The Memory Jar (21 page)

Then

He yelled at me when I called him, fury in his voice. His first response was this flash of anger, and here I was calling him for help, for understanding.
I had no right to hurt myself, I had no right to hurt the baby.
Well, that was bullshit. It was my body, not his, and my life. If I wanted to throw myself into a frozen mine pit, baby and all, that was my decision, and he could at least act like he cared about
me
at least as much as he cared about some sort of
idea
inside me.

“You're just as selfish as my stupid brother,” he said, and I decided to break up with him. Now I remember Joey and the time he spent in rehab that time, and I feel bad for not giving Scott a chance to really explain what he meant by that. I wasn't interested, at the time, but maybe I
was
really being selfish. Maybe it wasn't anger in his voice but fear.

Joey had a dirt bike and he did something dumb in a gravel pit, “acted like he had a death wish as usual,” according to Scott. I remember the bitterness in Scott's voice when he told me, the way his hands squeezed into fists. He worried about his little brother's recklessness, and the whole family started to think that there was something more to it than being an adrenaline addict. Maybe, like Scott claimed, Joey
wanted
to die. When he flipped his bike on top of himself while climbing an impossibly steep hill, when he was held together mostly by scars and stitches, his family had had enough, and they decided he needed more help than they could give him. I was pretty new to their family dynamic during this time, and Joey was just this kid a grade younger than me who was kind of a little bit dangerous. At school, people said he was nuts, but in a way that meant they were impressed by his craziness. They told stories of his epic cliff-dives or jumping open water on his snowmobile and shook their heads. “That kid's straight up loco,” I remember one boy saying when the rumors started going around school that Joey was out for six weeks at the treatment center down in Duluth. “Those shrinks are set up to help girls who cut themselves, not crazy assholes like him.” I remember being a little bit scared of this loose cannon in my new boyfriend's family.

Joey came back from the program with a therapist and a kind of dark, experienced quality that made the girls crowd in close, hoping to save him. He no longer scared his family with his apparent death wish. He was quiet and slouchy, and he looked like he needed to curl around a guitar or a skateboard. His hair hung in his eyes. His dirtbike was locked in the shed,
and his snowmobile was destined for someone else's destruction.

Now

Every step toward the island is a step away from smoothing things over with Joey and going back to the hospital to sit at the side of my brain-injured boyfriend whose first word upon waking up was another girl's name. A step away from getting warm, too, though I still have this idea of making a fire, of kindling my memory of that final night, of finding some clue that will absolve me, maybe.

My feet crunch along the top of the snow, which glows softly in the gathering dark. I'm thinking about my memory, how strangely the images slide into place until I'm pretty sure I caused the crash even if I can't finish out the memory entirely. What if I did it on purpose? What if I was really trying to kill us both? The details fall into empty holes between images like shadows settling into all the hollow places, chasing out the imagined shapes my brain has created to see through the darkness. What if
Kendall
did it? Could she have messed with the snowmobile in some way, thinking—what? What
is
she thinking? I can't even begin to guess. Was Scott rejecting her by marrying me instead of giving her imaginary sister our baby? Did she try to kill us both in a jealous rage? What if, back at the hospital right now, Scott has woken up again and is telling everyone the whole story, about Kendall and everything? What if he doesn't wake up again at all? The uncertainty of all of it sits in my gut like a stone, the possibility that doubt will always be there—unanswered questions. I think of his feverish cheek, his bright eyes. Her name in his mouth.

I've been walking for six or eight years now, at least, but I'm still trying to ignore the chill seeping in through the soles of my stupid boots. My cheeks and the tip of my nose sting from the wind gusting around the edges of my hood, and my thighs feel like heavy planks crawling with biting ants. There's no sign of the island, not even a dark shadow on the horizon. Nothing around but the endless eerie glow—I feel like I'm walking on the moon, except with every step my feet weigh twice as much. I can't get lost walking on a lake, right? I mean, it's a big open space, surrounded on all sides by the shoreline, with a giant island in the middle. Even in the dark, I'm not going to walk past an entire island. Even so, the anxiety sits in my belly, and its presence does not help to warm me.

Inside my jacket pocket, my phone rumbles, and I stop to fish it out, but the zipper takes me too long with my gloves on, and I miss the call. I slip one glove off to check, and it's from that number, the please-consider-adoption number. Fucking Kendall. The voicemail message icon pops up with a soft beep, and I'm clicking through menus, trying to access the message, my fingers freezing, when the screen flashes and the phone buzzes again. Text from Dani. I back out of voicemail and pull up her message, shifting my weight from one frozen foot to the other. My hair, whipping in the wind, escapes from my hood and obscures my vision. I drag it back out of my face with my still-gloved hand, trying to twist it at the back of my neck, but my hood falls down and an icy blast shoots down the back of my neck. It's seriously too cold. I need to get to that fire or turn back and let Joey win this round. Whatever, I need to keep moving. I turn around to let the wind push my hair back off my face.

Got you a pretend aunt, looks 25, trustworthy. Will make appt right now online, but only if it's what you want. LOVE YOU.

My feet are so cold. I hop up and down, still trying to twist my hair back, but my glove is too full of static and I pull it off with my teeth and walk backward for a few steps, trying to wrestle everything into place. I have no clue what direction I'm supposed to be heading anymore, and my eyes are blinded by the light of my phone anyway. Whatever, it's not snowing. I can always follow my own footprints back, and why hasn't Joey run after me, anyway? After that speech about how he'll always be there for me.

For me and the baby. Whatever. What is it that makes everyone in the world feel like the instant two cells stick together inside my uterus, they all should have more say in what happens inside my body than I should? I think I could save about a million more lives than this one potential life if I can move forward and become a cardiologist, but I can't have a baby. Not now. I keep walking, my glove still hanging in my teeth, and focus my attention back on Dani's message.

It's what I want.
My thumbs pause, poised above the bright screen, my feet crunching below me in the darkness, headed in no particular direction. I hit send.

It happens so fast, so stupid. Crunch. I'm walking alone in a monotony of footsteps, my best friend's capslocked love and this broken choice sent from my frozen fingers, and, too sudden and stupid, my foot breaks through, sinks through slush and slides on wet ice beneath—in a heartbeat I'm pitching forward; my phone skitters off across the ice and my hands punch twin holes through the slush in front of me. Cold seeping into me, frigid, stunned, I scramble for anything to push against, but there's nothing but ice cold water and panic—I'm sure I've gone through the ice and I feel my heart stutter, slow, until somewhere deep beneath I find solid ice and push, my knee sinking, push up to standing, and the wind hits me full and frozen.

The cold is so intense that my brain almost immediately dismisses the pain, leaving me with both arms soaked to the armpits in water a half degree from being frozen solid—they hang, numb and useless. My left knee is wet through, my jeans freezing to my skin, and my right boot is filling with water. I don't know. I'm shivering in a way that alarms some distant part of me, a part that isn't trying to figure out if I'm standing up or if I'm alive. I can't feel my foot, but I don't fall over so I take a step. I can hear water sloshing over my toes and that distant part tells me I need to empty my boot, I need to get dry, I need to maybe take off the wet clothes or something, but I'm not sure where my hands are except that they're wrapped in a wave of pain that I can't feel so much as I hear it—the sound of a waterfall pushing me underwater, a surround-sound television stuck on static, my teeth clattering against each other inside my head.

Walk. I have to get warm. I have to move. I spend too long searching for my phone, and when I find it (shattered screen but not too wet), I can't seem to close my fingers around it much less press the buttons to call for help. Where the fuck is Joey? He should be here with that stupid extra hat. The wind is in my face and I need to follow my footprints back, no magic fire, just fast walking and violent shivering and I think it's good to shiver but I can't remember why, and I lift my arm to catch my balance and the cold air pushes itself through my wet jacket and I can feel my heart slow like a down-shifting engine, and it's scary. I bring my arms in tight again and think of the baby I'm scheduling out of me and thinking about how they'll find my body and there will be no more privacy, pregnant teen found frozen on Grave Lake. I pull everything in tighter around the middle of me. I lean into the wind and will my legs to hold me even if I can't feel them.

I can do this. I'm not going to freeze to death on this awful lake, and I'm not going to be one of those people Scott told me about who goes hypothermic and takes off all their clothes, though at this point I'm not sure I would be able to take my clothes off even if I wanted to. There's a test for it, I remember now, or at least I remember Scott showing me something, but when I try to recall exactly what it was my brain goes all foggy and I find myself standing still, staring at my hands. Why am I not wearing gloves? I don't know where they are. Did I drop them? My hands look funny. I reach down for a shadow on the ground, but my hands close on nothing and I'm crawling and I don't think this is the way to the island.
Focus.
There's a baby here. I have to save it.

A phone ringing. It's in my hand but I can't bring it up to my ear.

Taylor? TAY?

Mom? I don't know if I'm speaking or thinking. I'm so tired. I bring my head down to the phone since I can't move my arm. I can't move anything.

Taylor, don't do anything stupid!

I smile. “Too late,” I say, but the phone slides away from me, and I'm not sure she hears.

Then

My mother. She took me to the ocean, once, in California, when I was too little to understand we were there to say goodbye to her mother, who was dying of cancer. “This is where your mama grew up,” she said, and I remember the way she held my hand, the way she walked with bare feet over the sand. Her steps were lighter than they usually were, even though her face was sad.

“Why did we move to Minnesota?” I drew in the white, soft sand with my finger. I wrote my name in giant, lopsided letters.

“You were born there, sweetheart,” she said. She sat in the sand beside me and traced her finger over the heart I had drawn, traced the letters, MOM. “It's your home.”

Now

I'm staring at the snow, dragging my hand through the crusty top layer. Mom. I don't see the phone. I can still hear her voice, saying my name, and I want to curl up tight into this darkness but I have to get up, get moving.

I'm not cold anymore. I still can't find my feet or my legs and everything slows down when I uncurl and I wonder if it's worth it, but there's something urgent tugging at my belly and I see the word MOM in the snow or the sand and I want to live. I push on, stumbling.

“Taylor? Holy shit!” Arms pulling me in, hands running up and down me. “Oh god, you're soaked.”

I try to tell him but the words won't line up. My mouth belongs to someone else.

“Get in the car,” he says, but he's already half-carrying me, half-dragging me, and I fall against the seat. I can't stop shivering. “I couldn't figure out who to call.” He's pulling at something, and I realize it hurts, which is a new sensation.

“Stop—” My voice doesn't sound right. Is my actual tongue frozen? My boots. He's pulling off my boots.

“Sorry. This heater sucks, but I'm going to have to—” He's tugging at something else and I try to pull away. He's unbuttoning my jeans. “Sorry, Tay. No time for modesty when you're this cold.”

He pulls off the rest of my wet things and wraps me in a blanket and his own jacket. I can feel the pressure of his hands and as my body starts to thaw out it only feels colder, but mostly I am nauseous and sleepy and Joey pulls a hat down over my head and presses my hands between his own, then pulls up his shirt and puts my hands against his chest. The heater rattles on full blast but I can't feel any actual heat.

“I called Celeste at the hospital,” he says. “I told her you took off in the cold, and she said she's sending help.”
Celeste.
I can't quite place who she is, but she sounds like an angel. Joey's eyes are worried but I don't remember why.

“I was scared if I went after you, you'd run away even more. I had to peel part of the wall off one of those fish houses to put under the wheels, but I got the car unstuck,” he says, indicating out the window with his chin and then pressing his fingertips to my neck. “Your pulse seems slow.”

I swear I'm getting colder every second now, shivering harder—my lungs fill with air for the sole purpose of maintaining some kind of low growling wail that I can't stop, can't control. Joey flicks the switch on the heater a couple of times, fiddles with the vents, folds his lanky body around me in an awkward pile in the passenger seat. “Are you going to make it, Tay? I'm going to start toward shore, try and meet them.”

“Hungry,” I say, which is a weird thing to say, but my mouth at least forms a word. “Everything hurts.” The shivering settles, pins and needles in my feet. Who is them? I try to move my hand, but it barely floats up. I think about opening the door, falling to the ground. The snow seems softer.

“Taylor.” He kisses me, I'm pretty sure, even though everything feels a step or two from real and I can't remember if I should kiss him back or not. Anyway, I close my eyes and I think I stay alive.