Me Again by Cronin Keith

Author:Cronin, Keith [Cronin, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, relationships, sara gruen, humor, recovery, self-discovery, stroke, amnesia, memory, women's fiction
Publisher: Muscovy House
Published: 2012-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

“I THINK THIS IS THE STREET,” Rebecca said. “What was the house number again?”

As I reached for the map, she turned towards me and said, “Um, can you read the house number?”

I smiled. “Yes – I can read numbers fine. They’re like... like letters in words that I can’t understand.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding. “I wasn’t sure how that worked.”

I looked at my map and announced, “We’re looking for three two five. It’s a big yellow house.”

Rebecca slowed the car down and strained to read numbers on the sides of houses. Finally she said, “There’s three twenty-five, but it’s not a yellow house. Are we maybe on the wrong street?”

“No, that’s my fault,” I said. “I forgot that Mrs. Margolis told me the house wasn’t yellow anymore.”

Rebecca stopped the car in front of a large grey house. “So, is this it?”

I looked at it for a long moment. It fit the configuration of the house I remembered, but the pale grey siding was throwing me off. I squinted at the house, and the effect was that of looking at a black-and-white photo. Suddenly I felt that strange inner tingling – that all-too-rare sensation that I had learned to associate with remembering.

“This is it,” I proclaimed.

Rebecca parked the car across the street, and we got out and surveyed the house, neither of us making any move to approach it.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah – I’m just trying to see what I can recognize.”

I stood taking in its details, comparing it against my own mental picture to see what was new, what was the same.

“Which one was yours?” Rebecca asked.

“My what?” I asked, puzzled.

“Your house. Didn’t you say this lady was your next-door neighbor?” Rebecca pointed to the houses on either side. “So, which one is it?”

Whether brain damage or simple stupidity was to blame, I stood there slack-jawed. In all my preparation for this trip, I’d never once thought about the fact that I’d be seeing my old house. I had focused entirely on my meeting with Mrs. Margolis – my one true link to a past I couldn’t otherwise access. But I’d never taken the next logical step.

“I don’t know,” I said stupidly. “Believe it or not, I never even thought that far.”

Rebecca was gracious enough not to reply, and I turned my gaze to the house on the right. It seemed to be the mirror image of Mrs. Margolis’s house, with all its features reversed. Its driveway was on the left, while Mrs. Margolis’s was on the right. Its front door was on the right, as opposed to the left-side door on the house that faced us.

But that was the extent of its similarity; while the grey house in front of us was tidy and well-kept, the one on the right was dilapidated, its shabby white paint peeling, its yard overgrown. An ancient rust-riddled van was parked in the driveway, its side emblazoned with stick-on letters urging us to “Call the Happy Housepainter! No job too large or too small!” Apparently the house the van was parked next to was the exception.

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