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“Why didn’t they like you?”

“I don’t know. Probably my rugged good looks.”

“Nah, that couldn’t be it,” I said with flirtatious sarcasm. I was becoming quite the charmer.

“I love that you’re giving me shit.”

“Something else I’m good at.”

“I bet you’re good at lots of things,” he said, a grin creeping onto his face. He scanned the parking lot. “Now, if I could only remember where I left my car.”

“You could hit the panic button.” He did, and an alarm that was six cars away went off. It was so loud that a few people were looking around to see what idiot had set it off. Michael looked around too, so no one knew it was him. Then we started laughing, and he put his keys against his side and shut the alarm off.

“How’s your writing going?” I asked.

“Good. Tomorrow I’m going to the Central Park Zoo to interview a primatologist about the tamarin monkey. They’re endangered.”

“I love monkeys. They crack me up. Will you get to hold one?”

“I hope so. They’re supposed to be very gentle.”

“That’s cool that you get to do things like that.”

“You want to come with me?”

Yes. Yes, I do. “Oh, I couldn’t, but thanks for asking.”

“Too bad. We would’ve had a lot of fun.” He pressed the remote on his keys, and I heard the beep of his car opening. “I need to shower before my meeting. Hopefully I’ll see you soon,” he said.

“Have a good day,” I said, and he went to his car. Why didn’t I say I’d go with him to the zoo? What else did I have to do? Then again, I barely knew the guy. What if he was a serial killer? What if he wasn’t? He was hot. I watched him drive away. Darn dignity, it was the only thing keeping me from chasing after him. That and I looked stupid when I ran.

DAD

“Are you comfortable, Mr. Rubin?” Dr. Myers asks, and I nod. She’s a neuropsychologist who’s going to administer some tests, at least that’s what Dorothy told me. I got good grades in school, but I haven’t taken a test in many decades. I’m anxious I’ll fail. If I do, will she let me take a make-up test? My eighth-grade math teacher, Mrs. Stoneman, always gave us a pep talk before every test. Why can I remember that, and I can’t remember who drove me here?

The doctor moves a chair from in front of her desk and wheels me over. Her office is warm and has cozy, comfortable-looking chairs, yet I’m not sitting in one. There’s a framed diploma from UC Berkeley and a lot of books about various mental illnesses and syndromes. I wonder if what I have is in one of them. Lately I’ve been imagining strange things, and if I told anyone they might think I was crazy. Like the snakes in Dr. Myers’ potted plants. I know they’re not real, but still I see them slithering around.

She opens a drawer and pulls out a binder, along with a timer. “We’ll be starting in just a minute,” she says.

I start to sweat. She talks to me in a soft, kind voice, hoping I’ll relax, which I won’t be able to do until after this stupid thing is over. She says she’s going to start by telling me three words, and in a little while, she’ll ask me to repeat them back. My mind has more important things to concentrate on than remembering useless words. I tap my left fingers across my right knuckles as if I’m playing a piano; it relieves my nerves. When did I start doing that? I can’t remember.

“Dog, apple, fork,” she says very slowly.

“Dog, apple, fork,” I say three times out loud, hoping they’ll get stuck in my brain. Right after I say them, I feel the words begin to evaporate.

Next, she asks me who the president is, what year it is, and why I think I’m in her office. I’m pretty sure I got the president and the year right, and I tell her that I’m in her office because my family thinks I’m losing my marbles. I laugh, but she doesn’t, and she doesn’t deny it either. I know we’re just getting started, but I’m already tired.

“You’re doing very well, Mr. Rubin,” she says, as if I’m a second grader working on a science project. I complete a bunch of other tests, and then she asks me to draw a clock. Of course, I know how to draw a clock. Even a child can draw a clock. She turns over an hourglass timer. The sand seems to be moving so quickly, it makes me edgier. I draw a circle, but then I get stuck. I keep staring at the circle, or is that a square? No, I think it’s a circle. My vision blurs as I look at the paper. I write the number twelve at the bottom, or is that where the six goes? If she wasn’t watching me, I’d have finished in two seconds. The sand finishes going through the hourglass.

Get me out of here. I’m tired of MRIs and CT Scans and whatever else they’ve made me do. I know there’s something wrong, but can it be fixed? And if it can’t, do I really need to know what it is? The last thing Dr. Myers asks me is to repeat those three words she told me before. Dammit, what were they? I think one of them was a type of fruit, but I can’t remember the others.

“Banana, chair, balloon,” I say, because those are the first words that come into my head, and I don’t care if they’re right. Dr. Myers writes something down and then calls Dorothy in.

“Goodbye, Mr. Rubin. It was a pleasure meeting you,” Dr. Myers says. Not sure if I’d say the same about her.

CHAPTER 10

On the first day of every month, I would fill in our dry-erase calendar with doctor’s appointments, after-school activities, and family birthdays. When I got to the twenty-fourth of the month, I realized that it was Jim’s and my twentieth wedding anniversary, and neither of us had mentioned it. It was a glaring red light on how disconnected we were from each other. In the past, Jim loved celebrating our anniversary; he’d start planning a month in advance, and on the day, he’d give me a sappy card with a poem he’d written and a traditional gift that fit that year. On our second anniversary, which was cotton, he gave me fishnet stockings. I never quite believed they were made of cotton, but he said he’d done research. That night I put them on with nothing but my “anniversary suit,” and he couldn’t have been happier.