I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia (12 page)

In May, Jim planned another, more appropriate “experiment” by way of a family trip to Sea World in San Antonio, Texas. He desperately wanted things—meaning me—to get back to normal. He thought a low-key, typical suburban family vacation would help. Jim knew that I had gone to Sea World with my family when I was younger, and he thought that putting me in what might be a familiar environment could possibly spark some Su-type memories. At least that is what he hoped for. In one photograph from that trip, Benjamin and Patrick are sitting in strollers shaped like whales. They are wearing matching outfits and have matching haircuts. They could almost be twins. Pictures such as these are often all I have, because I certainly don’t remember that vacation.

I can, however, repeat the stories of that trip after having been told them again and again. Apparently, at one point Jim lifted Patrick up so he could see the dolphins better, and so he could pet them. Patrick immediately started screaming and struggling to get out of Jim’s arms, so Jim set him down. When Jim asked him what was wrong, it turned out that Benjamin had told Patrick, “You better watch out because Mommy and Dad are going to feed you to those big fish.” Benjamin’s precocious intellect, developed as a result of my dependency on him, was unfortunately the bane of Patrick’s young existence. This incident was reminiscent of another one earlier that spring while they were playing together in the sandbox in the backyard. Benjamin told his little brother that fire ants tasted like purple Skittles. Poor Patrick ended up with a horrendously sore and swollen mouth and tongue.

It was after that excursion to Sea World that Jim began to seriously consider moving away from Texas. I failed to remember ever having been at such a memorable place, and I think he was a little bit disappointed about that. Jim thought a fresh start somewhere else might be good for everyone in the family.

Jim had been with General Dynamics for almost four years. He was only twenty-five, but he already possessed highly marketable skills in the aerospace and defense industry. He told me that his market value as an engineer would be higher somewhere else. He said he was considering looking for a job on the East Coast; perhaps New England or somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, like Baltimore or Washington, D.C. I’m sure that I hadn’t a clue as to what he was talking to me about, but it was decided that he would interview with a few places and then we would move. He ended up accepting a job in Baltimore, Maryland. Jim says he always thought we
were making these big decisions together. Looking back now, he thinks it more likely that I was simply feeding back words to him and just telling him whatever I thought he wanted to hear. I’m fairly certain that he is right, because I still find myself doing that at times, even now.

—The Kinks

B
ecause I had moved so many times as a kid, Jim figured I knew exactly what all would be involved in moving halfway across the country. In reality, there was one not so small problem with that reasoning. At this point, I could barely remember what I had eaten that morning for breakfast, or even
if
I had eaten breakfast. I was beyond clueless about what it would mean to live in a different house in a different neighborhood in a different part of the country. And a cross-country drive was as alien a concept to me as it was to Benjamin and Patrick back then. Once again, when Jim looks back, he realizes that I had no idea what was going on.

Jim was fortunately able to sell our house right away that August, and he decided that we would move to Maryland soon after Patrick’s
second birthday in September. The next problem was somehow figuring out a way to get two cars, two kids, and two cats to Baltimore. Jim came up with what he thought was the most obvious solution: I would drive one car with the kids, and he would drive the other car with the cats. Jim outfitted both cars with CB radios, and showed me how to work mine so we could keep in contact with each other along the way. I agreed readily to his plan, just like I agreed with most everything he said back then. Jim thoroughly regrets the decision now. At the time, he thought there was no other option, but he also admits now that he didn’t fully realize the extent of my confusion about almost everything. He told me recently that in the world of really dumb ideas he has had in his life, this was probably one of his worst.

Again, my actual memories of this mighty trip east are not at all clear, and I don’t think Jim’s recollections are much better. The journey was, however, not without incident. We were supposed to drive that first day all the way from Fort Worth to Jim’s parents’ house outside of Atlanta, and spend the night with them. But for whatever reason—maybe we got a late start—we ended up having to stop in rural Mississippi for the night. There was a bass-fishing tournament in whatever little off-the-highway town it was, and hotel rooms were extremely scarce. We ended up pulling into what looked to be a minimally acceptable motel (the rent-by-the-hour sort). Jim went into the office to ask someone about room availability while I waited with the boys, who were both asleep in their car seats by this point. Apparently, a very drunk bass fisherman opened the passenger-side door and crawled into my car. I have no idea what he said to me. I can sort of recall the smell of him and being frozen in place, not able to talk or move, but nothing else. Jim came back from the office and found me shaking like a leaf,
nearly in tears. I was barely able to speak and explain to him what had happened. He was chilled to the bone when he realized what I was trying to say:
There was a man. He was drunk. He smelled bad. He said something. I was scared. Then he went away.
I sometimes wonder what really took place in my car. Certainly Jim would not have been gone long enough for anything too terrible to happen. Right? We ended up staying for what was left of the night in a tiny, moldy, foul-smelling room. I’m curious as to whether I slept at all.

The next morning we got back on the road and made it to Jim’s parents’ house by late afternoon. After a much more comfortable night’s sleep at their place, we pressed on to what we thought would be our final leg to Baltimore. But we hadn’t driven too far when Jim’s car broke down outside of Charlotte in Concord, N.C. This car was one that he had purchased from my parents, and it had been driven for years by several of the Miller children, myself included. Jim says that there was a crack in the transmission housing, and he fed it transmission fluid regularly. But the car had chosen this particular morning to seize up. Jim left the boys and me at a Burger King and headed to a nearby service station. Benjamin and Patrick were initially thrilled to be out of their car seats, and they entertained themselves in that Burger King playland for quite some time, jumping and running around while I sat and watched. One hour stretched to two, then to four, then to six. They both got hot, tired, hungry, and cranky. And I imagine I was pretty tired and cranky myself. I didn’t have any money to buy them food and drinks. Jim had told me to “Stay here!” in that certain tone of voice he had. And because I was a little bit afraid of him when he used that certain tone of voice, I did what I was told.

It turned out the car could not be fixed. Jim called his new boss in Baltimore, who suggested that Jim rent a truck and tow
the car. The only rental available in town when Jim inquired was a twenty-six-foot U-Haul. He came and told me all of this at the Burger King, where I had been sitting with a two- and three-year-old for almost eight hours. Jim remembers me telling him that I didn’t care what we did next but that whatever it was, the kids were going to be his! I wanted nothing more to do with either of them for a
very
long time!

It was nearly evening at this point, and none of us really wanted to drive anywhere except to a hotel for the night. Unfortunately, there was a huge NASCAR event going on at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, so there were no hotel rooms to be found. We kept going, on to the next town, and the next, but everything for miles around was booked. It soon got dark, and the oncoming headlights on Interstate 85 began to bewilder me. This kind of sensory overload, along with being thoroughly exhausted, was precisely the worst scenario for me, the exact kind of situation that would cause me to shut down. We were approaching a busy interchange at Interstate 40. I became confused and chose the wrong lane, heading west toward Tennessee. Jim, trying to navigate the road with the enormous U-Haul that was towing our dead car, didn’t immediately notice that I was no longer behind him. He had gone several miles before he glanced in the rearview mirror and saw, to his horror, that I wasn’t there. He reached for his CB radio and turned up the volume. Immediately he heard a group of truckers declaring, “This crazy lady on the radio has hijacked channel ten and keeps asking for ‘Jim’!” Jim picked up the receiver and called out for me. I recognized his voice and he asked me what I could see, so he could try to figure out where I was. Unfortunately, I was panicking, and for a while I didn’t make much sense. I have no idea how, but Jim says that eventually he was able to calm me
down, and ultimately talk me through exiting I-40 and making my way back to I-85. I still think it is a not so small miracle that I was able to follow his directions and, in the end, locate him. How was it that I was able to keep it together enough to even drive, let alone follow his directions? It makes no sense. Like so many things in my life, how did I ever live to tell the tale?

The following day we rolled into the parking lot of the Welcome Inn in Towson, Maryland, our home for the next several weeks until we could close on the house we had bought in Bel Air. Jim remembers arriving late at night, exhausted after days of driving. I have only the vaguest of memories of the whole time we lived there: carrying laundry down to the Laundromat that was at the bottom of a long hill, and the boys flying down that hill on their blue Fisher-Price tricycles, watching all the different-colored Disney “Sing-Along Songs” videos, and looking at books with the boys. I have no idea what Benjamin, Patrick, and I did to fill those days. Did I know where I was? Did the boys and I ever try to venture out anywhere? If so, how did we find our way back? Did I rely on Benjamin? Did I understand that I was no longer in Texas? Basically, everything I knew was gone again, and Jim thinks that the boys and I just sat in our room every day waiting for him to come back. He doesn’t remember me complaining about the situation, or showing any outward signs of stress, so he didn’t worry too much until one evening when he came home and found me in a state that he hadn’t seen before. He says that I had “lost it, like catatonia, lost it!” He says that I was awake but “checked out, unresponsive, just withdrawn, like PTSD.” I spoke, but only if I was spoken to first. He says I looked “stunned, or in shock.”

Had something terrible happened that day? I don’t know. These are the kinds of stories that freak me out a little bit more each time I hear them. Again, how the hell did I survive? How did my kids survive in my care? What kinds of things did Benjamin and Patrick see me do? What did they think of me? Or was my erratic, inconsistent, and childlike behavior normal to them? Was this just the way their mommy was?