A Clean Slate (28 page)

“You should know,” Dr. Sinclair said, “that although it's possible that you will continue to remember parts of those months, you may plateau. You may even forget things again. Memory is very spotty and very unpredictable.”

I nodded. If there was anything I'd learned since that day at the dry cleaners it was how unpredictable memory was. And life, too.

“Would you like to know what we've learned from your scans?” Dr. Sinclair said.

No, I thought. Don't tell me. I don't want to know. I don't ever want to know. I wondered if I could just will myself away again, back to the state where I didn't know anything for sure, where I couldn't be trusted to remember. And yet it wasn't possible anymore. I'd lost the ability to hide.

“Yes,” I said.

He flipped through the chart again, his fingers moving deftly as if he knew exactly what he was looking for. I envied that sure-handed search of his. “As you may remember, the original hemorrhage caused the headaches you had last May. What we've found is that you've had repetitive bleeds, one episode of which occurred roughly a month ago and was located in your frontal and temporal lobes. This hemorrhage could have easily contributed to or caused your short-term memory loss.”

So maybe it hadn't been all my own doing. Maybe I hadn't completely willed away my own memory.

“An additional bleed led to your fainting episode yesterday,” Dr. Sinclair said.

“That was only yesterday?”

He nodded. I wondered why it seemed so long ago. “We found a prescription bottle in your purse.” He held it up to show me. “Had you taken one of these?”

“Yes. I had a headache.”

He gave me a patient smile. “You don't remember me telling you not to take these?”

I searched the new store of information in my brain, but nothing came to me on this topic. I shook my head.

“Dr. Markup prescribed these when you were first complaining of headaches, but once I saw you I warned you against them because they contain an agent that can make you bleed more. In fact, I believe they contributed to your fainting episode.”

I said nothing. I was furious at myself now. I'd put my
self here. If only I hadn't taken that blue pill, I might have gone on, blissfully unaware. But would that have been better or worse?

“It might have happened, anyway,” Dr. Sinclair said, seeming to sense my thoughts. “Unfortunately, the treatment options haven't changed radically since I saw you last. I'm very leery of surgically excising the bleed because of the diffuse nature and the danger of causing further harm. The other available treatment is focused radiation, which, as you may remember from our talks, has its own problems. The only real option right now, in my opinion, is to closely monitor you for any other bleeds or functional issues.”

“What do you think will happen to me?”

“In terms of what?”

I remembered his office now, the one in the Radisson Hotel building, where Laney's sister had seen me. I could see the rolled-out paper on the examining table, the diplomas scattered over the walls. And I remembered him sitting on a little stool with wheels, giving me his clinical recitation of possible ramifications.

“This thing could kill me,” I said. “Isn't that right?”

He dipped his head to one side, as if in reluctant acknowledgment of my statement.

 

Those next few days in the hospital were like being in the middle of a violent, clanging battle, one within myself, where one side was on the edge of victory, only to be hurled back by the last-ditch efforts of the other troops. A certain feeling tried to be the victor in this battle—a feeling of being on the brink of that madness and depression of the past summer. How easily it would be to fall back into those open, comforting arms and shut myself off from the world again. But my new life kept pulling me away from that ledge, reminding me that I would have to fight for a normal life, but it would be worth it. I had Laney again, and I had Cole.
Even my mom had rushed to Chicago when I'd called her, and she spent her days sweet-talking the nurses and giving me a running commentary on the celebrities we saw on TV. She could handle this, I realized. She could handle more than I'd given her credit for, and somehow that gave me strength to give those brutal armies a final heave-ho.

Once that war in my head slowed, my reaction to my dreary prognosis was a sinking disappointment at the utterly unromantic explanation for my memory loss. All those crazy thoughts—that Beth Maninsky was a covert operative for the CIA, that maybe I was the spy, that maybe I'd witnessed a murder, that the two-freckled man was someone I'd been having illicit sex with—were just that, crazy thoughts. Instead, I was left with my own psychological run for cover and this vague description of bleeding somewhere in my brain, where I couldn't even truly feel it, couldn't see it. I would have to take the word of Dr. Sinclair that it could happen again, that hypothetically it could lead to a quick death tomorrow on the subway, or it could abate, letting me live until the age of one hundred and twenty. More likely, it would be something I'd have to deal with on a regular basis—keeping my stress level down, getting regular blood-work, making visits to Dr. Sinclair's office and possibly going through radiation treatments in the future if it became bad enough.

It helped that my memory hadn't completely returned. In fact, I hoped I never recovered the parts of my life I couldn't remember. It seemed like some merciful god was keeping the more agonizing moments at bay. For example, I could recall now being fired by Bartley Brothers. I could see the self-satisfied smirk on Attila's face and hear the pity in his voice, but I couldn't remember Ben dumping me later that evening. I could remember moving into the Lake Shore Drive apartment, putting up those pictures of Ben and
spreading my green duvet over the bed, yet my memories of packing up my town house, of turning that key for the last time, seemed permanently gone, and for that I was grateful. It was enough to know it had happened, without recalling the specifics.

For lack of anything better to do with me, they let me out of the hospital after three days filled with CT scans, blood tests, urinalyses and an angiogram.

Laney and Cole picked me up when I was discharged. They were dating, they told me on the way home. It had all started after I'd passed out in Cole's studio. They'd stayed up all night in the hospital, waiting to learn what was going on with me, and somewhere in the middle of their worry they'd found each other.

Cole was driving Laney's car as they told me this. That hula girl on the dashboard swung her hips to and fro, and Laney kept glancing over her shoulder as if nervous of my reaction.

“We know it's quick,” she said, looking to Cole for confirmation.

He nodded, uncharacteristically quiet, and glanced at me in the rearview mirror.

“But we're sure it's right,” Laney said. “It just feels so right. And we know this might be weird for you…” She glanced again at Cole.

“You guys, it's fine,” I said, and they both seemed surprised. Of course it was fine—what else was I going to say? I was just happy to have Laney back again, although I wondered whether I might lose her once more, this time to Cole.

“You're sure, Kelly Kelly?” Cole said with another look at me in the mirror. “You know how fucked up I am.”

“And what an arsehole you are,” I said, mimicking his accent.

Laney turned around in her seat and reached over it to grab my hand. “You all right?”

I shrugged.

W
hen we got back to my apartment, Laney told Cole she'd call him later, and she stayed with me that night. I loved her for it, but it was strange and horrible at first. The fight we'd had hung there in my apartment, struggling for space with the news of my medical condition. Laney helped me unpack from my Caribbean trip, the two of us moving awkwardly around my bedroom, slipping clothes onto hangers, throwing others in the hamper.

“These are cute,” Laney said, holding up a pair of lilac pants that Melanie had talked me into.

“Thanks,” I said.

She moved past me toward the closet, our forearms brushing, an odd feel of physical closeness. “Maybe you should clean these first,” she said, eyeing them.

“I'll look at them later.” I took a T-shirt out of my bag and put it in my dresser drawer.

“I could take your cleaning in tomorrow if you want,” Laney said.

“No, I can do it.”

“Well, it's no problem, you know? I can get us some coffee and then just swing by there on the way and—”

“Laney,” I said, my voice brittle. “I can handle it.”

I turned around from the dresser. She was standing by my closet, the lilac pants in her hands, a wooden hanger in the other. After a moment, she finally looked at me. “I guess I fucked this up, too.”

“What?”

“Us. I shouldn't have told you about the whole caretaker thing. My issue. I should have just figured it out for myself.”

“No, of course you should have told me. But I'm just not sure now what's normal help from you and what's going overboard. I don't want it to get worse. I mean, I'm not sure how this can get worse, but I don't want to lose you, and so I don't want too much help from you…” I trailed off, feeling tears come to my eyes.

I wanted everything back to normal, back to the way things were before my birthday, my diagnosis, my memory loss. But even as I had that thought, I knew it wasn't true. I was glad that I had seen Ben for who he was, who we were together. And I was glad I'd gotten to be a photographer's assistant for a while. There were so many things I was grateful for, so many things I'd learned since that day at the dry cleaners. But I wanted Laney and me back to the way we'd always been. I needed that.

I blinked away the tears and saw that Laney had her head in her hands, her shoulders shuddering. I moved around the bed to her side.

“Okay, well, don't ruin the pants,” I said, taking them from her.

She gave a pathetic little laugh and looked at me, her eyes red and runny. “I'm sorry.”

“I'm sorry, too.” We hugged each other tightly, and both of us cried a little more.

“I'm seeing Ellen, you know,” she said, pulling back and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Really?”

“Yeah, she's pretty good.”

“Well, tell her to expect a call from me,” I said. “Dr. Sinclair says that I've got to control my stress.”

“Want to go together?” Laney said. “We can make it a weekly thing—therapy and margaritas. I'll bring the shaker and the limes, you bring the tequila.”

We both laughed. “Sounds good,” I said. “But how about a confession right now? It's a good one, and there's no way I'm telling Ellen.”

“What is it?”

“It's a pretty hot story. I'm not sure if you can handle it.”

“Oh, my God! Did you have sex?”

I grinned and stood up, refolding the shirt in my hands.

“You did!” Laney said. “Get over here.” She pulled my arm until I sat back on the bed. “Tell me!”

And so I gave her the whole story of Sam, every tiny detail, with Laney shrieking and clapping. And then she told me how she'd broken up with Gear and how she and Cole had started. They'd stayed up all night talking in the hospital waiting room, and once they'd gotten word that I was all right, they'd gone out for coffee and just kept talking. Cole told her that he'd had a crush on her since that first day they'd met, and Laney admitted she'd been thinking about him, too. She was charmed by how sweet he was and by his randy accent. Cole also spilled the story about Britania and why he'd left New York. She told him about her music and her dream to be in a band.

“It was amazing,” Laney said. “It's like he just gets me. He totally understands me, and yet he really likes me.”

I watched her as she talked. She seemed head over heels
about him. She seemed truly happy, and that's all I could ever ask for my friend.

“But you know, even if this thing works out with Cole,” Laney said, lying back on my pillows. “You and I are the important part. I won't let anything happen to us, okay?”

I felt a surge of relief through my chest, and I flopped back on the pillows with her. “Okay,” I said. There was a pause. “So have you kissed him yet?”

She squealed, and I clapped, and then Laney told me the rest of the story. Sometime during the tale, somewhere between Cole kissing the back of her neck outside the coffee shop and creative use of the beanbag chair back at his studio, something settled over Laney and me. We seemed to fall back into the place we'd been before my birthday. We felt like us again.

 

Laney called in sick for a few days. We saw movies and split bottles of wine and stayed up late talking on the couch.

When Cole came over to pick her up two days later, he brought a large pizza, and the three of us ate it, standing over the box in the kitchen.

“How are you, Kelly Kelly?” he said. He folded a slice of pizza into a roll and ate it with large bites, his other hand reaching for Laney, rubbing her back. It was odd to see them touch like that, and yet they both seemed unaware of it, like two people who'd been together a lifetime.

“I'm good,” I said. “I think. I mean, I feel fine.”

“Great. So when are you coming back to work?”

He and Laney looked at me, and the kitchen was silent. I could tell that they'd talked about this.

“I'm not, Cole. Nothing's changed.”

“Right. You're still a bloody great photographer and a brilliant assistant. Don't be daft, Kelly Kelly.”

“I'm actually being quite smart. I'm being logical about this. I need to get a real job.”

Cole gave me a cross look.

“Sorry,” I said. “I just mean a job that will pay me some solid cash.”

“Well, I already told you—”

“Coley,” Laney said softly, putting a hand on his forearm. “Leave it alone.”

“But—”

“Just leave it be for now,” Laney said.

“Hmph,” he said, his mouth full of pizza. “Just for now. But you and I will revisit this,” he said, waving a paper towel at me.

He turned to Laney then and dabbed a drop of sauce off her chin with the paper towel. She smiled, giving him a look that even I couldn't read.

 

I called Ben a week after I was discharged. He'd sent flowers and left messages at the hospital a few times, but I hadn't talked to him yet. I needed to speak to him now for a few reasons. For one thing, I wanted to see if it was true—if he was marrying Therese—and how he would explain it to me. For another thing, I now had a reason for my behavior over the summer—the way I'd waited at his house, took those surveillance pictures. At the time I'd done that, I'd had this desperate notion that my relationship with Ben was the one aspect of my life I could control. I couldn't alter Dee's death, I couldn't make Bartley Brothers take me back and I couldn't change my medical diagnosis, but maybe if I could get Ben back, I'd thought, maybe I'd feel in charge of my life again. And so I'd focused solely on Ben, on getting him back. I'd gone overboard, though, way
way
overboard, my sadness pushing me to go to odd, strange lengths.

The last reason I called Ben was to see if he'd heard of any analyst openings. I hadn't changed my mind about getting another job in the financial world. In fact, the medical
bills had started trickling in, and I knew then, more than ever, that the job with Cole wasn't going to work.

“Ben Thomas,” he answered on the first ring, sounding annoyed and slightly panicked. I'd been watching the business stations that morning, and I knew that a stock he traded was plummeting. I could have waited until the market closed to call him, but he would have to talk to me once he heard my voice, and this call would make his day all the more shitty. I figured he deserved it.

“Hey, it's me,” I said when he answered.

A pause, then, “Wow. How are you?”

“Okay.”

“Hold on. Let me close my door.”

While he put me on hold, I wondered if he'd taken the partner office that I'd had my eye on, the one tucked at the back of the floor, tiny but hidden.

“Kell,” he said when he picked up the phone again. “Are you all right? I called the hospital a few times, but you were always sleeping or getting tests done.”

“I'm doing pretty well.” I coughed to evoke a little sympathy, then got to the point. “I hear congratulations are in order.”

He sighed. “It's not what I want. It's what I have to do.”

That phrase struck something deep inside me, like the muffled clang of a distant church bell. It reverberated in my head.

It's not what I want. It's what I have to do. It's not what I want. It's what I have to do.

I still asked Ben about analyst jobs, dutifully scribbling down the company names and phone numbers he lauded like consolation prizes. But I never called any of them because I realized right then that life, mine at least, had to be a mixture of
both
elements—what I
wanted
and what I
had
to do.

 

I called Cole and asked for my job back, the only job I'd ever loved, the thing I wanted most. And after he'd given a
whoop of joy that sent a happy tingle of confirmation through me, Cole agreed to give me a raise. Yet it still wasn't enough. So I did what I had to do. I paged through the housing section of the
Reader,
viewed at least thirty of the dumpiest apartments known to man, and finally rented a small studio in Rogers Park that made my old town house look like a palace.

My new place has a fraction of the space I'm used to and none of the creature comforts. My lovely fall wardrobe that I spent so much on at Saks is crammed in a foot-deep closet with most of my other worldly possessions, and that's
after
I gave away at least fifteen pairs of shoes to Goodwill. And there's an artist in the apartment above me who likes to paint at three in the morning, accompanied by Marilyn Manson screeching full-blast on his stereo, no matter how many times I thump on the ceiling with my broom. The water pressure is pathetic, there's no air-conditioning and my kitchen is actually smaller than the closet. Still, I've filled my walls with photos of my friends and family and the shots I've taken around Chicago. I always splurge on fresh flowers, and when I've got a handful of candles going at night, the place feels like my home.

And I did something else I had to do. I took a job at Katie's Coffee. Now, five days a week, I open the store at 5:00 a.m. and work until ten o'clock, when I get on the El and head to Cole's.

This coffee job isn't what I want, certainly. There's nothing more embarrassing than having to serve one of my old business colleagues on their way to his or her six-figure job.

“Do you want your soy topper steamed?” I hear myself asking, trying not to grimace, trying even harder not to notice the quick flash of sympathy that lights their eyes.

At the end of the day, I'm exhausted, but it's a good exhausted, somehow more gratifying than the thumping brain stress I used to have after a day at Bartley Brothers. And
there are other upsides. I now know how to make myself a killer white chocolate mocha, even better than the one at Starbucks.