While watering your downstairs neighbor’s plants you’ll find a photograph on one of his shelves of your downstairs neighbor with his arms around your shoulders. The memories will come flooding back. Your downstairs neighbor will come out of the closet where he was hiding.
“I thought you were on vacation!”
“I wasn’t. And I’m not your downstairs neighbor. I’m–”
“My husband,” tell him.
“Yes,” he’ll say, smiling. “I got you the apartment above me after you started having spontaneous amnesia not long after our wedding.”
“Because I was so certain it was a mistake that we got married!” you’ll say, crying now because your memories have returned and you finally know who you are again.
“That’s right,” he’ll say, also crying because he’s so glad to have you back, if only briefly.
You and your husband will use your brief window of lucidity to talk about the old times, how he pressured you into marriage, how you agreed to settle for him but soon found it all too disappointing a reality to tolerate so your mind began tricking you into thinking your husband doesn’t even exist.
“I thought about just granting you a divorce,” he’ll say. “If that would cure you. But you didn’t remember ever having been married so no court would grant us one unless you could agree you that were in a marriage that you wanted to dissolve. So I bought the apartment above us. So you could lead your own life until the amnesia has set you free, and I could continue to keep an eye on you and care for you.”
“You did all that for me?” ask him. “You went through all that trouble for me?”
“Yes my sweet,” he’ll say. “Does knowing how much I’ve cared for you make you more accepting of the fact that I’m the man you married? Is it any more tolerable a reality knowing all of this? Do you think your memory might stick around for a while?”
Say to him, “I thought you were on vacation. Why are we sitting on the floor. You’re gross. I’m going back upstairs to my apartment.”
Happy Water Your Downstairs Neighbor’s Plants Day!
