Lost Memory of Skin

by Russell Banks

  Finally it’s the Writer who speaks. The young man knew your late husband, ma’am. We’re very sorry to intrude at such a time, but your husband instructed my friend here to deliver the DVD to you personally. They filmed an interview together. Your husband, in the event of his untimely death, wanted you to have it. We thought it was important enough to risk intruding on you like this. I hope you don’t mind.

  Without answering him, the Wife as if brushing away cobwebs passes one hand over her face and gestures with the other for them to come inside.

  She asks the Kid if she should watch the DVD now since he knows what’s on it. Can it wait until I’m a little over the . . . the shock of it all? I don’t need any more bad news.

  The three of them stand awkwardly together in the middle of the living room. The blinds and curtains are drawn, filling the room with thickened shadow and gloom, as if no one has ventured into it in months. The Kid says, I dunno, I think maybe you oughta check it out now. Before you do get any more bad news.

  She says, Oh! He’s told her more than she wanted to hear.

  I mean, I think the Professor wanted you to look at it right away. Like, as soon as they found his body and said it was a suicide.

  Well, it was suicide!

  The Writer clears his throat and asks, Was there a note or a letter to that effect, ma’am?

  No. But he was despondent. There were things you couldn’t know. He and I . . . we were recently estranged. I’m afraid to watch it, the DVD. He may say things about me or the children that I don’t want to hear.

  The Kid says, No way. He only says nice stuff about you and the kids.

  The Wife looks pleadingly into the Kid’s eyes: Will you watch it with me? I’m scared to watch it alone. I don’t know who else to ask. You were there, weren’t you?

  Yeah. I was sort of like the cameraman.

  She asks the Writer if he knows what’s on the DVD, and he says yes, although he hasn’t watched it himself. The Kid summarized it for him.

  She says, All right, then if you don’t mind, we’ll watch it together. Come with me, there’s a computer in my husband’s office, she says and leads the Kid and the Writer down the hallway to the Professor’s office.

  The Wife sits down at the desk and opens the computer and turns it on. As the Kid and the Writer take positions behind her, the Kid glances over at the big black safe and feels a twinge of guilt. He wonders if he should have told the Wife about the money and decides no, it would only complicate things even further. Maybe someday.

  When the computer screen has opened and the screen has filled with icons, the Wife slips the DVD into the slot. A few seconds later the Professor’s bearded plate-shaped face appears on the screen.

  You sit there, Kid, off camera. I’ll sit here on the sofa in front of it.

  Whaddaya want me to ask? I mean, I never done this before, interviewed somebody.

  The Kid interrupts his digital self: I guess I was more than a cameraman. Sorry.

  The Professor continues: No, but you’ve been interviewed. You start by asking a question that you want answered, and then I decide if and how I’m willing to answer it. Then you ask a follow-up question that’s generated by my previous answer. Simple. Especially for the one asking the questions.

  Okay. How about what’s the fucking reason for making this interview in the first place?

  Excellent first question! The simple answer is that in the coming weeks or possibly months my body will be found, and it will look like a suicide. This interview will provide evidence that it was not a suicide. . . .

  For nearly twenty minutes the Kid, the Writer, and the Wife watch the DVD on the Professor’s desktop computer. Finally the interview comes to an end:

  Pretty much everything I wanted Gloria to hear has been said already. Except that I truly love her and the children, and I am not guilty of the heinous acts that I will soon be accused of.

  Are you ashamed, though? Like you asked me when you were interviewing me about brandi18.

  Ashamed? Of what?

  You know, of spying and shit. Being an informant and a mole and a double agent. All that.

  No, I’m not ashamed. And I don’t feel guilty for all those years of deceit and betrayal, secrecy and lies. That was the nature of the world then and now, and those are the rules of the game that runs the world. And once you know that, you either play the game or it plays you. I only regret that I stopped playing the game. Now it’s playing me. Except for this one last move. . . .

  Maybe we should shut off the camera and discuss my fee.

  Fair enough.

  The screen blanks out. The Kid backs away from the Wife, who sits stunned in front of the computer. The Writer hunches over beside her, still staring at the screen as if wanting more. The Kid moves slowly toward the door thinking: I never should’ve said that shit about my fee because now they’re going to ask me how much he paid me and the Wife’s going to ask for the money back and I’ll have to give her what’s left of it if she does on account of she’ll need it for her kids and it isn’t like I actually earned the money by working for it but then I’ll be broke again and homeless with no job and I won’t be able to feed Annie and Einstein or even myself except by Dumpster diving so now I’m totally fucked again!

  But they don’t ask him about his fee. They don’t ask him about anything. For the Wife and the Writer, the Kid’s interview with the Professor has provided nothing but answers. Instead of asking questions, they make statements.

  Her pale face soaked with tears, the Wife turns and looks up at the Kid, who’s never seen a woman cry before: Thank you, she says. Then to the Writer: Thank you both. I know the truth now. I finally know who my husband really was. Finally! And I know what to expect. And when it comes, no matter how awful it is I’ll know how to deal with it and how to protect my children from it. I’ll be able to tell them that whatever people say about their father it isn’t true! And someday when they’re old enough to understand such things I’ll play this for them. So thank you! For their sake as much as mine.

  The Writer places a hand on her shoulder. Some people would consider your husband a hero. I’m one of them.

  The Kid stops at the door not so much surprised as appalled and stares at the two. They believe the Professor’s stupid story! Both of them! The Writer has leaned down and embraced the Wife. She sobs onto his shoulder wetting the sleeve of his yellow and red Hawaiian shirt.

  The Kid slips out the door and waits in the Town Car.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ON THE DRIVE BACK TO APPALACHEE THE Kid slumps in the passenger’s seat in sulky silence with his arms folded across his chest and his feet propped against the dashboard while the Writer natters on—at least from the Kid’s perspective—about the Professor’s courage in accepting the fatal consequences of his past associations and the man’s loving-kindness toward his wife and children by making sure they knew the truth. Arming them against the coming scandal, he says.

  The Kid tamps back an impulse to ask the Writer if he’s forgotten about the sick e-mail correspondence between Big Daddy and Doctor Hoo. Buried treasures and secret maps. Captain Kydds and Peter Pans. Disgusting! The Writer believes what he wants to be true, not what he knows to be true. Who does he think told the cops where to find the Professor’s body anyway? Who else had a motive? No one. It had to be the Professor himself. It was the only way he could be sure his cover story would get delivered to his wife, the only way he could defend himself from beyond the grave and also go out feeling smarter than everyone else. He probably holed up in a cheesy by-the-hour motel at a minimall somewhere west of the city for a few nights until his disappearance got on TV, then drove out to the canal and made an anonymous phone call to the cops with the motor of his van already running, lowered the window, and tossed the phone into the water, snapped the bike locks onto his wrists and feet, somehow shifted the van into drive and floored it. It would have given the crabs and eels only an hour or so to do all that damage to the Professor’s fa
ce but maybe that’s enough when they’re hungry. Complicated—maybe too complicated—but just complicated enough if you were married to the man like the Wife was or are slightly paranoid and believe in conspiracies like the Writer does to make suicide not quite believable which is exactly what the Professor needed to make his story believable to his wife and no doubt someday to his kids and evidently to the Writer as well.

  But not to the Kid.

  The Kid’s not buying it. Though he’d like to. It would help him sort out how to deal with the money. His fee. If the Professor’s story is a big fat lie and he was a big fat chomo into kiddie porn and worse then the money the Kid received for filming the story and delivering it to Gloria makes him an accomplice in the Professor’s big fat lie and life. Which makes the money dirty and he ought to hand it over to Gloria and her kids the same as if the Professor stole it from them. But if the Professor’s story is actually true then the money’s clean—it’s payment for the Kid’s services which involved a certain degree of risk for him and maybe still does if those secret agents assuming they exist ever find out about it—and he’s entitled to keep what’s left of the ten K and spend it any way he wants.

  It’s in the Kid’s interest then, his financial interest, to believe the Professor’s story is true. It’s the only way he can afford to rent the houseboat and live out there with Annie and Einstein in Appalachee at the edge of Paradise among normal people like Dolores and Cat and the ranger. Otherwise he’ll have to give the money to the Wife and he’ll be penniless and without a job or a home and will have to go back down under the Causeway and live with the ghosts and whoever else among the convicted sex offenders of Calusa County shows up there. And he won’t be able to take proper care of Annie and Einstein or even feed himself except by stealing garbage from behind restaurants and supermarkets after they close.

  He says to the Writer, You really believe the Professor’s story, right?

  Definitely!

  But how do you know it’s true? Instead of just believing it’s true.

  You mean, do I have proof ? Like scientific proof? No, of course not. Hardly anything about human behavior can be known that way. Even our own behavior. We just have to choose what to believe and act accordingly, Kid.

  Yeah, well, I need to know if his story is true or not. Because as far as believing goes, I can come down on either side. And if I come down on one side my “human behavior” will be different than if I come down on the other and vice versa. No matter which side I come down on, I’ll worry it’s the wrong side and my human behavior will be wrong too. This ain’t a novel or a movie, y’ know, where that shit don’t matter as long as you know by the end what really happened.

  The Writer laughs and shakes his head. You’re shoveling some heavy shit there, Kid. But I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. Whether he killed himself or someone else known or unknown did it for him, the Professor is dead and gone. You delivered his DVD to his widow and presumably you collected your fee, which I understand from Cat amounted to a rather large supply of hundred-dollar bills, right?

  Yeah. Right.

  So whether you believe the Professor’s story or not, your life will go on pretty much the same tomorrow as yesterday. You can live out there on your houseboat like Huckleberry Finn on his raft until your money runs out and then probably work for Cat and Dolores at the store until something better comes along. Sounds pretty nice to me, little buddy. I don’t see how your “human behavior” will be affected one way or the other by your not having scientific proof that the Professor’s story is true. You gotta believe, Kid! You just gotta believe.

  Not, the Kid says. ’Course, that’s easy for you to say, you’re a writer. For people like me it’s not so easy to believe things. Every time I believed someone or something I totally fucked up my life. So you can let that one go, man.

  Sorry, sorry, sorry, Kid.

  A FULL MOON ABOVE THE BAY SPLASHES WIDE stripes of cool glimmering light across the dark waters of the Appalachee estuary. There is a weak offshore breeze, and low waves lap the sides of the pier. The boats rise and fall slowly as if the sea were breathing. The Writer has rented the boat next to the Kid’s for one night only. He plans to structure his travel magazine article around a weeklong exploration by houseboat through the practically unmapped constantly shifting mazelike interior waterways of the Great Panzacola Swamp. He figures a single night spent aboard one of Cat’s boats at the pier ought to provide him with enough details to make his account believable. Sort of like African Queen. Only without the leeches, he tells the Kid.

  The Kid points out that he’ll be making the whole thing up and asks if that’s the way it is in the magazine article world, if what you read and what you think is true is actually mostly made up.

  The Writer explains that in a sense everything we read is mostly made up.

  Even the news?

  Even the news.

  Even on the Internet?

  Especially on the Internet.

  What about pictures and videos? Pictures don’t lie, man.

  Everything lies.

  If everything’s a lie, then nothing’s true.

  You got it, Kid. Sort of. It means you can never really know the truth of anything.

  Where’d you learn this? In college?

  Yeah. Brown.

  What the fuck’s a Brown?

  Where I went to college.

  They’re sitting in deck chairs at the stern of their respective houseboats, side by side and only a few feet apart. Einstein is perched atop the Kid’s cabin like a lookout and as if to amuse himself every now and then mumbles, Land ho, and Annie sleeps curled like a comma at the Kid’s feet. When the Kid returned earlier from Calusa both creatures seemed happy and relieved and the Kid’s chest and throat filled with thick emotion and he felt himself almost start to cry but quickly got hold of himself and knocked his feelings back and was okay again.

  But then when he went into the store for ice and more beer Dolores too and even Cat seemed oddly happy and relieved to see him—odd to the Kid since they know he’s a convicted sex offender but don’t yet know the exact nature of his crime when it could be anything from child abuse and rape to exposing his dick in public—a thing he wouldn’t be caught dead doing—and everything in between, the kinds of things that he would do and a few that he actually did and that lots of more or less sexually normal people would do too if given the chance. And again his emotions almost welled over.

  What’s going on? he wondered. Am I losing it or are they?

  Dolores actually hugged him and Cat didn’t charge for the ice. They knew only that he and the Writer had driven into the city so the Kid could deliver a message to the widow from his friend the dead Professor since he was probably the last one to see the Professor while he was still alive—that was all he told them and what he instructed the Writer to say—and they were impressed by his kindness and loyalty to his strange friend. They were closing up the store, planning to barbecue ribs for supper and Dolores asked the Kid if he’d like to join them but he just shook his head no and grabbed the beer and ice and backed out the door, turned and headed quickly for his boat. Their trust and seeming affection for him was scaring him. It was a lot like Annie’s and Einstein’s trust and affection but Annie and Einstein are innocent animals and to make animals and even reptiles respect and like you all you’ve got to do is first do no harm and second make sure they have enough to eat and a safe place out of the rain. It isn’t all that clear on the other hand if you’re a human yourself what makes humans trust and respect you.

  The Kid cracks open his second can of beer and says to the Writer, If everything’s a lie and nothing’s true like you said, then it doesn’t matter if the Professor’s story is bullshit, right? Is that what you’re saying?

  What you believe matters, however. It’s all anyone has to act on. And since what you do is who you are, your actions define you. If you don’t believe anything is true simply because you can’t logically prove what’s
true, you won’t do anything. You won’t be anything. You’ll end up spending your life in a rocking chair looking out at the horizon waiting for an answer that never comes. You might as well be dead. It’s an old philosophical problem.

  Then I got an old philosophical problem, the Kid says.

  Tell.

  It’s sort of about the money, he begins. My fee. Leaving out the numbers the Kid admits that he received a very large amount of money from the Professor for delivering the DVD to his widow, money he has no trouble keeping on account of the risk he was taking. But that’s only if the Professor’s story is true. If it is he can in good conscience keep the money and stay on the houseboat for a long time, maybe cut a deal with Cat to rent it for a year or more and live like a regular Huckleberry. But if the Professor’s story isn’t true and he drowned himself in the canal because the Shyster or somebody else gave evidence to the cops that the Professor was actually this guy Doctor Hoo and was into kiddie porn and sexually abusing little kids then the Kid has let himself be drawn into a chomo conspiracy of lies. If that is the case he should give the money back—what’s left of it which is almost all of it. Besides with her husband officially a suicide and no insurance and two kids the Wife could probably use the money.

  Well, you can take that out of the equation, Kid. Gloria doesn’t need the money. Your late friend was a very successful player on the commodities exchange for years and apparently he got into gold early.

  How do you know that?

  I asked and she told. You don’t have to worry about Gloria, Kid.

  I guess that’s good.

  You’re trying to think logically about this, but you’re being way too sloppy. Not that it would help if you were rigorous. Anyhow, let me show you the limits of logic. First, forget good and bad. Forget all about ’em. And forget the money, even. The Writer tells the Kid to remove everything from the equation except considerations of pure logic.