The Memory Box (13 page)

Keepsakes are supposed to fill you with warmth and nostalgia. Sweet things, like newspaper clippings of your stage performances in high school, old love letters from teenage boyfriends. Special gifts that marked important occasions, like graduation day. My peeks-into-the-past track record of late has been odious at best.

I don’t care what’s in the box. If I haven’t seen this stuff in years, I’m obviously not missing anything. It’s going straight into the trash. Sight unseen.

I curl my fingers under the two flaps, clench my teeth, and yank the box back toward me. Everything is going in the garbage. I’m getting rid of it all. I stare at the taped-up mouth. It’s ridiculous to be scared of a box. I had a good childhood. I had the most wonderful sister in the world, and we were an awesome pair. Like a lock and key. One useless without the other. My heart starts to pine for my youth. I kneel on the floor and drop my head in my hands, and beg myself to remember anything. Where do memories go when you lose them?

Without thinking I throw the sides open and look back inside the box. My heart flutters in gales. At the top is a thick stack of newspaper clippings. A proud smile grows across my face. I knew these would be in here. When I was a kid, I was in all the plays at school. I loved acting and singing. As a high school senior, I had the lead in the musical
Anything Goes
. My picture was in the newspaper. JD clipped it out and saved it for me. All our neighbors gave us their copies. I had to style my hair in pin curls for the role. These are my things!

With care I remove the newspaper clippings and place them on my lap. My legs are folded underneath me. I stop for a second to take in how wonderful this feels. Smarty saunters in the room and finds me in the closet. He licks the side of the box and jumps up so his legs rest on top of it, allowing him to peer inside while he sniffs obsessively. “Don’t lick that, Smarty!” I clap my hands. “Come on down from there. Shoo! Don’t drool on my things!”

He backs out of the closet and lies on the floor, watching me.

I can’t wait to tell the girls about my days in the theater and show them these clips of me on stage. These were some of the greatest times of my childhood. I gently lift the newspapers one by one to find my photo.

The only problem is that all of the clips are obituaries.

One after the other. Dead people announcements. I turn them over to where the “local happenings” column is usually printed. No, only classifieds. I thumb through the stack. There are pages and pages of obituaries. Tons of them. Could these be JD’s obituary—in quantity?

I crane my neck to look back in the box for something to jump out at me. The dried corsage from my prom. The handlebar fringe from my purple bike. My softball mitt from the sixth grade. What is this crap? Why am I doing this? Why didn’t I heave the entire box with its contents into the nearest dumpster?

I grab the newspapers and throw them in the box. It doesn’t matter that they’re not neatly stacked with lined up corners. I’m chucking them. The one on top has an obit circled in red marker. Maybe these are JD’s. I read it quickly: it’s not JD’s. I have no idea whose it is. I’ve never heard the name before in my life. Out of curiosity, I look to see if the others are the same. They aren’t. They’re all different. Different people, different towns. Even different states. None of them are from Lanstonville or anywhere else in Pennsylvania. There must be fifteen to twenty newspapers in the pile, all from other states: Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut, and New Jersey, and a couple from New York. The dates span from September to December 2000. All the pages are peppered with bold red circles drawn around select obituaries. I read each one. I’ve never heard of these people. None of them.

They all have something in common. All the obituaries are for young women who died in their twenties. Tragic premature deaths. All of the young women were married. They all were mothers of one surviving daughter. Coincidentally, or maybe not, the daughters were all two years old. The date, time, and location of the wakes and funerals are highlighted in yellow. In the margins of the newspapers are handwritten notes. In red marker. In my handwriting. Many of the margins have just one word: “No.” Some notes elaborate: “not right,” or “works in family business,” or “doesn’t speak English,” or “too ugly.” Or “too smart.” A couple say “maybe.” The “maybes” have a sheet of lined notebook paper stapled to them with more notes, like, “Coping without Partners meeting on Wednesday,” or “Met for coffee—too curious.”

The thoughts oozing into my mind are uncomfortable.

This can’t be what I think it is. What it appears to be. There’s an odd sensation in my stomach, like the jiggling of cold marbles tumbling over each other.

Out loud I remind myself, “Don’t get distracted. You were getting rid of junk.” I systematically stack the newspaper clippings into a pile and return them to the box.

Just before I silence the past for good and place the flaps down, my eyes inadvertently saunter back to the newspaper on top. This one has a beefy red asterisk on it. Written across the top margin of the newspaper in red block letters is: “Mr. Right!!!” I lower my gaze without moving anything else. My head and my eyes adamantly disagree on reading a single word more. My eyes win. The obituary that’s captured in a blazing red noose from Spellington, Delaware reads:

Debra Thompson, 29. Debra Anne Thompson, beloved wife and mother. Leaves husband, Andrew, 2-year-old daughter, Tessa …

There is a note on lined paper in my handwriting attached to the newspaper clipping:

“Andy is perfect. Handsome and charming. Not very bright or inquisitive. Attentive but unobservant. Perfect in every way. Grieves for his wife but he’ll need to quickly fill her shoes. Admits that he’s scared to death to be Tessa’s only parent. ‘Needs a mother for Tessa.’ Empathetic toward me and my role as a single parent. Barely asks anything about my ‘deceased husband.’ Tessa will be turning three next July—the perfect twin for Lilly! Andy’s the one!”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Tuesday, September 26, 2006, 2:07 p.m.

B
ehind the wheel of my car, I sit, parked under a sweeping elm in front of our house. I look at the place where I live. At the life I premeditated. I want to die, but I can’t leave the girls at school, waiting in front of the third-grade door, watching all the kids and parents dribble away. Alone and abandoned.

But I can’t pick them up either. I can’t do it. I’ve spent the last half hour scanning the pages of the school directory, which lists the kids in Lilly and Tessa’s third-grade classes. Dialing numbers to find someone who can bring them home from school. A real mom. I’m not fit for, or deserving of, motherhood. I’m a liar. And a sham. They don’t know me. And I don’t know me.

But it seems that all the real mothers are getting manicures. Or pedicures. I didn’t even do that right. I never get my nails done.

I look at our lawn, which I dragged myself across to get to the car; every step crushed the perky, stand-at-attention blades of grass. A lawn that says:
a respectable, privileged, and decent family lives here
. I’ve made a liar of it, too.

My grip on the steering wheel transforms my knuckles into a range of mountaintops with little peaks of snow at the summit. The car is idling, waiting for me. I pull away from the curb and drive. I don’t know where, and I don’t care. My head tips forward twice; I can’t focus on the road. I pull the car over to the curb. My eyelids lose the battle to stay open. They are so heavy. My eyes bear the weight of all the evil they’ve seen. How can I blame them for shutting?

I reach around the floor of the car for a bottle of water, to splash my face.

Suicide attempts are actually a cry for help, aren’t they? Those people don’t really want to die, they want to be found and helped and hoisted up and out of the muck of misery. It’s the classic cry for help, isn’t that what they say? I wonder if JD really wanted to be saved but no one came to her aid. No one read the signs. Where the hell was I? Maybe she wanted to die.

I know the feeling.

With closed eyes, I reach down to the cup holder and feel around for a bottled water. There’s always a bottled water in my cup holder. Water, vitamins, dental floss, and hand lotion are car staples. JD gave me that idea. She was always getting on me for not drinking enough water. She was a diabetic most of her life and could drink enough to drown herself.

My hand finds a bottle in the glove compartment. It’s empty.

I love the sound that comes from blowing into an empty water bottle. If your lips are just right. A lonely foghorn sound. It’s so comforting—a fog horn. Calling you home when you’re lost. Or foggy. Droning on, tirelessly, to show you the way.

This is the beginning of the end, I know that now.

I want to die.

But I don’t want to die—

My chest collapses on the steering wheel. I let myself go. Screw the horn.

This time, I don’t muffle it, or silence it; it’s not a polite quivering cry, or the kind that seeps out like the air of a pierced balloon. It’s painful and tragic and steals all my strength.

I think about the girls and Andy. Like a Super 8 film, images flash in my mind: our party on Sunday, the trip Andy and I are planning to Aruba, dinner with Sylvie and George, the winter and Christmas, decorating the house, Lilly’s dance recital—The Nutcracker. At the end of the film, my family is weeping, wearing somber attire. Lilly and Tessa are wearing grey or black—I can’t make it out—but they look awful, weary. They clutch each other’s hand. I’m not with them. Andy’s hand is in a fist, pounding his knee repeatedly. Lilly and Tessa are hunched and trembling and fragile—I can’t bear to look at them.

The demons can’t stay. It’s time for them to go. I’m not ready to throw in the towel.

I return my hands to the steering wheel; my eyes are open; my seat vibrates from the engine humming softly.

So what if it
is
true? So what if I
did
try to find a suitable partner for myself, who could be a father for Lilly?
And
I had the strength of mind to think about a sibling for my forsaken niece. After all, I was incapable of having my own children. And she needed a sister. Everyone does.

I had a responsibility to Lilly, the daughter of my deceased sister.

Is that so wrong?

I’ll tell you what it is—it’s practically
brilliant
. Not to mention utterly responsible. I was grieving, for God’s sake. My beloved sister—had just been taken from me. She chose me to be her daughter’s custodian; if that doesn’t say something, what does? She trusted me to make the right decisions.

Overnight, the weight of the world had fallen on my shoulders. I must have been scared out of my mind. One day, a carefree young woman in her prime dating years, on a thrilling career path, and the next, unwittingly, the surrogate mother of my sister’s two-year-old daughter, stripped of my former life. On top of that, my mother and father were gone. How much tragedy could I take? How was I to raise Lilly? I was so young myself and ill-prepared for motherhood.

So that’s what I did. I went shopping for a husband. With the utmost of practicality. I’ve done it a million times before—flats, heels, suede, leather, pumps, slingbacks. I know what I’m doing. I’m a scientist, and the mall is my laboratory. Maybe more women should go about it like that. After all, look at us now; we’ve been married for … six-ish years.

That doesn’t make me a criminal. Is what I did illegal? Did I kill anyone? I had to do what I had to do. I’m not ashamed of that. It’s very Darwinian if you think about it. And for that, I should be proud.

I grab the gear and put the car in drive. Wipe my face with my sleeve and sail smoothly through the streets of town, weaving in and out of familiar territory. I find myself in the parking lot of the grocery store near school without a conscious decision to be there, causing me to think about the last thing I ate.

It wasn’t lunch. Or breakfast.

Amazingly, it has been twenty-four hours since I last ate. Yesterday, lunch. Frittata with asparagus. A cup of coffee this morning and a bite of a Sno Ball certainly don’t count. No wonder I can’t keep it together. I look at my watch—twenty-six minutes until I need to pick up the girls. I’ll just get a couple of things. It’s food I need, protein and something to get my blood sugar up. Something to drink.

Into the grocery store I walk with decisive strides. I have a plan. To eat. It’s small, but it’s something. I grab a cart. The Bee Gees are singing, “If I Can’t Have You,” and contentment washes over me when I see the young mothers with toddlers shopping for bananas and strawberries. It’s all so normal. I become intoxicated by the smell of fresh baking bread.

I, too, grab a banana and strawberries, as if normalcy will infuse me by association. The apples are stacked in a pyramid next to bags of caramels—good and evil all in one square foot of grocery space. I pass them by and proceed to the yogurt section on the way to the deli and grab a peach smoothie, then order some turkey, just a couple of slices to eat in the car.

It’s just lacking romance. Is that it? Is that what’s making me feel so badly. I think about the way Andy and I met; it’s depressing. Does he even know … I … how it really was? It doesn’t matter anyway. We’ve passed the test. We’re in love and have a wonderful marriage; I’m not going to beat myself up over this. So I went about it a little unconventionally. If it weren’t so disturbing (and was someone else’s life), it would make a great book idea. I file it away in my mind for my next class. I guess we
are
supposed to draw from real life, right?

On my way to the front of the store, I pass through the greeting-card aisle. There are birthday cards for “wife” and “husband.” I read a few, hoping to identify with the sentiments. These couples met like normal people do. Starting with a crush, until death do us part. My eyes amble over to birthday cards for “daughter.” Cards I’ve been buying for years dishonestly. Or deceptively? I don’t have daughters. They are not mine. I have no children. That thought slams against my brain pretty hard and gets stuck in my throat like a Lego. The first card I pick up says, “Daughter, the day you were born, it seemed as if the sun shone a little brighter, the sky was a little clearer, the …” I can’t bear it. I ram it back into the plastic holster it came from. Who writes this crap? I check the time on my watch. Oh my gosh, the dismissal bell is about to ring.

As I speed walk to the register, my grocery cart screeches madly and veers to the left. I always get this one. It takes all my might to wrangle the carriage to the right, just to stay straight. I dip in and out of three lanes until I find one with no line.

My hand explores the bottom of my handbag for my wallet. It’s not there. Shoot. I open my handbag as wide as it will go, and this time I stick my head in. How can I not have my wallet? I never don’t have my wallet. I empty the contents of my bag into the grocery cart, a stupid idea; half of it falls through the holes to the floor. Shit. No wallet. My belongings scatter every which way. On my knees, I struggle to reclaim my lipsticks and loose change, chasing down every last coin, praying it will amount to something.

Twenty-seven cents. That won’t even buy me a banana. I swerve the carriage around. I
need
something to eat now. It’s a matter of medical necessity
. I cannot leave without food
.

My feet take over as if they have a mind of their own. The damn grocery cart keeps veering to the left—to keep this thing on track is like wrestling an alligator. My feet stop in the middle of aisle eleven: the automotive department.

No one’s ever in the automotive aisle. God only knows why they have one. Midway—between floor mats and air fresheners—I stand intimately close to the motor oil, scratch the back of my neck, and look behind me. No one’s there. Nor is there anyone to the left or right. I rip open the plastic deli envelope and stuff all three pieces of turkey in my mouth while I pop open the yogurt smoothie, and guzzle it down without stopping until my lips make a sucking sound when they get nothing but air.

This is
not
shoplifting. This is an act of survival. And child welfare. I poke the deli plastic through the neck of the empty smoothie bottle and tuck it behind a can of Pennzoil 10W40, wiping a trickle off my chin with the back of my hand.

Before I abandon the cart, I see a pack of Sno Balls at the bottom of it. How did those get in there? Did I do that? That’s disturbing. But now that I see them, I can’t resist a bite. Just one. I rip the plastic and stick a Sno Ball in my mouth as far as it will go. But not the whole thing. Just a bite. I put the rest in the plastic and stick it behind a can of oil, and make a beeline for the parking lot.

I’m almost at the car, and my cell rings. I grab my phone from the outside pocket of my handbag. I don’t recognize the number.

“Hello?” I answer the phone.

“Mrs. Thompson?”

“Who’s this?”

I look around the parking lot. It’s empty. Except for the grocery cart cowboy who’s herding the shopping carts. He looks up and sees me watching him push the snake of carts back to the store.

“This is Tina Wiggins, from Lincoln Elementary.”

Tina Wiggins? Oh God. This is about the fire alarm.

“Yes …” I say tentatively. If I hang up on her, they’ll just call again. Or send the police.

“I’m the substitute nurse. Mrs. Robin is not here today, so I’m filling in.”

“Oh. That’s great.”

“I don’t want to upset you, but Tessa had an accident.”

“
Tessa?
”

“She’s gonna be fine—really. It’s been pretty hectic here today. They wanted the kids to have a normal afternoon, so they went outside for gym. She was running back into school and tripped. The brick stairs broke her fall. Unfortunately, she must have been biting her lip when she was running, and her front teeth, well, they’ve punctured through the other side of her lip.”

“
What
—?”

“Don’t worry. We’re en route to the emergency room at Mountainview General. Could you meet us there?”

“What do you mean? Are you in an ambulance?” Oh God, no, not Tessa in an ambulance. She must be freaking out. At least if it were Lilly, she’d think it was cool. “Is Tessa okay? How is she doing?” I have a very low threshold for my children’s pain. “Can I speak with her?”

“It’s hard for her to speak right now. Her lip is packed up pretty good to stop the bleeding. We’ll be at the hospital in a few minutes. She’s doing good …” She whispers, “ …sort of.”

I start walking quickly toward the car. “Just tell her I’ll be right there, I’m not far—I’m on my way.” The one time I’d be okay with her biting her cuticles, it’s physically impossible.

“Thanks, Mrs. Thompson. Don’t worry, she’s in good hands, the EMTs are great. I won’t leave her until you get here.”

“I’ll be
right
there … Oh, no, I have to get Lilly—”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. She’s going home with Delia Henry. We couldn’t reach you at home or on your cell, so we called Mrs. Henry. She’s on your emergency card in the office.”

I’ve had my cell phone with me the entire time. It never rang.

“Mrs. Henry said Lilly can stay with them. I called your husband at work when I didn’t get you on your cell. He was in a meeting, so I left a message with his assistant.

“By the way, before I forget, you should know, Tessa chipped a tooth—”

“Oh my God—”

“No, really, it’s not bad. You can hardly notice. I’m sure you could leave it alone and no one would ever—”

“No, no, it can’t be left that way. We’ll have the dentist file it—it can’t be left like that.”

“Whatever. I just didn’t want you to be surprised and react in front of Tessa. She’s a little worried about it.”

“I’m on my way. It won’t be five minutes. I’m practically in the car.” I hang up the phone, but before I put it back in my handbag I look at my recent calls. Two missed calls from Tina Wiggins. Damn phone.

I pull into the emergency room parking lot, for the second day in a row, slipping my car into a signed spot which reads: “Emergency Room Parking Only, 15 Minute Limit.” I hurry toward the sliding doors. Hopefully, we can get Tessa taken care of quickly so I can pick up Lilly at Meg’s and get home for a “normal” evening. Maybe we can even be home before Andy, so it will seem like a typical Tuesday night. I’ll make one of our favorite dinners. That’s what we need. To hunker down with a good meal and our routine. Normalcy. I promise myself to concentrate on Lilly and Tessa and Andy and everything that makes us a happy family. And no computer.