Ten Years Gone

Becky has begun reading the novel What Alice Forgot, the story of a woman who suffers a concussion while exercising at her gym and, upon waking, has forgotten the past 10 years of her life.  She awakens in the mindset of who she was 10 years prior - newlywed, pregnant for the first time, and hopeful about the future.  As she begins to explore the world around her she finds herself in the middle of a divorce and bearing a C-Section scar.

This has led both of us to wonder what we would think if, upon waking here in the apartment, we'd forgotten the past 10 years of life.  


Ten years ago today I was seventeen - a junior in high school, a determined underachiever.

Upon waking I would find an unfamiliar apartment, very different from the house on Holden Beach to which I was accustomed.  I would look out the window, likely murmuring, "Where the hell is this?"  The duck pond of the apartment complex, the indistinct buildings, the sound of traffic from the nearby thoroughfare - all bewildering and unfamiliar and possibly belonging to any city, any state.

A large, folded piece of posterboard is tacked to the wall of the apartment near the patio door.  On it is drawn a caricature that I find vaguely familiar, a face with sideburns and curly hair - obviously me.  I touch my own face, reassured to feel the scratchy, coiled oddness of my facial hair is right where I remember it to have been - albeit much thicker.  On the posterboard is scrawled a message in large, bubbled letters, "We will miss you, Mr. James!" 

Who?

On the mantel above the fireplace there's a large, flatscreen television flanked by fairy figurines and what looks, at first glance, like an XBOX - but the raised letters on the surface of the sleek black device read "XBOX 360" - whatever the hell that is.

My desk is there, near the door to the apartment, the desk my grandfather built for me when I was only eight or nine years old - built from the thick, sturdy wooden structure of the remnants of the old Duke Power building in downtown Charlotte.  On top of the desk is an assortment of artifacts - photographs of myself and a young woman with dark, short hair - I'm wearing a suit in the photo and I wonder if I knotted the necktie myself. 

Other things would reassure me and remind me of myself: pieces of paper bearing my handwriting, a picture frame containing a digital slideshow which reveals photos of my grandparents, my parents, siblings, me and the dark-haired woman and - a baby?

What the hell?

A baby?

A baby.

Did my parents have another kid?

He even looks sort of like I did when I was an infant and -

Oh.

He has to be mine.

Ok, ok, I can handle that - right?

A small, folded notecard on the table displays a large, cut-out and pasted red heart over which the words, "I love Josh," have been carefully and lovingly applied.

I turn to face the narrow hallway that links the living room to three closed doors.  One door is a bathroom.  The other opens onto a room in which the floorspace is dominated by a large bed and a crib.  In the crib is the same baby from the photos.  He's asleep.  I'm terrified of babies.  I can't hold one without breaking out into a sweat, my hands trembling and my mind screaming, "Just hand it over to someone, anyone responsible!"

I close the door try the last room.  A bed, a massive wardrobe, more furniture that's entirely unfamiliar and, on the bed, the woman from the photographs is fast asleep - her mouth open and her neck craned as though she's straining to stare at something beyond the back of her eyelids.  She's beautiful.

I traipse around the foot of the bed and to the nightstand I recognize as my own.  I grab the wallet and open it.  I haven't bothered to test for my driver's license yet except there it is, in front of several credit cards, my face and my name.

Fayetteville?  How the devil did I end up in Fayetteville?

I open the nightstand drawer and take out a large, weathered ziploc bag which contains, among other things, Army patches and dogtags.  They clink as I remove them and, yes, my name is stamped into the tags along with my blood type and social security number - the word "Atheist" is stamped below all of this?

Atheist?

I push my hands through my hair and find it shorter than I usually keep it.  I touch my face again and realize that I'm wearing glasses, something I haven't done since middle school when I began wearing contact lenses.  Still, I don't feel any acne, that's a plus.

The woman in the bed stirs a bit as I replace the dogtags gingerly into the ziploc bag.  I step away from the nightstand and open the door to the closet.  Black Nirvana t-shirts.  Ok, well that makes sense, at least.

I remember, and suddenly with a gripping anxiety, that my uncle, my mother's brother, has been missing for five days now after having a falling out with my grandfather.  My mother and grandmother have been driving all over Brunswick County looking for him, calling his friends in Charlotte, former acquaintances in Tennessee but to no avail.  I feel a guilty surge in my stomach and feel like calling my mother to see how she is, if he's been found.

I open my palm where I've continued holding the driver's license.  It was renewed in 2011 on my birthday.  No one is there to tell me that my uncle was found on 19 March 2002 and buried two days later.  Thirty-four years gone and he was unable to bear the life in which he'd found himself.

The woman stirs again and I look at her. I back slowly out of the room and, on instinct, return the other bedroom where the small creature opens its eyes slowly and raises little hands to a little mouth.  The lips separate and reveal the dark-pink gums and the black, steady, and small breath as the child coos.  I change his diaper without believing myself ever to have done so before.

We stand at these moments even when we know who we are, and then we discover the love we have come to deserve during the passage of our years despite the hurt we've come to know.

The author at 17 (with Bella, the Shih-Tzu)