thought he visited you guys in April too.”
Joan shrugs her shoulders. “Nope. He just came in January.”
“Wait. Are you sure?”
Her brow tightens. I meant no offense. Actually, I trust her brain more than mine, which hasn’t been too sharp of late. Still, I could’ve sworn. “I remember now,” I say. “He took your mother out to dinner for her birthday. They probably met up in Manhattan,” I say, satisfied to be tying up the loose ends.
But Joan is shaking her head. “No, I don’t think so. My mom was sick on her birthday this year. She had a really bad stomach bug and she was home from work for two days. She didn’t go out with anyone.”
Her words are definitive, leaving me perplexed and more than a little disgusted with my own inferior memory. Granted, I shouldn’t feel too bad; it was tough even for Sydney to keep track of his own busy schedule, which is why he had an assistant. “Sorry,” I say. “I guess I was mistaken.”
She nods and ambles up the stairs, humming a melody as she goes.
I retreat to my room and collapse onto the bed, half exhausted, half invigorated. Maybe it’s best I wrap these blankets around me and take a nap. When I wake, rested and strong, I can look back at this morning’s episode as a momentary lapse in judgment, a careless indulgence. I’m only strengthening Sydney’s grip on me when I should be taking steps to extricate myself from him. Why else did I come all this way to New Jersey?
But maybe I’m tired of restraint. Maybe that fire ignited something in me that’s still burning. In a sense, I was wrong about there being no way of building new memories of Sydney. They can be found, it turns out, in the minds of others. Joan isn’t the only one who interacted with him when he was out here. There’s also Paige and Ollie. And what about the project Syd was spending so much time on?