Why Visit America

by Matthew Baker

  Wash examines his appearance in the mirror. Wrinkles around his eyes. Creases along his mouth. A thick neck. Broad shoulders, wide hips, hefty limbs, and a round gut. Fingers nicked with scars. Soles hardened with calluses. The body of an aging athlete, or a laborer accustomed to heavy lifting who’s recently gone soft from lack of work.

  He can’t remember being a toddler. He can’t remember being a child. He can’t remember being a teenager. He can’t remember being an adult.

  He stares at himself.

  Who is he other than this person standing here in the present moment?

  Is he anybody other than this person standing here in the present moment?

  His wife stirs as he slips back into bed. She reaches over and startles him with a kiss. He kisses back, but then she climbs on top of him, and he pulls away.

  “Too soon?” she whispers.

  Mia, that’s her name, he remembers. She has a flat face, skinny arms, thick legs, and frizzy hair cut off at her jawline, which he can just make out in the dark. Her nails are painted bright red. She sleeps in a plaid nightgown.

  “I barely know you,” he says.

  Mia snorts. “Didn’t stop you the first time.” She shuffles backward on her knees, tugging his boxers down his legs as she goes, and then chuckles. “I mean our other first time.”

  * * *

  The restaurant is a diner down by the highway, a chrome trailer with checkered linoleum and pleather booths and ceiling fans that spin out of sync, featuring a glass case of pastries next to the register and a jukebox with fluorescent tubing over by the restrooms. The diner serves breakfast and lunch only. Wash arrives each morning around dawn. The kitchen has swinging doors. He does the dishes, sweeps the floors, mops the floors, and hauls the trash out when the bags get full. Mainly he does the dishes. Dumps soda from cups. Pours coffee from mugs. Scrapes onion rings and pineapple rinds and soggy napkins and buttered slices of toast and empty jam containers and crumpled straw wrappers into the garbage. Sprays ketchup from plates. Rinses broth from bowls. Racks the tableware and sends the racks through the dishwasher. Stacks spotless dishes back onto the shelves alongside the stove. Scours at crusted yolk and dried syrup with the bristly side of sponges. Scrubs skillets with stainless steel pads for so long and with such force that the pads fall apart and still there’s a scorched residue stuck to the pans. Burns his hands with scalding water. Splashes stinging suds into his eyes. His shoes are always damp as he drives home in the afternoon. He shaves, he showers, and he feeds the dog, a moody mutt whose name is Biscuit. Then he sits on the porch step waiting for the rest of his family to get home. His house is modest, with small rooms and a low ceiling, and has no garage. The gutters sag. Shingles have been blown clear off the roof. The sun has bleached the blue of the siding almost to gray. Across the road stands a field of corn. Beyond that there’s woods. The corn stalks sway in the breeze. The dog waits with him, curled up on the grass around his shoes, panting whenever a car drives past. He lives in Kansas.

  Sophie, his daughter, a ninth-grader, is the next to arrive home, shuffling off of the bus while jabbing at the buttons of a game. Jaden, his son, a third-grader, arrives home on the later bus, shouting taunts back at friends hanging out the windows. His wife works at a hospital, the same hours that he does, but she gets home last since the hospital is all the way over in Independence.

  Wash tries to cook once, tries to make meatloaf. He knows what a meatloaf is. He understands how an oven functions. He gets the mechanics of a whisk. He can read the recipe no problem. But still the attempt is a disaster. He pulls the pan out when the timer goes off, and the bottom of the meatloaf is already charred, and the top of the meatloaf is still raw. He hadn’t been able to find bread crumbs, so he had torn up a slice of bread instead, which doesn’t seem to have worked. He samples a bite from the center of the meatloaf, that in-between part neither charred nor raw, and finds some slivers of onion skin in among what he’s chewing. When his wife arrives home, she surveys the mess with a look of amusement and then assures him that this isn’t a skill he’s forgotten. She does the cooking. At home, the same as at the diner, he does the dishes.

  Other items that his wife assures him were not accidentally erased during his procedure: the date of her birthday (all he knows is the month, August); the date of their anniversary (all he knows is the month, May).

  “Here’s a clue. My birthday was exactly a week before you came home. Borrow a calculator from one of your delightful children if you need help with the math,” Mia says, dumping a box of spaghetti into a pot of roiling water while simultaneously stirring a can of mushrooms into a pan of bubbling marinara. “If you’d like to know how long you’ve been married, your marriage license is in the filing cabinet in the basement. In fact, if you’re really feeling ambitious, your children have some birth certificates in there too. Heck, check your immunization record while you’re down there, you’re probably due for a tetanus shot.”

  There are moments so intimate that he can almost forget he’s living with strangers. His daughter falls asleep on him one night while watching a show about zombies on the couch, her head lolling against his shoulder. His son leans into him one night waiting for the microwave to heat a mug of cider, his arm wrapping around his waist. Late one night after the kids are asleep, his wife hands him a rubber syringe and a plastic bowl and asks him to flush a buildup of wax from her ears, an act that to him seems far more intimate than intercourse.

  But then there are the moments that remind him how much he must have lost. One night, during a supper of baked potatoes loaded with chives and bacon and sour cream, his family suddenly cracks up over an in-joke, a shared memory that’s somehow related to mini-golf and bikinis. His wife is laughing so hard that she’s crying, but sobers up when she realizes how confused he looks.

  “Sorry, it’s impossible to explain if you weren’t there,” Mia says, thumbing away tears.

  “But he was there, he was the one who noticed,” Jaden protests.

  “He can’t remember anymore, you ninny,” Sophie scowls.

  And then the subject gets changed.

  Wash does know certain information about himself.

  He knows his ancestry is part Potawatomi. He knows his parents were named Lawrence and Beverly. He knows his birthplace is near Wichita.

  But taking inventory of what he knows isn’t as simple as thinking, “What do you know, Wash?”

  He has to ask a specific question.

  He must know other facts about himself.

  He just hasn’t asked the right questions yet.

  “Wash, were you ever in a fight before?”

  “Wash, did you like your parents?”

  “Wash, have you seen a tornado?”

  He doesn’t remember.

  He tries asking Sophie about his past one afternoon. Wash is driving her to practice. Sophie runs cross.

  “What was my life like before the wipe?” Wash says.

  Sophie is a plump kid with crooked teeth, a pet lover, and has a grave demeanor, as if constantly haunted by the fact that not all kittens have homes. She’s doing history homework, flipping back and forth between a textbook and a worksheet, scribbling in information. She’s got her sneakers propped on the dashboard with her ankles crossed.

  “Huh?” Sophie says.

  “What do you know about my life?”

  “Um.”

  “Like tell me something I told you about myself before I got taken away.”

  She sneers at the textbook. Bends over the worksheet, forcefully erases something, and blows off the peels of rubber left behind. Then turns to look at him.

  “You never really talked about yourself,” Sophie says.

  He tries asking Jaden about his past one afternoon. Wash is driving him to practice. Jaden plays soccer.

  “What was I like before I went away?” Wash says.

  Jaden is a stringy kid with a nose that dominates his other features, a soda junkie, and constantly hyper, regardless of
caffeine intake. He’s sitting in an upside-down position with his legs pointed at the roof, his back on the seat, and his head lolled over the edge, with his hands thrown across the floor of the truck. He’s spent most of the ride listing off the powers of supervillains.

  “I dunno,” Jaden says.

  “You must remember something about me.”

  “I guess.”

  “So what type of person was I?”

  Jaden plucks at the seatbelt. Frowns in thought. Then turns to look at him.

  “A grown-up?” Jaden says.

  Wash tries asking his wife, but her taste in conversation is strictly practical, and she doesn’t seem interested in reminiscing about his life before the wipe at all. No photos are framed on the counter. No snapshots are pinned to the fridge. If pictures of his family ever hung on the walls, the pictures have long since disappeared.

  But other artifacts of his past are scattered throughout the house. In his closet hang flannel button-ups, worn tees, plain sweatshirts, a zip-up fishing vest with mesh pouches, a hooded hunting jacket with a camouflage pattern, a fleece, a parka, faded jeans on wire hangers, and a suit in a plastic garment bag. Who was that person who chose these clothes? In his dresser mingle polished turquoise, pennies smashed smooth by trains, a hotel matchbook lined with the stumps of torn-out matches, an assortment of acorns, ticket stubs from raffles, wooden nickels, a pocket knife whose blades are rusted shut, and the marbled feather of a bald eagle. Who was that person who kept these trinkets? There’s a safe in the basement where his guns were stored before being sold. He knows a combination, spins the numbers in, and the handle gives. But aside from a bungee, the safe is empty. No rifles, no shotguns, no pistols. Even the ammunition was sold.

  Who owned those guns?

  And then there are the artifacts of his past that he sees in his family. Sometimes in the driveway he’ll glance up from the car he’s washing or the mower he’s fueling and see his daughter watching him from the door with an expression of spite. Was he ever cruel to Sophie? Sometimes as he drops his boots in the entryway with a thud or tosses his wallet onto the counter with a snap he’ll see his son flinch over on the couch. Was he ever rough with Jaden? When he sets his cup down empty, his wife leaps up to fetch the jug of milk from the fridge, as if there might be some repercussion for failing to pour him another glass.

  He has a beat-up flip phone with nobody saved in the contacts except for his wife and his kids. Were there other contacts in there that were deleted after he got arrested?

  At cross meets and soccer matches, the other parents never talk to him. Was that always the case, or only now that he’s a felon?

  How does he know that trains have cupolas? Where did he learn that comets aren’t asteroids? Who taught him that vinegar kills lice?

  Wash is at the homecoming football game, coming back from the concession stand with striped boxes of popcorn for his family, when he stops at the fence to watch a field goal attempt. A referee jogs by with a whistle bouncing on a lanyard. Cheerleaders in gloves and earmuffs rush past with pompoms and megaphones. Jayhawkers chant in the bleachers. Wash glazes over, he’s not sure for how long, but he’s still standing at the fence when his trance is interrupted by a stranger standing next to him.

  “You did time, didn’t you, friend?”

  The stranger wears a pullover with the logo of the rival team. His hair is gelled. He’s got pleated chinos and shiny loafers.

  “Do I know you?” Wash says.

  “Ha. No. You just had that look. We all get the look. Searching for something that isn’t there,” the stranger says.

  Wash cracks a smile.

  The stranger grumbles, “I don’t know why people even say that anymore. Doing time. That’s not what happens at all. Losing time. That’s what happens. Poof. Gone.” The stranger glances down and gives the ice in his cup a shake. “I lost a year. Let’s just say, hadn’t been totally candid on my tax forms. Couldn’t have been worse timing though. I’d gotten married that year. No joke, I can’t even remember my own honeymoon. Spent a fortune on that trip too. Fucking blows.” The stranger turns away to watch a punt return, sucks a gurgle of soda through his straw, and then turns back. “How long did you do?”

  “Life.”

  The stranger whistles.

  “No kidding? You lost everything? From start to finish? How old were you when you got wiped?”

  “Forty-one.”

  “What’d you do to get life? Kill a cop? Rob a bank? Run a scam or something?”

  “I don’t know,” Wash admits.

  The stranger squints.

  “You aren’t curious?”

  “Nobody will tell me.”

  The stranger laughs.

  “To get a sentence like that, whatever you did, it must have made the news.”

  Wash stares at the stranger in shock. He could know who he was after all. All he’d have to do is get online.

  “We don’t have a computer though,” Wash frowns.

  The stranger passes behind him, giving him a pat on the shoulder, and then calls back before drifting off into the crowd.

  “Going to let you in on a secret, friend. At the library, you can use a computer for free.”

  * * *

  Lindsay, his reintroduction supervisor, is waiting for him at the house when he gets off work the next afternoon. She’s wearing the same outfit as before, a scarlet tie, a navy suit. She’s sitting on the hood of her car next to a box of donuts.

  “Time to check in,” Lindsay says through a bite of fritter.

  Biscuit stands on the couch, paws propped against the window, peering out of the house.

  “Have a seat,” Lindsay says brightly.

  Wash takes an eclair.

  “How are you getting along with your family, Washington?”

  Wash thinks.

  “Fine,” Wash says.

  Lindsay leans in with a conspiratorial look. “Oh, come on, give me the gossip.”

  Wash chews, swallows, and frowns.

  “Why’d you have to give me life? You couldn’t just give me twenty years or something? Why’d you have to take everything?” Wash says.

  “The length of your sentence was determined by the judge.”

  “Just doesn’t seem fair.”

  Lindsay nods, smiling sympathetically, and then abruptly stops.

  “Well, what you did was pretty bad, Washington.”

  “But my whole life?”

  “Do you know anything about the history of prisons in this country?” Lindsay reaches for a napkin, licks some glaze from her fingers, and wipes her hands. “Prisons here were originally intended to be a house of corrections. The theory was that when put into isolation criminals might be taught how to be functional citizens. In practice, however, the system proved to be ineffective at reforming offenders. The rate of recidivism was staggering. Honestly, upon release, most felons were arrested on new charges within the year. And over time the conditions in the prisons became awful. I mean, imagine what your situation would have been, being sentenced to life. You would have spent the next half a century locked in a cage like an animal, sleeping on an uncomfortable cot, wearing an ill-fitting jumpsuit, making license plates all day for far less than minimum wage, cleaning yourself with commercial soaps whose lists of ingredients included a variety of carcinogens, eating mashed potatoes made from a powder and meatloaf barely fit for human consumption, getting raped occasionally by other prisoners. Instead, you get to be here, with your family. Pretty cool, right? Like, super cool? You have to admit. And the wipe isn’t simply a punishment. Yes, the possibility of getting wiped is meant to deter people from committing crimes. Totally. But wipes are also highly effective at preventing criminals from becoming repeat offenders. Although there is some biological basis for things like rage and greed and so forth, those types of issues tend to be the psychological byproducts of memories. And a life sentence is especially effective. Given a clean slate, felons often are much calmer, are much happier than
before, are burdened with no misconceptions that crimes like embezzlement or poaching might be somehow justified, and of course possess no grudges against institutions like the government or law enforcement or former employers.” Lindsay glances over, then turns back toward the road. “For example.”

  “So I’m supposed to feel grateful?”

  Wash didn’t mean to speak with that much force.

  “Do you even know how much a wipe like yours costs?” Lindsay says, her eyes growing wide. “A fortune. Honestly, most people in your zip code would need a payment plan for a simple vanity wipe. You know, you do something embarrassing at a party, you overhear somebody saying something mean about you that rings a bit too true, so you just have the memory erased. And then there are survivors of truly traumatic incidents, who often have to save up for years after the incident if insurance won’t cover the cost of having the incident wiped. And alcoholics and crackheads and the like have no choice but to shell out, as a selective memory wipe is the only possible cure for addiction. Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder are generally treated with wipes as well, although those wipes, as was the case with yours, are covered by taxpayers.” Lindsay leans back on the hood of the car, propped up on her elbows, and squints into the sun. “It’s a better deal for taxpayers anyway. Wiping your memory may have been costly, but was still nowhere near as expensive as paying to feed and shelter you for half a century would have been. That’s the problem with prisons. They’re overpriced, they underperform.”

  Wash scowls at the driveway.

  “How are you feeling, Washington?”

  “Frustrated.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “I don’t even know what I did to get wiped.”

  Lindsay smiles. “The less you know about who you were before, the greater your chances of making a successful transition to your new life.” Beneath her cheery tone there’s a hint of uncertainty. “I would particularly recommend in your case that you avoid asking people about the details of your arrest.”