to the lighthouse
On any given day, you can see pretty much anything on the streets of New York City, so my running out of the church, up Broadway a few blocks until I hit Union Square, and finally finding a cab to Travis’s apartment, while still wearing my wedding dress, didn’t create much of a stir. Sure, I got a few points and stares, but it didn’t matter. I was on a mission. I’d dialed Travis’s number the minute I got outside and got a disconnected recording, which made me even more frantic.
There was a guy walking into Travis’s building as soon as I got there, so rather than wait and call up, I conspicuously followed him inside, smiling (for future reference, a wedding dress might be a perfect cover for a major burglary), and took the elevator up to Travis’s floor. I ran to his door and started ringing his doorbell and pounding like a crazy person.
The door opened and there stood . . . Ben. Not who I was expecting. Nor was he expecting me. He looked me up and down in my wedding gown and guffawed.
“What, did you fall off your cake?” he said.
“Where’s Travis?” I gasped, totally out of breath.
“He’s not here,” he said. “He doesn’t live here anymore. I took over his lease.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Who wants to know?”
“Who do you think?”
“Why don’t you leave him alone, Jordan?” he said. “How about you just forget about him. You’re good at that.”
I didn’t have time for this. The last thing I needed was Ben and his attitude. “Ben, where is he? Tell me,” I urged. “I need to find him. Where does he live now?”
“I don’t remember,” he said smugly. “I must have forgotten. You know how that is.”
“Hilarious,” I mocked.
“Yeah, I thought so too. Thanks for stopping by,” Ben said, and then started to close the door. I squeezed myself in between the door and the jamb and stopped him.
“Please, Ben,” I begged. “Please just tell me where he is. I need to talk to him. And I think he’d want to talk to me too.”
He sighed. Some combination of my newfound lucidity and apparent lunacy must have overwhelmed his resistance. “He moved onto his dad’s old boat. He wanted to preserve his savings to fix the lighthouse and open the restaurant, in case he’s got anything left after the lawsuit gets resolved.”
“Oh, it’s resolved!” I said grimly. “Do you know his phone number?”
“He doesn’t have a phone.”
“How is that possible? Just give it to me—please!”
“He doesn’t have a phone,” he said again.
“Well, do you know where the boat is?” I asked.
“They’re generally found on the water,” he said.
Tears began to form in my eyes. “Ben, please.”
“It’s in a marina somewhere, I don’t know. Really, I don’t know,” he said and I could tell that he really didn’t, so I thanked him and left.
I’d find him somehow, if I had to scour every marina from Maine to Miami.
* * * * *
I took a taxi to Penn Station, a train out to Long Beach, and then another taxi to the marina. I was banking on the fact that there probably wouldn’t be too many people living in the boats. I’d imagined they’d be lined up like ducks in a row and that I could walk up and down and peer in until I saw Travis.
Of course, I was stupid. For starters—all the boats were out in the water, moored in star shapes in the harbor, and there was no way I could get to them. Add to that the fact that they were spread out over about a two-mile area, and there you have it. Me standing on the dock in my wedding gown. Ridiculous.
Frustrated and overwhelmed by the day’s events, I wasn’t in a hurry to take two taxis and another train, so I took off my shoes and walked along the pier. I’d been so focused on getting to Travis, making up with Travis—Travis, Travis, Travis—I hadn’t even thought about what would be next for Jordan.
The euphoria of coming clean and casting aside Dirk had worn off. I found a quiet spot, slumped down on a bench, and stared at the sailboats’ bobbing masts, marveling at the train wreck I’d wrought.
* * * * *
I got off the train at Astor Place and saw Lyric Lady, lighting a match. As soon as it sparked, she blew it out. Then she lit another and did the same thing. I didn’t know if I should be happy for her getting out of the psych ward or not. I just wanted her to be safe. I cleared my throat as I neared her to make my presence known, and she looked up at me and frowned.
I walked exceptionally slowly as I passed her, giving her the maximum amount of time to toss a lyric at me. But . . . nothing. I don’t know why this mattered so much to me, but it did. I felt this oddly poignant sense of loss. Probably how she felt when I stopped playing along—first selfishly, to cover my tracks and then because I didn’t know better.
Then as I was just about to turn left on Broadway she cleared her throat. I stopped and turned.
She stuck her chin out defiantly. “‘I got . . . nine lives . . . cat’s eyes . . .’” she said.
“‘Usin’ every one of them and runnin’ wild,’” I answered. And I was back. “Back in Black.” She raised her kerchiefed fist in the air, and on an impulse I ran back and hugged her.
Then she looked me over again and nodded. “‘Nice day for a white wedding.’”
I nodded back and confided, “‘It’s a nice day to—’”
But she beat me to the finish, tossing her head back and bending her whole body forty-five degrees. “‘Start agaaaain!’” she sang out. It was good to be home.
I got to the apartment at around midnight and Sneevil cocked his little head at me and let out a tiny chirp.
“Sneevil,” I said aloud, “remember me?”
I walked straight over to his cage, and for the first time, I raised the gate and reached in—and though canaries don’t like to be handled, he cautiously let me pet his tiny feathered head. He even leaned into my hand and nudged me.
“I’m sorry I didn’t remember you, little guy,” I said to him. “But I’m back. And you’re mine now.”
The red light on my answering machine was blinking and I didn’t want to know what kind of vitriol it had in store for me, so I opted to ignore it. Not just ignore it but delete it—unheard. That was the past. Cliché as it sounded, my new life started when I stood at the altar and came clean. Although it may have been selfish and disruptive, I needed to do it so I could start over . . . again. This time not faking, not lost, but assembling all the information I’d gathered under both circumstances and coming up with a responsible plan for my future.
I picked up the phone and called Todd. I wanted to hear what had happened after I left my wedding. Turned out that my mom hyperventilated and nearly passed out from all the excitement, Samantha insisted that they go on with the reception since it was already paid for, and Todd and Cat went to the closest bar, where she matched him shot for shot (even if hers were ginger ale).
“Well,” I had to ask, “was my mom okay? After she hyperventilated?”
“She’s fine,” he said. “Nothing five glasses of merlot won’t fix.”
“Okay . . .” I said, waiting for more info, but none was forthcoming. “So you don’t even have any gossip for me? You just left?”
“You’re the gossip, nimrod! Did you think something more exciting was going to happen after you left mid-wedding?”
“Guess not,” I admitted.
“So?” Todd said. “Are you going to tell me what happened after you left? I’m judging that everything didn’t go perfectly as planned or you wouldn’t be calling me right now. What’s up with Travis?”
“He moved,” I said, “onto a boat. In a marina. Somewhere. But I don’t know where.”
Man overboard. Relationship over.
* * * * *
Obviously, the first official sit-down of the Three Musketeers was going to be awkward, but I needed to apologize to Cat in person and wanted to say some things to Todd as well.
We met at Cozy’s, and although I’d prepared a bit of a speech, it all went out the window when I saw their faces. Cat was trying not to be angry, but I could see the hurt seeping through the warm smile she met me with.
“Cat,” I started. “I’m so sorry. I know deep down that I could have trusted you. But I knew that you’d be horrified and I’d never be able to keep it up. You’d be the voice of reason. The one who put her foot down. I know it sounds dumb, but I respected your sense of right and wrong too much to bring you into it. And I wasn’t willing to deal with what would have been your totally appropriate disapproval.”
I started playing with the napkin dispenser because tears started blurring my vision and I needed to distract myself. I pretended to be wiping a finger smudge off the aluminum, but I was only making it worse.
“Hey,” Cat said, and reached out to touch my hand. “It’s okay. I mean, yeah, I was pissed at first . . . but Todd and I threw a few back at Chumley’s in lieu of your reception . . . and as much as I hate to admit it—I probably would have ruined your scam.”
“You’re just saying that,” I said.
“No,” Todd chimed in. “She would have. She really sucks at stuff like that.” Cat play socked him in the arm and we were silent for a minute. “You’re just too solid, Cat. We all bow down to you, pathetic bumblers in the presence of true goodness.”
“The actual amnesia was never part of the plan,” I said. “Thanks for trying to talk me out of the Dirk thing. Sorry I didn’t listen.”
“How weird was that, though?” Cat asked. “Not the actual getting of the amnesia—which was superweird yet obviously karma—but the Dirk thing. Talk about a clinical approach to life.”
“By any means necessary, no less. So uncool,” I agreed. “When my memory came back and I realized I was walking down the aisle to marry Dirk . . . ?” I did an exaggerated shudder at the thought.
“He had you, he blew it,” Todd said. “Then he lost you, and he wanted you back. Now that you’ve woken up from the nightmare—”
“Damnesia!” I inserted.
“Right!” Todd smiled back. “And now that he’s lost you for good, I wonder what his next move is.”
“I don’t,” Cat said. “I saw him hitting on your cousin before they shuttled off to the reception.”
“The reception?” I repeated. “My God—what a total mess I made. I didn’t even think of all those things—the cake and the booze and the band and the tent rental. And return policies on gifts have gotten awful!”
“Coulda been worse,” Todd said, winking, and I couldn’t help laughing, and Cat couldn’t either.
We sat there, me slurping pea soup—which I have to say tasted even better than I remembered—and all of us apologizing to one another for various missteps over the previous months, and when all was said and done, we were back to normal. Todd was even seeing someone who’d lasted past a week’s time. All was right. Except for things with Travis. That was wrong. Very wrong. But I wasn’t giving up on us, and Todd and Cat agreed to help me.
* * * * *
My first stop: the DMV. Probably the last place you ever want to go, but Todd suggested that instead of wandering aimlessly on the docks in a wedding gown, I should look up Travis’s registration. I didn’t know if they’d actually give me any information, but it was worth a shot. Here’s what I found out:
1. The DMV really is as stereotypically awful as it’s made out to be.
2. If you operate a boat in New York State, you must register it with the DMV.
3. However, the DMV will not give you information about anything that isn’t yours (okay, reasonable).
4. They won’t even be nice about it.
5. Desperation isn’t always a ticket to sympathy.
I was complaining to Cat about the dead end I’d hit, and how I was never going to find his boat, when she just started tossing out ideas at random.
“Stand on the dock with a megaphone?” she suggested.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Message in a bottle?” she said.
“Not so much,” I replied.
“Smoke signals?” she said, again jokingly, but that was it. Not smoke signals but the beacon. The lighthouse. If I couldn’t go to him, I’d make him come to me.
* * * * *
Rather than continue to spin my wheels, I decided to do some Internet research. I sat at my desk at home (I missed you, desk, I thought), logged onto my computer (missed you too, computer!), ready to choose a search engine, and came face to computer screen with an e-mail in-box filled with 168 unopened e-mails.
I warily clicked the little mailbox icon to take a cursory glace and make sure I wasn’t missing anything important, and, lo and behold, there were a zillion messages from my mother and Walter to and from each other—none, gathering from the subject lines, having anything to do with me (I did not miss this).
I decided to open and respond to one of them and delete the rest. The one I opened went as follows:
From: judypatootie521@hotmail.com
To: wallygator317@hotmail.com
Subject: I forgot!
I remembered that I wanted to tell you something but couldn’t remember what it was. Maybe I’ll remember later. If not, it probably wasn’t important.
Yet, it was important enough to share in an e-mail about nothing and blind copy me on it. It wasn’t a huge deal, but it was taking up the majority of my in-box. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that all I had to do was ask them to stop. Simple. Yet, like so many other not-yet-dealt-with issues, I’d feared the confrontation and not taken any action. I hit Reply All.
From: JordanLandau@yahoo.com
To: wallygator317@hotmail.com, judypatootie521@hotmail.com
Subject: re: I forgot!
Dear Parents,
Please do not cc me on your e-mail exchanges. I appreciate your wanting to include me in your correspondence. However, if it does not pertain to me or if it is not “to” me, I would rather not receive them. I realize that there is a lot we will have to discuss, but I’ve been meaning to ask you to stop ccing me for a long time, so I wanted to do that while it was fresh on my mind. Thank you very much.
Send.
* * * * *
I was browsing the New-York Historical Society, the conservation society, and the municipal authority, trying to figure out who could best help me get the lighthouse up and running—if it was even a possibility. I’d only been searching for about seven minutes when I heard a ding in my in-box.
From: wallygator317@hotmail.com
To: Jordan.Landau@yahoo.com
Subject: re: re: I forgot!
Dear Jordan,
I understand completely and will stop ccing you unless it is relevant to you. Glad to have you back and look forward to the next phase of this family.
Love,
Wally (Dad)
Seriously? I thought. That was all it took? I was dumbfounded. A simple, calm, concise communication. Problem solved. No assumed identities. No abandoned memory. Huh.
After a series of dead ends and “you don’t need us, the people you want to contact are . . .” I finally garnered some useful information after being on hold for about seventeen hours. A woman named Brenda at the Long Island Power Authority caught me singing along to the hold music in a state of utter delirium, and she took a liking to me instantly.
“Sounds like you were pretty into that song. I can put you back on hold,” she offered, but I declined. She giggled and admitted to doing the same thing when she was on hold.
She told me that the Redding Harbor Lighthouse’s power had been shut off in 1988 and it hadn’t operated since.
“Wait,” I said. “So the power could be restored?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “If somebody approved turning it on again.”
I did have a rich history of trying to negotiate with the utilities company. But, really, who among us has been successful in that endeavor? Certainly not I. With my credit history, my power had been shut off so often, at times the view from across the street would resemble that of a strobe light—off and on, off and on, with blinding repetition.
But Brenda and I had a connection. We’d bonded over my rendition of “Because the Night (Belongs to Us),” so surely she’d help out a fellow on-hold crooner. I just wasn’t sure what the best way to go about asking was.
“That is very interesting,” I said.
“I guess,” she said in a singsong, and exhaled—waiting to see if I was going to say anything else. There was a lull in the conversation, and while I can appreciate those quiet unspoken moments as much as the next person, Brenda may not have.
“Very, very interesting,” I repeated, trying to fill up the emptiness.
“So, um . . .”
“Jordan,” I said, finishing her sentence and trying to make things more personal.
“Yes, okay, Jordan, is there anything else I can help you with?”
“As a matter of fact there is,” I said, finally mustering up the confidence to ask.
* * * * *
If you didn’t factor in that I’d be out at the edge of the earth as I knew it, alone at a deserted lighthouse in an area with no cell service, and the very distinct possibility that Travis wouldn’t even come, there was nothing wrong with the idea.
Of course, Cat and Todd disagreed.
“I don’t like the idea of you all alone out there,” Todd said warily.
“Alone isn’t the worst thing I could be,” I said.
“It’s really romantic and all, but don’t you think it’s kind of extreme?” Cat asked gently.
“It is extreme. Yes,” I said.
“So we all agree on that,” Todd chimed in.
“He needs to meet me,” I said.
“He can’t meet you if he doesn’t know when and where he’s supposed to be,” Cat said.
They weren’t getting it. “Not that kind of meet,” I explained. “Meet me. Meet this version of me. He’s known me when I was faking who I was, which is closer to who I am—but too contrarian and too caffeinated—and he’s known me when I didn’t know who I was, which is mildly embarrassing, but he hasn’t ever met the real me.”
“Have any of us?” Todd said. “How many versions of you are there, by the way? Is this your final answer or is there going to be a new version in the coming weeks?”
“Maybe,” I said. Todd threw his hands up in the air and Cat sighed dramatically. “But nothing crazy,” I reassured. “I just mean that I’ll be the best version of me I can be. I may change . . . but hopefully only for the better.”
“Like a go-go dancer you?” Todd asked hopefully.
“I’ll let that go,” I said. “I didn’t even really know who I was until now. And, yeah, I made mistakes, and it was pretty awful at times . . . but they say the most painful times bring on the most personal growth.”
“My older brother used to beat the hell out of me all the time,” Todd said, “and I must admit, it did grow . . . tiresome.”
“Point is,” I said, ignoring Todd, “I want the chance to show Travis who I am. To see if we have a chance. Without any lies or lawsuits or hospitals. And we may not. But the old Jordan wouldn’t have ever done something like this. She’d have accepted that she made too many mistakes and she deserved to suffer for it. I’m not her anymore. Can you guys back me up on this?”
“Of course,” Cat said. “Go get him.”
Todd was silent. He took a long deep breath and exhaled. Then he finally spoke. “Fine. Go for it. Of course, I just want you to be happy. But remember one thing. You sang ‘Close to You’ with Dirk in public and without any irony . . . and I will never let you live that down.”
* * * * *
The train ride out to Redding Harbor isn’t exactly short. It’s at pretty much the outermost tip of the island—as far as you can go, and that kind of alone time lets you run through only so many songs on your iPod before you have to confront what’s going on a little farther between the ears.
There was a little boy sitting next to his mother—sneakers untied, scrawny legs dangling—his hands covering his eyes. They were playing peekaboo. He’d cover his eyes and say, “Where’s Mommy?” and then remove his hands and giggle at the excitement of finding her again.
I hated peekaboo when I was little. The only game I hated more was hide-and-seek—probably based on the same reasons. In peekaboo, there’s an element of momentary fear. Where is your mother? And then relief. Ah . . . there she is. I never felt comfortable, because I never had the faith that she’d definitely, for sure, without a doubt, be there when I opened my eyes. So I cheated. When I played peekaboo, I always peeked through the cracks in my fingers to make sure nobody pulled a fast one and ditched me. Technically it was called peekaboo, so my logical defense would be that I thought peek meant “peek.”
Hide-and-seek was another matter entirely. I hated it because I never felt worthy of being found. And I was always scared that if I picked too tough a hiding spot, they’d just give up and go about the rest of their day—leaving me tucked away in some dark place, wondering if the game was still going on. So I always picked an easy spot. I picked such lame hiding spots that I may as well have just stood there out in plain view wearing a sandwich board. I didn’t know why I did what I did at the time, but suddenly I understood it better—I understood myself better.
And in essence, there was a certain element of hide-and-seek to my having faked amnesia and even getting it for real. The first time, I was hiding who I was. Hiding the person I’d grown ashamed of from everyone, and also from myself. I didn’t like who I’d become and I didn’t necessarily want anyone to find the old Jordan, but I did want them to find the new-and-improved one in her place. Consciously, the first time, and unconsciously the second. Both times—not feeling proud of what I’d done and who I was.
But this time I wasn’t hiding—in fact I was doing the exact opposite. I was trying with all my might to be found. I was about to try shining the brightest, most intense, dazzling, blazing light in an effort to signal my not-so-hiding spot.
I was doing what sEra the bartender had described to me—jumping without a net and having faith that the net would appear. The net being Travis. And there certainly were unanswered questions—his being married being the biggest question—but in my amnesiac state he’d promised that there were explanations, and I trusted that there were. I just had to get him to trust me enough to explain. More important, I needed him to just show up.
* * * * *
The lighthouse was dark when I rolled up in the rental car I’d appropriated for the second part of the trip (no small feat when you have no credit card) on the chosen Saturday afternoon. As I approached it, I saw for the first time how rundown and forlorn the place looked. If part of the lighthouse cliché is desolation, then Travis’s beacon fit the bill.
Because he’d been there to guide me the first time I’d come, and I was so focused on him, I hadn’t seen the crumbling foundation, peeling paint, shattered windows, and the twisted mass of thistle, sickly juniper, and exhausted vines creeping around the place. It looked beaten. And as I pushed hard against the door and practically fell into the cold and stony emptiness of the ground-level vestibule, I felt a chill of doubt and defeat too.
I don’t know why I expected it to be lit when I got there, but my breath grew short and my heart sped up as I climbed the stairs. In my turbulent emotional state, it didn’t occur to me that, in addition to neglecting every friendship, working relationship, financial relationship. and basic code of decent human behavior during my bouts of amnesia, I’d also neglected to hit the gym. I was terribly out of shape and now losing faith in the project, which began to take on the proportions of a harebrained scheme in my now-memory-besotted brain. I told myself that it would of course be dark until someone physically turned it on—but I still had a lingering fear that maybe my impassioned plea for a one-week electricity window had been finally met with a yes only to get the crazy girl off the phone. And not because I’d told her she could indeed save my life with the flip of a switch.
It turned out not to be as simple as that, of course, but not as convoluted as you might imagine. The service restoration took a week, and beyond that, I was on my own. After a few calls I’d learned the location and operation of the main circuit breaker and lantern room switches. As these things go, the lamp was of a fairly recent vintage, and after a few trips up and down the stairs, peering into the box, poking around the controls, following directions in the manual I’d pieced together, everything seemed to be in order.
Sure enough, when I got to the lantern room and prepared to be dazzled, the lamp wouldn’t turn on. Perfect, I thought. More punishment. I messed with it for a few minutes, trying to get it to illuminate, and I began to realize at last that I was no longer the Jordan who’d faked amnesia, and certainly not the one who’d had amnesia. I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself. I was okay with whatever the outcome would be. I could recognize my part in all the mess I’d created and I was actually proud of myself for simply taking the action. I had no control over the result. I had no control over anything.
And I believe it was as soon as I really accepted that in my heart—well, maybe not as soon as that, more like a good while later actually, because I struggled with the giant lightbulb for a long time, but it’s a lovely metaphor—that the light sprang to life. It glowed low and timidly for a moment, then despite the accretion of dust and grime on the outer surface of the lens, it became a blazing brightness so intense that I half thought it would wash me over the railing and out to sea.
Now, I’m not saying it turned on by itself—I gave it one last shove, but it worked. And I laughed a laugh of idiot joy and held my open palms up to the blaring beacon. Acceptance? Was that what I’d been lacking all along? So if I accepted that I’d never lose those last ten pounds, would they suddenly come off too? Maybe? Maybe not (but it was worth a shot).
Reading material is crucial in times of waiting, e.g., doctors’ offices, airports, train stations, any situation where you’re in an extreme rush or anxious for something to happen. And this qualified as one of those instances where I wished time would compress, as in the nature shows where a germinating seed becomes a blooming flower in five or six seconds. But I was destined to watch for Travis at the pace of grass growing. In my mad dash to get out to the lighthouse, I’d neglected to bring anything with me. (And, yes, I accepted that I had no reading material, and, no, a book did not magically appear.)
So after my first several minutes of joy and wonder turned to simple pondering and then to borderline despair, I paced. I paced and I thought. And I sang. And I sat on the floor. And I tidied up the place a bit. I did jumping jacks. And then marked off the tower one foot at a time, counting how many steps it took to get all the way around. And I did one handstand. And I paced some more. I was bored. But I wasn’t giving up.
It started to rain. I wondered what it was like to be on a boat in the rain. I pictured Travis on one of the many boats out in the distant harbor—reading or doing whatever he did . . . and then looking out the window and spotting the lighthouse. Lit. I pictured it about a thousand different times and a thousand different ways before I realized how late it really was and that maybe he wasn’t even on the boat. Or maybe his boat wasn’t in that harbor anymore. And maybe this was a really, really bad idea.
I stepped tentatively onto the deck, which was worn and warped with age and slippery from the rain, and found a new area to pace. I didn’t mind getting rained on. It felt good—cleansing—until it started to really pour. Then it was just miserable. Thick gray fog had settled all around, so I could see less and less. It felt like I was crying, but maybe it was just misery, hopelessness, and night closing in.
And then I heard a car. In the mist, I saw uncertain headlight beams and what appeared to be a beat-up pickup truck rounding the curve on the little jutting promontory that held the lighthouse. It stopped a distance away. Then someone opened the door. And my heart, wanting to see, made its best effort to leap out of my chest by way of my throat.
I couldn’t make out if it was him or not but it was someone, in a desolate area with not a whole lot to do, and the chances of that someone being Travis were pretty excellent. I got so excited, I ran to the railing to get a better look. And I slipped.
It happened so fast that I couldn’t stop myself. I felt my legs shoot forward and then the rotted outer edge of the platform gave way beneath my feet, and a pain soared through my thigh muscle as it stretched beyond my only semi-athletic reach. I slid down and banged my two elbows on the battered rail, then the adrenaline tensed my arms and curled my hands into claws, and the next thing I knew I was dangling from the lower ring of railing. I felt intense pain in my legs and arms and the unmistakable chill of blood flowing somewhere, but something else bothered me more. What if it wasn’t even Travis down there but some local stranger instead, oblivious to me hanging up here, just out for a stroll or curious about why the lighthouse had sprung to life?
This is some high irony, I thought. The girl who’d tried to escape herself was about to vanish permanently. I’m going to fall and die on these rocks and nobody will know. Maybe it’s a fitting end. Maybe I deserve it.
“Jesus!” I heard someone scream. And I couldn’t help wondering if that was it. If I’d missed the dying part and gone straight to the afterlife. After all, apparently Jesus was already there.
I certainly couldn’t look down to confirm. I was bruised, bleeding, terrified, hanging on to a rain-slicked, rust-encrusted metal railing that seemed poised to give way with just a little encouragement from me. The platform was at the back of my head, and my legs dangled free. When I tentatively pulled on the rail to hoist myself, it creaked and sagged. So I closed my eyes and felt the pain leaving my arms, taking my grip with it. Then my savior screamed again, but the voice was close enough to touch me. “Jordan!”
And his hands did touch me—or grabbed me by the arms, and I looked up, and it was Travis.
His fingers vise-gripped me below the elbows, and as the grip pinched I yelped loudly, but he pressed forward, or more precisely fell backward as he too slipped, and we tumbled onto the deck.
“Hi,” I said.
“What’s a nice girl like you doing hanging around a place like this?” he asked.
“I thought I saw you . . . I saw someone. I got excited. I was just trying to get a better look.”
“Next time don’t be so excited to see me,” he said, standing up but not letting go of me.
I chewed on my bottom lip while I tried to find the right words to say.
“Is it you?” he asked. “I mean, the you I knew before the amnesia?” Then he cleared his throat. “The real thing?”
“I got my memory back, yes,” I said, feeling ashamed but relieved that at least he was smiling.
“You’re all wet,” he said.
“It’s not so bad,” I said, barely audible through my chattering teeth. He took his jacket off and put it around my shoulders.
“I guess pneumonia beats falling to your death.” He looked into the lantern room at the light. “You did this?”
“It’s what it’s for, right? For people lost at sea to find their way home?”
“Or to keep them from getting too close to trouble,” he said, staring at me. “But it didn’t work. I followed it right to you.”
“I was hoping you’d see the—” I said, but I realized what I was about to say.
“The light?” he inserted. We nodded together, and he smiled a mocking smile. “But it’s a remarkable feat. Unbelievable almost.”
Travis glanced around as though a stranger to the place. “Honestly, I don’t think I’d ever have come back if I hadn’t heard someone say the old lighthouse was signaling again.”
I turned to him. “But I thought bringing it back to life was your dream.”
He smiled and sighed. “I woke up. Like you did. The memories here . . . they’re vivid and important to me, but this wasn’t a happy place. My father . . . he lived under the spell of the isolation, like a prisoner of his own past here. He pretty much ignored my mother for years and withdrew into himself. And he died alone. In a way, I was trying to fix that somehow, return it to its glory for him.”
“It was a nice dream,” I said quietly.
“The way I honor him is by breaking with this sad, beautiful thing,” he said, running his hand along the low masonry wall encircling the lantern room. “Maybe it’s a project for someone else. I’ll bring the memories along. To the East Village. Maybe the Lower East Side.”
“You’re moving?”
“Opening a restaurant,” he said, and now his smile was lighter. “When I look back on my past, I want to see more than this place.”
He took a step closer to me and I thought for a split second he was about to kiss me, but he stopped himself. “How was the wedding?”
I held up my left hand to show that there was no ring. “Didn’t happen,” I said. “Although I came uncomfortably close. I guess I should ask you the same question?”
“Right,” he said, and didn’t look down or away or anywhere but in my eyes. “My marriage.”
“Yeah,” I said, eyebrows raised.
“Jamie Reingold,” he said. “My friend from college and a few years later my girlfriend and then, well. She and I went to Vegas with five other friends, got a little drunk, and thought, what the hell, let’s get married. I’d never even talked about it with the girl, but after a few Jäger shots, it sounded like an excellent idea. So we found the closest chapel and had a guy in a polyester shirt with a Miller High Life logo on the back marry us. We were young and restless and stupid—”
“And in Vegas,” I said.
“And in Vegas . . . not really thinking too far ahead, but, anyway, we did it. And we were okay for about two years.” He seemed to count in his head. “Maybe a year and a half. I don’t know. When we realized one day that it was marriage, and if you met someone that was more of a match for your maturing self, you couldn’t pursue that person, which we both started to want as we grew apart, then we started to resent each other. Ridiculous, but we didn’t want to be married to each other.”
He looked out across the bay. “We were almost surprised by the need for a divorce, because we hadn’t been entirely serious when we’d said ‘I do.’ We should have asked for clarification of the question. In this case, what happened in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas. It went wherever we did. We’d figured we could just get it annulled, but that didn’t work, so we thought, okay—divorce. Turned out New York law doesn’t take marriage as lightly as we did and getting divorced was a freakin’ nightmare.”
“I see,” I said.
“One year separation, court filings. It’s happening, though,” he reassured. “We did the paperwork. We’re legally separated. Haven’t kissed her in years, by the way.”
“Haven’t kissed me either,” I said.
“Not in way too long,” he said, and he smiled, and he leaned in and grazed my mouth with his lips, while looking right into my eyes—his eyes crinkling at their outermost edges as he smiled. And then again he kissed me, this time relaxing into it and closing his eyes. Then we kissed again. And again—ignoring the easing rain, embracing the future. And for this soaked, bloody pulp of a girl, whose memory of her love for this man grew clearer as a moonlit night asserted itself through the fog, all was right with the world.
* * * * *
I’d like to say that after the whole ordeal, my family underwent a total metamorphosis: My mom became a nurturing übermother, my sister and I turned into best friends, and my dear dad grew more of a backbone. But that didn’t happen. Something better happened instead: I changed. You know that person about whom you say, “When I grow up, I want to be like her”? Well, I did. And now I am.
I learned to accept my family for who they were and understand that, though they might be limited in certain areas, they all had good qualities that I could appreciate. Hating them for not being who I wanted them to be was only hurting me. Holding on to resentments, a wise person once said, is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies. Plus, if that happens—and I’m not sure he thought of this part—then that person’s not around later to give you the satisfaction of watching him fall on his ass.
I reimbursed my mother for the rent she’d covered, got whole with the landlord (and kept the bird), and also cut a chunk off my credit card debt (you should have heard the shock in Citibank Cindy’s voice when I called her), using part of a loan from Cat. Yes, I know about the hazards of lending and borrowing with friends, but it’ll be paid back in six months with interest—first two payments have already been made. Cat’s got more money than Bill Gates, it turns out, so she offered, and knowing that I, Jordan Landau, was now good for it, I accepted.
The next time I saw my neighbor in his Tiger Schulmann finery, I was carrying my recyclables to the trash room. He lit up the moment he saw me, not knowing which “me” he was going to get but certain that—memory or no—there would be an angle to play with pliant Jordan Landau of apartment 5E.
“Hey, Jordan!” he said with a toothy grin. “Remember me?”
“Yeah,” I said, looking down at his spandexed package and then back at his face. “Put some pants on, for Christ’s sake.”
I tossed my garbage into the receptacle and walked back to my apartment—not bothering to gauge his reaction.
* * * * *
At work, things got back to abnormal quickly enough. With the lid blown off her affair, Lydia broke up with Kurt, the secrecy of the thing apparently having been its primary attraction for her. He got a production job at another agency. And, not long after, she was jettisoned for having taken creative license—or let’s just call it taking creativity—in a few situations having nothing to do with me. Just as well. It allowed me to slip back into the stream as a senior writer within a few months, not exactly wiped clean of my sins but seen as more of a daring forger than a dim-witted fake. Even Art—of high-five fame—welcomed me back with a hand-stinging slap, perhaps my combination punishment and re-initiation into the land of the living.
He forgave. They all did. So I did, too. I learned to stop blaming the passengers for where the S.S. Jordan was headed and just take the wheel and navigate for myself. That’s the surest way to get to the best version of me—Jordan Version 3. I finally understood that you can’t run from who you are, but you certainly can change who you are. Every day you get the chance to decide who you want to be. And that’s as far as it goes.
Your family may seem to consist entirely of people you couldn’t stand to have around for ten minutes if they didn’t have all sorts of damning details to use against you. Then again, they may occasionally feel the same way about you. And since it’s the only family you get, somehow, in an imperfect permanent way, you fit together. And find a way to love each other.
And fortunately, we get to choose our friends.
* * * * *
I was riding my bike in the city a little while later on a gorgeous morning in early June and I passed the wall right near where Travis and I had our first accident. I remembered it—the one with the message scrawled in spray paint. It still said:
GOD IS DEAD.
—Nietzsche, 1883
But I hadn’t noticed what it said right underneath:
NIETZSCHE IS DEAD.
—God, 1900
I could tell that it was going to be a good day.