couldn’t really follow those now, or maybe it was just that she wasn’t really interested in them anymore. The market this. The market that. Who cared?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I forgot.”
“That’s okay.” He tried to smile. That is, he
She wasn’t good at remembering where she put things, or what she was supposed to do, or a lot of facts and figures. But she was good, she realized, at judging emotions, whether people’s words and expressions matched their feelings.
“How do you want to celebrate?” he asked. “Or do you even want to?”
She thought about it.
“Let’s go to the zoo.”
On Wednesday mornings she had her appointment with Helen, her therapist. It was nice, because Helen’s office was just off Newport Avenue, and she could walk to it. She hadn’t driven since the accident. She didn’t have seizures or anything like that; she probably
“I don’t know why he likes me,” she told Helen.
The therapist leaned back in her chair. She was fluffy. Cloudy, in Kari’s way of picturing her, but with sharp beams of light that refracted through the clouds: a mass of graying brown hair, hornrimmed glasses, chunky jewelry and layers of gauzy clothing, and a penetrating gaze, a way of pinning down feelings with sharp words, like the feelings were dead butterflies.
“You’re a very likable person, Kari.”
“Maybe. But I’m not the same person. I’m not …” She struggled to find the words. “We used to want the same things. I was quick, like he was. I was … ambitious. We were going to, to make a lot of money. Live well. Have nice things.” She shrugged. “I don’t care about that stuff now. But he still does. And he says that he loves me, but I don’t know why.”
“Because you’re lovable.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re kind. You’re caring. You’re pretty …”
“So is it about how I look?”
Helen sighed. “It’s about a lot of things. Have you asked him?”
“I tried. But he won’t tell me.”
Helen tapped her pen on edge of the desk, like she was summoning up her words. “Kari, you keep talking about how he feels about you. How do you feel about him? Do you want to be with him?”
She considered this. “I don’t know.”
“You really need to think about that, Kari. And you need to think about what you want to do, long-term. You’ve made a remarkable recovery. It’s time for you to start thinking about the future.”
She tried to smile. “It feels so far away.”
“I know. But it comes before you know it. Look.” Helen hesitated; she wasn’t sure of something, Kari thought. Maybe not about what she wanted to say, but the words she needed to use, so that Kari would hear them. Finally Helen continued: “Your life is very different than it was, and you can’t do some of the things you used to do. You’re not going to be a lawyer.”
“That’s okay. I don’t want to be one.”
“Good. So why don’t you think about what you
When she walked home, the bum was there, leaning against the telephone pole.
“Spare a dollar? So I can get something to eat?”
“Jesus loves you,” he said. “But the Shining Ones, the deceivers, they take a pleasing form.”
There were a lot of gaps in her memory. The stuff she’d learned in school, especially law school. Some of it was there, but she couldn’t connect it all together. And other kinds of things: incidents. People she knew. Places she’d visited. She’d remember, sometimes, if someone reminded her, that, oh yes, she’d been there. She’d seen that.
Other people and places were gone, no matter how well they were described to her.
The zoo was something she did remember. She’d been coming here since she was a little kid, for all her life, really.
Walking through the front entrance, seeing the flamingos across from it, smelling that strange chlorinated bird-shit smell, she thought of coming here with her parents, back when her parents were together, and her little brother.
Before everyone died.
“Let’s get some tacos,” she said to David.
Her father had died first. A heart attack. Had left the house to her and her brother. They’d talked about selling
