Me Again (18 page)

Chapter 22

“I
’D FORGOTTEN how much I like riding on trains,” Rebecca said, speaking up to be heard over the noise of the rails.

Mrs. Margolis nodded. “It’s not elegant, like it used to be. But there’s still something very nice about it, I agree.”

It
was
nice. The motion of the train was different than riding in a car, simultaneously more powerful and more relaxing. And the scenery was better, too, since the train tracks weren’t forced to follow along traffic-laden city streets. It was – to my memory at least – my first glimpse of just how wide open the farmlands of Illinois really were.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Mrs. Margolis said, noting the attention I was paying to the scenery rushing by my window.

“It is,” I said. “I didn’t realize how beautiful Illinois was.”

Rebecca looked at me, her face growing serious. “You don’t really know anything beyond the hospital and Springfield, do you?”

“Only what I’ve seen on TV,” I said.

“That’s not the same. TV isn’t real. It’s just weird to think that essentially you’re a guy in his thirties who’s never even left town.”

Mrs. Margolis frowned, getting a glimpse of how blunt Rebecca’s comments could sometimes be. I was about to reply when my attention was diverted.

“Over there!” I said, pointing to my left. “Are those cows?”

Mrs. Margolis and Rebecca looked out the window, then back at me.

“Yes, dear,” Mrs. Margolis said. “Those are cows. Herefords, I believe.”

“You’ve never seen cows before?” Rebecca asked. She was starting to laugh, then stopped herself.

“Oh God,” she said, “I’m doing it again. I mean, when
would
you have seen cows? There aren’t exactly a lot of them roaming around the hospital.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I just—"

“No, it’s not okay,” Rebecca said. “I was rude just now, and even I know it. It’s hard to grasp just how little of the world you’ve seen.”

“I know what cows are,” I said. “I’ve seen them on TV, and in speech therapy I had to learn and pronounce lots of animals’ names. I just never saw one in the flesh before. At least, not that I can remember.”

Rebecca looked at me a long time. Then she said, “It’s really kind of neat, seeing how new everything is for you. The world must seem so full of surprises.”

“That’s one way to put it,” I said. “And it’s true – I’ve already had plenty of surprises. I just don’t know how
neat
it is.”

“It’s all in how you look at things,” Mrs. Margolis said.

I wanted to believe her.

Scanning the countryside through her window, Rebecca said, “Have you seen any horses yet?”

“Just Mr. Ed on TV,” I said. Deciding to have some fun, I added, “It must be really interesting to talk with a horse. It’s funny that out of all the mammals, they’re the only ones who learned how to talk.”

Mrs. Margolis stifled a smile, while Rebecca’s face drew tight with concern.

“Jonathan,” she said, “um, you do realize that horses can’t really—"

Unable to maintain a straight face any longer, I let a laugh escape.

Rebecca looked at me sternly, then relented with a grudging smile. “Okay, you had me there for a minute, I’ll admit.”

Mrs. Margolis said, “I think it’s wonderful that you didn’t lose your sense of humor, Jonny.”

I’d never thought about that before, being more focused on the seemingly more crucial things that I’d lost, such as my memory of all the people in my life, how to count, and so on. And was I really hanging on to my sense of humor, or was this perhaps a new development? Nothing I’d learned about my past suggested that I had ever been a barrel of laughs to be around.

* * * * *

A tall young man with tattooed arms and gaping earlobes stretched wide by some painful-looking earrings escorted us to my storage space. He left us facing a bright orange garage door, one of many that lined the outer enclosure of the facility. I fumbled in my pocket for the key my mother had given me, eyeing the massive padlock that secured the base of the door.

“Wow, how much stuff do you have?” asked Rebecca. “I was expecting a small closet. This is more like a two-car garage.”

“Well, I do have a car,” I said. “Mom had it put in storage along with my furniture.”

“What kind of car?”

I stopped and thought. “I have no idea,” I finally said. I had never thought to ask. Since I’d probably never be able to drive again, it hadn’t been a pressing concern.

I inserted the key and fussed with the lock until it reluctantly clicked open. It took me a few more moments to figure out the door’s latching mechanism – I’m afraid the stroke hadn’t done much for my mechanical abilities. Finally I managed to raise the door over our heads.

To my left, Rebecca felt around and found a light switch. Now a bare bulb cast a yellowish glow over the contents of the room.

Everything in front of us was black. A black desk. Black dresser. Black coffee tables stacked one on top of the other. Along one wall, Rebecca pulled off a dusty sheet to reveal a massive black leather couch.

The other dominant color – is it a color, or a material? – was chrome. If it wasn’t black, it was chrome. Or it was black and chrome.

“Not a big fan of earth tones, I see,” said Mrs. Margolis, making her way deeper into the storage bay around peninsulas of furniture and boxes.

Rebecca shook her head. “It does sort of scream
swinging bachelor pad
, doesn’t it?” Running a finger along the couch she said, “This is really nice leather, though. It must have cost a fortune.”

While they each had immediately stepped inside the bay, I remained standing in the doorway, surveying the objects in front of me.

Mrs. Margolis said, “Jonny, are you all right?”

I waved a hand distractedly. “I’m fine. I’m just taking it all in, seeing if I remember anything.”

Rebecca poked her head out from behind a mountain of cardboard boxes. “Well?”

“So far nothing’s ringing a bell,” I said.

“Maybe you should come on inside and take a look.”

Reluctantly I complied. I tried to identify why I was so hesitant. I realized that I felt like I was somehow trespassing, going through some stranger’s belongings. Even though that stranger was me.

“It looks like they just brought all your stuff here just like it was in your apartment,” Rebecca said. She had pulled open a dresser drawer, and held up a pair of socks. “They didn’t even empty your drawers.”

Mrs. Margolis said, “Take a look in that desk – maybe they left it the same way.”

They – whoever they were – had indeed left my desk drawers intact. I opened the left top drawer to find a plastic caddy holding paperclips, postage stamps, and miscellaneous office supplies, including some computer devices that I believe they called
floppy discs
. A shallow center drawer yielded numerous pens, some receipts, a large metal Zippo lighter, a few cigars in tubes with Spanish labels, and an open pack of Marlboros.

“You smoke?” Rebecca asked, leaning over my shoulder.

“I guess I used to,” I said. The idea didn’t appeal to me at all; I found cigarette smoke very annoying now, and cigar smoke made me gag.

“You don’t seem like a smoker,” Rebecca said.

“I know what you mean,” I said, “but I also know I’ve changed a lot.”

“Well, you had very nice taste in clothing,” Mrs. Margolis said, from somewhere in the back of the bay. “Or at least, some very
expensive
tastes.”

Rebecca and I followed her voice to a corner of the bay where a lead pipe had been crudely suspended from the ceiling with some sort of wire. On the pipe hung a large assortment of suits, shirts, and pants.

“Hugo Boss, Armani, Brooks Brothers,” Mrs. Margolis said, thumbing through the garments, inspecting their labels. “You were clearly a man concerned with your appearance.”

I was now a man clad entirely in garments from Target and The Gap. Of course, I was also now a man whose mother did all his clothes shopping. I probably needed to change that, I reflected.

“Try one of them on,” Rebecca said, pointing to the suits. I pulled a jacket off a hanger, and brushed the dust off its shoulders. I slipped it on, only to find myself positively swimming in the thing.

“Wow, that thing is huge on you,” Rebecca said. “You must have lost a lot of weight.”

“Definitely,” I said. “I’m thinking of patenting the new Hooper-rific Coma Diet. Just give us six years, and we’ll take off those unwanted pounds.”

“That might be funny if it weren’t so creepy,” Rebecca said.

“Maybe a tailor could take these in,” Mrs. Margolis said, hanging the jacket back up on the pipe.

“I don’t know if I’m really an Armani kind of guy,” I said.

“I want to see what you used to drive,” Rebecca said, walking over to the left side of the bay, where a dark blue tarp completely covered the unmistakable shape of a car. Other than the couch and a matching leather chair, it was the only thing that had been covered up; the rest of my belongings had all been left exposed to six years of dust.

Together Rebecca and I peeled back the tarp, revealing a low-slung black sports car, all muscular bulges and aerodynamic curves.

“Oh, isn’t that a nice-looking car,” Mrs. Margolis said.

“My God,” Rebecca gasped. “It’s a Lamborghini.”

She looked at me. “These things cost a fortune. I mean, a serious fortune.” Narrowing her eyes the way she did when she was appraising something – or somebody – she said, “You must have been a
really
good accountant.”

My stomach lurched. Or a really crooked one, I thought.

Rebecca wasn’t letting it go. “So your mother never told you that you had a two-hundred-thousand-dollar car sitting here in storage?”

I assumed that was a large number. A very large number, based on Rebecca’s tone. “I guess she didn’t know,” I said. “She just said I had a nice black car.”

“That’s kind of an understatement,” Rebecca said. “And you don’t remember it?”

“Nope.”

“That’s so weird,” Rebecca said.

“Welcome to my world,” I said.

“Have you found anything you do remember?” Mrs. Margolis asked.

“Not yet. But there’s still a lot of stuff here for me to go through.”

Eager to table the car discussion, I threaded my way around stacks of boxes to investigate the large dresser Rebecca had opened. In the top drawer I found a leather jewelry box. Inside was a Rolex watch, some expensive-looking cufflinks, and a bulky gold ring in which a large ruby bulged ostentatiously. I sighed, instinctively knowing which finger it would fit. Sure enough, while it was slightly loose on both my right and left pinky fingers – no doubt the result of my weight loss – it was too small for any of my other fingers. I slipped it on my right pinky and modeled it for Rebecca, the weight of the thing feeling like a doorknob hanging from my hand.

“That’s a big ring,” Rebecca said, raising an eyebrow. “Really big.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking of joining the Sopranos.” I’d hoped for a smile, but didn’t get one.

I slid the ring off my finger and put it back in the jewelry box, pausing to pocket the Rolex before closing the box. I figured my dad might like the watch, which I could never see myself wearing.

“This doesn’t seem like you,” Rebecca said, her face turning more serious.

“What, the ring?”

“Not just that. All of this.” She swept the room with a wave. “Thousand-dollar suits, the Rolex, the pinky ring. A car that cost as much as my house. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with any of it. It just doesn’t seem like... well, like
you
.”

Mrs. Margolis spoke up. “What
do
you think he seems like, dear?”

“I don’t know. Nice. Good. Caring. Not...
cold
, like all this stuff.”

“It’s as strange to me as it is to you,” I said. “And I’ve told you before, I’m not sure that I’d like the person I used to be.”

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Margolis said. “You’re a perfectly nice person. You’ve just had some bad things happen to you.”

I wasn’t so sure about that evaluation, but chose not to argue.

“Oh my,” said Rebecca, fishing something from the drawer, “these are...
special
.”

She held up an impossibly small pair of men’s underwear, barely more than a pouch and some straps, all in a garish tiger-stripe print.

I grabbed the offending garment from her and stuffed it back into the drawer, saying, “Don’t you need to leave soon, if you’re going to make it to your show on time?”

“He’s right, dear,” Mrs. Margolis said, looking at her watch. “It’s going to be at least a twenty-minute cab ride to the theatre district.”

Rebecca frowned. “Are you sure you want to do this all by yourself? I wasn’t envisioning you having so much stuff. We could stay around and help you.”

“No, I’ll be fine,” I said. “Besides, you’ve already bought your tickets. You go on, and have a great time. We’ll reconnect after the show; by then I’ll have had time to go through all this stuff.”

“You’re sure?” Rebecca looked dubious.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Now, go. You don’t want to be late.”