My Life, Deleted Read online

  We waited so long that we finally ordered lunch, and around 3:30 P.M. it was time to go.

  “Are you ready to go home?” Joan asked.

  I was scared to find out what “home” was like, but I nodded and tried to prepare myself to find out.

  Chapter 3

  MY SHORT-TERM MEMORY seemed to be okay, so I knew it was Friday, December 19, 2008, and I was being released from the hospital with my wife, Joan, by my side. But I was racked with fear of the unknown as I tried to prepare to leave the shelter of my sixth-floor room, the only place that felt familiar. I was still having trouble finding the words to say what I wanted, and my speech was still coming out in slow, robotic monotones.

  Joan had brought me a comfortable T-shirt and jeans to wear home, but like Peter Sellers’s character in Being There, I had no idea what to expect the real world to be like because I’d only seen it on TV.

  As the tech pushed me down the hallway in a wheelchair, she used a different elevator than I was used to, and I started noticing things from a different perspective. Every other time I’d gone down that hallway, I’d been lying on a gurney. Now that I was sitting upright, a cacophony of new perceptions seemed to be hurtling toward me at warp speed as the adrenaline shot through my veins. I felt dazed and beleaguered by it all.

  Outside, I squinted as the tech wheeled me down the sidewalk that ran along the driveway of brick pavers shaped like miniature stop signs, which, for some reason, I still recognized. I was confused as my eyes tried to adjust to the bright Arizona sunlight. Since the accident, when almost every point of reference I’d acquired in a lifetime had been erased, I’d been completely ensconced in the hospital world, glimpsing “outside” by watching the news. Given that it was December, I had seen lots of people dealing with cold weather and snow in other parts of the country—nothing like the sunny sky above me now—but couldn’t grasp the geographical differences. So I didn’t know what to think when I saw people dressed in light clothing walking around on the street. I could only assume that I was supposed to get out of the wheelchair and join them for parts unknown. Alone.

  But before I could ask the young tech, “Where do I go now?” Joan said something reassuring.

  “I’m going to get the car. I’ll be right back.”

  I was still unsure of her role in my life. I hoped she really was going to come back and get me, that she wasn’t going to abandon me there. But I also believed that after she came back with the car, her “job” with me would end. The relief was tremendous when she pulled up in a black Chevy Tahoe, opened the passenger-side door, and invited me into the car.

  I proceeded to climb into the vehicle, which seemed to be very big for Joan, who was all of five feet one inch and about one hundred and twenty-five pounds.

  “Is this the car you drive?” I asked.

  “No, this is Taylor’s car. I drive a smaller car, a Porsche Boxster that you bought me in Carlsbad,” she said.

  As she went through the litany of vehicles that we owned and who in our family drove which one, I felt my brain shutting down. I couldn’t process all that information. Not when I was trying to get used to being outside in the real world for the first time.

  The hospital was only a twenty-minute drive from our house, but time seemed to fly by as I stared at the buildings, cars, and people we were passing, hoping that something or someone would look familiar. It was no surprise by this point, however, that nothing did. Even though I felt like we were racing along, all the other cars sped past us.

  Joan told me the names of the streets and the businesses along the route, reciting the numbers of the major roads and highways nearby, but she might as well have been speaking Chinese. I had no idea what direction we were heading or what town we were in until I saw the signs saying we were entering Gilbert, where she said we lived.

  “Does this look familiar?” she kept asking.

  “No,” I repeated.

  We’d sat at many stoplights and made numerous turns when Joan finally said, “We’re turning onto our street. Do you know which house is ours?”

  “I have no idea,” I replied.

  She slowly pulled up to our one-story beige stucco house, entered the driveway, and hit a button in the car.

  Well, this has to be it if the door opened.

  My head throbbed with the pain and the stress of entering yet another foreign place that I was supposed to recognize.

  Joan hit another button to close the garage door, and as we walked into house, she said, “Welcome home, honey.”

  Taylor was in the kitchen to greet us and gave me a big hug. As we walked into the living room, with its high ceilings, wide, deep armchairs, never-ending couch, and grand fireplace, all I could think was, This is huge.

  But the enormity of it, coupled with my pounding head, was too much to bear. All I wanted to do was rest for a while and close my eyes.

  “Where is the place that I can lie down in?” I asked.

  “The bedroom?” Joan asked, looking at Taylor in shock.

  “Yeah. How do I get there?”

  Taylor grabbed my hand and proceeded to lead me back into the master suite, which was yet another huge room.

  Apparently I’m a big man with big tastes.

  As Joan later explained, that assumption proved to be true: I hated to feel cramped by low ceilings and small rooms. Even so, the king-size bed seemed rather expansive, standing tall in its massive bed frame, with a nightstand on either side of it. Across from the bed was a table with some books on it and a broad wooden cabinet that encased a flat-screen television. A row of windows spanned the entire north side of the room, providing a view of a stone fountain and swimming pool outside.

  I changed into some sweats while Taylor and Joan pulled back the covers and helped me get into bed. Then Joan left to fill the Percocet prescription—a mix of oxycodone and Tylenol—they’d given me before leaving the hospital.

  Joan had explained that we’d lived in this house for more than three years, but as I lay in that bed, where I had slept for at least a thousand nights, it felt like the very first time.

  As tired as I was, I couldn’t actually fall asleep, so I lay there, thinking and examining the contents of the room: the family photos hanging on the wall and the strange but comfortable-looking armchair that had cup holders and a power cord plugged into the wall. I later learned that this was a massage chair I enjoyed using to relax my back muscles.

  I was puzzled by the round, flat pillow on the floor, covered with a blanket, which turned out to be the bed for our dog, the brown Lab named Mocha.

  The bedroom door was closed and I could hear voices in the next room, so I decided to take advantage of being alone to look around. I padded into the master bathroom, which also seemed huge compared with the tiny toilet stall in my hospital room. It was also much nicer, with its shiny granite countertop, two sinks, and the beautiful tile on the floor, which I later learned was called travertine. The walk-in shower was shaped like a clamshell and had two shower heads—one high up and the other set low and adjustable. Now I was no genius, but even with a head injury I was able to figure out that the tall one was my side and the lower one was Joan’s.

  At the far end was a wall of two mirrored doors, so I opened them to find a walk-in closet the size of a small bedroom, packed with shelves and rungs of hangers spanning sixteen feet to the ceiling with shoes and garments, some hung in cellophane bags according to season. It was no mystery that Joan loved fashion, because 90 percent of the belongings in that closet were hers, with mine tucked away in one microcorner. My mind was boggled by the discovery that she owned at least one hundred pairs of shoes, each packed in its own plastic labeled container, and that the price tags were still attached to probably 20 percent of her clothing.

  Why would she continue to buy shirts, sweaters, coats, pants, and skirts when she already owns more than she can wear?

  This gave me a clear indication of one foundational difference between my wife and me before my accide
nt and perhaps now even more so. But before I could jump to conclusions, I soon realized that I’d had my favorite things as well. On my side of the bathroom counter was a stack of boxes, each of which contained a shiny fancy men’s watch, while Joan had only one watch box on her side. I noticed that many of mine had different-colored faces, with different types of straps, and some had lots of little knobs and buttons.

  Why would anybody need all these watches when you only have one wrist to wear them on? I am wearing only one ring now, and so did Joan, but I saw men on TV wearing lots of rings, so I maybe wore more than one watch at a time?

  But, as I stood there, I couldn’t understand why I would need a single watch, let alone thirteen of them, when my cell phone showed me the time.

  These boxes, I eventually learned, were winders for my Rolex, Baume & Mercier, Breitling, IWC, Omega, and Chase-Durer timepieces, all of which I loved and was proud to have been able to afford. But at that point I had no idea that most of them were worth thousands of dollars each or that I decided which one to wear on a given day based on what else I was wearing or where I was going.

  Going through the drawers and lower cabinets, I started noticing a pattern of excess: packages with thirty rolls of toilet paper, packs of ten toothbrushes, and half a dozen containers of the same brand of men’s deodorant. I would later find out that this was called “buying in bulk,” which was cheaper and more convenient for people like me who hated shopping, but at the time I thought it was way too much stuff for the two of us.

  Searching further, I was surprised to find about twenty bottles of cologne in the mirrored cabinet next to my sink.

  Are these all for me? Why would I ever need twenty when I could wear the same one every day?

  I’d seen plenty of cologne and perfume ads on TV and in Joan’s magazines in the hospital, so I opened one of the bottles and smelled it, pumped the spray onto my hand, and smelled it again. It smelled good, so I grabbed another and another, spraying each of them in the same place and smelling it again. I went over to Joan’s side and saw that she had about half as many bottles of perfume, but that still seemed like too many for one person. I didn’t test any of hers, though, because I didn’t know if I was allowed to.

  Based on what I’d observed in those few minutes, I already felt I’d been a complicated man whom I now didn’t understand, and it was going to take a lot of investigation and thought to figure him—or me—out. Joan seemed complicated too but in a different way, so the concept of us living together was going to be that much harder for me to figure out.

  Leaving the master suite, I went to find Joan and Taylor in the family room and asked if they would show me the rest of the house. I wanted to hear more about my life.

  They led me past the front door to a guest bathroom on the other side of the house and into a second family room, where, I was told, Grant and Taylor usually hung out with their friends to watch the large television. It was a smaller version of the TV we had in the living room, which was much easier to watch at a distance than the one in my hospital room.

  After that we entered Taylor’s bedroom, which had beautiful hardwood floors. Her bed-frame posts were hung with about thirty purses, and her shelf was covered with shiny gold trophies topped with little figures dancing and cheering. I had picked up the word “trophy” while watching the playoffs, and seeing that these said 1st Place, I figured these were Taylor’s awards for cheerleading.

  Next came the guest bedroom, which Joan said used to be Grant’s and was the one he used when he stayed over although he, apparently, used it more than any guests. She said our nineteen-year-old had his own apartment a few miles away and worked two jobs, repairing motorcycles and delivering pizzas.

  Finally we came to one last room, which contained a bed next to a U-shaped desk that was stacked with four or five computers with their screens turned on, a fax machine, and a phone. A Ranking Arizona magazine cover, displayed on a stand, featured a photo of Joan and some other people with text that said our company, West Jet Aircraft, had been ranked number one in 2008. On the wall was a photo of a surgical team standing next to one of our jets. “This is your home office for when you don’t feel like going to your Tempe office to work,” Joan explained.

  I soon discovered that closets throughout the house were filled with file cabinets, office supplies, and boxes of aviation company documents. By the looks of it, I’d been a very busy and successful businessman.

  Also hanging on the wall was a red and white football jersey and two newspaper articles with photos from the California Bowl in 1983. When I asked Joan about them, she said I’d worn the jersey during that game, and she’d gotten it framed for my birthday years ago.

  That game must have been very important to me.

  I wasn’t interested in the details right then, but I later discovered that game had solidified my chances for an NFL draft in 1984 because I’d dominated the defensive tackle on the opposing team, helping us beat Cal State Fullerton, 20–13.

  We passed through the living room again to head into the backyard, where I admired the landscaping, including the L-shaped pool with its own waterfall, and the three-tiered waterfall, fire pit, lounge chairs and table in the secluded grotto at the other end. Even in December it was sunny and a pleasant sixty-five degrees out there, where, Joan explained, we’d spent many an evening with cocktails while I smoked a fine cigar.

  “Wow, this is really nice,” I said.

  I truly was blown away—overwhelmed, really—by our home. But even after taking the full tour of the house and garden, which had been paid for with my hard work, I still felt like a guest in it. As uncomfortable as that felt, though, I knew that I’d better get used to the idea of living there with these people who called themselves my family because they were all I had. The uncertainty I felt was pretty intense, so it was good that I was heavily medicated because that helped me relax a bit. And because the meds made me so drowsy, I was forced to sit still and take frequent naps in those early days, which better enabled me to ease into my new surroundings and absorb new information in short, finite bursts.

  I knew in my gut that I had to start making myself comfortable around these people so they would feel like I was getting better. I didn’t know how long they were going to put up with taking care of me in my helpless state, nor did I have any concept of time to understand the duration of a marriage or a relationship. I could see from the wedding photo in our bedroom—two young kids dressed in all white and our faces stretched with sappy smiles—that I had aged quite a bit since then, so I figured they’d keep me around for a while anyway.

  The last thing I wanted was for them to leave me completely on my own. I felt they would be not only crucial to retrieving my identity, but key to my very survival.

  A couple of hours later Joan suggested I call my parents, whom she’d been keeping abreast of my progress in the hospital. Because the doctors said I only had a bad concussion and my memory should return within a couple of weeks, my parents saw no need to rush to my bedside. Joan told me they lived in Chicago, and I had no idea how far away that was, but they weren’t a priority for me at that point. It was all I could do to deal with the people right in front of me—Joan, Taylor, and sometimes Grant—but I sensed they were important, so my plan was to put them at ease and get off the phone as quickly as possible. My head was killing me.

  Wanting a point of reference, I went into my office and picked up an eight-by-ten-inch portrait of them. The tan frame was embossed with the word “Grandparents,” and although they were strangers to me, at least I could put a voice to each of their faces. They looked very happy, smiling and leaning in toward each other at a restaurant table in front of a fireplace. I could see some wrapped gifts, which Joan said were to celebrate my father’s seventieth birthday.

  “How are you feeling?” my mother asked.

  As we chatted on the phone, I stared at the dark-haired woman wearing a purple and black pantsuit and the gray-haired man in his beige sport coat and
burgundy shirt, but I felt no emotional tug whatsoever.

  I didn’t want to alarm her, so I kept it simple, not mentioning that I had no recollection of them. “I had an accident,” I said. “My head hurts.”

  I asked them to help Joan if she needed anything because, obviously, I couldn’t. The call didn’t last more than five minutes, but it felt like five hours. By the time I hung up, I was completely exhausted.

  When Joan said my sister Candi was on the phone a little while later, I didn’t have the energy to go through that again. I tried to wave Joan away, but she covered the mouthpiece and gave me a quick lesson in manners before placing the receiver in my hand.

  “Hon, she just wants to hear from you that you’re okay,” she said.

  I reluctantly agreed to talk to Candi, but if it had been up to me, I wouldn’t have spoken to anyone else. Afterward, I figured that if Grant had a sister and Taylor had a brother, I might have more of each and needed to prepare myself to speak to them too.

  “Do I have more sisters or brothers calling?” I asked Joan.

  Joan explained that I was the youngest of three children and that I had another sister, Bonnie, but no brothers. That meant I had one more call to go, which was both a pain and a relief that this one would be the last.

  Chapter 4

  I’D BEEN HOME from the hospital for two days when Joan and I debated whether to cancel our traditional extended family Christmas dinner. Typically we’d always had everyone over to our house because our long dining table could accommodate all eleven of us, including Joan’s parents, my niece Jamie, her husband, Kevin, and my two young, rambunctious nephews, Noah and Aden.

  “Maybe it’s best we not do a big family get-together,” Joan said. “Maybe it should just be us this year.”

  In spite of my incessant headaches, I still felt the need to see and do the same activities as everyone else in the world, partly so I could understand what “normal” was, but also to observe and participate in an important holiday with the family I was struggling to get to know.