We Only Know So Much (11 page)

twenty-one

V
ivian comes into her kitchen this morning to discover Theodore, dog at his feet, taking apart the electric can opener. This is another thing that Theodore likes to do lately, take things apart. He doesn’t necessarily want to fix them, he mostly just wants to see how they work, although in this case the can opener wasn’t working, and now it’s in about as many pieces as there are pieces of it, all spread out on the kitchen table.

At one time, for Theodore, this practice might have been about saving a few dollars. He used to be decent at fixing things, but he doesn’t really know he’s not anymore, and these days he’s mostly only interested in the mechanics of the thing. His intention is to put it back together—that’s always his intention—but it never happens. The parts that look like they go together do not go together, not at all. It’s just like the puzzles. But he will keep trying. If he turns this one thingamajig a centimeter to the right, he knows it will lock right into the doodad and be as good as new. Never mind that Theodore’s hands no longer operate on the centimeter level. Lock into place. Just a little to the right. To the left. To the right. Lockintoplace. Boy, this is sure making Theodore hungry. He’ll get this back together, he knows he will, if he just looks at it long enough.

The repeated taking apart of appliances drives Vivian crazy. It almost makes her sorry that he seems to be past the crying, sentimental period he was in before his mind got a little worse. It was unseemly, just not manly. Her son had not shed a tear in front of her since he’d been about six, was always—well, not stoic, but certainly composed, a well-behaved boy, and there he was now so undignified, mushy, suddenly weepy at the drop of a hat, at dinner, during card games.

Anyway, it’s not just that his hands wave wildly now, even on the meds, causing him small injuries on a regular basis. Gordon took away his father’s beloved pocketknife only recently, after a pretty serious stabbing to his left hand sent them to the ER for three stitches to his palm. It’s true that the can opener wasn’t working right, but for heaven’s sake, it was from the seventies. That’s what Walmart’s for, Vivian thought, you throw these things out and go get a new one. She’d go out right now and get one herself if she didn’t have to schedule rides so far in advance with this family. Theodore’s thumb is perilously close to the little circular blade now, and though it’s coated in thirty years of gunk, as of yesterday it was still sharp enough to open a can of soup.

Theodore
. Vivian says.

Theodore doesn’t hear his mother at first, is contemplating a tiny screw and trying to locate the corresponding hole.

Theodore!

Theodore looks up at his mother with wide eyes. Vivian feels a mix of things right here, flashes back to Theodore as a small boy, always curious, always interested in how things worked, finds her irritation softening just a bit.
Dear, it’s broken now. For heaven’s sake, we can well afford to get a new one.
She knows that’s not really the point for Theodore, but it’s something to say.
You’re going to hurt yourself.
She should stop here. She knows she should stop here. She should really just not say another word.
Again.
Vivian takes the piece with the blade out of his hand.

Theodore’s face turns into as much of a frown as he’s got anymore. He looks down at the dog.
Whole lotta people around here telling me what to do these days.

All right, well, please don’t throw it away
, Theodore says to his mother
. I’m sure it can be fixed.

Vivian goes to look for a box. She’s learned that sometimes it’s easier to appease him. Hopefully he’ll forget, and she can throw it away soon enough.

twenty-two

J
ean’s book group has decided to convene as scheduled, in spite of their recent loss, as a “tribute” to James. They tell themselves it’s what James would want, though the truth is, none of them besides Jean had known him well enough to know what he’d want, and we know now that even Jean didn’t know everything. The fact was that Margot had picked an atrocious book,
The Bridges of Madison County
, one James would never have read on his own. Jean had read it when it came out, long before she’d ever even imagined she’d be unfaithful herself, hated it beyond words back then—the story unbelievable, the writing so dreadful she remembers feeling embarrassed for the author, had only ever hated one book more. (
Conversations with God
. She’d found it almost beyond comprehension that so many millions of people had purchased and found meaning in this book—it was all well and good, she thought, that some guy talked to god, but paying money to read these absurd conversations seemed like paying money to hear someone’s conversations with E.T.) So she didn’t plan to reread
Bridges
this time—not before James died and especially not now. To Jean, it had seemed chosen as a direct response to James’s last pick. Everyone wanted something romantic. Something
easy
.

Today Jean is in no mood to socialize, but she’s choosing between staring out the window with Theodore and getting out of the house, so she grabs her copy of the book, which she hadn’t even been able to unload at their last garage sale for a quarter, and heads out the door.

Four of the remaining five members are completely captivated with the book, so excited to talk about it. Each takes a turn reading some of her favorite lines. Most of the ones they single out are lines Jean would have chosen to demonstrate how bad the writing is. Margot reads:
“My life . . . lacks romance, eroticism, dancing in the kitchen to candlelight, and the wonderful feel of a man who knows how to love a woman . . .”
Jean wonders what on earth had convinced her to get together with this group in the first place. She thinks it was mostly that they asked. You’d think she’d identify with this character, but on hearing these lines she can barely suppress a gag reflex. Bad writing trumps potentially interesting story every time. Maybe
she
should write a book. Couldn’t she write a better book along similar lines? She should write a book about a lonely woman who takes up with a man who kills himself because his book group picked the worst book ever written. She knows these people aren’t bad people, but are they really this shallow? How did she not notice this when James was alive? Oh, right. For a while, Jean sits mostly in silence listening to the group
ooh
and
aah
about Francesca and Kincaid’s love—even the only remaining male in the group, Duncan, who isn’t usually such a sucker—about how surprised they were to find that they empathized with her even though she’d betrayed her family. Jean can’t help but wonder how empathetic they’d be if she confessed her own secret right now. Having listened to their gossip for years, she doubts that they’d swoon over her story the way they are for these flat, fictional people. She can’t decide what she’s more upset about: their attraction to this story, or the fact that they can’t seem to recognize that this book is a blight on mankind.

Finally Margot notices that Jean hasn’t said anything.
You’re awfully quiet tonight, Jean. Didn’t you like the book?

As is customary, Jean leans toward being polite, in spite of what’s in her head.

To be honest, it’s been a long time since I read it.

Okay. But you must have loved it then, right?

Jean is polite, but she’s also a bad liar, when pressed.

Well, not so much, no.

Surprised reactions from the rest of the group. They can’t believe it. They should be able to believe it; she’d loved
Confederacy
and always picked
difficult
books herself, but they can’t believe anyone wouldn’t love this book.

You didn’t think it was a beautiful love story?

Not really.

But why?

Jean tries to work around what she really wants to say, that she has some experience in this area, but that even when she didn’t, it still hadn’t rung true. She tells them she just thought it was poorly written, takes a deep breath and flips through the book to find an example.

Okay, here: “I am the highway and a peregrine and all the sails that ever went to sea.”

The group practically swoons in unison.

All right, what about this: “In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you live.”

I was blown away by that line!
Alisa says.
So completely true!

Don’t you just dream of that kind of certainty?
Margot asks.
I’ve been married for seventeen years. I don’t even think I felt like that on our wedding day.

Okay, here’s another one: “Here I am walking around with another person inside of me.” I mean, I dunno, don’t you think that’s kind of creepy?
What Jean had loved about James was that she’d always felt he was walking around next to her. No one gets the difference, and Jean sees that they’re not going to. This effectively ends this month’s group on an awkward note. Jean waits until the last few
Well-I-loved-it
s to leave, but she will not go back to book group.

twenty-three

G
ordon’s shrink, of course, suggests therapy. Gordon is not eager to rush into anything of the kind, but he is desperate. He’s always thought that psychology was a branch of quackery, or that it was for the truly disturbed, that everyone else should just buck up and think their way out of their problems. But right now Gordon is willing to explore all avenues—hoping for the ideal scenario, that the doctor and the shrink will each make the same crisp and clear diagnosis, something to the effect of “There’s nothing at all wrong with you.”

Gordon tries to push the shrink to explain various causes of memory loss, whether or not this is the beginning of a long slow or swift decline, whether it could be Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, dementia, a stroke, a brain tumor, what? The shrink tells him he’ll have to have tests to determine whether or not he has anything along those lines, but that since the short-term memory usually fails first, and real memory loss would likely be accompanied by many other symptoms, he doesn’t believe it’s necessary at this time. This is a brief bit of relief for Gordon—until the shrink adds,
It’s really very normal to repress certain painful memories.

Painful memories? With Trudy? How painful could they have been? Even if that were true, wouldn’t he remember
something
? Wouldn’t he remember Trudy herself? Her face? Even if he couldn’t put it into context? How was it that he remembered Sheila but not Trudy?

The brain has a remarkable ability to maneuver its way around trauma.

Trauma?

Sure. For example, the connection between horrific trauma and fractured—that is to say, split or multiple personality—is well-documented.

Gordon rolls
horrific
,
trauma
, and
multiple personality
around the tumbler; he knows there would have to be other symptoms if he were some sort of Sybil, his family would surely notice, he’d probably have blackouts, nothing like that has been happening. But horrific trauma? What could possibly have happened between him and Trudy that would fall under that header, that would be so unthinkable that he’d literally have unthunk it? Could she have drugged him, done something like that while he was unconscious? The shrink admits that’s a stretch, suggests maybe a more subtle trauma—maybe something that relates to Gordon’s mother or father somehow, or another family member, a childhood trauma, that something about their interaction connected to some long-forgotten ordeal.

You may have had a good family life, but often such experiences occur with family friends, babysitters, other relatives.

This is where Gordon veers off. He knows he had a good childhood. He
thinks
he knows. He used to know. Unless what the doctor says is true. Which it isn’t. There’s no way. No, really, there isn’t. We’re telling you. It’s just that, from now on, Gordon will never be more than 98 percent sure. The remaining 2 percent is troublesome, to be sure, but not so much that he can’t deny it. Something else is causing his memory loss, he is certain.

Do you suppose there’s any possibility that Trudy is lying, that she’s making the whole thing up, that she was some kind of crazy stalker? Someone I maybe dated once and then she became obsessed and fabricated all kinds of stories she believed, but that weren’t true?

I’m not sure how that follows.
Gordon isn’t really either, but even a
Gaslight
scenario would be better than a defective mind.

Don’t stalkers usually hunt you down, follow you around?
He’d only run into Trudy once, but could she be such a good stalker that she made their meeting seem accidental, that she might possibly be stalking him as we speak? That she’s so furtive a stalker that she would deny his online friendship just to make it look like she wasn’t stalking him? Gordon is warming to this idea, even though it means his life could be in danger. Given the choice, he prefers the idea that someone is interested in killing him to the idea that he’s losing his most precious resource. Who would he be without his mind? He doesn’t know, and he does not like not knowing things.

Gordon finally thinks to call his college roommate Phil to ask what he remembers about Trudy.

That was the year you blew me off most nights to be with her
, Phil says.

Gordon explains how they’d run into each other recently.
Except I simply could not remember her at all.

Really? You sure were into her then. You don’t remember me bitching to you guys when she spent the night? God, the noises still haunt me. I always thought something was wrong with you guys.
Phil makes a fake shuddering noise; Gordon is silent.
But, you know, we’re old now, man. Don’t sweat it. I mix up my wife and my dog’s names all the time.

That is not the same thing at all, Gordon thinks. Not at all.