The Things We Keep(2)

“Would you like to meet Luke, Anna?” Eric asks, and Jack nods enthusiastically. Luke must be the guy. I wonder if he’s going to rappel down from a tree or something. His entrance will have to be pretty impressive if they think it’s going to make a difference to my mood.

“I just want to go to my room,” I say.

Jack and Eric glance at each other, and I feel the wind leave their sails.

“Sure,” Jack says. “Do you want me to take you there?”

“Nope. I’m good.” I stand. I don’t want to look at Jack, but he stands, too, gets right in my face so I can’t look anywhere else. His eyes are full and wet, and I catch a glimpse of the softhearted man he used to be before his brushes with dementia and abandonment hardened him up.

“Anna,” he says, “I know you’re scared.”

“Scared?” I snort, but then my vision starts to blur. I am scared. One thing about being a twin is that you get used to having someone right by your side whenever you want them. But in a moment, Jack’s going to leave. And I’m going to be alone.

“Get lost, would you?” I tell Jack finally. “I have a pedicure booked in half an hour. This place has a health spa, right?”

Jack laughs a little, shooing a drop from his cheek. When we were younger Jack sported a golden tan, but now his skin is vaguely gray, almost as white as my own. I suspect this has something to do with me. “Ethan! Come and say good-bye to Anna.”

Ethan thunders across the lawn to us and tosses himself into my arms. He strangles me in a hug. “Bye, Anna Banana.”

When he pulls away, I take a long hard look at the large white bandage covering his left cheek and try to remember the angry red burns and welts underneath. I need to remember them. They’re the reason I’m here.

*

The first time I knew something was wrong with me, I was at the mall. I was lugging my bags toward the exit when I realized I had no idea where I’d parked my car. The parking lot was seven stories high. In the elevator, I stared at the buttons. None seemed any more likely than the other.

Eventually I made my way to the security booth. The man behind the desk laughed and said it happened all the time. He picked up his walkie-talkie and asked for the license plate number. When I looked blank, he smiled. “Make and model?”

It was such an easy question. But the more I tried to find the answer, the more it blacked out. Like a photograph with a question mark over the face, a criminal with his jacket over his head—something was there, but my brain wouldn’t let me see.

The man’s smile faded. “The color?”

All I could do was shrug. I waited for him to say this happened all the time. He didn’t.

I caught the bus home.

If I’d been tested for the mutated gene, as Jack was, I’d have known for sure it was coming. But finding out you’re going to be struck down in your prime didn’t fit into my life’s plan.

After that, things started happening all the time. Usually, I could explain the incidents away. Sure, I forgot a lot of appointments, but I was a busy paramedic. Getting lost on the way home from work was a little stressful, but directions had never been my strong suit. Unfortunately, there were things that were harder to explain. Like the time I smashed my car window with a ski pole when I couldn’t get the keys to open the door (and then found out the car belonged to the family across the road). And the time I showed up to work on my rostered day off (for the fourth time in a row).

It was the time I forgot the word “twin” when introducing Jack to my buddy Tyrone, from work, that I really started to worry. It was a year after the parking lot incident. I remember staring at Jack, wondering if there was indeed a word for what we were. I searched the dark, dusty corners of my brain, but it was useless. Eventually I called him a person who my mother carried in her uterus at the same time as me. I know, I remember “uterus” but not “twin.” Tyrone laughed; he’d always thought I was nutty. But Jack didn’t laugh. And I knew the jig was up.

I quit my job that day. If I couldn’t remember the word “twin,” what would happen when I couldn’t remember how to resuscitate someone or when I decided it was a good idea to move a patient with a possible neck injury? I had a feeling I’d already been off my game. And when I know something’s going to happen, I don’t see the point in dragging it out.

The same theory applies to life. Life’s going slowly in one direction. I can stay in the slow lane, just keep rollin’ on down that hill, gathering moss and cobwebs until finally, when I come to a stop, I’m so covered in crap, I’m unrecognizable. That’s what Mom did. That’s what most people do. But that’s never been my style.

*

At Rosalind House, there are a lot of drugs. Enough that everyone has their own basket. Every morning and afternoon, the nurse rolls her table-on-wheels through the halls with the baskets, a veritable candy woman of pharmaceuticals. In my basket is Aricept, a round peach-colored tablet responsible for slowing the breakdown of a compound that transmits messages between the nerve cells. Also in the basket is vitamin E, clear and yellow, long and thin. Lastly there is Celexa, a powerful antidepressant responsible for making all of this feel like no big deal. That’s the one I know for sure isn’t working.

I don’t get dressed until my second week at Rosalind House. When I do, I wonder why I bothered. All I do here is lie in bed, scribble in my journal, and stare out the window. Any visitors I might have had (Jack notwithstanding) have been told, at my request, that I’m at a facility on the other side of the country (Hey, I’m not likely to remember them anyway, and I need a “pity visit” like I need a hole in the head). Eric, the manager guy, stops by continually, trying to cajole me into bingo. (Yeah. Like that’s gonna happen.) Various nurses and staff have popped in. But I’ve been out of my room only once, and when I did leave it, I got so twisted around that I couldn’t find my way back. As far as blips went, this one wasn’t so bad. At least I knew I was at Rosalind House. I knew I had a room. But the only thing my little trip out of my room taught me is that I’m in the right place. Residential care.