“Do your parents ever talk about having another child?”
“Yeah, all the time,” Joan says. “But it’s never going to happen.”
I feel the need to offer an answer, though I’m not sure she’s asking for one. “Having a kid is a really big decision. It’s not something you just step into lightly. Maybe one person is ready and the other needs more time. And then, for whatever reason, it just doesn’t work out like you planned.”
I look up. Joan is doing her best to follow, but the thing is, she’s not really the one I’m trying to explain something to.
17
The Hollybrook Cognitive Research Center in Summit, New Jersey, is nothing like the college where Dr. M works in Arizona. The college in Arizona is covered in trees and the sun is shining and happy students are sitting on the green grass.
But today in New Jersey it’s all rain and clouds. The research center is just one brick building and it’s got a parking lot around it with no trees, just telephone poles and wires stretching everywhere.
Inside the research center, it’s even gloomier. Dr. M’s office had interesting things to look at, like a model of a brain and a silver ball that never stopped swinging, but this room is just a table and chairs with nothing on the walls. Mom is allowed to stay with me, but she has to keep quiet during the tests.
We’re waiting for the doctor to arrive and I’m playing my Nintendo DS, but I’m too nervous to pay attention. It’s my own fault that we’re here today. After Mom caught me answering the phone and I told her I wanted to help old people remember, she scheduled this appointment.
I reach my hand back to her. She takes it. “It’ll be fine, honey. I’m here.”
Dr. Robert Brickenmeyer is a skinny man with his hair combed like a dork. He puts a recorder on the table between us, but the recorder is nothing fancy, nothing like Dad’s stuff. I guess doctors don’t care how good things sound.
Dr. Robert reminds Mom not to say anything and he shows me a picture:
Then he covers the picture and he asks me questions: What time was it on the clock?
—3:25
—2:35
—1:45
What was directly above the ruler?
—chair
—cat
—football
Which hand was the teacher waving?
—right
—left
—neither
It’s a really hard test because I was too busy looking at the cute little cat, but I try to ace it anyway. Then Dr. Robert reads me eight pairs of words:
car—puddle
fox—melon
computer—snake
diamond—chocolate
skateboard—gorilla
umbrella—corn
butterfly—plastic
teacher—buckle
Dr. Robert says computer, and I’m supposed to remember that it goes with snake. These tests are just like the ones Dr. M gave me until he realized that my memory doesn’t work this way.
Then Dr. Robert takes out an iPad and plays a video. It looks like a TV show. There’s a man and a lady sitting on a couch and then someone knocks on the front door and the man gets up and answers the door and it’s another man. The first man lets the second man into the house and they all sit on the couch and then the lady goes into the kitchen and she comes back and the video is over.
“Okay,” Dr. Robert says. He brushes his hair to the side, even though his hair is already as far over as it can go. “The first question: What magazine was resting on the coffee table in front of the couch?”
Magazine? What magazine? “I didn’t see a magazine.”
The doctor nods and then he asks more questions, like how many cups the woman was holding when she came back from the kitchen.
I answer each one and then Dr. Robert plays the video again and I see that I got every question wrong. The magazine that I didn’t even notice was People and although I guessed that the lady was holding two cups, she actually wasn’t holding any. She was holding a plate.
“That’s not fair,” I say. “It was a trick.”
“It’s part of the test.”
I turn back to Mom and she smiles and it helps but I feel stupid because that’s not how my memory works.
“Please face forward, Joan.”
“I don’t remember stuff like that.”
“Well, that’s just it,” Dr. Robert says. “We’re not sure how your mind operates. We’re hoping to figure that out.”
“But I already did these tests with Dr. M. I don’t want to do them again.”
“You’re doing great,” he says, but he says it like a robot and I don’t like robots.
“I want to go home.” I turn around. “Mom.”
She stares at me until she sees something and then she stands and slides her purse onto her shoulder.
“Excuse me,” Dr. Robert says.
“I’m sorry,” Mom says. “She’s changed her mind.”
I rush to her and Dr. Robert stands and he walks around the table and gets down on one knee. “If you come back another day, we’ll have to start from the beginning. You don’t want that, do you? You’re doing a terrific job. Later you get to climb into a big machine.”
“I’m not coming back.”
Mom takes me by the hand and we find our way out.
I stare out the rainy window as Mom drives us away from Hollybrook and talks on the phone. It must be Dad she’s talking to because he told Mom last night that he wanted to hear how it went.
“Not great,” Mom tells him. “Yeah, she’s okay.”
I tried to tell Dr. Robert that it has to happen to me and in my life and I have to pay attention to it or else I won’t remember it. Ask me what Grandpa got me for my fourth birthday (indoor trampoline). Ask me what day it was when I learned my first B minor chord on guitar (Monday, November 7, 2011). Ask me the color of the building where they sent Grandma Joan after she got sick (red brick). Ask me what Sydney was wearing when he arrived on October 27, 2008, but don’t ask me what time it was when he came because I don’t wear a watch and I never look at clocks.
The car isn’t moving anymore. We’re parked in a shopping center and Mom says, “How about a smoothie?”
Mom gets Berry Bananza and I get Nectar Nirvana and we sit near the front of the store and suck on our straws. The window is foggy so you can’t see what’s going on outside, but inside it’s dry and cozy.
I like this smoothie shop because they have plastic cups, and plastic cups are better than paper cups because you can see how much smoothie you have left. Mom says plastic is bad for fish in the ocean but I know paper is bad for trees, so I guess that’s why Mom says you can’t win, which means there’s no right answer.
After two giant slurps, I ask, “Are you mad?”
“No, honey, not at all,” she says, shaking her head a zillion times. “It’s my fault. I was afraid that would happen. That’s why I was always against you doing this.”