“I didn’t even realize what I was doing, sometimes. It just happened. She didn’t believe me.”
“Neither do I,” Jemma said. The reel jammed. He took it from her briefly to fix it, then handed it back. She hadn’t quite understood the depth of Vivian’s wound. This was a girl who went through boyfriends like Jemma had used to go through sugary cereals, and yet Jemma had never seen her so angry as when she confirmed her suspicions by asking the angel if Ishmael was sleeping around, and she generated another list, name after name after name. “More evidence of the change,” Jemma said aloud.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Regardless of what I think, you’re the enemy. I can’t tell you a thing.”
“Okay,” he said, holding up his hands and smiling. “Sorry. I think she’s going to do very well, though. I get around, you know. And I listen. What else have I got to do? Teaching three-year-olds how to finger paint doesn’t take up much time. I’ve sort of been polling while I campaign, and everybody’s pretty excited about her.”
“If you say so.”
“Honest. Sometimes I don’t even know why I bother hanging my posters. But I have to try, at least. It’s only the second thing I’ve been sure about, since I woke up. The first one was Vivian. Now I know I have to run, even though I’ll probably lose. Queen Vivian. All hail. I like the sound of it. Thanks, by the way. I never said thank you, did I?”
“For what?”
“For everything. For what you did. I can’t tell you how glad I am not to be a fucking nurses’ aide any more. I kept hoping I’d remember what I did before, so I could do it again, that I’d have some incredibly rare skill that would just pop up one day… like yours did, I guess. They’re pretty mean to you, you know, when they think they own you, and they can order you around to do whatever they want. One of them tried to make me give her a pedicure. I haven’t got the nursing vote, that’s for sure. It’s all Vivian’s.”
“Nurses hate medical students,” Jemma said matter-of-factly. “They think we’re a big pain. It’s an old distinction. They’re already forgetting it. But I’ll just always be the bad help to them.” Jemma cast again. It really was quite pleasant, the big throw, and the whine of the reel, and searching the water to isolate the splash, and trying to sense through the line the moment when the sinker broke the water.
“Hasn’t anything come back?” she asked him.
“Not a thing. Not even a little thing. Something might seem familiar, like this. I must have fished before, but who hasn’t? I got the angel to spit out some law books for me, because I had that suspicion about being a lawyer, but it was all so horribly dull. I could barely stand to look at it. I give up, anyway. I spent too many days just trying — it just makes me feel mad. Really mad, sometimes. That’s stupid, to be mad enough to punch the wall and have no fucking clue what you’re so upset about. I think I’m not supposed to remember. Maybe that’s the whole point of me. The reason I lived. I’m the person who doesn’t remember anything. But if I’m the fresh start, then what am I so angry about?”
“You seem pretty relaxed right now,” Jemma told him.
“I’m keeping it inside,” he said. “I’m good at that.”
“You and my dad,” Jemma said. “You know, I could probably fix it, if you wanted. I mean maybe not, but probably. The not-remembering, I mean.”
“No thanks,” he said, after a pause.
“I was jealous of you. I think a lot of people were thinking it would be nice not to remember, and wished that they could have. Didn’t you hear about the nurse on seven who kept trying to get some propofol, just so she could stop thinking about everything?” She was reeling swiftly on the line, imagining the sinker tearing up through the water. She wanted it to jump and swing when it broke the surface, and maybe even crack a window. “How could they not be jealous?” she said. “Even now, when everything’s looking up. How much better and how much easier is it to just go, to just forget about everything and face forward, if you’ve already forgotten. Can you imagine… fuck!” The line stuck again, and something pulled at it, gently, then hard, then violently. Jemma didn’t think to drop the pole until it was yanked from her hands. She would have fallen if Ishmael hadn’t steadied her with a hand on her belly. Then they both leaned forward a little, trying to see what was down there. Jemma heard two splashes, one of them certainly her pole, but the other one certainly something else.
38
When I was about eight I learned how to make drinks for my mother and father.
It was always very much the same every time: the same kind of gin, the same glass, the same number of big ice cubes. I would stand at the sink in the upstairs kitchen, carefully measuring out gin into a shot glass. I poured twice, just to the red line, and emptied the little glass twice into a larger one. I liked the way the gin fell down over the four cubes I stacked, one by one, in the glass. I rubbed the rim of the glass with the open end of a cut lime, then took a special tool — one of my favorite objects in the house — to cut an inch-long twist out of the rind. It contracted as it fell, bouncing off the highest cube to fall into the gin and then wedge in the space between cubes number two and three. I always thought of a little green Eskimo falling to his death among icebergs.
Then I would lean down to bring my eye level with the drink, giving it a final check. Two shots, four cubes, the highest cube raised half out of the gin, a piece of lime pulp stuck here and there along the rim, a rind twist that was neither too long nor too short: all was in order. I picked it up and brought it to my mother. Let’s say it was the December before my seventh birthday, a cold day in Severna Forest in a month without snow.
Thank you, said my mother.
You’re welcome, I said, watching as she stirred it once with her pinkie. The same hand held her cigarette, and she made a circle of smoke over the glass before she raised it to her mouth to take a tiny sip. It seemed like the most elegant thing in the world.
It’s perfect, she said. Like always. Why can’t your father learn to do this?
It’s a science, I said. A scientific process.
Edward Kent would have learned. He practically knew already. Did I ever tell you about him?
I said yes. Edward Kent was the man who could have been your grandfather, the man my mother had almost married before she married my actual father. She called off the wedding just days before, on account of his bad attitude, or because he was too good-looking, or too gay, or because he beat her once with his terribly expensive shoes — the tale was told a hundred times and more, and always there was a different reason.
Did I really? I don’t think I did.
I think, I said.
Well not about how he was waiting for us when we got home from our honeymoon. He had a gun. That’s how bad his attitude was. That’s how crazy he was. He was crazy for me, and just crazy, anyway. He had a very sensitive soul, I think. It’s probably for the best that I came to my senses and called the whole thing off. But sometimes I think it would have been better than what I got. He would have been a good father. He would have been crazy for you, too, in a good way. How would you like to have had him for your father?
I guess it would be okay, I said. I could never quite understand how this other man could be my father, and I might remain myself, as I was then.
Oh, better than okay. He had a sensitive soul and he played tennis, so he had those legs. We would be living in DC and all the news people would come over for dinner, or for parties. He was Edward R. Murrow’s godson, you know, and already a producer at CBS and we were only twenty-five. He wasn’t going anywhere but up. We didn’t tell on him, waiting for us with the gun. He had climbed up the balcony and pried open the sliding-glass door to your father’s apartment and he was sitting on the couch having a drink and resting the gun in his lap. Did you have a good trip? he asked us, and your father said, The best ever. Then he looked at us both — a weird, sad look, and stood up, and put the gun in his pants, and walked out. How about that?