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Bad Memory
My wife speaks in a hushed
voice. I’m of a higher standard - a loud one! She cannot stand anybody’s loud
voice. In the presence of loud speakers, her hands, on their own, travel where
her ears are. She cups them there, and holds her head pretending to have a
headache.
I cannot stand her low voice. She asks me to lower my voice. I ask her to raise
hers. She fails, most of the time, to follow my suggestion of speaking up.
I forget to lower my voice because of the plain fact that I don’t hear myself
and, when I don’t hear myself speaking, how would others hear me, I tell her. Of
course, I pretend that my hearing is equal to a ninety year old person.
She keeps repeating her mantra that I am too loud and the neighbors hear
everything I say or argue about.
I offer her a linguistic compromise: Let us speak only in our native tongue and
no neighbor will understand. She tells me that English is comfortable enough for
her and, besides that, certain words from our mother tongue have disappeared in
time from her vocabulary, due to our living so many years abroad.
I egg her on; “Then read the newspapers from back home on-line.”
She says: “I would if you give me some computer time!”
I said:” I forget, why don’t you ask?”
“When I do, you don’t hear me! When you do hear me, you forget!”
One week ago, what sounded to me like a whisper and, to my wife, sounded as the
normal speaking tone of voice; supposedly she told me that the next Saturday
we'd be going to have two important events to tend to, in a probably short frame
of time. According to her, this is what she said that she had said, and I think
she whispered: “Don’t forget, we’ll have to go to Woodside to bring the cargo to
K&K Freight Forwarding Services there and, after that, we’ll have a wedding to
attend, in New Jersey.”
We have never been to Woodside, never used those cargo services; and travelling
in New Jersey is more often a nightmare than fun - and I didn’t know what to
expect.
“Remember the ‘little’ kid Tom? He used to scuff when walking as the kid. His
family still lives nearby. He’s getting married in New Jersey. His mother is
from the same town I am from. She and I went to Nursing School together … do you
remember?
I said: “Honestly, no! I forgot!”
What happened in between that day and the coming Saturday is not so important.
What is important is that my wife has a remarkable memory. She never uses
calendars for a year’s events, but only “markings” in her head. She is not, by
nature, fond of anything that is used to write, or leave a mark on the paper, or
any place else. Her memory is a continuously running Rolls Royce motor, 24/7.
Her memory is also an impediment to her sleep. She wakes me up at 3 a.m. with a
question - what she should prepare for the tomorrow’s lunch? I swear, she is a
picky eater and her question doesn’t relate to her at all. When she is asking
that, she is actually thinking of me and my needs. She takes her wife’s duty as
the most important type of business one can have, I’m guessing. Or, she might be
taking me for her private patient where the sense of her nursing/nurse’s duty
prevails over everything else. That is her secret, and she won’t tell me. My
puzzle goes on …
I give my memory a long vacation whenever I can. I need paper as much as the
morning coffee and a bagel. The desk calendars are my best memory boosters and
confidants. When the year is running out, right after Christmas, the first thing
I do is go to my local bank and ask the lady Manager there: “Miss M., how about
my new calendars? I mean the desk calendars. Did you get them yet?”
The lady Manager looks back at me with a question of her own: “Why don’t you ask
me about the interest prospect for the next year? I would still give you your
five new desk calendars, anyway.”
Since I remembered my wife’s scolding words of my talking too-loud, I just smile
at my lady Manager and politely leave the bank. I know the next visit to the
bank I’ll ask her the same question. She’ll give me the same answer, and then
I’ll tell her that her answer is a "living" proof for my asking for the
calendars once more, as an urgent need - because I have not gotten them at the
previous visit. And she’ll laugh it off this time with the five calendars in her
hand. And she’ll tell me that these calendars for me are like the walking canes,
one for each business day. I’ll laugh a friendly laugh back at her. I also will
tell her that “the walking canes” is a very beautiful, creative metaphor! I’ll
tell her that in my too-loud voice. And the other customers in the bank will
look at me in a funny way. Some of them because my voice will be too loud, and
some of them will question the word "metaphor", thinking that I’m playing a big
linguist shot, when English is not even my native tongue.
However – I must ignore certain things, and not remembering them will help me to
preserve the happier version of life. A very few of those I mark down on one of
my calendars as the red flags to stay away from troubles. The “Pay the Real
Estate Tax – reminder/note!” is one of them though that is not the one that tops
the red-flag list.
For the October 12th is written down in a microscopic print, still in the red
ink: Verify every contractor’s license and the Insurance card. We live in the
cruel City and in the cruel times. Everyone is dishing out heavy doses of
discipline - (evoking some paragraph in the law) via some punishment through the
monetary penalties, which multiply and grow big through its own accrued daily
interest, like the fat rats in the restaurant’s basement.
The Building Department is the worst in that (dis)respect. One cannot open his
front door to his residence without the Building Department’s consent and
potential, heavy penalties. Permits, permits for everything - even going to the
bathroom! - is the follow-up note in twice underlined, the parallel red lines.
Who’s controlling this miserably happy world? I try to remember. I don’t write
that down on my calendar, because that question is always on my mind.
My wife is not a woman of pretence. This Saturday morning, she was holding her
neck with both her hands, swaying it from the right to the left. I had not
spoken a single word in her morning presence yet. I started wondering what
caused it. It was a symptom of her being affected by a loud noise, or something
that had to do with the loud words. I decided to move closer to the window,
silently, to give her some mental and physical space.
The clouds were travelling aimlessly on the sky, as if confused about where to
drop off the heavy rain. Another thing about them was their indecision. One
couldn’t tell if it was going to rain in the morning or afternoon, or at night.
Nobody can read the rain’s swaying, swinging mood. I think rain and the clouds
are bi-polar, in general. I keep the thought to myself. Can you imagine if I had
declared that personal theory in my neighborhood bank; in the front of all those
rich customers and in the front of its manger, Miss M. And, if I should had done
that in my naturally loud voice, with my specific number of Decibels? A question
hit me. I bet you, the customers and Miss M. would call an ambulance with a
special request: A psychiatrist should come along! Again, I would be suffering
together with my own metaphor of likening the rain and the clouds to people. My
conclusion is: It’s extremely difficult to deal with people who forgot the
metaphorical meaning of the words. I should probably use them less frequently
and write that down in each squared bordered space in the current calendar, as
yet another reminder.
My wife puts her coffee mug down in her spot at the table. In our house
everything is designated according to the imaginary division for the sake of
every-day harmony between us. Life flows easier that way. My chair awaits me. My
wife’s eyes are focused on it. A silent invitation to sit down is understood. No
– it’s not a boot camp. It’s the order of things around our kitchen table.
I leave my view of the world outside by the window where it originated. Counting
the floating clouds in the sky is not so interesting after thirty minutes.
“Do you know what day is today?” she asks.
“Let me think for a second … it’s Saturday”, I say.
“Do you remember the events for today?” she asks.
“Oh, let me check my calendar …”
“Never mind, save the trip!”
“No. No really, I got to check my calendar”
My wife cups her head, resting her elbows at the portion of the table in front
of her.
In my calendar’s square box for Saturday, two words, in the red ink were written
down: K-Kargo and wedding!. The exclamation mark at the end gave it the weekend
importance.
“Eureka!” my wife says in the voice that matched mine when I’m in an agitated
state of mind.
The three boxes, crisscrossed with the rope keeping the lid tightly on them were
waiting and ready under the window in the study room. In my wife’s handwriting,
the same address was repeated on each box with our European address and our
local phone numbers. They all brought back a warm nostalgic feeling, in a
meteoric flashback, of our first and original residence there. That residence,
in the circumstances of unpredictable life was/is turned into our contemporary
vacation condominium. These boxes, full with daily and some occasional vacation
necessities, like ping-pong paddles and our swim trunks/suits, a bunch of books
in English, tennis rackets and the like, will be imprisoned, by our own wilful
decision, in the huge ship’s metal container for about one month or even longer.
They will travel over the Atlantic Ocean all by themselves, amongst so many
other strange boxes with strange addresses, until they reach their final
destination - leaving us behind.
Once our things get there, a government official from the Customs Service will
ask my wife, when she eventually gets there herself - before me - to pick them
up, if she has anything to declare.
“Nothing special, just our daily vacation necessities!” she’ll tell him.
He’ll let her load our three boxes onto our cousin’s station wagon, without
paying any import taxes. The cousin will drive to our apartment building. He’ll
bring one by one upstairs to the second floor and leave them right in the middle
of our marble foyer. He’ll ask (he never forgets!) for a shot of the American
whiskey that my wife keeps handy for the helping hands of the relatives and
strangers alike. He’ll shake his head once or twice after swallowing whiskey in
one single gulp, and leave saying: “Bye-by-by!”
Shortly afterwards, a full surge of happiness will overtake my wife. Her eyes
will appear to be on the verge of tears. She’ll sit down on the first and
nearest chair she can grab and take a deep, deep breath. She’ll look around as
to say “hello” to everything in our apartment, including little souvenirs lined
up on the oak shelf in our dining room, as if all of them were living humans,
welcoming her back home. She’ll kiss them all, one by one.
In her heavy immigrant’s heart, she’ll feel a special love, as a child upon
seeing its mother after one long year of unbearable separation. She’ll have a
coming-home emotional meltdown which she will safe keep in her memory, and not
share it with anybody. Not even with me, for the fear of triggering yet another
one!
Once she pulls herself together, the hallway mahogany framed mirror will welcome
her with her perfectly made hair do. She’ll smell on expensive cologne bought
someplace on 5th Ave, New York City. Her body posture, though physically tired,
will be strengthened with special, in full-force, inner pride. She’ll look like
a brand new bride of yesteryears. Then, only then, she’ll decide to walk out on
to our balcony and just stare in silence at the sacred space that soars above
the red tiled roofs that surround our three-story apartment building. She’ll be
inhaling the air that smells of apple orchard mixed with aroma of the fresh
baked cookies from the bakery downstairs, hidden comfortably, right below our
apartment. A few yards away, a natural high of just well being, will be breezing
crossways from the blue Adriatic Sea, enveloping the whole building in its fresh
salty mist, leaving a slight mark on the balcony walls and its double-winged
doors. The sun above will have a happy and welcoming face, warm and dry just the
right way for a tired traveller looking for a rest. The natural high in its
prime generosity all around, inside and out - that one can only hope for!
When Spomenka, our neighbor from upstairs, rings the bell to our apartment,
eager to see her American neighbor - my wife will be still, very much
overwhelmed with her sweet-home-coming. She’ll pretend that she didn’t hear the
bell ring. She wants to be immerged into the moment alone. She’ll say hello to
Spomenka the first thing tomorrow morning. If she should feel like it, she’ll
even invite her to the nearby restaurant that sits on the edge of the
water, to have an early breakfast together. She won’t have to look at the menu.
Both of them favor the homemade ham, and organic eggs with the strongest Turkish
coffee, over all those other fancy names on the breakfast menu.
That would be the right time to sit down with Spomenka and sink into a
superficial conversation, where nothing important will be said on Spomenka’s
part, except how her job as a CPA is trite and dry; and that she should have
listened to her mother and became a lawyer. A famous lawyer! She would stress
it. And, then with a strike of good luck, move to America and became a
millionairess. My wife would just listen, and patiently listen some more to her
stories and life’s misses, as a tired and out of focus priest listening to all
those sincere and insincere confessions of his parishioners, almost ready to
curse at them, upon hearing so many sins linked to cursing! Her patience was
going to wear out, and she’ll eventually just excuse herself: “You know Spomenka,
I have not cleaned my apartment it’s been a year now. I got to go upstairs and
do some work!”
Then, they would promise to each other to get together very soon.
“That sounds OK with me,” Spomenka was going to say. She’ll accent the word "OK"
and pronounce it as if she lived in America.
My wife would continue her stroll back toward our apartment, taking the longest
route possible.
On her walk-path, certain forgotten words from her vocabulary will be coming
back through her eavesdropping on the local people. “How could I forgot them”,
she’ll remind herself; then revving her brain power she would just catch them
repeating them in her head at least five times, hoping that they would stay in
there.
“I would feel comfortable living here again!” – I bet she would keep saying
those words aloud along the way just to heighten her prospects of coming back
home for good and persuade me to do just that!
Anyway, my wife was really ready to rush both of us to load those boxes into our
car. She was afraid if something should go wrong between now and until they are
loaded into the container – we would have to wait for the next ship’s sail;
probably another month.
“I’ll tell you what – let’s load the biggest box first,” she said, “but take the
car out of the garage first. You see, you’ve already forgot to do that!”
I managed a narrow space between my Impala and the garage wall by wiggling my
whole body. My steering wheel was somewhat cold to the touch but obedient and
ready, as usual, to take the car and me out of the garage and up the steep
driveway, crossing a halfway over the narrow sidewalk. It’s an adventure before
any car ride for me. I engaged the emergency brake with the car hanging over the
sidewalk, just in case the Impala should “decide”, on her own, to go back in.
That is the mood spoiler I’m perpetually afraid of, before any trip.
“Good that you remember that!” my wife said following my every move with her
restless eyes and her poker face. This time she did not mention the wrecked
Honda of some years ago, that found its ultimate fate right in this same
driveway. Normally, she does that to keep my driving mind at its sharpest edge.
The biggest box went in with our mutual struggle. Using the seat belt around it
was a challenge.
“Just imagine that the box is an overweight person, and we are helping him with
the seat belt,” said my wife.
“… helping him?” I said.
“Yes. Him!” she answered.
“OK!” I said, “The case closed!”
“Was that necessary – your comment?” she said under the breath.
“The second box goes in right next to it?” I asked.
“The same as the first one,” said my wife.
“This one is smaller,” I remarked, “should we wrap the seat belt around ‘him’
too?”
“Yes. Another seat belt goes around her too!” said my wife.
“Oh, now it is ‘her’!” I said under the breath.
“Is that necessary?” My wife questioned my statement once more. This time her
voice was one notch higher than usual.
“How about the third box? Could it fit into the trunk?” she continued.
“I forgot something,” I answered.
“It figures!” said my wife.
“You created the situation where all three boxes cannot fit onto the second
seat!” I said, “and I forgot to take the things out of the trunk.”
“You had the whole week to do that. Remember, I’ve told you about the events of
this Saturday,” said my wife.
“Let me check my calendar to see if you are right about ‘the whole week’ stuff,”
said I.
“I don’t need a wise guy now. I prefer a longshoreman or a UPS-person or a mover
who knows and is familiar with loading boxes,” said my wife.
My car was blocking our strip-of-a-sidewalk in the front of our house. A
Pakistani guy was walking by. He circled around my car. Then he stopped and
looked at me. Then he shifted his eyes towards my wife. He looked at her like he
himself never had a wife. He seemed to be ready to say something. He changed his
mind when his cell phone demanded his urgent attention. He waltzed away the same
way as he came by. It’s funny: A stranger came by and a stranger walked by, but
stopping first. A conversation normally changes all that. No conversation. He
was still moving in a slow motion, yelling something in Urdu, arguing, his hands
flaying in the air as two birds with broken wings.
Our neighbor, Marina, peeked out of the window, pretending to check out the
weather, or check on her invisible parked car, which she didn’t buy yet. Then
she decided to come out onto the front porch. She always does that out of pure
curiosity. That is her trademark. She calls out to my wife:
“Hello Alexia, are you moving? Do you really need a longshoreman, I mean a
mover?”
My wife was thinking that thought … moving. It crossed her mind many times. It’s
been on her lips more than I could care to hear it.
“Oh, no – just sending some stuff to the old country. The container is in
Woodside and the ship will be sailing in a couple of days. We need to be there
by 1 pm”, she said. She said it in a careful kind of manner. Her words were
spoken in a neutral gear. One could almost "see" them lined up in a straight
line, gliding one after another …
Her dog, Maximo, distracted Marina. He appeared by the doorway, huge and dark
and angry. She yelled at the dog in the universal Slavic expression when
“communicating” with the domestic animals; “MARSH UNUTRA!” Maximo gave off an
obedient whine, almost graceful, sneezed into the damp, humid air then ran back
into the house. Marina followed. She slammed the front door by mistake. She
yelled: “Oh, shit!” in an angry, scratchy voice. A flat curse dissipated trough
the air. The particles bounced off the side of our Impala about fifteen feet
away.
Luckily, for us - for the moment - there were no more close-by visible
distractions around, that we could immediately detect.
Our journey to Woodside started the moment I guided our overloaded car into the
long line of cars, which were coming, down our street. Every single one of them
had to make a left hand turn on the Avenue up the block and come down real fast,
trying to beat the traffic light. We, the inhabitants of the block, think that
there is an element of racing urge in all these drivers and in all of this
nonsense of speeding down. We jokingly call our street “Daytona Beach”, trying
to catch the license numbers of the speeders going through the red light.
“It is a mini highway!” my wife said, harboring a secret wish that the Traffic
Department eventually reverses the direction of the traffic upwards, in the
opposite direction. We all know - that won’t happen in the next one hundred
years!
This is the first moment of the day where we see eye to eye. I make a mental
note of it. Woodside was nothing as the wood-side should be, or look like.
Getting there in the weekend traffic is not what the weekend traffic was
supposed to be. It was more like the everyday traffic - drive, stop, drive
again, slow down and curb your curses, then go back to the same, all in that
order. As far as the woodside/wooded side … on the way here, and now here, there
are maybe ten trees in total! So, tell me if the ten trees make “a woodside”?
The real woodside should be the whole forest or two! That was what I was
thinking to control my anger.
We took the right exit off the clogged highway but made a wrong turn after it.
“This Northern Boulevard is awfully long”, I mumbled.
“Sure. Especially when driving in the wrong direction!” said my wife.
I’m thinking, “A U-turn is always a very handy traffic tool. Legal as well as
illegal, as long as one makes it safely.”
There were three, as large as a medium size bungalow, ship’s metal containers
with the single door in the back, as wide as the container itself, waiting for
us. Their length reached a half of the block, resting on the swath of land next
to the narrow dirt road.
The shippers were scattered all around, standing next to their boxes and crates.
They were covering each foot of the – what normally was a free space around the
containers. Some of the customers stocked their boxes three-box-story high then
decided to rest their tired elbows right on the top of them.
”Who is in charge here?” asked my wife to nobody in particular.
To me, at the first glance, nobody was in charge. I was afraid to pick one
individual person for a boss and be wrong. The one, I thought who might be the
boss just unloaded his six boxes, what it looked as heavy as himself. Neah!
Then, a burly guy with a thick notebook under his arm appeared on my personal
horizon.
I poked my wife gently into her ribs.
The guy was intimidating. The golden earrings were hanging in each ear. A former
jeweller? A lost pirate? The long, curly moustaches were almost touching his
earlobes. He demanded a second look. His piercing eyes were focused on my wife.
He overlooked me. His voice was loud and direct, as the bullet travelling to
meet the bull’s eye.
“Lady, the name?” he asked.
“Me? ... I was wondering who the boss was?” answered my wife.
“Never mind, you found me. You see all these boxes, crates and other shit? I
(we) have two hours to get them inside the containers. You see, the boxes, the
crates and other shit are the boss!”
My wife skipped the words and there was no answer coming from her side. She
covered her ears with her hands for a short, crazy moment. Then in a second she
pulled herself together.
“Mrs. D. I called you last week.”
“Mrs. D.? Let me look … here you are, four boxes, right?” said the double
earrings man, holding his Register note-book.
“Noo ... wrong, only three; see there they are next to the guy in the pink
shirt, right by his feet,” said my wife.
“I have written down four, and 4 IS under your name. I never cheat, I’m an
honest freight forwarder!”
“I’m not saying that but, instead of four, it should and IS three (3) boxes, as
you can see - only three!”
“But – I have you down for four (4) and that much space I have sold you over the
phone when you called!”
“But – you sold me more than I needed! I’ve said three boxes, only three!”
“Four!”
“Three! You wrote wrong!”
“I wrote what you’ve told me!”
“How could I’ve told you four when I have only three boxes?”
“I don’t know. You should know!”
But – I DO know, I’ve told you … only three. You probably mixed my number of
boxes with someone else’s?”
“No. I did not!”
“Yes! You did! Anyway – what’s the difference; here are my only three (3)
boxes!”
“I have to charge you for four!”
“Why?”
“Because in my book it says: four (4)!”
“Forget the book, Mister ... !”
“Lady, now you’ve touched the raw nerve right here on the left-hand side of my
temple. You see it popping up like it’s going to burst any moment. I cannot
forget about the book; the book is the core and very essence, should I say glue,
of my entire business!”
“Oh yeah …!” squealed my angry wife.
The man, being the boss and standing in his rented territory, became even
angrier than when he first showed it. He had more verbal ammunition.
“If someone should snatch this book from my hand, right this moment, right now …
and … and burn it - all these boxes and the crates and the shit would stay right
here in Woodside – for ever!”
My wife froze in angry silence for a long moment. Her both hands found a
temporary refuge on the strap of her pocketbook. She was togging down on it, as
if fighting a crazed mugger.
“This damned guy’s memory is totally shot!” hissed my wife, “he relies on that
damned book like you on your desk calendars!”
She paid him for four (4) boxes finally, in the hope that the popping vein in
the guy’s forehead/temple doesn’t burst before those three boxes, belonging to
her, reach their final destination.
“What about that wedding in New Jersey? Is it still on?” I dared.
“OH, I almost forgot … The heck – Yes! Let’s go to any place away from this
Woodside, and these boxes, these crates and this guy’s damned, stinky book!”
Then she remembered: “Having some fun, at the wedding, might improve your
memory?”
My mind – in hurry - formed a question mark, and then it went blank, echoing my
self-defence in deep, deep silence.
The Old City...
Steve Vidler
Buy This at Allposters.com
Reviews
(applause received) 
Mike Mollica
United States
"I truly enjoyed JJ's story. It
was filled with great imagery and unique humor that made me the
story a pleasure to read.
On the surface it comes off as a simple anecdote though when you
explore a bit deeper the messages and truths uncovered are quite
meaningful and profound.
Well done. "
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the next to review this story - click here.
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