“Lucy, we hope you get your memories back, but there are no guarantees things will get better than they are now. Your memory is a bit like a trickster at the moment, and we need to help you find a way to trust it again.”
So I’d been writing down memories I knew were real, the way you add a completed to-do item on a list for the satisfaction of checking it off. Memories from my childhood were easiest and most concrete, like when only a year after I was gifted my beloved birthday bike with the rainbow tassels, it was stolen and I told my parents I had locked it up—though I hadn’t. Or the time in ninth grade when I forged a doctor’s note and skipped school, then got caught when the principal called my mom to check how I was feeling because I’d misspelled tonsillitis (tonsellitus) and she was onto me.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about this “honest lying” thing. I mean, I’ve told friends I loved their haircuts when I didn’t, told bosses I made a dinner reservation for out-of-town clients when I didn’t (I forgot, blamed it on the hostess) and exclaimed my delight over gifts I knew I would be regifting or returning. These are all times I lied, on purpose and with intent. But now my own memory lied to me and I was as gullible as I had been when Alex told me as a kid if I swallowed my gum it would expand until my stomach exploded.
“It may not feel like it,” Dr. Kay said, bringing me back to the present. “But we’re making progress. Great progress actually.” She pointed to the list, my new cheat sheet, where I had been diligently filling out answers and adding questions.
Along with my memory confidence list, Dr. Kay and I spent a lot of time talking about Daniel, which I appreciated because he was a topic avoided in most other conversations I was having. My parents seemed to believe if they didn’t mention him, or the fabricated marriage memory, it didn’t exist, and after the coffee incident that first morning, Matt and I hadn’t discussed Daniel at all. I understood why no one wanted to talk about it, of course, but it was hard on me not to acknowledge him.
So Dr. Kay’s office was one place I could share—without worrying about how it all sounded—what I was feeling when it came to Daniel, which was a cornucopia of things. Loss. Confusion. Love. Bewilderment. Abandonment. Desire. Guilt. She never said much when I talked of Daniel, simply nodded encouragement to keep going, keep sharing, and on occasion would pepper the discussion with a few questions to keep things moving. To prevent me from shutting down and folding into myself, which many times I desperately wanted to do.
Depression was, according to Dr. Kay, an issue we needed to stay on top of. “It’s not unusual for people suffering memory loss to also suffer depression,” she said. “Accepting things as they are versus how you wish they could be is a challenge for anyone, but especially for those who are struggling with big holes in their recall.”
I wondered if I might already be depressed. I was far from feeling happy about things, but having never experienced depression—or at least having never remembered experiencing it—I wasn’t sure what we needed to keep an eye on exactly. Mentally, I added it to my set of questions. Ask Jenny or Alex if I’ve ever been depressed. I figured if I had been, I would have confided in one of them.
“How are things on the relationship front?” Dr. Kay asked, and I looked up from the list and my doodles.
“Well, I’m working on accepting Daniel and I aren’t actually married, if that’s what you mean,” I replied.
She smiled. I knew that wasn’t what she had meant, but I didn’t feel like talking about Matt right now. “How’s that going?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Okay?” She waited for me to continue. I sighed. “I can still picture our wedding day so clearly. The dress. The flowers. The rings.” I looked down at my bare left ring finger, tucked my hand under my thigh. “But I think I might be remembering my sister Alex’s wedding.”
“What makes you think that?” Dr. Kay asked.
“I was going through some photos my mom and dad brought over, and Alex’s dress looks pretty similar to mine. Or the one I thought I wore. At a wedding I apparently didn’t have.”
The dresses—the one I remembered wearing when I married Daniel and the one Alex wore on her wedding day—were not similar; they were identical. Peach-colored satin, but so pale it looked almost off-white in the sunshine. Vintage-style, to the knee with a rhinestone belt and capped short sleeves. Remembering myself in that dress had been somewhat confusing, though, because it was a style I would never have imagined myself wearing. My perfect dress would have been more classic, based on my style: maybe a strapless A-line, with a modestly poufed skirt, in winter white.
So how could I explain the vintage peach satin dress I thought I wore, which was much more Alex’s style? I couldn’t. Until I saw the photos of her wedding. I had forgotten entirely she was—well, had been—married. She and this sound engineer, Paolo, from Brazil met at a music festival in New York State and he followed her back to Toronto under the guise of a few weeks’ vacation. Apparently Alex sprang the city hall wedding on us two days before it happened, and she told me when recounting the story that Mom had been none too pleased, which should have surprised no one.
Our mother considered herself a forward-thinking parent: one more interested in experiential learning over structured homework; one who cared little if grandbabies came before a wedding; and one who would have been as delighted for Alex to marry a woman as a man, which was entirely possible. My sister didn’t subscribe to convention and since high school had been in plenty of relationships, gender irrelevant. My parents were happy when Alex was happy, so Mom couldn’t understand why she hadn’t told us about Paolo.
Alex and Paolo were married for less than a month before having the marriage annulled when Paolo went back to Brazil. As it turned out, his first wife was as surprised by this spontaneous wedding as my parents, and I, had been.
“And it wasn’t only the dress. We both had cupcakes instead of wedding cakes. And her bouquet was...my bouquet,” I told Dr. Kay. “She carried paper flowers. They were beautiful.”
“How does it make you feel, knowing these facts don’t belong to you?”
It was a strange way to put it, but she wasn’t wrong. I had taken ownership over the details, had crafted an entire section of my past around them without ever realizing they weren’t mine. How did it make me feel? Completely unhinged. Like I might never find my way back.
“It makes me feel like I’m insane,” I said, being honest with Dr. Kay because I had no reason not to be. If she had a reaction to my use of the word insane, she didn’t show it. “But don’t they say crazy people don’t know they’re crazy? So maybe I’m okay?”
“You are okay,” Dr. Kay said, leaning forward onto her crossed knees. I was somewhat reassured. She looked relaxed, not concerned in the slightest by my admission.
“Mostly it makes me feel alone, and yet entirely reliant on other people,” I said. “I can’t remember some things, other things I’m remembering completely wrong and some stuff I’ve made up altogether. Who can possibly relate to that?”
“How much of these memories with Daniel have you shared with Matt?”
At first I said nothing. Wasn’t sure how to talk about Matt and Daniel in the same sentence without the hit of bitter guilt that came with it.
“You’re allowed to mourn the loss of the marriage you remember, Lucy. Your feelings are valid. I know you know this, but it’s worth saying again—these fabricated memories will feel as real to you as any confirmed memory does.” I nodded, looked down at my list, the words blurring as my eyes filled. “But that also doesn’t mean what you have with Matt isn’t real or important.”
“I miss him. Daniel, I mean.” I took a deep breath, fiddled