Late Stories

Remember

He puts three eggs on to boil. When they’re done, he’ll dump the yolks and use the egg white in the tuna fish salad he’s making. Should take ’bout fifteen minutes altogether, getting the water to boil and then the boiling. He reminds himself again of the owner of the sandwich shop at the Y he goes to who said to get the shells off without them sticking to the whites, he boils the eggs for forty minutes, or was it fifty, drops them in cold water and two minutes later shells them. “Method’s infallible,” he said, “though it does take a lot of time.” Boiling them for ten minutes will be enough to get the same results, he thinks. He goes into the living room and reads a novel while listening to some soft piano music. A while later, he smells something funny. Goddamnit, the eggs! He runs into the kitchen. They’ve been boiling for probably an hour. All the water’s boiled out, the eggshells have split and the saucepan will have to be scrubbed and scrubbed to get rid of the eggs stuck to the bottom. He puts three more eggs into a larger saucepan, stays in the kitchen and cleans the first saucepan and reads from the novel till the eggs have boiled for eight minutes. That’s enough time. He can’t stay here forever. He pours the boiled water into the sink, covers the eggs in the pan with cold water and waits there a couple of minutes before he starts shelling the eggs. The shells don’t come off easily, but with a lot of peeling and picking he gets most of the egg whites for his tuna fish salad.

He gets dressed and goes out around seven for his daily morning walk. Says “Hello” and “Good morning” to a few people while he walks, one jogging at a very slow pace and the others walking their dogs. Gets back home. Goes into the bathroom to pee. Sees his fly has been open all the way since he last peed. People he saw during his walk, even the jogger going the opposite way, may have noticed. Why’d he forget to zip up? Should concentrate more on it. People will think he keeps his fly open deliberately if they see it another time. Or could. Or just that something’s the matter with him. That he’s not thinking.

Puts the tea kettle on for drip coffee. The cat. Did he let him out? He did; hours ago. He forgets sometimes where the cat is, he lets him in and out so many times in a day. There have been foxes around. He gets worried. He goes outside to see if the cat’s around. Looks; whistles for him. Calls for him a few times. Starts weeding around the blueberry bush his younger daughter put in this spring by the driveway. Likes it to stand out. Often the cat sidles up to him while he weeds. Or just quietly appears next to him, lying on his stomach. From there he weeds around the other blueberry bushes near the blueberry bush. He forgets who put them in. Maybe they came with the house. His wife was always good at knowing those things. Gets a big leaf bag out of the garden shed and puts most of what he’s weeded into it. That’s enough work outside today. It’s gotten too hot. Heads for the house. The cat. Ah, he’ll be all right. Smells burnt metal through the kitchen screen door. The tea kettle. Knows all the water must be gone and the handle will be too hot to touch. Uses a potholder to lift the kettle off the stove and put under the faucet. Steam fogs up his glasses and he has to wipe the lenses to see out of them. Kettle’s probably ruined, but maybe not. Didn’t he ruin a tea kettle a few months ago by letting the water boil out? Sometime, anyway, but hasn’t happened since. He’s been extra careful about it most times. He also has to remember to always put the whistle part down.

Makes a frittata in a frying pan on the stove. He’ll have half of it for dinner and then some of it cold for lunch tomorrow. Puts it in the oven for about ten minutes and then sprinkles grated parmesan cheese on it and sticks it under the broiler to make it crisp on top and turns the oven knob to “broil.” Should take no more than a minute under the high flame. Makes himself a drink. A fast one: just vodka and ice in a glass. Sips it. Puts the bottle of vodka back into a kitchen cupboard. Ice container could use more ice. He empties a tray of ice into the container, drops another ice cube into his glass, fills the tray with water and puts the container and tray into the freezer. Smells the frittata burning. Damn, there goes that. Turns the oven off and pulls the pan out. Frittata’s scorched. Who knows what with the pan? And it’s an expensive one, his wife’s before he even met her, French — Creuset, he thinks it’s called; supposed to be the best. Not going to make another frittata. There’s some egg salad and Muenster cheese in the refrigerator, and with two slices of bread — don’t even toast them; the way his mind’s going today, don’t even chance it, though he’s really only kidding himself; he’s not that bad off — and lettuce and cucumber slices, he’ll make a sandwich.

Did he take his tamsulosin pill this morning? Thinks he did, but then maybe not. Supposed to a half an hour after breakfast. Doesn’t want to take two in one day. Especially one so soon after the other, if he did take it today. So did he? Think back. Doesn’t come up with anything. Let it go for today. Not taking the pill one day won’t kill him. Get a pill holder that has seven compartments for each day of the week. Do it next time you’re in a pharmacy. Remember to. Do it even sooner. Make a special trip to the pharmacy when you go to the market later, and start using the holder tomorrow. Three carbidopa-levodopas, one tamsulosin and one omeprazole per compartment. That should do it. Prepared a lentil rice loaf and puts it in the oven at 375 degrees. Lentils and rice are already cooked, so the whole thing should take half an hour; at most, forty minutes. He’ll see when he looks at it thirty minutes from now. Has plenty of time to check his emails. Hopes his daughter answered his email about Maine this summer, a decision he has to have in the next two days if he’s to put a deposit down for the cottage they rented for a month last summer. He goes to the computer in his wife’s old study. Stares for a while at the photograph leaning against a window there of his wife and daughters, two and five years old or three and six. Tries to remember what they looked like at those ages and decides on two and five. Maine again. Wind blowing his wife’s long hair. What a smile she had. And so beautiful. On a sailboat friends of theirs took them out on. All of them in life jackets. He no doubt had one on too. His daughter writes she can’t leave her work till July 28th. He writes back and then reads three other emails. What a drag. One’s a long one from an editor about a story of his coming out in a magazine, that needs an equally long response. Sure he wants to keep this? Is a word missing there? He’s already mentioned the color of the jug two pages earlier, and since there’s only one jug, does the color need to be given again? Her name’s Lily at the top of the page, Lila at the bottom. Surely that’s an error. Should the verb tense, line 9, page 14, be in the present, when the sentence starts off in the past? Around two dozen others. He checks the original manuscript. Makes the corrections or gives reasons why he doesn’t go along with the suggested changes, or no reasons: he just wants this and that to stay put. He’s very slow at the keyboard. Types with two fingers now, sometimes three, and is always making typing mistakes and correcting them. Then he sends it. Then thinks does he really go along with all the editor’s changes he did agree to? Maybe he answered too fast just to get it out of the way. He rereads the last email he sent the editor. Makes a few changes back to what he originally had and sends them. While he’s here he clicks on — that can’t be the right term for it; what is the right term then? He’ll remember — a twenty-eight minute dramatization, with English subtitles, of Kafka’s The Judgment, a German writer he’s been corresponding with the last few years sent him. Three minutes from the end of it he remembers his loaf baking. Turns off the computer and goes into the kitchen. It’s been more than two hours. He never checked a clock. Thought he’d just know when thirty to forty minutes were up or he’d look at the time on the computer, which he didn’t do, when he first sat down at it. Loaf’s completely ruined. God, what an asshole he is. “You’re an asshole,” he says, “an asshole.” What else is he going to ruin? He’s not losing his mind, is he? No, just his memory, or whatever it is that reminds him to prevent things like this. Maybe if he’d kept the temperature down to 325; 300, even. Would take longer to bake but give him more of a chance to remember something’s in the oven, so less chance it’d be ruined. Suppose he left something on the stove that long? Well, he thinks he would have smelled it sooner. And why didn’t he smell the loaf burning? He got lost in something else, and there’s less chance of smelling something burning in the oven than on the stove. From now on, pay attention, you hear? He doesn’t, there’ll be a real accident. He has no smoke alarm because he hates the noise it makes when just a slice of toast is getting burnt. He should think of getting one. He should really remember to. But he never will, and not because he’ll forget to, unless one of his daughters insists on it. So he won’t tell them of the burnt frittata and lentil rice loaf and the tea kettles he let boil out and other things. If he does, then the first one to visit him will go to the store to buy two or three of them and install them herself.

He puts two rice cakes in the toaster and presses the lever down. Shouldn’t take long. The phone rings. He goes into his wife’s study to answer it. It’s his sister. “How are you?” “Fine.” “What’s doing with you?” “Nothing much, and you?” “The same,” and so on, when he smells something burning. “Hold it,” he says; “the rice cakes,” and he puts the receiver down and goes into the kitchen. The rice cakes are on fire in the toaster. Flames coming out of the slots that reach the bottom of the cupboard above them. He pulls out the toaster plug, presses the button to pop up the rice cakes, blows on the flames till the fire’s out, and then, with a potholder and dishtowel protecting his hands, holds the toaster over the sink and shakes it till the rice cakes fall out. Runs water on them till they stop smoking and are soaked, and puts them in the kitchen trash can. Now that could have been very dangerous, he thinks. Very. How stupid can he get? He goes back to the study; his sister’s no longer on the line. He’ll call her later, if she doesn’t call him first, but he won’t tell her why he suddenly had to get off the phone. She’ll say didn’t his smoke alarm go off? And then urge him to get one, at least for the kitchen. He looks inside the toaster. Nothing seems damaged. Cupboard seems okay, too. He puts two more rice cakes into the toaster and turns the timer knob all the way to the left. Stay here, and then when he thinks they’re ready, pop them. He got the idea for toasting the rice cakes from his wife. That’s how she always asked him to make them for her when she had cream cheese or butter or peanut butter put on them after they were warmed. It’d take about forty-five seconds. “Don’t let it burn,” she’d say. He likes them toasted more than warmed, even some of the puffy grains blackened, and it’d take a little more than a minute. Room still smells of burnt rice cakes. He turns the exhaust fan on. It makes so much noise, he won’t have any trouble remembering to turn it off. And remember, never leave the rice cakes in the toaster for that long again. Maybe a better idea would be never to toast them again. Let’s face it, it’s getting or gotten to the point where he’s beginning not to trust his memory that something’s in the toaster or oven or on the stove that needs checking into every now and then.

Puts a pill into his mouth, fills half a juice glass with water, gets a large container of yogurt out of the refrigerator, lets the pill dissolve on his tongue, swallows it with water, opens the refrigerator and starts to put the glass on the shelf where the yogurt was, realizes he means for the yogurt container to go back into the refrigerator but after he has a spoonful of it, puts the glass upside down into the dish rack, has a spoonful of yogurt, puts the spoon into the sink and the yogurt container into the refrigerator. Absentminded, that’s all. Not really a problem. Was doing too many things at once and too quickly; just didn’t think.

He goes outside for his daily run and longer walk. He runs first, just a quarter-mile or so. He can’t run like he used to not that long ago, which was about two miles every day. Then he starts walking fast. He feels his fly. It’s open; forgot again. Makes him even more worried about himself. Toaster, oven, stove, forgetting his keys when he goes out to drive the car. Goes back to get them and often gets distracted and when he leaves the house again realizes he’s forgotten his keys a second time. So: remember to check your fly every time before you go out. Remember, remember. Right. Check. Every time. Will do. At least solve that problem.

Goes to the market to shop, comes back, smells gas. Checks the stove. He left one of the burners on though no flame. How’d that happen? What was the last thing he did on the stove? Boiled water for coffee this morning. Turns the exhaust fan on. What’s he want to do, kill himself? If not by fire, then gas? Big joke. Funny. Knows it’ll never get that bad. If his wife were alive he’d tell her it. No he wouldn’t. And what was the joke again? Couldn’t have forgotten it that fast. If not by fire, then gas. She’d get frightened for him and her both. Concentrate more. Just concentrate on everything to do with what he does in the kitchen and his fly and what he needs to have on him when he takes the car. Though how many times has he forgotten his keys and wallet? Not much but enough. Maybe once every two months or not even that. Though maybe more. Keys aren’t that big a problem. Most of the time he knows almost immediately when they’re not on him. But sometimes he’s gotten to the market or wherever he’s gone to, felt his pocket where the wallet should have been, and had to drive back home for it, a few times from miles away.

He goes outside to get the newspaper by the mailbox. Picks it off the ground, takes the plastic sleeve off, starts reading the headlines as he walks back to the house. His fly. Why’s he think it might be open? He didn’t. Just checking. It’s open. Didn’t he tell himself to concentrate more on it? Zips it up. At least nobody was around to see it.

Turns on the light switch by the CD player to two living room lamps so he doesn’t have to walk to his bedroom in the dark. Done it several times before, and even though he walked very slowly and his arms were weaving around in front of him, he bumped into things and twice cracked his forehead on a door. After he turns on his night table lamp, he’ll turn the living room lights off with the light switch above the piano at the other end of the room. Both switches work for the same lights. He goes into the bedroom, undresses, exercises a little with two ten-pound weights, washes up, makes sure a handkerchief is on the bed and his watch and pen and memo book are on his night table, and gets into bed and reads. After about half an hour, he shuts off his light. A little light comes in from the living room. Forgot again. That one he does about once a week, or about every third or fourth time he makes it to the back of the house that way. He hasn’t figured out a way not to forget to turn the living room lights off before he gets into bed other than to tell himself when he first switches on the lights: Don’t forget to turn the other living room light switch off after you turn the night table light on.

So he’s worried. Or getting to be. Or just a little alarmed. Because what else will he forget? For he’s been forgetting so much the last few months. Actually, the last year, and probably more. It could even go back to sometime after his wife died, or it’s become worse since then, though he has no idea why for either. Truth is, he’s not sure when it began. Maybe there were inklings of it before she died, and because he was so busy with her, he never paid much attention to it. But stove, oven, toaster, lights, fly, pills, a couple of times his phone number and zip code, feeding the cat, not knowing if he let him in or out the last time he opened the outside door for him, more than usual: people’s names. What words mean but usually not their spellings. Music compositions and their composers. Hearing a familiar piece on the radio but can’t come up with its name or who wrote it. Well, he’s always had trouble with that, one or the other or both, unless it’s something like Enigma Variations or Pictures at an Exhibition or Appalachian Spring, which are played on the radio so often that, great works though they are, he’s sick of them. Recently, authors and their most famous works. Just the other day: Ellison and his novel. Okay, read it long ago, but it’s still written and talked about but he couldn’t remember his name or the book’s title the entire day. Tried, too. Then, when his last name suddenly popped into his head, the first name came right after and the book’s title. Also the other day: gazpacho. Bought a small container of it in the local market and was about to take it out of the refrigerator and sit down and eat it, when he realized he’d forgotten what it was called. This is a test, he told himself: let’s see how fast he can come up with its name. Knows it’s made of chopped-up tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and onions and is served chilled and is of Spanish origin and the traditional way it’s made in Spain, or in some parts of it, and which he doesn’t do when he makes it himself at home, is with chunks of bread. He gave up, and as he opened the refrigerator to take it out, it came to him: gazpacho. With an “s” or “z,” he thought. Let’s see. He ran the word through his head. “Z.” He’s almost sure. Remembers looking it up in the dictionary, maybe two or three times, when he wasn’t sure of its spelling for something he was writing. Anyway: remember. What’s on the stove, in the oven, how long the thing should be cooking, or thereabouts, and so on. Cat, pills, toaster, fly. To wear a cap when he’s going to be outside, even when the sun’s behind clouds, to prevent more scalp lesions. To check his daily calendar book every few days to see what appointments and engagements might be coming up. People’s names he’s not sure he’ll remember next time he sees them. Use some memory device to help him remember. For instance, if the guy’s name is Tom, then “Tom and Jerry” or “Tom Collins” or “Tom-Tom,” but something like that. There’s a former grad student of his he seems to bump into a lot at markets and the two Starbucks he goes to and certainly at departmental parties he’s still invited to, whose name he always forgets. It’s embarrassing for both of them when that happens and he has to work around it to get her name, without appearing he forgot it, or ask someone else for it. So what is her name? Terry? Tracy? Teresa? He’s not even sure it starts with a T, but something tells him it does. T-a? T-e? T-o? T-u? Oh, he gives up. He doesn’t understand why he forgets some people’s names more than others and a few people’s names all the time. Knows her last name, a fairly common one, is the same as a well-known contemporary British writer, but forgets it now, too. Writes people’s names in the memo book he always carries with him. About a week ago during his early evening walk, he met for the first time his new neighbors from across the street. Both doctors. That came out in their brief talk. Also that they have twin sons. He saw them and introduced himself. So what are their names? They told him and he gave them his. He in fact asked for their names again just before he said goodbye and continued his walk. Might even have told them he’s bad at remembering people’s names, which is why he asked for theirs again. He thinks the woman said she is too and asked for his again. But are these going to be two more people whose names he always forgets? Because he’s sure to be bumping into them again. Johnny and Rachel? Or Rebecca? He thinks it’s Rebecca. He takes his memo book out of his back pants pocket, and pen he also always has with him, from a side pants pocket — he doesn’t keep it in his back pocket, which he used to do, because he knows he’ll eventually sit on it and break it and stain another pair of pants for good; he’s learned that much — and writes on the first clean page he comes to: “Johnny and Rebecca or Rachel; new doctor neighbors. Rebecca at Union Memorial, Johnny in private practice: pulmonology.” Last names? She has her husband’s: Mathews or Mathewson, and writes these names down. He’ll put on this same page the names of other people in the neighborhood he’s bumped into on his walks and exchanged names with, if he can remember theirs, and also new people he might meet around here, and look at them from time to time, or maybe only when he puts a new one down, so he’ll know their names next time he meets them. Let them think he has a great memory, despite what he might have told them, and don’t correct them if they say he does. Take it as a compliment, or just shrug.

Gets up, brushes his teeth, washes his face, exercises, dresses, goes into the kitchen. Oops. Forgot to shave, something he likes to do daily. Takes his shirt off so he won’t wet it, and shaves and then brushes his hair. Hasn’t had a shower, something he also likes to do daily, in a couple of days — could it be three? Would hate to think it was — but he’ll do it at the Y today after he works out, or here. Feeds the cat, changes his water, lets him out. Remember: he’s out, not in. Again: good practice, to remember that. Cat out, cat out, he tells himself. Has breakfast, washes the dishes, makes sure the oven and all the stove burners are off, puts on his baseball cap and goes outside and does some needed yard work. Is out there for more than an hour. At least it feels like it. Fills up four leaf bags with weeds and twigs and sticks, gets sweaty and tired and thinks that should do it for the day. Has to pee. Came on suddenly, even though he’s taking medication for it, though it’s a bit better now than it used to be. He doesn’t have time to go inside, so he’ll do it behind a tree. Puts his hand to his pants to open his fly, but it’s already open. Oh, geez. Won’t he ever remember? What does he have to do? he thinks while he pees. Maybe he could make. . no, there’s nothing he can do. On that score, he almost seems hopeless. But he can’t give up on it. Just try to catch it as many times as he can. Always, and he means always, never leave the house or a restaurant or any kind of store he’s been in a while and it has a restroom for customers, without peeing first, even if he peed just ten minutes before. Got it. A set routine he’s going to remember to follow, not that he hasn’t thought of this before. At least he still drives without forgetting to look all around him when he backs out of a parking space or makes a turn, understands most of what he reads, or as much as he did years before; has a good visual memory for lots of things, going all the way back to when he was a kid, and is still able to write and at times even do some tricky writing stuff. By that he means. . well, that he still comes up with something new to say in each piece and say it with what he thinks, though he might be all wrong in this, in a new way. It’s the day-to-day things he forgets a lot. Well, writing is day-to-day, page-to-page, till he’s finished the piece. But what was he getting at? Did he once again lose what he started out to say? Not important. Really, not important. What is, and maybe this is what he was getting at, is what he’s going to do about all this forgetting. Maybe he should talk it over with his daughters. They’re smart, practical, want the best for him. No, doesn’t want to worry or burden them with his problems, which is what his mother, when she was around his age now, used to say to him. What did he say when she said that? Probably something like “Don’t worry about me. It’s not a burden. You can never be a burden to me. I want to do everything I can for you.” So did she usually end up telling him? Forgets. If he does tell his daughters, they’ll say something like, “Daddy, you have to be more careful. You can burn down the house with you in it.” “I know,” he’d say. But keep it to yourself with them. He really doesn’t want to worry them. And there’s enough, when they’re here, that they can see for themselves. Then a friend. Is he really that close with anybody? Not since his wife died. He sort of pulled himself away. Even his sister? But what can a friend or his sister do to help? He knows she’ll say he should take ginseng tablets. She’s big on that and claims it’s improved her memory by fifty percent. He remembers saying something like “I don’t know how you can measure that, but if you say so, okay.” So there’s nobody, really. Think. Nobody. He goes into the house. Wait a minute. How about his doctor at his next annual checkup? But by that time he’ll forget he wants to speak to him about it. He always seems to forget what he wants or even thinks he needs to talk to him about. Too much time between thinking about it and the appointment. What he should have done is write it down in his daily calendar book for the day of the appointment. So for now, call his office and say he wants to see him sooner than his annual checkup, which he thinks is in March. It’s always in March. But it won’t do him any good. His doctor will put him on another pill. Then more upset stomach and worse constipation than he already has. That’s what the hell those pills mostly do. So again: just try harder to remember. Memory devices. Anything that can help. That’s really all he needs. His mind is fine. For a start, he writes “remember” in marker on a piece of paper, scissors around it and tapes it to the refrigerator door. Underlines it twice. Puts an exclamation point after it. Then writes “remember!” on another piece of paper, cuts it out and tapes it to the bottom of the bathroom window frame. Any other place? No, that should do it. He pees, doesn’t need to flush it — that he never seems to forget to do when he has to, nor put the toilet seat down — and is about to turn around and leave the room when he sees the “remember!” on the window frame. Zips up his fly. Later, for lunch, he puts the rest of the lasagna he made two days ago for dinner into the oven to warm up, sees the “remember!” on the refrigerator door and says to himself, “Now remember. This is important. Come back in twenty minutes to take the dish out. Twenty? Make it thirty, at 400 degrees.” The lasagna’s been in the refrigerator and he just turned on the oven and he likes the pasta ends crisp if not a little burned. He pours himself a mug of coffee from the thermos, goes into the living room with it, sits, looks at the clock on the fireplace mantle, moves the mug to the side table from the chair arm so there’s less chance of knocking it over, reads the newspaper and then a book — a good bio of one of his favorite writers; he’s really enjoying it. He listens to music while he reads, rests his head back in the easy chair and daydreams or dreams for what feels like a few minutes and then comes out of it or wakes up. Smells something burning.