Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac(44)

“There’s a particular grave I want you to see,” he said.

“You’ve been here already?”

James nodded. “I’ve been to a lot of cemeteries. Sera and I went to Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris and we saw Oscar Wilde’s at Père-Lachaise, too. Wilde’s was covered in lipstick prints.”

I asked him how he’d gotten into visiting graveyards.

“Well…when my brother died, I guess. I liked thinking of all the others who had also died. It seemed less lonely somehow. Knowing that there are more of them than us, Naomi.”

He took me to the grave of Washington Irving, who wrote the novella The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I don’t know what kind of rock the headstone was made from, but at this point it was white from time. The stone was so worn away you could barely make out the inscription. It was a simple tombstone, just his name and dates.

“Most famous people tend to go that way, no epitaphs,” James said. “That’s what I’d do.”

“You’ve thought about it?”

“Oh, only a little,” he said with a wry grin.

It was pleasant in the graveyard. Silent. Empty and yet not empty. It was a good place for forgetting things. My phone rang. It was Will. I turned it off.

“That story reminds me of you,” he said.

I didn’t necessarily take that as a compliment. We had read Sleepy Hollow in Mrs. Landsman’s class around Halloween. It was something of a tradition in Tarrytown, where the book is set. (Technically, North Tarrytown, where James lived, was the true Sleepy Hollow.) It was about “the ghost of a Hessian trooper whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the revolutionary war” and who was said to “[ride] forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head.”

“You think of me as a headless horseman?” I asked.

“I think of you as a person on a quest,” James said.

“What does that mean?”

He was standing behind me, and he put his arms around me. “I think of you as someone who is figuring things out under difficult circumstances. Despite the fact that I am falling in love with you, I think that I am likely to be a brief chapter in this quest. I want you to keep sight of that.”

He had never said “love” before, and I suppose it should have thrilled me. The fact that the “love” was in a clause took a bit away from the moment, though. I asked him what he was really saying.

“I want you to know that I don’t expect anything from you.” James took my hand and turned me around, so that we were looking eye to eye. “I need to take pills to keep me steady,” he said, “but you make me feel the opposite. I worry about that. I worry for you. That’s why I fought this. You. Us. I’m not even sure I trust myself with anybody now, but…

“If things start to go bad…I mean, if I start to go bad, I want you to break up with me. I won’t fight you on it. I promise.”

“What if I fight you? Aren’t I allowed to do that?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Promise me you won’t, though.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You have to, otherwise we can’t be together. I swear to God, I’ll end it right now. If I get sick again, I don’t want you to come visit me or even think about me. I want you to forget we ever met. Forget me.”

I knew that would be impossible, but I crossed my fingers and told him I would.

I spent Thanksgiving alone with Dad. Rosa Rivera had gone to Boston to spend the day with her two daughters. James went to L.A. to see his father.

My dad cooked way too much too-rich food; we ate nearly nothing, and then Dad drove the rest over to a local food bank.

My mother called my cell phone in the afternoon while Dad was out. I had been ignoring her thrice-weekly messages since September, but I was feeling pretty blue that Thanksgiving so I picked up.

“Hi,” I said.

“Nomi,” she said, shocked at getting me. “I was just going to leave a message.”

“I can hang up and then you can still do that.”

Mom didn’t say anything for a moment. “How are you?”

“I’m good,” I said.

“Did you get the coat I sent you for your birthday?”

“I’m wearing it right now.” It was red with tortoiseshell buttons and a hood. I felt like Little Red Riding Hood in it, but it was warm.

“Your dad likes the house pretty frigid.”

“He’s getting better. It’s not his fault; it’s me. I’m always cold.”

“I know. Dad told me.”

“I should go. I have some schoolwork to do.”

“Okay. I love you, Nomi.”

“I should go.”

“Okay. Oh wait, I actually had a reason for calling…”

“Yeah?”

“Dad said you were having some trouble in photography. I could help. I do that, you know.”

“It’s not trouble. I just have to turn in this assignment. I…I really have to go.”

“Thanks for picking up,” she said.

We said goodbye and I hung up the phone. I didn’t want her goddamn help. She was always trying to find ways to insinuate herself back into my life.