A Curious Moon

By Tracey Workman

They appeared without warning. The memories. 

At least, I thought they were memories. They could have been hallucinations, and every time one snuck up on me, I briefly wondered whether someone had slipped LSD into my coffee. The images that appeared were bright and thick in my mind, and they were heavy. Some afternoons, I snuck off to my office’s lactation room, which had a couch and a noise machine and was the only place where I could escape the emotional gravity.

The memories or the hallucinations started a few months ago. Around the same time as the headaches, which were intense and full of blinding pain that would start behind my eyes and make its way up to the top of my head, pulsing with a fury I was sure would kill me. I called out of work weekly, and even though I worried I’d get fired for my frequent absence, my boss was glad to be rid of me, sick of recognizing the sadness in my eyes as his own, both of us recent victims of the “D” word.

When I finally called the doctor and explained my symptoms, I was sure they’d have me committed, believing I was someone on the verge of a mental breakdown. And maybe I was. Instead, they ordered a CT scan, and on the day of the appointment, told me to lie down and stay still while beams of x-rays penetrated my skull. A non-invasive procedure, the radiology tech explained, except it felt the exact opposite, and I imagined the tech laughing at the shape and size of my naked brain from within the control room.

Later, while sitting on the examination table, the doctor told me bluntly without any preamble that I had a brain tumor. Specifically, something called a meningioma. Not rare, “accounting for approximately 20 percent of all brain tumors”, he said. Symptoms included headaches, hearing loss, and sometimes numbness on one side of the face. He said all of this like he was delivering a weather report and the day called for rain. 

“What about the memories?” I asked him. “A certain smell or even a change in the weather will trigger an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia.” I held my hands out in front of me, hoping the gesticulation would help describe the experience. “It almost feels like I’m watching a TV show, a replay of my past running before my eyes.” 

“It’s probably a bit of inflammation,” replied the doctor. “No cause for concern. With proper diet and exercise, your symptoms should ease up.”

I looked at him in horror, not quite sure I’d heard him correctly. No cause for concern? “But they’re vivid,” I tried to convince him to care, a quiet desperation building within me. “They don’t feel like normal memories. They’re stickier, and they linger for hours.”

“We’ll keep an eye on it,” he said. “It could be years before we start to see any real threat. Meningiomas are typically very slow growing.” 

He had to have noticed the look of disgust on my face. The thought of this thing growing in my head, taking up space, made me feel nauseous. “What do I do in the meantime?” 

“You could try acupuncture or meditation. I know a great acupuncturist in Japantown. I’ll have the nurse give you his contact information. It’s great for modulation of neural activity.”

I wanted to believe him, to believe the solution to my problem would be as simple as acupuncture. But he didn’t look like a real doctor. He looked like an actor playing one on TV. His teeth were perfectly white, and I kept waiting for them to sparkle like in a toothpaste commercial. His thick hair looked painted on, and I questioned whether it was actually a wig. He walked me to the receptionist’s desk and said, “Let’s check in again in six months.” He reached out his hand and smiled, his parting words, “Great to meet you, Christine.” The whole appointment lasted less than an hour.

I left the neurology center defeated and disoriented, and I silently chastised myself for not asking about other treatments. Out on the street, life carried on around me, but for the second time in a year, I felt as though mine had ended. The future I had been promised, shattered, starting with my divorce last June. In sickness and in health, Luke had vowed. For better or for worse, yet here I was, alone. Luke and I hadn’t even gotten the chance to experience our worst, and a part of me felt grief for the unknown. What other hardships had we missed by calling it off too soon? In the beginning, we were happy. In the middle, we were content. And in the end, I was surprised.

A woman walked by, laughing, and I felt a sudden urge to slap her. To shake her and yell at her, warn her that joy is a false pretense meant to trick your mind into believing nothing bad would ever happen to you. Instead, I collapsed onto the nearest bench and willed myself not to cry. 

My cell phone vibrated next to me. Probably a work email, a client checking in on another missed deadline, but I wasn’t ready to face yet another failure. I pushed my purse away from me, too forcefully, and its contents spilled out onto the sidewalk in front of me. My chapstick rolled to a stop in front of a smattering of bird droppings, huge white gobs of paint, the pattern forming an abstract image I knew I’d seen before.

The heaviness overtook me before I could stop it, a freight train of memory barreling at me at full speed. The day my divorce was finalized started to materialize within my mind. I was at the Museum of Modern Art in downtown San Francisco, and I had just walked past Lee Krasner’s abstract Gaea and sat down in front of Frieda and Diego Rivera by Frida Kahlo. The museum was chilly, but I kept my sweater off, hoping the temperature would seep into my skin and numb my ability to think, to feel. Looking at the painting in front of me, Frida’s hand in Diego’s, I tried to recall the few times Luke and I had held hands, his palms always smooth, mine dry. But squeaky footsteps hitting the museum floor kept distracting me. They sounded around me again, this time more muted. A shuffling of feet, the click clack of heels on cement. I wasn’t in the museum, but back outside in front of the neurology center, Frida and Diego dissolving into the background.

I hadn’t thought of Frida Kahlo in a while, not since that day at the MoMA. Maybe if my marriage had suffered from infidelity, like with Frida and Diego, Luke and I would still be together. He craved excitement, after all. Instead, we simply grew apart. At least, those were the words he used when he first asked for a trial separation. A week later, he filed for divorce.

I’d always known Luke and I were different. He had an insatiable thirst to see the world, while I found comfort in the home, attached to my routine. Week-long vacations were never enough for him, and the minute we got back from one, he’d start planning another. 

When Luke and I first met, I enjoyed the discomfort that came with trying something new. Like the time we went whitewater rafting in Vancouver. Or when we went searching for a hidden cave in Sedona. I felt invincible whenever we accomplished something that had initially terrified me. But over the years, Luke’s constant need to push ourselves to our limits, and his inability to sit still started to gnaw at me. On the weekends, when I wanted to stay home with a good book and a glass of wine, he would beg me to get up. We had to “seize the day”, he’d cry. 

Now, all my weekends are spent at home. In six months, I watched every episode of Love Island, and I rearranged my living room no less than five times. I tried to venture out, to explore more of the city on my own, but without Luke’s encouragement, the task felt too overwhelming. Like the mimosa pudica plant, I fold inward whenever I’m exposed to too much stimuli. 

· ✶ · ─ ·⏾· ─ · ✶ ·

A few days after my diagnosis, and after several sleepless nights in which I stared at the ceiling wondering if I’d wake up the next day or perish in my sleep, I was hit with another memory on my walk to work. They were coming more frequently now, with an urgency that scared me. 

As with all summer mornings in San Francisco, I woke up that day to a wall of fog outside my window. But hours later, the clouds were starting to lift off the horizon and bits and pieces of sunlight littered the sidewalks. While at a stoplight, the wind picked up a lone, blue scarf, discarded and left for dead, and carried it down the street. Every few seconds, the scarf would drop to the ground, defeated, before lifting off again, waving goodbye to passersby as it continued on its journey. 

The sight of it brought on a wave of uncontrollable emotion, and I half coughed, half hiccuped out a small sob. The scarf felt familiar, like an old friend who I hadn’t seen in years, but I also questioned whether it was real or if my mind was playing tricks on me. A singular ray of sun hit the scarf, and its dark blue faded to light, and I felt at that moment not as if I was in San Francisco, but in Mexico. The air felt warmer, and if I closed my eyes, I could hear ocean waves in the distance. 

An image started to form in my mind, like a Polaroid slowly developing. The buildings in front of me disappeared, and when I looked down, I no longer saw the sidewalk, but a scarf around my neck. Also blue. Its ends gently fluttering in the breeze, sun splayed out near my feet. The sandals I wore ready to give out, the leather cracked, sweat stains tracing each of my toes. I would have to throw them out after this trip, if they even survived the next few days.

It was our first time in Mexico, me and Luke. I wore the scarf on the last day, my final attempt to suggest a sophistication I believed Luke had been looking for at the time. He was always so put together when we first started dating. Even his linen pants would rarely wrinkle as if they, too, were in on the scheme to seduce me.

Somewhere nearby, a car horn sounded, jolting me back to the present. Opening my eyes, I looked around for the scarf, but it was gone. Panic rose in my chest. It was just a mirage. Or was it? I needed to find the scarf so I could see more of that day, to remember Luke’s face when we were happy. I closed my eyes once more, to return to that moment. But the edges were blurry, and I felt cold, the sun hiding behind the clouds once again. Disappointed, I turned around and continued my walk to the office.

When the doctor had listed out the potential side effects of the meningioma, he said I might have trouble recalling certain memories, not that I’d be overtaken by them. I worried the tumor was somehow cutting off blood supply, making my amygdala, which I learned through a Google search was the part of the brain critical for retrieving memories, grow stronger, larger. 

The paranoia grew the longer I walked. I could feel pressure in my forehead, a headache starting to form. But maybe it wasn’t a headache. It was the tumor, expanding. Soon, it would burst out of my head, right there on the sidewalk. What a sight it would be, my blood washing the street in a mural of madness. 

· ✶ · ─ ·⏾· ─ · ✶ ·

The next day, I grabbed lunch with a friend and decided to share the news. As expected, she reacted in shock. 

“The doctor doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal,” I told her, even though remembering his dismissal brought back a brief surge of anger that I quickly tampered. “Apparently, this is fairly common in women our age.”

“Christine, come on. He told you a brain tumor is common? I’d love to see the statistics on that,” Rachel rolled her eyes. “Who is this quack? Where did you find him?”

“My insurance recommended him.” A white lie. I had actually Googled, “Brain doctors near me,” but I didn’t want Rachel thinking I wouldn’t bother to do my homework on something so serious. Still, she looked skeptical. 

“You need to get a second opinion,” Rachel said matter-of-factly and then returned her attention to her salad. Rachel was always like this. She believed that once she stated her opinion, it would be recorded as fact, and that was that. Any effort to continue arguing would be useless, and she wouldn’t entertain it. 

I also knew she wasn’t wrong. I wondered if my experience would have been different if I had been a man. If it had been Luke in the examination room complaining about headaches and wild memories, would he have been told there was no cause for concern? Or would he have been sent for more tests, the doctor eager to pinpoint the problem?

“You’re right,” I agreed with Rachel. “I’ll look into it.” I made a mental note to Google “female brain doctors near me” that evening.

But when I got home later that day, I didn’t search for a new doctor. All afternoon, an absence gnawed at me. Like when you leave for the airport, but you can’t help but feel like you’ve forgotten something, only to show up at the hotel hours later and discover you don’t have your toothbrush. The memory of me and Luke in Mexico felt closer than it had in years, almost as if we’d taken the trip just last week instead of nine years ago, and I desperately wanted to keep revisiting it. Maybe it would reveal glimpses of the Christine Luke originally fell in love with, the version of myself who he felt closest to — and the version he never would have left.

Barging into my closet, I started to pull out the storage bins I’d frantically packed up the day Luke and I agreed to separate. I had dumped dresser drawers and bathroom cabinets into boxes and totes without rhyme or reason, clearing out the apartment in record time. But now, as I searched through them, I realized I had no idea where anything was. I hadn’t labeled a single thing. One box included kitchen utensils alongside my underwear, and another had books, shampoo, a few drinking glasses, and my summer dresses. But the blue scarf I’d worn in Mexico wasn’t in any of them. 

I wondered if I had left it behind, stuck in the back of a closet somewhere. I thought about calling Luke and asking him to search for it. We’d promised to go no contact, but it’d been nearly a year since we last saw each other. I was probably the last thing on his mind these days. Luke had an insane ability to compartmentalize his emotions. When something bad happened, he’d acknowledge it, hold space to feel whatever he needed to feel, and then he’d move on. Life was too short, he’d explain. I’d been envious of his ability to let go so easily, especially as someone who still had nightmares about the time I’d failed a math test in fourth grade.

I picked up my phone and imagined my fingers making the pattern of his number on the keypad. But the butterflies in my stomach told me to wait a few minutes. I needed to take a breath, calm down. 

As a distraction, I turned on the television. A rerun of Seinfeld was playing on NBC, and the butterflies became beetles, my stomach in so many knots, I felt nauseous. Luke loved Seinfeld. Whenever we struggled to find something to watch together, Seinfeld was our default. He could quote a line from almost any of the show’s 180 episodes. His favorite, “When the aliens come, who do you think they’re going to relate to?” A question George asks after Jerry sarcastically jokes baldness will one day become popular.  Luke would use the line whenever we witnessed someone doing something strange. Like the time we saw a girl order a burger, sit down, and flip the buns around before she bit into it. 

I took it as a sign. I picked up my phone and dialed Luke’s number before I could second guess myself. One ring. Two. At three, I worried he had blocked my number. Four, and I convinced myself he’d forgotten it, thinking the number on his screen was a spam call.

“I thought we agreed we wouldn’t call each other?” A ghost returned from the dead on the other line. Luke’s voice sounded familiar and foreign at the same time, both a comfort and a torment. Nine years of hellos and goodbyes, I love yous and goodnights filled the space between us, and I realized at that moment, I hadn’t actually wanted him to answer.

I tried to swallow, to say something, anything. Even a timid hello, but my throat constricted, and I was suddenly underwater, drowning.

“Christine?” Luke asked. “Hello?”

“I have a brain tumor,” I managed to spit out. Not exactly the topic I’d planned to bring up on our first call post-divorce, and I sank into my couch, embarrassment and shame flooding my senses. 

A pause on the other end of the line, faint music in the background. Luke wasn’t at home. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied, more gently this time. “But Christine, you shouldn’t be calling. We promised.”

My vision started to fade. A truck raced toward me, and my body braced for impact. It hit me instantly, and all feeling left my body, my arms and legs heavy, paralyzed. He didn’t care. Luke had moved on, and my heart broke for the fourth time. The first, when he’d asked for a separation. The second, the day he filed for divorce. And the third, last year. When I signed our divorce papers.

At my continued silence, he kept talking. “I’m sure you’re scared. I would be too. But you’ve got your parents, your friends. I can’t help you. I’m not your emergency contact anymore. It’s time to move on.”

The connection went silent, followed by the three “beep-beep-beeps” to let me know the person on the other end had hung up. Luke’s parting words echoed in my ears. I had heard that line before, and it became louder and louder in my mind. I put my hands to my ears to try to stop it, but it was too late. I was already being pulled backwards in time. 

It was our second trip to Mexico. This time, in Mexico City. We were at the Palacio be Bellas Artes, but we weren’t meant to be there. I remembered it had been a spontaneous decision to stop in, and I begged Luke to let us go. Luke wanted to catch a bus to the Teotihuacan Pyramids, but I saw an advertisement for a retrospective of Fernando Botero, a Colombian artist I was obsessed with.

Luke had complained, hated museums of any kind, but agreed to let me have five minutes. Almost immediately, one of Bolero’s newer paintings caught my eye. Circus Band.

The scene depicted in the painting was meant to be a happy one — a brass band in full swing, a small monkey in the middle dancing and having fun. But I saw something else. The monkey, forced to perform, looked tortured. As if she wanted to do anything else but dance. I understood where she was coming from, at times in my own life feeling as though I was on a stage, playing a certain part, my identity not my own. 

I was hypnotized by the monkey’s eyes, but Luke interrupted. “Come on, it’s time to move on,” he said. “We need to get to the city center before the bus leaves.” I caught a brief glimpse of a few other paintings before we were out the door and on our way. 

The memory faded, and I was back sitting in my living room, staring at the phone in my hand, the screen black. The disappointment I felt upon leaving the museum that day washed over me. I’d forgotten how often I would neglect my own needs or interests in favor of Luke’s.

The realization dawned on me with a ferocity I wasn’t expecting, and a rage swelled up within me. It started in my toes, spread to my stomach and my chest, and eventually, my head. Seconds later, I found myself back in my closet, screaming as I threw the boxes that held the contents of my old life against the walls. I had wasted nine years of my life making myself smaller for Luke, making his interests my interests. It dawned on me then, this sorrow I’d been carrying around for months, was not because I had lost Luke. I had lost myself instead, and I was slowly, painfully having to relearn who I was and what I believed in. 

I fell to the floor, wrapped my arms around myself, and cried. 

· ✶ · ─ ·⏾· ─ · ✶ ·

A few weeks later, after procrastinating calling additional neurologists, I found myself back in a doctor’s office, this one less sterile than before. The walls weren’t white, but a pale yellow, and the receptionist seemed brighter as a result. I didn’t have to sit in the waiting room long before they called my name, and I was ushered back into an examination room.

“I took a look at the scans Dr. Richards sent over to our office,” the doctor began shortly after introducing herself. Dr. Munson, an older woman, likely in her mid-50s, a loose bun set atop her head with bits of hair sticking out on either side. She didn’t seem to notice. Or care.

“I was surprised to hear he hadn’t recommended surgery,” she continued, sounding disappointed. “I don’t want to scare you, but the meningioma has already spread and is anaplastic.” The unfamiliar term sent goosebumps down my arms. Dr. Munson noticed my alarm and quickly followed up with, “It just means the tumor is growing quicker than we’d like.”

“Is that why I’ve been having such vivid flashbacks?” I asked her.

“It’s possible. Especially if you’ve recently experienced any kind of trauma.” She noticed my expression, the pain in my eyes, and nodded, her hypothesis confirmed. “The brain is a mysterious organ. Even today, with all the medical advances of the last century, the world’s top neurologists are still working to understand why the brain instructs us to do certain things or act a certain way. Especially when it comes to memory. Our brain will hold onto some memories more strongly than others, and our best guess is that it has to do with emotion. When you experience something that makes you really happy or really sad, your brain rewards you by holding onto it, sometimes for decades.”

“So this will never stop?” My voice is steeped in hopelessness.

“To be honest, I don’t know. It could be a result of the meningioma, but it could also be your brain’s way of helping you move on from something. But I do think, no matter what, we need to remove the tumor.” 

“Is that my only option?”

“We could consider radiation, which is less invasive, but there is a high change of recurrence down the road.” She paused, waiting for me to weigh my options. “I know brain surgery sounds serious, and it is. But the location of your tumor is promising. It’s in what we call the convexity region, or the top of your head, which is a lot easier to reach than something on the bottom.”

“What would the procedure entail? Do you have to crack open my skull?”

Dr. Munson chuckled lightly. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly say ‘crack.’ During a craniotomy, we remove a piece of the skull to access the brain — but only temporarily. The surgery itself lasts around six hours, and you’ll be in the hospital afterwards for about a week. Full recovery will take anywhere from eight to 12 weeks.”

I looked out the window and watched the cars across the street slow to a stop as the stoplight went from green to yellow to red.

“Think about it. If you want to get another opinion, I completely understand. But I wouldn’t wait too long. I recommend having the surgery in the next three months, if not sooner, given the rate of growth.”

I left the doctor’s office this time less confused and grateful to Dr. Munson for listening to me, for not dismissing my concerns. But I also couldn’t stop thinking about what she had said, about the brain and how it stores certain memories. It almost felt like a psychic reading, Dr. Munson using her intuitive abilities to help me recognize what I was holding onto — and what I needed to let go of.

Instead of heading back to work, I turned in the direction of North Beach, the location of my first date with Luke. As I got closer, I started to make out the sign for Caffe Greco, the place where Luke and I first met. 

I chose a table outside, nearest the door so I could catch glimpses of the table Luke and I had sat down at on that cold Friday evening all those years ago. He had been wearing a polo shirt and khakis, the uniform of all men in technology, and I remember my hands were clammy with nerves, and I had to keep wiping them on my jeans. The memory came easily to me, lightly. I could recall it without being absorbed by it.

“What can I get you?” the waiter came up and asked. I briefly paused, remembering how Luke had ordered a dry cappuccino on our date, and I had followed suit even though I wasn’t a fan. I preferred my coffee sweeter.

“I’ll take a vanilla latte, please.” I told the waiter. “And an almond croissant.” Luke had also avoided sweets, always telling me sugar was the new cigarette. I laughed at the thought. How I’d hide any treats in our house, enjoying them only on evenings when Luke worked late or went out with friends.

It was reminiscent of all the ways in which I changed myself. For men, for coworkers, for friends and family. I don’t remember when I initially started to dampen who I was. Maybe it was after a friend told me I ate bananas weirdly. Or that time when a boss remarked on the fact that I would often summarize meetings out loud after they happened. He didn’t say it facetiously, but I knew by his tone that he found it annoying. By the time I met Luke, I had begun to form this idea in my mind that I was somehow peculiar in a way that wasn’t palatable to the rest of the world. So when I sat down at Caffe Greco and introduced myself to Luke, I made a conscious decision to become someone different. Someone better.

How silly I was. Hiding my true self, working so hard to present a false version to the world. Luke had embraced my new persona so willingly, and I took it as confirmation that I was doing the right thing. Becoming the person the rest of the world wanted to see. 

For better or worse, my diagnosis — this thing in my brain — woke me up. The memories weren’t a sign of insanity. No. They were the encouragement I needed to rediscover who I was. 

And I was finally ready to release them. 

· ✶ · ─ ·⏾· ─ · ✶ ·

The lights above the operating table momentarily blinded me, and the fear I’d been able to keep at bay finally surfaced. I tried to swallow, but my throat closed up, and small pools of saliva formed in the corners of my mouth. 

Dr. Munson came over, placed an anesthesia mask over my mouth, and asked me to slowly count backwards from ten. No small talk, she got straight down to business.

“Ten,” I began, my voice muffled. “Nine.” Luke’s name came to mind then. I never noticed how funny the name Luke sounded, the long ‘u’ sound so similar to everyday objects like boot and glue. I took a moment to roll the letters around in my mouth and started to laugh.

“Christine,” the doctor came into view again and gently placed a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s keep counting.”

“Eight.” I closed my eyes and once again saw the blue scarf. But this time, I wasn’t in Mexico. I was in Greece, and it was the summer before I met Luke. 

“Seven.” 

That summer, I decided to take my first solo trip to Europe. I purposefully wanted to avoid the inevitable compromises that arise when traveling with others, and instead, I wanted to focus solely on the things I wanted to do. The landmarks I wanted to see. The food I wanted to eat. 

“Six.” 

I started in Greece, in awe of the turquoise waters of Paros, skipping the more popular destinations of Santorini and Mykonos that my friends would have convinced me to go to. I went to Italy and Spain, and ended my trip in Tenerife. 

Oh, what freedom I’d had then. And it was freedom that would greet me on the other side in the recovery room.

“Five…”

Tracey Workman lives in Houston, Texas with her fiancé and miniature Australian Shepherd. She has worked in communication and PR for nearly 15 years and writes fiction in her spare time. She has a Bachelor of Science in communication from Boston University.