The next morning, after I’ve written down twenty good song titles, like “Time Traveling” and “A Song to Dance To,” and after I’ve filed down my crooked pointer nail so that my chords sound smoother, and after I’ve hopped onto the computer to check where the walrus is swimming (Hilton Head, South Carolina), I walk into the kitchen and see Mom and Gavin sitting at the table.
I slap my journal down so everybody knows I’m here and I open the cabinet because I’m thinking it’s another English muffin day.
“Gavin bought bagels,” Mom says.
Gavin reaches into a paper bag and pulls out a fat bagel. “Your mom said you only like plain.”
I can’t lie, it feels pretty exciting that Gavin knows which kind of bagel I eat. I give him a thank-you nod and pop one bagel half in the toaster oven. I notice Mom touching my journal and I grab it off the table.
“Relax,” Mom says. “I was just looking at it.”
I take the journal with me to the bathroom. As I’m leaving the room, I hear them talking about me.
“Ever since Arizona she’s been keeping a diary,” Mom says. “She goes through a new notebook every month. Apparently it’s pretty common for people with her condition.”
The doctor I saw in Arizona, Dr. M, says I’m the only kid he’s ever heard of who has highly superior autobiographical memory, or HSAM. The rest are grown-ups, about thirty of them, and Dr. M thinks that makes me pretty special. Most of the time I don’t feel special, just lonely. I’d rather everyone in the world have HSAM, especially my parents and my friends, so we could all see the same memories.
When I’m finished in the bathroom, I stop in the hallway because they’re still talking about me. “I remember Syd saying you were reluctant to have her see someone,” Gavin says.
“It’s true,” Mom says. “But I’m glad we did it. It’s just now we have to deal with all the phone calls.”
“Phone calls?”
“I made a mistake.”
“What do you mean?”
“When we got back from Arizona after Joan was diagnosed, I posted something about it on Facebook. It was an innocent thing. I was just relieved to finally have a name for what she had. But then the study she took part in was published and HSAM started getting attention in the news, and even though they never released her name, I guess someone found my post online. Suddenly strangers were trying to friend me and I was getting random phone calls from universities, pharmaceutical companies, you name it. It’s still out of control.”
It’s true our phone rings a lot, but I never knew those calls were about me. Mom said it was people trying to sell us stuff we don’t need.
“I wish I’d handled it better,” Mom says. “Ollie and I just want her to have a normal life.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Gavin says. “She’ll be fine. There’s no such thing as normal anyway.”
It gets quiet for a minute so I come back into the kitchen and rush over to the toaster before my bagel burns. I take a seat at the table next to Gavin and I realize I’ve never once sat next to a person who’s been on TV.
Gavin looks at me. “I like your outfit.”
Mom thinks I dress like a gypsy. I hate wearing the same thing twice because it reminds me of another day when I wore the same thing and then I get stuck thinking about that day instead of living the day I’m in. Since Mom doesn’t want to keep buying me new clothes, I have to come up with different versions of the stuff I already have. Today I’m wearing a T-shirt that I’ve worn before (June 11, a Tuesday, when I smeared almond butter on it at lunch), but I’ve never worn it with this black vest (April 26, movie Friday) and these jean shorts (June 24 and June 25). But it’s okay because Dad says the guitarist for the Rolling Stones looks like a gypsy, and he’s a rock god.
I notice that Gavin is wearing the same bracelet Sydney used to wear. Now he’s looking down at my plate. “No butter or cream cheese?”
“I hate cream cheese.”
I want to tell him why I hate it—because it smells like shit—but I’m not sure how Gavin feels about cursing. Dad’s rule about cursing is this: If it’s been in a song, it’s okay, as long as the song is good. Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd say shit in good songs, and Johnny Cash says son of a bitch in a good song, and John Lennon says the worst curse in a great song called “Working Class Hero.”
Mom slurps the rest of her coffee, which she has in a travel mug even though she’s not traveling anywhere. She picks up Gavin’s regular mug and says, “More coffee?”
Gavin is busy with his phone. “Sorry, I have to take this.”
He stands up and he’s wearing shorts and the hair on his legs doesn’t have a color, which is spooky. He opens the front door and walks down to the studio.
The bagel on Gavin’s plate has only one small bite in it and Mom takes it away so she can make room on the table for her big textbooks, which means she’s got students coming today. You would think she loved kids because she spends so much time with them, but actually she gets very annoyed when we’re out somewhere like a restaurant and there are kids around. She’s always talking about needing more adult time.
What I need today is writing time, so I stand up and grab my journal.
“Excuse me,” Mom says. “You left your plate.”
I guess she was pretending to be my waitress only for yesterday and now she’s ready for everything to go back to normal, which is okay by me if it means Dad will keep the studio and we won’t be going on any vacations. But the way she’s smiling I don’t think she’s ever going to shut up about Costa Rica until we’re on the plane and the lady tells us to put away our iPods for takeoff.
“Where are you going?” Mom says.
“Downstairs.”
“Just stay out of his hair, okay?”
That’s what she tells me when Dad is busy with something, so I’m wondering what type of something is keeping Gavin so busy.
Gavin’s bedroom door is closed and I’m down the hall strumming the Gibson on the studio couch. I’m putting my chords in a new order and the sound makes me feel heavy and that’s when I know I’m writing a crying song.
Normally when I’m strumming a few chords I can turn to Dad and ask him how they sound. Without him here, I decide to turn to the next best person: John Lennon.
John Lennon’s Ten Rules of Songwriting is a set of rules I came up with after listening closely to John’s forty best songs. I’m not sure yet what I want my song to be about but it should probably follow rule no. 4, which is Use First Person Unless You’re Writing “Nowhere Man.” That means the lyrics to my song should use I instead of he or she or Bungalow Bill.
I grab my iPod and record myself playing my new chord pattern and humming a quick melody that comes into my head without me having to do anything. I put on a pair of Dad’s big headphones and walk around the studio listening to the recording over and over. I’m thinking about Arizona because Mom mentioned it at breakfast.
It was last year, on the third Sunday in July, that I met Dr. M at the college in Tucson. He knew all about my certain kind of memory, how it isn’t “photographic,” which means I can’t fit everything in my brainbox, just memories. When it comes to remembering facts and trivia like the name of the eleventh president or how many sides there are on a trapezoid, I have to study like everyone else. And if Mom says, “Shut the light when you leave the room,” I’ll remember she said it, but sometimes not at the exact time I’m leaving the room, so I’ll “forget” to shut the light. But that kind of small forgetting doesn’t bother me. It’s the other kind, the big kind, when people forget what happened in their lives, that gives me the blues.
I asked Dr. M, “Does HSAM hurt?” He asked me, “Are you in any sort of pain?” I didn’t know what to say and that’s when he told me, “Many HSAMers find it helpful to keep a journal. They find it provides some relief. A way to unload.”
Thinking about Arizona and Dr. M gives me an idea. I open my journal and write down a few lyrics.
I went to Arizona
To meet a smart man
He told me not to worry
He could understand
There are lots of songs about California by artists like the Beach Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Katy Perry. But I can think of only one song that talks about Arizona and that’s “Get Back” by the Beatles. That makes me feel like I’m on the right track with my song.
I wonder if Gavin has ever been to Arizona because I know it’s pretty close to California, which is where all the actors live. When he comes out of his room, I’ll ask him. I also want to know why he was standing still in front of that giant fire instead of running away, which is what I would have done, unless that fire was just special effects and Gavin was only acting. An actor seems like a fun thing to be, but more people listen to old music than watch old TV shows, which means music is remembered more. Also, Dad is a songwriter, so that’s what I want to be.
I think of the hundreds of songs Dad wrote and recorded down here in his studio. I can hear the songs in my head and I can also see the things that took place here, like the string quartet that Dad hired, and the picture that fell off the wall when Dad was playing his drums too hard, and the blackout that erased one of his songs and made him have to go back and record each instrument a second time.
It’s hard to think about what’s going to happen to the studio next. I see it every school year when we change classrooms or when a restaurant closes down at the shopping center and a new one opens up in the same spot. Soon Dad will clear out his things and this apartment will look empty and the new people will want to fill it up with all their stuff. But this place will never look empty to me, it’ll always be full, because everywhere I turn, all around me, I see what no one else sees: the memories.