Never Coming Back(43)

“And don’t ask her to remember things. Don’t even use the word remember.”

Vigorous nods. That was a no-brainer, was what the look on their faces said. But it was a far harder task than you might think, to train yourself out of saying, “Do you remember?” In the course of my failures, which by now were many, I had learned just how often that word wanted to be said. It lurked, a danger word, ready at any time to fall into the air between my mother and me and rend the fragile peace that not-trying-to-remember meant for her.

Remember when . . . ? A phrase that links one human being to other human beings. It is a phrase of heft and permanence, the verbal equivalent of Sunshine and Brown’s old garage-sale telephones. It puts you into another world, a world that used to be and no longer is, a world that you and the person you’re talking with both remember. Unless one of you doesn’t.

“Remember when” was something that Sunshine and Brown and I said all the time to each other. We went back many years, to that first week of college. But before age eighteen, I had no one left. My high school friends and I had lost touch. Annabelle Lee was my mother’s friend, not mine, and we exchanged no confidences. I might once have had Asa Chamberlain, but he let me go, and then he left the earth in a fury of blasted metal and flesh. Regrets for $2000.

We walked in together, me leading the way. Hello to the nurses, hello to the aides, hello to the woman who sat by the miniature rock fountain with its endless trickle of water, hello to the old man by the piano, one finger stroking its closed lid. Hello to the Jokes and Jingles Workshop attendants, sitting around the table in the conference room, today playing a game involving cards and cookies and laughter. You had to be in the early stages to attend Jokes and Jingles, and Tamar didn’t qualify. Not that she would have joined anyway. Never a joiner, my mother. Always a loner. Like now, in the Green Room—it was no longer the Plant Room—the television remote in her lap.

“Tamar,” Brown said. “Remem??—”

“Brown!” Sunshine said. “Shhh.”

She held the notebook up in the air—she was still clutching it—“Remem”—then she too stopped herself. See? It was harder than you’d think, not to use the word. Tamar, remember me? That was what Brown had been about to say. My mother looked from Brown to Sunshine and then to me, accusation in her eyes. She knew something was not right, but what?

“Ma, I’m sorry,” I said.

“We pried it out of her, Tamar,” Sunshine said. “It’s not her fault.”

“You pried what out?” she said. “What’s not her fault?”

They didn’t know what to do with those questions. Welcome to the club, best friends. Welcome to Jokes and Jingles. Brown handed her My Side of the Mountain.

“This book is for you, Tamar,” he said. She placed it in the exact middle of her lap, the way she always did, but she repeated the question.

“You pried what out?”

“The keys to the kingdom,” Brown said, which made no sense. But somehow it did the trick, because she nodded.

“Is it time?” she said.

“It is, Ma. It’s seven-thirty. Time for Jeopardy!”

“Time for Jeopardy!” she echoed.





* * *





The four of us sat together on the couch, waiting for the show to begin. Sunshine and Brown urged me on with their eyes, their Talk to her eyes, their Time is running out eyes.

“So, Ma,” I said. “I’ve been wondering about some things.”

“You have? Like what?”

“Like, um, like what baseball team you like.”

Sunshine and Brown tensed. The air in the room changed. That was what tension did—it made the air still and solid, something you had to slice through to make progress. Baseball? was what their tension said. Really? That’s what you want to know about? You don’t even care about baseball.

“Baseball?” Tamar said. “The Egyptian Whalebacks.”

“What? Who?”

That was Brown, swiveling on the couch to stare at her. She looked at him calmly.

“Did you say the Egyptian Whalebacks?”

She nodded.

“I’ve never heard of them,” Brown said.

“You have now,” Sunshine said, warning in her voice. Stay with her, Brown, was what the warning said. Don’t correct. Follow her.

“Huh,” Brown said. “Where do the Whalebacks play?”

“Egypt.”

She frowned and gave him a poke in the ribs with her elbow, a where-else-would-they-play sort of poke, and I fought the urge to laugh. Brown was about to ask another question, but she poked him again.

“Shut up now,” she said. “It’s time for the heinous adventures.”

“Ma! Interviews. The heinous interviews.”

Don’t correct. Don’t criticize. Sunshine next to me tensed again, because I had told her, hadn’t I, and hadn’t she written it down in her notebook, that “Don’t correct” was one of the cardinal rules? Tamar flapped her hand in my face: Go away! Shoo!

But she was laughing. My mother, Tamar, a woman so serious all her life that her own daughter barely remembered her laughing, was laughing like a little girl. She flapped her free hand at the television and Brown started laughing too. Meet her where she is, Clara.