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Natalie would have thought that her mother finally wanting to connect with her would be a good thing. She would have thought that was something she wanted—after all this time, Mom wants to ask her how she’s doing and fix meals and reminisce on things Natalie didn’t even know she remembered.
But her brain fixes on after all this time, and that’s not something she can brush off. It took this long. It took Mom having her mind rewired. It took them shocking her memories away and giving her brain damage for her to remember she had a daughter.
Well. She didn’t remember she had a daughter, is the problem. She forgot Natalie even existed; that still stings, even though that really wasn’t her fault. She forgot everything from the past nineteen years of her life, including him—
Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that Natalie isn’t special. She was forgotten with everything else, and that can’t have been because Mom held something against her, or because Natalie mattered so little in her mind. Mom is still, well, her mom.
Natalie isn’t sure whether to take the fact that she wasn’t special in the face of Mom’s memory loss as an insult or a blessing. Because in one way, she feels hurt. She wasn’t special enough to fight to remember. But also, she wasn’t the only thing Mom couldn’t remember. She wasn’t alone.
She supposes she should just settle on the fact that she doesn’t know how to go about this. What to say, what to think. But Natalie likes knowing what to think. She likes having facts to lean on. She likes being able to predict what will happen next. But the brain is one of the most unpredictable—and in this case, unreliable—things she’s ever had the misfortune of interacting with. She’s stuck wondering what will happen next.
For some reason, none of the paths she drafted included her mother sliding in the barstool next to her one Saturday afternoon, sitting and watching her eat her lukewarm cereal despite how it should be lunch by now, and saying:
“I haven’t heard you practicing.”
Natalie nearly drops her spoon, turning to stare at Mom incredulously, because she can’t help her shock. Mom looks at her with interest. That’s something she doesn’t understand. How long has it been since Mom and interest and Natalie have been in the same sentence?
She wishes she wouldn’t get defensive the way she does, but her question is out of her mouth before she can stop it, sharp and clipped. “Why do you care?”
Mom’s eyes widen. She bites her lip, looks away, thinks for a moment. Dredging up something that she can use to explain from the few memories she’s regained. The most surprising part about them is that most of them are related to Natalie in some way, a trend Natalie’s noticed quietly over the past few weeks with a twisting feeling in her stomach. She doesn’t know what to make of it.
“I know that you care about it,” Mom finally answers, slowly, looking a little unsure. “And you had that—that recital, right? Did that…?”
Natalie does her best to hide her full-body reaction to that. If Mom pays attention, she’ll see her stiffen up and straighten a little, but she doesn’t think Mom will do that. She’s never paid much attention before, after all. Not that Natalie’s aware. “That was a while ago, Mom,” she says.
There’s hurt in Mom’s eyes. And maybe she’s more observant than Natalie thought, because there’s sympathy there too. “...Oh,” she says softly, looking away. “Okay.”
Part of her wants to leave it. It would ache a little less if she left it. But she sets down her spoon—because she’s not finishing this cereal anyway—and asks, “Why?”
Mom shrugs. “Dan—your father, he…told me about a few of the pieces you’ve done. And I remember some. I remember you playing for me, once. I remember music.”
Natalie takes her in—blonde hair neat, clothing unwrinkled, her eyes finally a little lighter. Her face lined, but not with the kind of lines Natalie has come to expect; they’re lines of concern, mild at best. Something manageable. She doesn’t remember ever seeing her mother like this. It’s the most untroubled she’s ever seen her. Which, she’s still not entirely untroubled. But it’s enough for Natalie to feel sick to her stomach.
It took all of this for Mom to have some semblance of peace? Forgetting her? Forgetting her marriage? Forgetting—
And now she wants to talk with her daughter like they can make things okay again. Like they can rebuild. But Natalie only wonders that with each memory that comes back (because Dad swore they will), won’t Mom lose this again? Won’t she go back to the way she was before? Won’t Natalie be even worse off, because she got to see what she could have had if her—if the ghost she doesn’t know the name of never haunted their family, which would make the contrast even starker?
Mom sighs, bringing Natalie out of her spiraling thoughts. “Look…,” she begins, halting, like she’s finding the words as she goes. “I know this hurts, sweetheart. I’m hurting, too.”
“Why? They did all this to suck the hurt out of you.”
Natalie wishes she could take it back as soon as she’s said it, but it’s too late. Mom recoils, her eyes huge, even as Natalie stammers, “Shit—sorry, I—that wasn’t—”
It was what she meant. So she can’t really say that she didn’t mean it. Maybe just that it wasn’t supposed to come out? She’s trained herself over the years to keep any thoughts related to her mother as close to her chest as possible, but it’s been harder to do that since Mom came back with half her memory gone.
Mom irons out her breathing, matching it to Natalie’s as she struggles to get her own in check. She picks at her fingernails. Her voice wavers when she speaks, but she does her best to move on as if nothing happened. “Do you have another piece, then?” she asks. “If your recital has passed.”
Natalie opens her mouth, closes it again. The best answer she can come up with is, “I haven’t really…done any of that for—” (For how long, now? She can’t remember.) “—for a while.”
Mom visibly deflates. “Ah,” she says.
Natalie could choose to turn this around, if she wanted. She could say, But that doesn’t matter, I can look through what I have. She could lead Mom upstairs to the out-of-tune piano shoved in the corner of her room and pick through the stack of arrangements and lift one out. She could see Mom lay eyes on it and exclaim, Oh! This looks familiar, and Natalie could nod and answer, You played it. That’s why. See your handwriting there?
She could choose to let Mom connect with her. But she’s afraid that if she does that, it will only hurt more when she inevitably gets her memories back.
When she inevitably remembers him.
So Natalie chooses not to speak. She sits on her uncomfortable barstool and curses her architect parents for designing their kitchen this way and picking out this furniture, and she watches her Mom examine the grain of the island in disappointed silence.
Finally, when Mom gets too uncomfortable with the silence, she proposes, “You could…look at pictures with me?” She flushes, maybe thinking of the other time Natalie showed her family photos. “If you want. You don’t—have to, I just thought maybe…”
Natalie shrugs. “I’ll think about it,” she says.
She cleans out her bowl and puts it away. She thinks about it a great deal. But when she hears Mom shuffling around downstairs and laying things out the way she’s done for the past few nights in a row, she doesn’t go down to join her.