Chapter 12
THE NEXT MORNING, MY MOM places two mugs of fresh coffee on the kitchen table.
“Hey, Dad, your coffee’s ready!” I call out, but he doesn’t answer. “He must be outside? I’ll get him.” I start to stand up, but my mom catches my arm.
“Actually, honey, your dad had to go into work,” she says, frowning.
“But he said he was going to the appointment with us.” I plop back down in my chair.
“He really wanted to. Work has just been so busy.”
“It feels like he lives there now. I’ve been home for days but I never see him,” I reply.
“He’s been taking as many appointments as he can at the garage.”
“Does that have anything to do with those?” I flick my eyes to the hospital bills that my mom has tactfully hidden behind a fruit basket on the counter. I don’t know much about health care, but I imagine a two-week stay paired with whatever they did to my head doesn’t come cheap.
She pulls the chair out across from me and slides onto it. “That’s not for you to worry about. Okay? Here.” She slides the orange mug toward me. “Drink your coffee.”
“My coffee? Absolutely not. No thank you,” I reply, scrunching my nose up.
“Oh, just try it. I added your favorite hazelnut creamer.”
“Fine.” I huff out a big sigh before I take a small sip and immediately drop the disgusted expression from my face. “Okay, that’s actually not bad,” I tell her, going in for a second slurp as her eyes crinkle over her green WORLD’S BEST MOM mug. I can’t believe she still has that.
“Hey, speaking of your dad, I have to run over to the church before your appointment. Why don’t I drop you off at the garage to have lunch with him? Then I’ll pick you up when I’m done and we’ll go to the doctor.”
I remember all the times Mom and I would pack up dinner and bring it to him on nights when he was stuck there late.
The three of us would huddle together in his tiny back office, before he would take me through the garage to show me all the cars he was working on at the time.
I was never particularly interested in how to replace brake pads, but it was always nice to see him in his element, wanting to teach me a thing or two.
Plus, it’s somewhere new to try to jog a memory.
“Yeah, that sounds really good,” I reply.
I know I don’t have to worry about what will be different about Green’s Auto Repair, because that place hasn’t been updated since my dad bought it ten, or I guess twelve, years ago.
Sure enough, I spy the same blue plastic chairs in the waiting room.
Same chunky television sitting in the corner of the office next to the same rust-stained refrigerator with the door you have to lift with your foot to shut.
“I’ll be right there.” A man’s voice calls from underneath an old Ford pickup. Gruff and smoky.
“Hey, Uncle Chuck, it’s just me,” I reply. I have no idea why I call him that since he’s not really my uncle, but immediately the sound of the ratchet stops and he rolls into view on a mechanic’s creeper.
“Stevie?” he says as he sits up. His face is even more leathery than I remember, but his smile is still the same oddly endearing one I’ve always known.
“Is my dad around?” I ask, wondering why he’s looking at me that way, until I remember everything that’s happened.
“You’re okay!” He hops up quicker than an old man should and wraps me up in a hug.
“I was so worried about you. My God, you grew up, kiddo.” He holds me out at arm’s length to get a good look at me before tugging me into another hug.
He’s acting like he hasn’t seen me in a decade, but I’m the one who’s basically watched him age two years overnight.
“It’s been longer for me than it has for you, trust me,” I say, my face squished against his chest that’s laced with the smell of motor oil and cigarettes.
He lets me go, knitting his eyebrows together, each scraggly white hair sprouting out in a different direction. “Last I seen you, you was just a kid.”
“Okay, Uncle Chuck.” I laugh him off, shaking my head. “I gotta go. Brought my dad lunch,” I say, moving toward the back of the garage and into his office.
As I step in through the doorway, Dad looks up at me, surprised. What are you doing here? he mouths, a corded telephone tucked under his jaw. I hold up the two sandwiches in Ziploc bags that I made this morning and a big bag of salt-and-vinegar chips to share.
“Okay, Mrs. L, we’ll get you on the schedule. I’ll see you Saturday,” he says into the telephone before dropping it onto its base in the corner of his messy desk, almost every paper stained with black fingerprints.
I guess he really does work weekends now.
“Haven’t seen much of you the past few days, thought we could have lunch,” I say.
“I know.” He runs his hand over the top of his bald head, the bags under his eyes even more apparent than they were at the hospital. “Sorry about that. Just playing catchup.” His eyes flick to the food in my hands. “Is that ham and cheese?”
“With mustard and extra mayo.”
He makes some space on his desk and I grab two cans of root beer out of the fridge before sitting down across from him.
We start eating in silence, the sound of our chewing the only noise in my dad’s cramped office. It feels awkward, but I can’t quite put my finger on why. It’s not like we were ever big talkers, not like Mom and me anyway, but we’ve never had trouble finding things to chat about over a meal.
“How’s business?” I ask, popping a salt-and-vinegar chip into my mouth, but I don’t think he hears me.
His attention is trained on something over my shoulder.
I turn to find Fox News muted on the TV, closed captions scrolling across the bottom of the screen.
“Dad,” I repeat a little louder, rolling my chair to the right to cut off his line of sight until his attention is on me. “How’s work been?”
“Oh, it’s fine. It’s good. Busy, you know,” he replies, and subtly rolls his chair in the opposite direction to get a view of the TV again. This… is not what I had in mind for our lunch date.
“Pfft,” he scoffs. “Yeah, because he’s barely a man!” I spin my chair to see the pixelated screen, where a clean-cut guy in a tan suit and a pink tie is sitting at a round table with the regular hosts. “Just leave the queers to CNN, Joe. That’s your problem.”
“Dad!” I say, sitting back in surprise. I know he subscribes to the Church’s views, but I’ve never heard him say something like that before.
“What? Come on. Why even bring those people on television?”
“They’re just regular people, Dad. Not any different from you and me,” I reply, but he’s leaning around me again to get a clear view of the screen. “And since when do we eat meals with the TV on? That’s like… your golden rule.”
That finally gets his attention. He looks at me confused and then at the TV before turning it off with a guilty look on his face.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. How are you doing? You’ve got your appointment today?” he asks.
“Yeah. Mom should be picking me up soon to take me,” I reply, my skin still prickling after that comment he made, but I push through it. “I’m starting back at the coffee shop this coming week. I—”
“That’s good to hear, Stevie.” He laughs, shaking his head. “Glad you’re not like these other yahoo kids who think they deserve everything fed to them on a silver spoon.”
“Uh… yeah, I guess.” I have more to say.
I want to tell him that I’m trying to get back to my routine to try to recover my memories.
I want to talk to him about how nervous I am for my first day, and tell him I’m meeting Savannah and Rory for breakfast next week at the Dinor.
I want to know if I’ve ever mentioned the boy who works there.
But even with the TV turned off now, things just…
aren’t feeling right between us, like we’re operating on different wavelengths.
And it’s like he can’t even hear the one I’m on.
This garage may not have changed. But my dad definitely seems different. So we end up eating our sandwiches in almost complete silence until my mom honks her horn from outside.
“Everything is looking good,” Dr. Reicher says, sitting down across from my mom and me in her office after my checkup. “Your latest scans show things progressing just as we’d like them to. Incision is healing well too. How have you been feeling?”
“I’m okay, I guess. I haven’t had to take the prescription pain meds at all and the headaches are getting better,” I reply, squeezing my hands between my knees as I try to quiet the anxiety that’s been building in my chest since we got here.
“That’s great to hear! Well then, I’m happy to tell you that you have my full permission to get back behind the wheel. Your mother tells me that you’ve been chomping at the bit. Just take it slow and…”
“Look. I still haven’t gotten any of my memories back,” I interrupt her. “What does that mean? Is it bad? Does it mean I never will?”
I don’t care about the scans. I don’t care that my incision is healing or that I can drive. I care that my own dad and I can’t even manage to hold a conversation now and I have no recollection of why. No memory of what has changed about me or him, or between the two of us.
She tilts her head in concern and folds her hands on top of her wooden desk. “Well, to be honest with you… most times, people do start to recover them within those first few days…”
Shit.
“Look, Stevie. You might want to consider the possibility that this is something you may need to make peace with. I know starting fresh sounds really scary, but it also might be a much healthier way for you to move through your life at this point. Okay?”
I nod, too frustrated to say anything back to her. My own doctor doesn’t even believe I can do this, but I am not giving up. I’m not starting fresh. Not when everyone else can remember a version of me that I can’t.
I’m going back to work at the coffee shop and that’s all I need to focus on. I won’t stop until I remember. Until I prove Dr. Reicher wrong.