Bad Memory

Posted by J. J. Deur in Stories - Humorous on 27-7-12

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.

“Is that necessary?” My wife questioned my statement once more. This time her voice was one notch higher than usual.

The Old City…  Steve Vidler
Buy This at Allposters.com

/p“You had the whole week to do that. Remember, I’ve told you about the events of this Saturday,” said my wife.

p