JOAN AND I HAD BEEN PLANNING for some time to go to Oceanside, California, where we kept our forty-six-foot Meridian 411 yacht. I’d only seen photos and was looking forward to checking it out in person, but the primary purpose of our trip was to spend some intimate time together. I knew we were going to make love for the first time since the accident; I just didn’t know when or how it would happen. I also didn’t know how good I was going to be at pleasing Joan, and I’m sure I had more performance anxiety than most men who were about to consummate their relationships with new girlfriends or wives.
While we were there, I figured I’d also try to meet up with a new broker. Coincidentally, we’d put the boat on the market a couple of weeks before my fall, thinking we weren’t using it as much as we’d anticipated and should put the proceeds back into our business or buy some new real estate. The broker we’d contracted with for ninety days hadn’t gotten a single bite, and now that we really needed the money, we wanted to find someone more aggressive.
But before I was ready to take the helm, I knew I was going to have to relearn how to operate the controls so I didn’t damage one of our most prized possessions.
As our departure date approached, I pulled up the Meridian website, found a manual, and began to soak up as much information as I could with Joan beside me to help make sense of it. The manual included diagrams of the control panel, for example, and broke down the complicated series of steps required to start the boat. If I didn’t follow the instructions properly, I was horrified to learn that I could flood—and ruin—the boat’s expensive Cummins diesel engine.
“Does this sound familiar to you?” I asked Joan.
“Uh, no,” she replied sarcastically.
Joan said we’d divvied up responsibilities, with her taking charge of the interior, such as the lighting, kitchen appliances, television and its satellite dish, toilets, and water tanks. I was responsible for starting the engine and operating the electrical panel and fuel systems. Because of my piloting experience, she said, I’d been able to learn to drive the boat in only a few lessons.
But that knowledge and experience didn’t help me now, and because Joan couldn’t answer my questions, she suggested I call our friend and broker Jim, who had handled our original purchase of the boat for $325,000 in 2007. “I’m sure he’ll be willing to help you out,” she said.
The thing was, I wanted to learn as much as I could by myself first, to avoid looking stupid by asking dumb questions. Determined, I spent hours reading the diagrams and dry technical instructions until they sort of made sense and in my mind I could envision using the controls.
I also studied the overall layout, including the staterooms, bathrooms, galley, and two cockpits, and read the documents I’d saved from the purchase, a detailed maintenance history, and an appraisal, which provided me with extensive pictures of the components.
Hours later, it sadly became clear that I still had a lot to learn before I could safely operate this boat and not break something that would cost a significant amount of money to fix. I realized I had to swallow my pride and let Joan call Jim for help.
Joan explained what had happened to me, then handed me the phone. Shocked to hear about the accident, Jim proceeded to reassure me that I’d been a fast learner and a good captain who took pride in the upkeep of my yacht. “You know, Scott, you’re a real bright guy,” he said. “Once you see everything, it’s going to make sense to you.”
When Jim offered to help guide me on our maiden voyage, I thanked him for his advice and his offer. “I’m sure I’m worrying a lot for no reason,” I said.
Joan also told me about Davey, an eccentric old-timer with a great sense of humor, who owned the same model of boat as ours and even kept it at the same dock. He spent most of his days tinkering around on it and helping his neighbors, including us, with their boats. After hearing this, I knew he would be the one I’d go to for help if I needed it.
When we still co-owned jets for our business, Joan said, we sometimes flew into the Carlsbad municipal airport, which was a fifteen-minute drive from Oceanside Harbor. Other times we’d make the five-and-a-half-hour drive in our roomy Chrysler. But after selling it off, this time we drove out in my BMW. With Joan at my side, I didn’t need to consult MapQuest.
To keep my mind off my three-month-old headache, I took the wheel and talked to Joan, who pulled discussion topics from a book she’d picked up titled 4,000 Questions for Getting to Know Anyone and Everyone. Leading us through politics to sex, favorite foods, spirituality, and sports, the book opened up new avenues for Joan to tell me stories about our past.
We stopped in Yuma, Arizona, for a much-needed break, where Joan explained we’d made the trip so many times that we knew where to stop for a clean bathroom, coffee, and healthy food choices. She also mentioned that we had other routines when we visited the boat, and she started to giggle.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, pausing, “we always go to King’s Fish House for a great lunch, then we go to the boat, and after you hose off the outside and I organize our stuff on the inside, we—well, you know—celebrate.”
She kept looking at me to see if I understood her inference, and I laughed nervously. She leaned over, kissed me on the cheek, and snuggled with me. Clearly, she had a plan, and I was happy to go with the flow, hoping I didn’t ruin things with my headache pain. I wondered, though, was I going to remember how to make love? Would it be like driving the car, where my hands knew what to do? Was it going to come naturally or be a challenge? Was I going to be able to give her what she needed? I felt like a different person now, so would I make love differently too?
Time flew by, and we were soon approaching the harbor. Joan seemed to be testing me, seeing if I might figure out where to turn, but as usual, I had to keep asking her where to go next.
After lunch at King’s—crab cakes for me and blackened mahimahi for her—we pulled up and parked at the dock marked T, which was about twenty yards from the shore.
“Wow, nice. We have beachfront property, don’t we?” I said, genuinely in awe.
“Only the best,” Joan said. “The boat is our oceanfront floating Cali home that we always wanted.”
We grabbed Joan’s rolling suitcase, my duffel and black sports bags, and a grocery bag of clam chowder, pecan sandies, sodas, bread, and peanut butter, and headed down the ramp to the boat. Twenty-five vessels lined one side of the dock, and a several-story weatherworn condo complex, with balconies running across the beige stucco façade, hung with beach towels and flowerpots, overlooked the harbor on the other.
“We’re near the end of the dock, past where the building ends, and have nothing but sea air in front of us,” Joan said.
As we got closer to our slip, she said, “We like to start our weekend midweek—it is very quiet and very private,” she added, with the same giggle and mischievous look as before. The other docks had boats on both sides, and she was right—our spot was more isolated.
Our sleek white yacht, with its tan leather upholstered seats and beige carpet, Formica-covered cabinets and furniture, and its entertainment center, complete with a color TV and CD and VHS/DVD players, was quite impressive. I felt proud to have been successful enough to buy it with cash.
Joan confirmed that the Meridian was the one purchase I’d found most rewarding, and because I enjoyed it so much I called it my sanctuary. It was nice to know that at least one thing in my life hadn’t changed. I located the hose to rinse off the salty, corrosive residue from the ocean mist while Joan went inside to prepare the cabin.
Once I finished, I came in to get a drink of cold water from the fridge and was surprised to find Joan in the master stateroom, lying on her side in bed, with the navy blue cotton blanket and gold sheets pulled up to her chin. Why was she in bed while I was outside working?
Peeling the covers back a bit, she patted the bed next to her, and I started to get the idea. Sweaty and wet from hosing down the boat, I dropped my shorts and T-shirt to the floor. As I pulled back the covers, I was pleased to see she was wearing a fuchsia lace camisole and matching boy-cut panties I didn’t recognize. She rolled over to show off her backside and the rest of her outfit.
“Well, that’s new,” I said.
“I have a lot of these outfits in different colors,” Joan replied coyly.
“I think I want to see them all.”
I climbed into the bed, which was elevated atop a chest of drawers, with two steps on either side of it, and modestly covered myself with the blanket. Joan had opened the porthole and top windows and turned on the fan, so a gentle breeze was blowing through. As she slid the covers down to expose my chest and cuddled up next to me, I started to feel warm all over.
“Are you still hot?”
“Yes.”
Unsure if she was being literal, I watched her adjust the fan and felt her run her fingernails up my side, which caused goose bumps to erupt across my chest. Joan told me that I’d worked construction during summers in college, and when I came home to our apartment, which had no air conditioning, she would cool me down using this same method. It was working all right, but it wasn’t the temperature that was making me sweat this time.
Joan sat up and faced me on the queen-size bed, and I took in her beauty as I ran my hands down her silky smooth arms. She’d brushed her hair and put on some of that Versace perfume I liked. Her skin had a rosy glow, and I wondered if she was as nervous as I was. When she smiled warmly, I felt safe.
“How’s your head?”
“Shipshape,” I replied with a chuckle.
She leaned over and kissed me softly, and I could feel some of my fear turn to arousal.
“With your insomnia, I’m sure you’ve watched a lot of Showtime in the middle of the night, and even though I don’t look just like those girls, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”
Joan was referring to the soft-core adult entertainment programming, featuring topless women having simulated sex with men, that ran in the wee hours. “Yeah, I’ve seen it,” I said, “but—”
“—don’t worry, I’ll be gentle with you, my forty-six-year-old virgin. This might be fun. I’m also relying on your unaffected procedural memory to kick in somewhere.”
And with that she kissed me again. I felt her breasts under the lace top brush against my chest. Imitating what I had seen on TV, I slipped the strap off her shoulder and began to caress her. Part of me wanted to lie back and be seduced; the other part wanted to show her that I was still a man who could take control. But as much as I wanted to feel manly, I still didn’t know who I was, so mostly what I felt was confused. And, seeing that the ceiling was so low that my petite wife had only a foot of clearance above her head, it made sense to let her take the lead in this dance, at least for now.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I looked down and said, “I think this means I’m more than okay.”
Joan playfully controlled the experience, but she treated it—and me—with levity so it didn’t feel like a lesson. I was still nervous but relieved that she was guiding me along as we moved forward. Better that than for me to take charge and get it wrong.
“I know you don’t remember, but we’ve been down this path many times before, so just go with what feels good, and hopefully it will come back to you,” she said. “And just remember, I love you.”
Well, they say it’s like riding a bike, but it isn’t if you have a brain injury like mine. I was so preoccupied with doing things right, fumbling around and not knowing what order to do things in, I couldn’t really enjoy the experience. Like many virgins, I just wanted to get the first time under my belt. The bonding feeling I’d heard about didn’t come until afterward, when we were lying there, talking it over.
“See, I told you it would all come back,” she said.
“Okay, if you say so,” I said, wondering if she was just trying to make me feel better.
Even though it was hard for me to talk about this, I asked what I’d done right and what I could do differently, hoping to improve for the next time. I could tell Joan was trying to be encouraging, but I had to admit that she looked relaxed and happy, so I figured I must have done something right.
We’d been lying there, talking and snuggling for about forty-five minutes, when Joan started crying.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s overwhelming,” she said, explaining that she was happy and sad. Making love had been nice, but it was so different, so tense, and I’d seemed so scared.
Hearing her say that, I wondered if I’d ever be the same—if we’d ever be the same—and be able to please her as I had before. She kept saying we’d had a healthy sex life before; I was hoping that practice would help, and practice we did. I soon began to develop a repertoire of moves that seemed to work well, and I grew increasingly comfortable initiating them. By the fourth or fifth time, I felt better about my performance—and us—although, just as in the rest of my life, my confidence was still low and I took rejection personally. But once I’d finally tasted the proverbial apple, I realized how much I liked it, and started wanting it more—and more often.
We were still enjoying our alone time together when Grant called on Saturday and said he was struggling not to use drugs. “All I want to do is take all the money out of my account and go get high for a few days,” he told Joan.
Every couple of weeks Grant had been calling with some crisis or other, not having enough food or money or needing a ride somewhere. His problems never seemed to end. In my view they were all the result of the life that he had chosen to lead, and I was tired of dealing with his problems when I had so many of my own. That said, I didn’t dispute the way Joan was handling this—helping him whenever he asked—because she’d been dealing with him for much longer than I had.
She and I talked, and we agreed that Grant needed his mother there to help him through this. So while she talked to him on the phone, I busied myself booking her a flight online out of John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana. We decided that she would go home to deal with Grant while I met with the broker Sunday afternoon as arranged. I’d never been to this airport before, so I made sure to print out my MapQuest directions and also programmed them into my GPS system as backup because sometimes the two didn’t match up. I was okay with Joan leaving to help Grant as long as I was consumed with the logistics of getting her home. It was only after she left, when I had time to reflect, that I felt lonely, thinking how nice it had been to get away and how abruptly we’d been interrupted.
How often will this happen in the future? Will he always come first?
But I was learning from Joan that you have to prioritize people’s needs in life, which is what she told me she’d done as a triage nurse, and she seemed pretty good at it.
Later, around 9:00 that evening, Joan called to check in, but she was elusive about details. I let it go, figuring that she didn’t want to worry me when there was nothing I could do from here. Surely she would fill me in soon enough.
After signing a contract with our new broker, I called to update Joan. “But more important,” I said, “how’s Grant doing?”
“He’s having a real rough day,” she said, adding that he was going to spend the night at our house.
I took myself out to dinner harborside, returning to the boat to watch some TV. The plan was to go to bed early and head home around 9:00 in the morning, but as I was watching the news, something very strange, unexpected, and exciting happened.
One by one, a series of memories from my early childhood in Chicago, about a dozen in all, flashed across my mind. These short glimpses revolved around a backyard barbecue, with a bunch of adults sitting in folding nylon and metal chairs next to a pool, a long skinny lawn, and a chain-link fence. None of the adults had faces, and although I couldn’t visualize what they were wearing, it was clearly warm enough to sit outside. I could also see a big apple tree, a kid’s bike at the bottom of seven steps that led up to a metal screen door, and a garage with power lines running across it.
Each flash lasted only thirty seconds over the course of maybe ninety minutes, but they were all so vivid and clear I was beside myself.
Yes! This is it! I have my memory back. It’s all going to come back to me now.
Ecstatic, I wanted to call Joan right away, but I decided to save the bombshell until I could watch her face light up. It was too late to start driving home now, so I’d get a few hours sleep and leave around 3:00 A.M., which would get me home around 9:00 to start Joan’s day off with a bang.
But things didn’t work out as planned. When I pulled up to the garage around 8:45, Taylor was getting into her car to go to school—about an hour and fifteen minutes later than usual—and she looked upset.
“Why aren’t you at school?” I asked.
“It’s been a terrible morning. Talk to Mom.”
“Tell me what’s wrong,” I said.
Taylor started crying. “I don’t want talk about it, Dad.”
“You are not leaving here upset. Now please tell me what’s wrong.”
“Grant relapsed again. He’s using heroin now.”
I almost passed out. I simply could not believe what my daughter had just told me. Heroin? Joan said she’d never seen heroin as a nurse, so I assumed that I’d never met someone who knew how to get it, let alone use it. Here we were the ones who were supposed to be older and smarter, and yet my son knew how to buy this street drug that dirty lowlifes used?
“Where are they now?”
“Mom took him to this free place in the ghetto for detox,” Taylor said. “They just left.”
I hugged Taylor until she stopped crying and told her she could stay home for the day. “No, I don’t want to be here,” she said. “I want to forget about this.”
I called Joan but got no answer. She either wasn’t picking up or her cell phone was dead; she often forgot to recharge the battery. My concern about not being able to reach her quickly turned into anger. I was so pissed that Joan hadn’t told me about the severity of Grant’s drug problems, I couldn’t even see straight. I was convinced that she’d been trying to protect me from this problem, and this was not something I wanted or needed to be protected from.
Why is she doing this alone? Is this how life has always been?
I’d just gotten some of my memories back, and I wanted to share them with the most important person in my life, but she was too busy taking my son, the drug addict, to rehab.
An hour or so later Joan got home, and I confronted her as we sat at the kitchen table.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“I didn’t know Grant had been doing heroin until this morning,” she insisted, explaining that he told her he’d pretended to be walking our dogs when he was actually walking to a drug dealer’s house two blocks from ours. So much for the nice, clean neighborhood we thought we’d moved into. He’d apparently tried to self-detox before but had never made it past the second day, when he started getting sick.
So we’ve been lied to and deceived? For how long?
I still found it hard to believe that she hadn’t known about this. “Is that the truth, or is that just what you’re telling me now?” I demanded.
“No, really, I just found out this morning. I would never lie to you. I was going to tell you when you came home,” Joan said. “I never thought you would come so early and run into Taylor. And why are you home so early? I wasn’t expecting you until 11:00 or so.”
These obviously weren’t the best circumstances, but I couldn’t wait any longer to tell her. “Well, I have good news,” I said. “I got some memories back.”
Joan started crying, she was so happy. “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, her hands flying up to her cheeks. “Tell me, tell me! Your memories! They’re going to come back. They’re going to come back!”
After I recounted the snapshots of my past, I asked if anything sounded familiar. But because she didn’t know much about my early childhood, she suggested I call my mother. I did, and she confirmed that the scenes I described were from our apartment in Calumet City, a small community south of Chicago, when I was five or six.
As Joan and I talked further, my initial burst of anger about Grant, which stemmed from the frustration of not being able to get enough information, began to subside. Once he got out of detox four days later, he went back to his apartment, where he picked up his life again and told us he was trying to stay sober. I felt torn, so happy about my memories coming back but still so devastated about Grant’s increasingly serious drug problem. I only wished I could be as strong as Joan, who seemed to be able to put aside her obvious pain about our son’s medical crisis in order to feel happy for her husband’s medical breakthrough. It made me feel better when she confided that with her nurse’s training, she typically went into a numb, emotionless action mode during times like this, saving the breakdown and mess of tears for later. Such was the case, she said, first when Taryn died, then when Grant suffered his head injury. But obviously I didn’t remember any of that. My Joan of Arc was all I knew.