Whether you liked the writing or not, one thing was clear: this wasn’t the right story to read on a bright, clear Sunday. I closed the book and glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was just past twelve.
“There must have been some kind of misunderstanding,” I said. “I think I’ll be going.” I started to get up from the sofa. My mother had drummed it into me from childhood that you shouldn’t bother people at home when it was time to have a meal. For better or for worse, this had seeped into my being and become a reflexive habit.
“You’ve come all this way, so how about waiting another thirty minutes?” my girlfriend’s brother asked. “How about you wait another thirty minutes, and if she’s not back by then you can leave?”
His words were oddly distinct, and I sat back down and rested my hands in my lap again.
“You’re very good at reading aloud,” he said, sounding genuinely impressed. “Has anybody ever told you that?”
I shook my head.
“Unless you really grasp the content, you can’t read like you did. The last part was especially good.”
“Oh,” I answered vaguely. I felt my cheeks redden a bit. The praise seemed misdirected, and it made me uncomfortable. But the sense I was getting was that I was in for another thirty minutes of conversation with him. He seemed to need someone to talk to.
He placed his palms firmly together in front of him, as if praying, then suddenly came out with this: “This might sound like a weird question, but have you ever had your memory stop?”
“Stop?”
“What I’m talking about is, like, from one point in time to the next you can’t remember at all where you were, or what you were doing.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I’ve ever had that.”
“So you remember the time sequence and details of what you’ve done?”
“If it’s something that happened recently, yes, I’d say so.”
“Hmm,” he said, and scratched the back of his head for a moment, and then spoke. “I suppose that’s normal.”
I waited for him to continue.
“Actually, I’ve had several times where my memory has just slipped away. Like at three p.m. my memory cuts out, and the next thing I know it’s seven p.m. And I can’t remember where I was, or what I was doing, during those four hours. And it’s not like something special happened to me. Like I got hit on the head or got sloppy drunk or anything. I’m just doing my usual thing and without warning my memory cuts out. I can’t predict when it’s going to happen. And I have no clue for how many hours, how many days, even, my memory will vanish.”
“I see,” I murmured, to let him know I was following along.
“Imagine you’ve recorded a Mozart symphony on a tape recorder. And when you play it back the sound jumps from the middle of the second movement to the middle of the third, and what should be in between has just vanished. That’s what it’s like. When I say ‘vanished,’ I don’t mean that there’s a silent section of tape. It’s just gone. Like the day after today is two days from now. Do you get what I’m saying?”
“I guess so,” I said in an uncertain tone.
“If it’s music, it’s kind of inconvenient, but no real harm, right? But, if it happens in your real life, then it’s a pain, believe me…You get what I mean?”
I nodded.
“You go to the dark side of the moon and come back empty-handed.”
I nodded again. I wasn’t sure I completely grasped the analogy.
“It’s caused by a genetic disorder, and clear-cut cases like mine are pretty rare. One person out of tens of thousands will have the disorder. And even then there’ll be differences among them, of course. In my last year of junior high, I was examined by a neurologist at the university hospital. My mom took me. The condition has a name, some annoyingly long term. I forgot it a long time ago. Makes me wonder who came up with a name like that.”
He paused, then went on: “In other words, it’s a condition where the sequence of your memory gets messed up. One part of your memory—like the example I gave of part of a Mozart symphony—gets stashed away in the wrong drawer. And it’s next to impossible, or actually impossible, to ever find it again. That’s how they explained it to me. It’s not the kind of terrible disorder that can be fatal, or where you gradually lose your mind. But it does cause problems in daily life. They told me the name of the disorder and gave me some medication to take, but the pills don’t do a thing. They’re just a placebo.”
For a moment, my girlfriend’s brother was silent, studying me closely to see whether I understood. It was as if he were outside a house staring in through a window.
“I have these episodes once or twice a year now,” he finally said. “Not so often, but the frequency isn’t the issue. When it happens it causes real problems. Even if it’s only seldom, it’s pretty awful having that kind of memory loss and not knowing when it’ll happen. You get that, right?”
“Uh-huh,” I said vaguely. It was all I could do to follow his odd, rapid-fire story.
“Like, say it happens to me, my memory suddenly cuts out, and during that lapse I take a huge hammer and bash somebody’s head in, somebody I don’t like. No way you can just write that off by saying, ‘Well, now, that’s awkward.’ Am I right?”
“I’d say so.”
“The cops’ll get involved and if I tell them, ‘The thing is, my memory flew away,’ they’re not going
