Forget About It Read online

“Walter!” she said crossly. That single word had more possible uses than any other in my mother’s lexicon. Depending on the context, it could mean just about anything. In this particular case it meant, Shut the hell up, I’m the one explaining this.

  “The social workers and friend of the court agreed it would be best if someone were looking out for you for a while. The springing means it springs into action if and when you become incapacitated.”

  “Oh, she’s sprung,” Sam interjected with a delicious smile.

  Now the last thing I wanted was to turn over complete control to the Wizard of Odd. But my predicament was clear. Made even more so by my mom’s next sentence.

  “Now, Sam, do you honestly think Jordan would give up that level of control if she was faking? I’ve got the document right here,” she said, and got up from the table to get the papers.

  When she came back and put the document in front of me, I felt an ache in the pit of my stomach. I glanced at it, then at Sam and at Walter and back to my mom.

  “It all just makes me afraid,” I said. I ran through my entire repertoire in about twenty seconds flat: angst, befuddlement, confusion, denial. I wasn’t even up to the letter E before Sam cleared her throat in my direction. I swallowed a few times and tried to speed-read the paper before actually signing it. “I just want to read a little bit of it so that I understand what it is—”

  “Oh, go ahead and sign it, Jordan,” Sam said. “You can’t very well handle all of your affairs if you can’t remember who you are.”

  Then I looked at my mother. “And you’ve been so wonderful,” I said to her. “How could I not trust you?” How bad could it be? She was my mother. So she’d pay my bills for a while. Not such a bad deal after all. I was a little wary of her having me committed, but I figured that was a long shot. They’d greet us both at the door and probably take her instead of me.

  I signed it.

  14.

  looking up

  The strange thing about attempting to get some R&R at your folks’ place is that most people get infinitely more stressed out the minute they get around family. This certainly held true for me. Plus, every time I sat down at the computer to try to bone up on the subject of amnesia, someone would walk in and catch me. I could only say I was “trying to understand what was happening to me” so many times, especially with Sam breathing down my neck, trying to trick me into slipping up. But they were fruitless searches. I needed privacy, which was in short supply at Chez Landau. So I begged to return to my own home. I was sure they were as ready to be rid of me as I was them; and proving me right, they went for it.

  My mom drove me back into the city. I kept up a visage of childlike wonder the whole way home and pretended not to know my apartment building when we got there. When we stepped out of the elevator on my floor, my mom all but plugged her nose as we walked toward my door. It was clear that she didn’t like where I lived. But it was also clear that she wasn’t there to help me move out.

  I fumbled with my keys, pretending not to know which one opened the front door—then smiled sheepishly at my mom. Unfortunately I milked my uncertainty for a beat too long because Mr. Spandex-Dick-in-Your-Face came walking out of the elevator and approached us.

  “Hey, neighbor!” he said. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  I looked blankly at him and then at my mom, pretending that I didn’t know who he was and hoping she’d ignore him and usher me into my apartment. But she noticed. It. The skyscraper in Lycra.

  “Oh,” she said, never content to leave well enough alone or opt for subtlety in moments like these. “My, my . . .” she said, eyes on the prize as I willed her to look away, LOOK AWAY! Finally she recovered. “Jordan had an accident. She has amnesia and can’t remember anyone. Are you friends?” Damn her.

  “Yes,” he said. “I was teaching her self-defense.” I couldn’t believe what a gigantic fucking liar he was. Then again, who was I to talk? I just smiled and acted oblivious. But it was hard not to react to that. Believe me, it was hard.

  “Good. Then you can watch over her.”

  “It would be my pleasure.”

  “Fab, because I’m double-parked,” she said, already halfway back to the elevator. “You’re okay?” she asked me, not bothering to wait for the answer. “Call if you need anything.” And she blew me a kiss and disappeared into the elevator. Then I turned the right key into the lock and started on my way in.

  “So, this week? A self-defense lesson?” he called out.

  “Sure,” I said, and shut the door behind me.

  The apartment was a mess. Sneevil Knievel was the son of Satan. Or the pet that the Son of Satan had begged his father for that was now exacting on my universe his revenge for the little bastard’s neglect. He’d not only thrown seeds all over my apartment, he’d taken to shredding the newspaper at the bottom of his cage. I get bummed out by the current state of affairs as much as the next person, but do I feel the need to shred the New York Times to bits? Okay, yes. But I rarely act on it.

  “Hi, Sneevil,” I said as I threw my bag of new clothes down. That was one small bonus. Sam was too small and selfish to share her clothes with me, so my mom had ducked out to Woodbury Common, an outlet mall for those unafraid of clawing their way for Chloé, and picked up some exceptionally wearable clothes. Certainly much nicer than my H&M wardrobe.

  Sneevil immediately started to sing, and as mad as I was about him being in my apartment, making a mess and causing a problem with the neighbors, I felt bad for him. This was Sam’s bird. I got that she wanted to trick me and thought that would be a good way to expose my fraud, but I hadn’t taken the bait. Wasn’t enough enough? Didn’t she actually love the bird? Want her pet back? It bonded me to the little guy.

  I hopped onto my computer, readying myself to Google amnesia, but was confronted with fifty-four e-mails in my in-box, nine of which were back and forth between my mom and Walter. Here was the cream of the crop:

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Chicken tonight . . . or fowl overload?

  I’ve tried everything. Baking soda, Vaseline and rubber socks, sliding a hand cream–filled condom over it and leaving it overnight and still nothing. I showed it to a woman I work with and she said she’d seen the same thing on her husband. His doctor told him it was a toenail fungus. A little Lamisil should take care of it. I really need something. It looks like I’ve been soaking in an open sewer.

  Eeeeeew. I decided, again, that the e-mail ccs were going to stop. The new Jordan could innocently suggest that they not copy her on every mundane, bizarre, or stomach-turning e-mail that passed between them.

  The Internet didn’t have much more to offer than the info Todd had already prepped me with. I felt like I had a good handle on it—all I had to do was act frustrated every now and then about having no memory and act guilty for not remembering the people, places, and things that I should.

  I noticed a scent that seemed to be permeating my apartment. A scent that wasn’t there when I’d left it. And it wasn’t stale Sneevil, although that was no picnic either. This was nice. It smelled like . . . bread? The bread they served at . . . some restaurant. I couldn’t place the restaurant, but they had delicious rosemary bread—that was it, the scent was rosemary!

  And as soon as I took a minute to actually check out my surroundings, I noticed that there were little bundles of rosemary everywhere. And a note from Cat. She said she’d borrowed Todd’s key to stop by and lace the entire apartment with rosemary because it was apparently a holistic wonder for the memory. There were also several bags of walnuts and a Post-it suggesting I eat some for snacks, every time I felt hungry.

  Cat really was a true friend. I had been on the fence about whether or not to play amnesic with her along with the rest of my family. I wanted to tell her. I really did. The problem was, as loyal and self-sacrificing as Cat was, it really came down to the fact that she was too honest to
be able to be a part of this kind of deception. Too open. Todd had just the right mix of loyalty and that almost criminal take-it-to-the-grave shadiness that one requires in a close confidant. I felt bad but decided it was really kinder not to drag her into my little deception. Besides, she was a doctor—it would probably violate some sort of Hippocratic (Hypocritic?) oath to play along with me.

  I looked around—being back in my apartment felt very strange. It was my stuff, but I suddenly wanted to throw most of it away. And this wasn’t the ordinary and omnipresent impulse to upgrade from my barely post-college appointments. It was more a feeling that the posters, tiny Simpsons erasers, dolphin magnet sculpture, bonnet-clad corn husk doll, and penis-shaped candle—well, they were all very nice and all, but they weren’t me. While amnesia was pure affectation on my part, I’d begun to sense a difference in myself, slight but definitely there. Maybe like being in a bed with the covers tucked in too tight and then kicking them off and flopping around in freedom.

  I suddenly wanted to get out of the apartment. The new me needed some “me” time—or maybe it was “her” time, because I wasn’t exactly sure who we were dealing with yet. Some time not necessarily to spoil myself but to permit myself not to be focused on everyone else but me. And, yes, maybe a little spoiling was going to take place, but nothing extreme. Just some garden-variety girl stuff. A manicure/pedicure. Maybe a haircut. A massage was on my wish list, but that felt a little too indulgent.

  I definitely wanted to enjoy the city more. I’d lived in New York State my whole life and lived in New York City for years now, but I’d been cloistered in the same set of blocks, running between boundaries drawn by the same routines. Not to sound too much like a line in a personal ad, but I really never took the time to explore the city and I wanted to. (In formal attire or in jeans and a T-shirt—I didn’t care.)

  I took myself to the Central Park Zoo. For one reason and one reason only: the aviary. Not because I loved birds per se, and I was certainly getting my fill of bird with Sneevil around—but they had this little indoor tropical forest, and I was desperate to finally step inside it. My mom had taken us to the zoo several times growing up, but the birds were always off-limits. She complained about the humidity and her hair, and that was that—end of story. There would be no birds in our zoo experience. And even once I’d reached an age where I could take myself inside, I never gave myself permission to go in. The taboo of the humidity was engrained in my psyche. That was going to change. Pronto.

  And it did. I went in . . . I saw the birds . . . I experienced.

  Christ, was that place humid. I came out with a facial and a writhing-worm hairdo. But you know what? I didn’t care. It was so freeing to just do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it—frizz be damned. I could even frown right now if I wanted—my mother was nowhere in sight. Who was going to stop me? I did. I frowned. But then some maintenance man frowned back at me, so I snapped myself out of it.

  I watched the trainers feed the sea lions and wondered if those animals were really happy. If the sea lions subscribed to Abraham Lincoln’s theory of being as happy as we make our minds up to be, then damn straight they were happy. Of course they probably didn’t know Abraham Lincoln from Abe the Madagascan Tomato Frog in the amphibian exhibit, and I’d always had mixed feelings on the whole animals-in-captivity thing, but they seemed to have a good life. From studying the expressions on their faces, I decided that they were indeed happy, or at least neutral. It was a mixed bag—the old safe-but-bored conundrum. Anyway, predators were nowhere to be seen. Except this one guy in a fleece coat that identified his team as Aéropostale. He was tracking me until I lost him by the lemurs.

  I felt so good after my outing to the zoo that I vowed to spend the rest of my recovery time exploring the city like a tourist (sans fanny pack). I went to museums every day until I’d run out. MoMA was incredible and it was literally three blocks from the building I’d been working in every day for two years. I could get there faster than I could get to the deli where I got my sandwich for lunch every day. Why hadn’t I taken advantage of this?

  I went to the Empire State Building and took the trip to the observation deck. It was magnificent. A couple from Idaho asked me if I’d take their picture with the New York City backdrop, which I did, and then another couple asked for the same. Then a family. I became the observation deck photographer. But not because I was the old pushover that was Jordan B.C. I did it because it was fun. I was making a memory for myself: happily, finally getting to experience the view of New York’s own precious eternity, and honored to help everyone else who was there document it for their own memories.

  I went to Rockefeller Center and went ice-skating. It’s overpriced, overcrowded, and overrated . . . but I’d never done it. And it was the season. The tree was there (again, I missed the actual lighting), and I wanted to experience the joy of waiting for about fourteen hours in the freezing cold so that I could rent uncomfortable skates upon which I could wobble around the rink a few times and perhaps fall on my ass as a bonus.

  And I looked up. I’d never allowed myself to look up in all my years of living in New York. The ubiquitous “they” say you shouldn’t look up, because it makes you look like a tourist. But what’s so wrong with looking like a tourist? (Besides the fanny pack.) Tourists have the right idea. There I was, trying so hard not to look like a tourist, I was missing everything! All of the phenomenal architecture in the city—my God, some of the older buildings were just breathtaking. And I was ignorant of all of it—this incredible backdrop that wouldn’t be available to me anywhere else, and I wasn’t taking it all in every chance I got. Why?

  In my time off I also did some reading—some for fun and some for inspiration. I picked up a couple of self-help books. It turned out I had been suffering all this time from low self-esteem. Who knew?

  I read about Ted Turner and Bill Gates, whom one author mentioned in the same paragraph as Britney Spears, which seemed bizarre. It was talking about self-confidence and how these people focused on their goals and didn’t let setbacks get them down. As it turns out, Britney Spears lost a talent contest when she was a little girl. She came in second, but she didn’t focus on the failure. Something told her to forge ahead. She just continued to practice and build her confidence up. Of course, you can argue with that—and some messages from the cosmos are better left unheeded—but it came down to this: Without the oops, would she have ever done it again?

  Seemed like my whole life until then had been a failed talent contest. But there I was, stepping up to the mic again, lip-synching my heart out. I knew I could have my Mouseketeers break and eventually my big hit. And I would always always wear my underwear.

  Dirk finally stopped by again, and I was so over his feigning care that after five minutes of him trying to jog my memory, I pretended to fall asleep.

  15.

  i’m okay, you’re okay

  You can do nothing for only so long without starting to feel like a waste of skin. So after two weeks of intense Jordan time, I decided I was ready to go back to work. I called Lydia at the number she’d given me and asked her for the address of our office. I even repeated it back to her incorrectly for effect.

  I walked in feeling good. Confident. Their days of treating me like crap were over. Of course, there was the little matter of navigating their obvious doubts: How could I retain the skills of an ad agency staffer without a memory? And, this, overheard in the ladies’ room a few hours in: “Seriously—she’s, like, mentally incompetent, right?”

  My stock answer (I should have had someone broadcast an e-mail): the damage was to subconscious memory, not so much to the hippocampal process memory that we call on to do our jobs. So I wouldn’t remember all the faces and silly things we’d done together (a welcome relief from the endless retelling of those horrible Remember-how-drunk-she-got-that-time? anecdotes), but I still could outperform most of the dolts who padded payroll at this place.

  As I passed through the halls, people
were looking at me like I was Carrie soaked in pig’s blood. But my bloodletting at the hands of Splash Direct was a thing of the past—they just didn’t know it yet. Everyone I passed whispered to the person next to them and none too quietly either.

  “I heard she tried to kill herself,” whispered Charlotte, the uppity wench from payroll.

  “Nope. You heard wrong,” I said directly to her face, and then smiled like I’d said nothing at all.

  “Oh,” she said, totally flustered. “I wasn’t talking about you.”

  “Okay, good. Then let’s try to keep it that way, huh?”

  She looked truly shocked. And why not? Normally, I wouldn’t have said anything at all to her. They wanted to whisper about me, not my business. Well, now I was making it my business. And I’d be giving them plenty to whisper about—but I’d make sure they had their facts straight at least. I hightailed it to reception and pretended I didn’t know where I was going.

  “Hi, I’m Jordan. I’m not sure if you heard, but I had a bad accident and . . . well, I’m suffering from memory loss that leaves a few critical details out. You know me, right?”

  “Yeah, Jordan Landau,” the receptionist offered. “Traffic.”

  “Right,” I said. “Traffic.” It made me sick to think about what Lydia had done before I left, but if I was going to pull this off, I had to pretend nothing was wrong. “Can you let Lydia know that I’m here and ready for work?”

  “Sure. No problem.” She hit a couple of buttons and spoke into her headset. “Lydia? Jordan’s here.” She listened for a second, then disconnected. “She’ll be right out. Need help finding your way?”

  “No . . . funny thing,” I said. “Certain things are perfectly clear. Like the layout. I could probably find coffee machine filters in the thirty-sixth-floor kitchen sooner than I’ll remember . . . your name. Sorry.” Apologetic smile. Cue the awkward moment.