She waves her hands at me to keep me quiet and presses her finger to her lips again.
“He’s here?” I whisper. “Cassie didn’t mention anything when we talked the other day.”
Cassie rarely mentions anything when we talk.
“She mostly stayed in the guest room,” Lola says. “She barely knew I was here. Don’t take it personally.”
I tilt my head at Lola, and she makes an I’m sorry, I know that was dumb face. Then she waves away the discussion of Cassie.
“Two months I’ve been seeing the guy,” she whispers to me. “No idea who he was and now he’s in my kitchen.”
She points to the kitchen with panic in her face. I glance across the warmly lit living room and into the small, colorful kitchen. I remember helping her pick the colors: avocado, perfect plum, mango, and melon. My condo walls are white. Just White—that’s the actual name of the color.
“It’s not like he broke in,” I look back to her and whisper. “You’re dating him.”
“But I didn’t know who he was!” Lola says. She looks terrified.
I take her by the arm and walk her out the front door.
“Ok,” I say, smoothing down her pitch-black hair with my hands. “Let’s take stock. He’s not a stranger. He’s Chris. You’ve been dating for two months. You know him. He makes you really happy.”
“He’s the goofy guy from an annoying insurance commercial,” Lola says, her beautiful face twisted up.
“No,” I say. “That’s a character from TV.”
She breathes in and out very deliberately, nodding her head slowly. I mimic her actions until we’re both calmer.
“Does everyone know about this?” she asks.
“That he’s the guy from TV?”
She nods.
“Yes, sweetie,” I say. “Everyone knows.”
“Does he know that I don’t know?” she asks, her face so pitiful.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But I do know he’s crazy about you. And he’s absolutely beautiful—no taped-up glasses, no rashes, no car crashes. Now let’s go back inside.”
I ease the door open like I’m sneaking up on a bear.
“There you are,” Chris says, standing in the living room with two full coffee mugs in his hand. “You ok?”
“She’s fine,” I say. I take one of the mugs and hand it to her. “Hi, Chris.”
He gives me that pressed-lip smile you give people when you know something bad is happening in their world and you know you can’t really do anything about it. Looking at him standing in her living room, I can see how Lola hadn’t recognized him, memory gaps aside.
In character, his sandy-brown hair is forced down with shiny, styling grease into a Poindexter that is the opposite of the loose waves and out-of-place curls he has this morning. With his faded jeans—albeit with a similar hole in one knee—a Ramones T-shirt and no glasses to obscure his thickly lashed blue eyes, anyone would be hard pressed to put two and two together. But it’s there in his voice and in the lopsided smile, and some synapse must have fired just so in Lola’s brain and bam—there the recognition rests.
“Good morning, Nina,” he says. “Let me pour you a cup. You’re staying for a bit, yes? Cream and sugar?”
I know Lola needs me to hang around for a while until the shock wears off.
“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”
He turns back toward the kitchen. Lola is holding her mug with both hands, looking down at the liquid like she doesn’t know what it is.
“Is this how I like my coffee?” she asks me, not looking up. “I can see there’s cream. Is there sugar? Did I tell him this? Why can he remember how I like my coffee and I can’t remember who he is? Why didn’t I recognize him?”
She inhales sharply at a new idea that seems worse.
“Or is this not the first time that I’m figuring all this out?” she asks, desperate panic rising up in her voice again. “Have I had this conversation with myself before?”
She finally looks at me, and I notice she has blue paint in her hair.
“Have we talked about this before?” she asks, looking lost.
“No, honey, we haven’t talked about this before,” I say and touch her face. “And yes, you like cream in your coffee. Relax. Stressing out makes the holes widen.”
“Stressing out makes the holes widen.” She repeats her own mantra that I have just said to her, and then says it once more. “Stressing out makes the holes widen.”
She sits down on the couch, and I take a spot in the armchair. She’s gotten used to forgetting little things. Like the fact that she keeps buying the same tea with the really cool picture on the box only to rediscover that she doesn’t like it once she’s home and made a cup and hates it and then can’t bear to waste it so she puts it in the “stuff for guests” drawer where there are already four boxes. But finding out that she’s been dating a known persona—and a goofy-insurance-commercial one at that, no matter how cute he is—is a bit much to take in before noon.
She sips her coffee. “It’s good,” she says. “I do like it.” She smiles and relaxes.
Chris comes back into the room and hands me a cup of coffee. Lola purses her lips and wrinkles her brow. Chris sits down on the couch beside her and sets his mug on the coffee table. “Sweetie,” he says, “why is your face all turned up like that?”
“Thinking,” she answers and looks at me.
“About your dad?” he says and nods.
I nod too.
“Sure,” Lola says.
She can do this. She’s been at it for years now. There are events that occur in your life from which you can never return, and you see what was as if looking through a foggy window. Everything is familiar, but inaccessible. Your previous life becomes a series of memorable events best forgotten. All you can do is move forward.
It’s not like she’s completely unable to function as a regular human being. She
