A toy box decorated with giant letters of the alphabet. On a little rail hang two baby grows. Little booties on a dresser.
A bunny rabbit sits up enthusiastically inside the cot. He smiles stupidly at me. I take my shoes off and step barefoot onto the soft shagpile carpet, try to root myself in this world. I close the door behind me. There’s not a sound. I pick up the rabbit and carry it around the room with me while I run my hands over the shiny new furniture, clothes and toys. I open a music box and watch as the little mouse inside begins to circle round and round after a piece of cheese to a mesmerising tinkling sound.
‘I’m sorry, Sean,’ I whisper, and my words catch in my throat. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’
I lower myself to the soft floor, pull my legs close to me and hug the blissfully unaware bunny. I look again to the little mouse whose very being revolves around eternally chasing a piece of cheese he will never ever reach, let alone eat.
I slam the box shut and the music stops and I am left in silence.
‘I can’t find any food in the apartment; we’re going to have to get take-out,’ Justin’s sister-in-law, Doris, calls into the living room as she roots through the kitchen cabinets.
‘So maybe you know the woman,’ Justin’s younger brother, Al, sits on the plastic garden furniture chair in Justin’s half-furnished living room.
‘No, you see, that’s what I’m trying to explain. It’s like I know her but at the same time, I didn’t know her at all.’
‘You recognised her.’
‘Yes. Well, no.’ Kind of.
‘And you don’t know her name.’
‘No. I definitely don’t know her name.’
‘Hey, is anyone listening to me in there or am I talking to myself?’ Doris interrupts again. ‘I said there’s no food here so we’re going to have to get take-out.’
‘Yeah, sure, honey,’ Al calls automatically. ‘Maybe she’s a student of yours or she went to one of your talks. You usually remember people you give talks to?’
‘There’s hundreds of people at a time,’ Justin shrugs. ‘And mostly they sit in darkness.’
‘So that’s a no then.’ Al rubs his chin.
‘Actually, forget the take-out,’ Doris calls. ‘You don’t have any plates or cutlery – we’re going to have to eat out.’
‘And just let me get this clear, Al. When I say “recognise”, I mean I didn’t actually know her face.’
Al frowns.
‘I just got a feeling. Like she was familiar.’ Yeah, that’s it, she was familiar.
‘Maybe she just looked like someone you know.’
Maybe.
‘Hey, is anybody listening to me?’ Doris interupts them, standing at the living-room door with her inch-long leopard-print nails on her skin-tight leather-trouser-clad hips. Thirty-five-yearold Italian-American fast-talking Doris had been married to Al for the past ten years and is regarded by Justin as a lovable but annoying younger sister. Without an ounce of fat on her bones, everything she wears looks like it comes out of the closet of Grease’s Sandy post makeover.
‘Yes, sure, honey,’ Al says again, not taking his eyes off Justin. ‘Maybe it was that déjà vu thingy.’
‘Yes!’ Justin clicks his fingers. ‘Or perhaps vécu, or senti,’ he rubs his chin, lost in thought. ‘Or visité.’
‘What the heck is that?’ Al asks as Doris pulls over a cardboard box filled with books, to sit on, and joins them.
‘Déjà vu is French for “already seen” and it describes the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously. The term was coined by a French psychic researcher Emile Boirac, which expanded upon an essay that he wrote while at the University of Chicago.’
‘Go the Maroons!’ Al raises Justin’s old trophy cup that he’s drinking from, in the air, and then gulps down his beer.
Doris looks at him with disdain. ‘Please continue, Justin.’
‘Well, the experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of eeriness or strangeness. The experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience genuinely happened in the past. Déjà vu has been described as remembering the future.’
‘Wow,’ Doris says breathily.
‘So what’s your point, bro?’ Al belches.
‘Well, I don’t think this thing today with me and the woman was déjà vu,’ Justin frowns and sighs.
‘Why not?’
‘Because déjà vu relates to just sight and I felt … oh, I don’t know.’ I felt. ‘Déjà vécu is translated as “already lived”, which explains the experience that involves more than sight, but of having a weird knowledge of what is going to happen next. Déjà senti specifically means “already felt”, which is exclusively a mental happening and déjà visite involves an uncanny knowledge of a new place, but that’s less common. No,’ he shakes his head, ‘I definitely didn’t feel like I had been at the salon before.’
They all go quiet.
Al breaks the silence. ‘Well, it’s definitely déjà something. Are you sure you didn’t just sleep with her before?’
‘Al.’ Doris hits her husband across the arm. ‘Why didn’t you let me cut your hair, Justin, and who are we talking about anyway?’
‘You own a doggie parlour.’ Justin frowns.
‘Dogs have hair,’ she shrugs.
‘Let me try to explain this,’ Al interrupts. ‘Justin saw a woman yesterday at a hair salon in Dublin and he says he recognised her but didn’t know her face, and he felt that he knew her but didn’t actually know her.’ He rolls his eyes melodramatically, out of Justin’s view.
‘Oh my God,’ Doris sings, ‘I know what this is.’
‘What?’ Justin asks, taking a drink from a toothbrush holder.
‘It’s obvious.’ She holds her hands up and looks from one brother to another for dramatic effect. ‘It’s past-life stuff.’ Her face lights up. ‘You knew the woman in a paaast liiife,’ she pronounces the words slowly. ‘I saw it on Oprah.’ She nods her head, eyes wide.
‘Not more of this crap, Doris. It’s all she talks about now. She sees somethin’ about it on TV and that’s all I get, all the way from Chicago on
