Jonas Khemiri - Everything I Don’t Remember

*

His mom continues:

5. Laide was the first girlfriend Samuel ever introduced me to. They were together for about a year. It was a turbulent relationship. They fought a lot. Laide looked for flaws in Samuel. Samuel felt suffocated. I think both of them were pretty relieved when it ended.

6. No, I wouldn’t describe him as “secretive.” Doesn’t everyone have secrets? No one tells everyone everything, do they? I would be more inclined to describe him as curious. Enthusiastic. And maybe a little restless.

7. Yes. Without a doubt. Who said otherwise?

8. No, it started back when he was little. When he was seven he would come home from a birthday party and be absolutely amazed that he couldn’t recall what flavor of ice cream he had eaten that afternoon. To him, that made it seem like the ice cream was worth less. Maybe now that I write this down it seems rather precocious and more philosophical than it really was. At the time, I mostly thought it was a strategy to get more ice cream.

9. Not on my side. Samuel’s dad did have a melancholy streak. But I wouldn’t go so far as to call him “depressive.”

10. Samuel was nine and Sara was eleven. It was a complicated divorce. Their dad was very hurt, and for several years he only saw the children occasionally. Then he severed contact completely.

11. Yes. Samuel and I talked to each other that last day. But if you want to know more about what I remember, you’ll need to ask more specific questions.

Best wishes.

*

Three o’clock went by, and four, five, six. We fought to get everything in place and by nine o’clock we were done. The floor lamps and picture frames and a small stool made of brown wood came with the last load. I was the one who took the stool; I put it in the hall and brought out the contract where the client was supposed to write down how many people had been working and tally up the hours. The old lady was just about to sign her name on the contract when she caught sight of the stool and made a sound as if someone had thrust a knife into her stomach. She lifted up the stool and then I realized that it wasn’t a stool but a child’s chair that had lost its backrest. Marre ran down to the truck to see if anything had been left behind, but all he found were a few flat slats that might have been a backrest, and the client sat there with her little chair and the broken slats and she petted the stool as if it were a cat. Bogdan and Luciano tried to keep from laughing and made gestures in the air to show she was crazy. I just wanted her signature, and at last I got it, she signed and we hopped into our fifteen-footer and drove back to the office. Later that night I thought of her sitting all by herself in an apartment with that stool that had until so recently been a chair. I don’t know why I remember her in particular.

*

In her fourth email, his mom writes that she is bewildered to hear about my goal of understanding what happened by mapping out Samuel’s last day. Do you seriously mean that you want to know exactly what we said to each other? Okay, this is how I remember our last phone call. I called his phone, Samuel answered, it was quarter past ten, they were on their way to the hospital.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Good.”

“Did you pick her up?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Where are you now?”

“Almost there.”

“And it’s going okay?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Is she asleep?”

“No, she’s sitting here.”

He was using an impatient voice, as if I had asked if he had brushed his teeth that morning. In the background I could hear a piano melody that I recognized but couldn’t place.

“How is she?”

“Fine.”

“And you?”

“Fiiiine.”

He sounded incredibly irritated when he said that last word, as if I had been dragging our conversation out for hours.

“We’ll talk soon, then,” I said.

“Bye.”

That was the whole conversation. It took maybe a minute. Max. And after each monosyllabic response he was quiet, as though he wanted to make it clear that there was nothing more to say. We hung up. Fifteen minutes later I called back.

“Are you there yet?”

“Looking for a parking spot.”

“Do you have the department number or should I text it to you?”

“Got it, thanks.”

“Did you get gas?”

“Didn’t need to.”

“How does she seem?”

“Fine.”

“Nervous?”

“Sort of.”

We were silent for a few seconds.

“Can we talk later?” Samuel said.

Our call lasted no longer than that. I asked him to call after the doctor’s appointment and then we hung up. That was the last time I heard his voice.

Yours truly.

*

One Tuesday we were at the university, loading boxes of books and swag candy and projectors and a big yellow plastic sofa into the fifteen-footer. There had been some sort of fair there. The customer had said that it should only take a few hours, but it was past lunch and we still weren’t done. The sun was shining, students were lying on the grass, and in the distance I saw a slim figure with a loosely hanging backpack walking toward the subway. It was Samuel. I was sure of it. I never forget a face.

*

In her fifth email, his mom writes that she doesn’t agree with my simplistic description of Samuel. He was so much more than a person who “spent his money on experiences but didn’t care about food.” If you want to get to know him, you have to understand what a great child he was, how lonely he was as a teenager, how much he wanted to change the world when he started studying political science. You have to understand how difficult it was for him to get his degree and then be unemployed for eleven months, only to end up working at the Migration Board. It was so far removed from his dream. How many details do you need in order to understand him? Is it important to know that he had a stuffed toy lizard named Mushimushi that we lost on a vacation in Crete? That he was scared of sirens when he was little? That he started crying when he heard sad music and said that it “hurt him inside”? That he collected those plastic PEZ dispensers until he started middle school? That he loved the last few years of compulsory school but hated upper secondary? That he stopped calling his dad “Dad” after the divorce and started using his first name? Who decides what is important and what is superfluous? All I know is that the more details I give you the more details it seems like I’m leaving out. That makes me doubt this entire project.

Regards.

*

I jumped down from the truck and went over to say hi. Samuel was wearing headphones, green ones, the kind with a headband, and when he didn’t hear me I tapped him lightly on the shoulder. He jumped like I had tried to force him off the path. Then he smiled and nodded.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“That’s okay.”

We stood in silence for a few seconds. He looked at me with knitted brows. His brain was working overtime to try to remember.

“Are you Felix’s friend?”

I shook my head.

“Oh, right — we played basketball together, didn’t we? Or wait, were you in Sara’s grade?”

“We met in Liljeholmen. At a pretty lame party.”

“That’s right! At Tessan’s.”

Samuel nodded and it looked like he remembered for real. I put out my right hand.

“Vandad,” I said.

“Samuel,” said Samuel.

“So how’s it going?”

I said it the way I had practiced at home in front of the mirror. The way I had heard hundreds of people say it, at parties, at movies, on buses when they ran into old classmates. But somehow it always sounded wrong when I was the one saying it.

“Oh, I’m doing fine,” Samuel replied. “Although it’s also not great because I just gave a lecture and you know how it is, you’re standing there in front of a bunch of people who could be you a few years ago and the teacher wants you to talk about an average day at work and how you use your theoretical background in your job, and you do it, you say that you sit in your office and convince them that it’s worth throwing away four years on a worthless education and then they applaud and the teacher thanks you and then you leave and feel like a giant fucking fraud. That’s pretty much how things are going. How about you?”