How can such a world-destroying whirlwind exist in a span of twelve days? You can create a world in seven, I guess. We used to go to church for Grandma and Grandpa’s sake, and Mom used to say Genesis was a metaphor: a device to tell the story, to make a point. The right story can be more true than the truth. Why is that?
But then, stories can also lie.
I don’t know how to sort out the difference between a true story and a story that lies, when no one ever has the whole story. If you can’t trust your memory, what can you trust? I don’t know how anyone is ever certain about anything.
I am writing the truth in my journal, and it’s building a storm of words I can barely see through. Some are just fragments; others are thoughts I’ve been holding in for too long. At the heart of the storm is the truth I know already, though I can’t write it down, and when the center falls, all the scary beautiful magic I’ve been building will fall too.
It isn’t a perfect metaphor, I think. The eye doesn’t cause the storm. It is the consequence of it. You have to let the storm die out to free what is at its center.
How long have I been living in this tempest? It’s time to go home.
My mom walks in just as I’m writing that, sneaking up on me while I’m lost in thought. Today I don’t mind, though. Maybe it’s okay if she sees my funny thinking faces.
She’s got a couple of our old suitcases we haven’t used in forever. She’s taking home half of my stuff today, because tomorrow I’m getting out of here (for real this time). Between Henry and my mom and my team, we brought so much stuff into this hospital that she wasn’t sure she could take it all at once.
She sits down on my bed and puts a book-sized present in front of me wrapped up in pretty pink paper.
“I know you know you didn’t cause that crash,” she says. “But I also know that maybe it feels like you did.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I do think I remember a little. For some reason, all those old Beatles albums gave me a chill. I never knew why. But you messing around with the tape player didn’t cause the accident.”
“I guess.”
“But it’s not just the accident, is it?” she says. I shake my head. “Sadie, I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell us. I don’t understand what’s wrong. But I want to.”
“I don’t know if you can,” I say. “I don’t know if it was the crash or if I’m just blaming everything on the worst thing that ever happened. But since then, I’ve been broken in a million pieces. Everything seemed wrong after that.”
My mom nods. “Well, you started going to school, and we started a whole new life. And that was partly the crash, and partly just because things change. It’s hard to figure out who you are when life hands you a new adventure.”
“A consolation prize.”
She scoffs.
“I know you liked being on the road. All those ‘road years,’ like you used to say. But you don’t remember how hard it was, pulling together a living that way. All you remember is the fun parts. And we’re glad you do; there were a lot of them. But I don’t think that this life, the one we ended up with, was a consolation prize at all. Sadie, we chose this. It wasn’t forced on us. We took what happened, and we made a choice as a family, and we moved on. You were part of that choice.”
“But everything…broke,” I say. I don’t know how better to say it. Our whole lives, my sense of certainty, my future…
“I don’t believe in broken. Neither does your dad. But I do believe in change. Do you remember, when you were little, we were at a museum and there was all this Japanese art and pottery? I don’t even remember if it was Chicago or Detroit. One of those long trips. There were so many they just blend together.
“There was this blue cup you absolutely loved. It had been broken and sort of glued back together with gold. It was amazing, because it was so beautiful after it had been broken. And I felt stupid liking this cup that was such an obvious metaphor: that the cracks made it stronger and more beautiful.” She swats me gently. “I can see you rolling your eyes, you smart aleck.” I laugh a little. “I mean, it’s trite. But now I think about it sometimes and I like it. Because sometimes the truth really is just completely cliché. And I think this is one of those times. There is beauty in fixing something. There’s beauty in restoration. And there’s room for broken things to be better than they were before.”
“That is super-sappy,” I admit. “But I like it too.”
“Anyway,” she says. “This is for you. Because you’re not a ghost. You’re someone special and your story is just beginning.”
I open it. It is a beautiful leather-bound journal exactly like an explorer would have.
“Thank you,” I say.
“And your dad is taking the Beatles records out of the basement as we speak,” my mom says. “We’re on a huge nostalgia kick, and you can’t beat vinyl.”
“That’s what Henry says.”
“Henry knows a good thing when he sees it.”
She kisses me and leaves. There’s nothing more to say, nothing she could tell me that would make me happier than that. I repeat it to myself, rearranging it. “I am a good thing, seen.” I want to write those words down in my new journal, but when I open it and face those blank cream-white pages, I realize I’m not done with this story yet. So, I take out the battered green one, flip past the mess of thoughts I’ve scribbled today, and think of the true things I know.
I think I love old things because I want to know the ending before I start. I love the Beatles because they’re already over. There can’t be any more. No one can make a new Beatles song. There are no surprises and you are safe. That’s why it hurts so much to discover:
You can always add meaning to something, even if it’s in the past. A tape playing during an accident becomes a memory, and the song means something new.
Of course, I think, that isn’t always a bad thing.
What is a cover? Somewhere between an old song and a new one. Everything builds on everything else. Stories never die. There really isn’t an end.
My story, the one that’s in this notebook with its cracked green cover and tearstained pages, is a red and black mess of lines. It’s not even really a story. It’s just facts I wish weren’t true. Boring, mundane existence on cheap paper. It’s fragments. I flip into the very front and look at Day 1: a few sentences. It isn’t the whole truth, with all the depth and complexity of living through it. It’s just what I thought were “facts.” It’s embarrassing to be distilled down into so few words, and for those words to be…nothing. Boring. But in a way, that’s the truth too. I’ve been writing the truth all along.
I sit in my wheelchair in the bathroom crumpling a section in my fist, ready to tear it out and pretend that all this never happened. None of this. Just rip it up and throw it away and it will be gone. If I leave all these words here in the hospital, I’ll be free of them, and eventually I will forget that they were ever more permanent than a passing thought.
Why did I write any of this down? I made it real. I’m the one who’s killing George, after all.
My fist clenches, but I don’t throw it away. I can’t. Trying not to remember is remembering. So you have to remember. Even if it’s embarrassing. Even if it’s true.
The thing is, though, facts can say a lot of things. You choose where the story starts and ends, and what lines you draw between the things that are true. You can tell a lot of stories with the same facts. I thought I knew what story I was telling. Now I’m not so sure.
I smooth out the pages and start looking through them. So much is changing. Maybe leaving a hospital is always like that. Your world is destroyed on the way in and re-created on the way out. I’m going home and everything is different.
And…
I think I want it to be.