The Forgetting Time: A Novel

by Sharon Guskin

  Now this is what I mean, she thought to herself. Why think about that now? What was wrong with her?

  “My whole life, I thought, you die and you’re kaput,” Mr. Costello was saying. “You’re done and you’re done. Now, to be honest with you, I’m not always sure. I don’t believe in God or anything. Don’t get me wrong. I just don’t have too bad a feeling about it, I guess.”

  “Glad to hear it,” she said. She was still fussing with the oxygen cylinder. It didn’t need to be replaced yet, she decided. Maybe it would outlast him.

  * * *

  At four, after finishing the bed pans and turning Mr. Randolph and checking on Mrs. Rodriguez just because she liked to see the woman’s zonked-out little half-smile at various points during her day, she called Henry. She stood at the nurses’ station and heard the phone ring and ring and was about to hang up when his voice lurched into her ear.

  “H’lo? H’lo?”

  She didn’t say anything. She could hear familiar music in the background. Thelonious Monk, Pannonica. It hit her hard, at the knees. She could still hang up—

  “Denise? Is that you?”

  “It’s me.”

  He chuckled. “I’d know that silence anywhere.”

  “Well, then,” she said. And gave him more of it.

  “Charlie okay?”

  “Yes, he’s fine.” How many months had it been since they’d talked? She’d lost count.

  “Well, and how are you?”

  “I’m just fine, Henry. You?”

  “Ah, you know. They finally got rid of the principal with his head up his ass and now we got a new one, just as pigheaded. And don’t get me started on the budget. Don’t even have a room or a piano anymore, I go from room to room with a cart, like I’m selling doughnuts. Now how can you do anything with a cart?”

  “I don’t know.” She didn’t want to talk about teaching. A vision of the classroom came through to her anyway, the feeling of chalk powder on her fingers, the construction-paper-covered walls. Not that anyone used chalk anymore. At Charlie’s high school it was all smart boards.

  “I got them all singing a capella. And let me tell you, a second grade singing a cappella is a sorry thing. This land is your land…” He sang, humorously off-key, the sound lingering in her silence. He’s trying, she thought. He really is.

  “What’s Charlie up to, then?”

  “Still nuts about that band of his. Practices all the time.”

  “Practicing, hmm? He any good?”

  “I don’t know.” She thought about it. “Maybe.”

  “God help him, then.”

  “Oh, so you’re a religious man, now?”

  “Drummer needs all the help he can get.”

  They laughed, a tinge of the old complicity that made her throat ache.

  “You could call him up, you know. Hear for yourself. I know he misses you. He won’t say it, but he does.”

  “Won’t say it, huh.”

  She could feel the anger beginning to burn in him.

  “He’s just private. A teenager. That’s all. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “Henry.”

  “Just tell me this. Do you ever say my name in that house? Do you ever think of me at all? Or is it like I’ve never even lived there? Because that’s how it feels to me.”

  “Of course we talk about you, all the time,” she lied. “It’s been five years, Henry, I think we both need to—”

  “Five years is nothing. Five years is shit.”

  She winced. He was speaking that way to provoke her. She must not be provoked.

  “All right. Well, on that note, then, I’m going to—”

  “Denise? You know what day it is?”

  She said nothing.

  “That’s why you called me, isn’t it? To talk about Tommy?”

  The name caught her. She couldn’t breathe for a moment.

  “No,” she said.

  “I see him all the time. You know? In my dreams.”

  “Listen, Henry, I’m going to get off the phone now.” But she stood there, holding on to it.

  “He’s standing at the edge of the bed, looking at me. You know. With that look he had. Like he wants you to help him but he’s never gonna ask.”

  She was silent. This was why they hadn’t made it: she moved and kept on moving, as if they could find Tommy that way and only that way, and he stayed stock-still, head bowed, letting it break over him again and again.

  “You still think Tommy’s coming back someday? You don’t think that, do you? Denise?”

  His voice had an urgency that reached all the way down … a voice that was a hand burrowing inside her, winding her guts around and around like a skein of yarn. She was aware suddenly that the name had never stopped repeating itself since she’d woken up with it that morning. Had been going on in the background all through the day. She was going to be sick. Going to be sick right now if she didn’t get off the phone. Her hands started to shake.

  “Denise?”

  She readied herself to say something. But there was nothing to say.

  She hung up the phone.

  She was going to throw up.

  No. She wasn’t. (For one thing, she hadn’t eaten anything all day.)

  Okay, then. She needed a pill.

  No. She didn’t.

  She closed her eyes and counted to ten.

  Then to twenty.

  * * *

  She always went the long way home, taking the highway to the exit and then doubling back, but today she got in the car and without telling herself what she was doing she drove out on the main road and turned right at the light. She drove straight through town, past the strip of doctors’ offices, the dollar store and the liquor store and the Taco Bell, past the fire station and the boarded-up department store, heading out toward the cornfields where the turnoff to their house was, and McKinley.

  McKinley Elementary was a low, concrete box pierced with vertical slits; it was built in the sixties, when they didn’t believe in windows, and had that grim, prison aspect you found sometimes in churches and schools from that era. Inside had been a different story, the halls plastered with pictures and stories, the rooms vibrating with the bustling life force of young children being educated.

  She had avoided this building for years, like a face that you tried to put out of your mind, and yet there it was, there it had always been, a mere five minutes from their house, and she realized now that during her days at the nursing home there was a part of her that knew what was happening, at every moment, at the school: that at 8:45 the bells were ringing and students were lining up for class; and at 12:40 they were eating lunch; and at 1:10 they had recess. Eleven years she’d taught there and its rhythms were ingrained in her bones.

  She parked opposite the school, two doors down from the Sawyers’ house, where Tommy used to go after school some days to play video games with Dylan. The video games at the Sawyers’, she remembered now, were more violent than the ones she had let him play, and there had been some disagreements about that. She and Henry had argued about whether they should say something to Brenda Sawyer, or rather, she had gone back and forth, her disgust with the violent games battling with her natural reticence about telling other people how to raise their children, until Henry got sick of the whole issue and vowed to call Brenda up and tell her that there was no way any son of his was shooting anybody, even if it was only a game.

  And in the end—in the end they had not needed to resolve this issue. They didn’t get the chance to figure it out, or to discover what kind of parents they would be to Tommy at nine and a half, or eleven, or fifteen. The Sawyers had been part of the crowd in those first few weeks plastering posters of Tommy all over Greene County, delivering doughnuts and coffee to the police officers with a subdued excitement, an intensity of purpose that she was initially grateful for but, as the days passed, couldn’t help but resent. And Brenda and Dylan had been among the few who came calling
a month after Tommy had disappeared, toting along a casserole and some flowers, as if they couldn’t decide what to bring. She’d watched them from the bedroom window, the mother and son standing side by side on the doorstep with nervous faces, saw their bodies sag in relief when they realized that no one was going to let them in. They left the casserole and the flowers on the stoop, and when they had gone she tossed the flowers and scraped the disgusting noodley thing the woman had made into the garbage, washed and scrubbed out the glass pan, and had Henry deliver it back to them that very evening so she could be rid of them forever.

  And there was the Sawyers’ gray house with the basketball hoop, same as ever, and there was McKinley. There were lights on in the office. Too late for afterschool and there weren’t enough cars to suggest a meeting; probably it was the custodial staff. Or Dr. Ramos was working late.

  If he was still the principal. Probably he had moved on. He had always been an ambitious man.

  The light went off. She should go. But she sat in the car until the robust figure of Roberto Ramos exited the building, heading for his car in the parking lot. The same Subaru. He reached into his pocket, fumbling for his keys, and then out of some instinct he looked up and saw her car across the street. They looked at each other across that distance, a tall figure in a black coat; a battered minivan. She shivered in the cold air of the car, rubbing her arms. Maybe he’d just wave, get in his car, and go on. She hoped that was what he’d do.

  And yet there he was, knocking on the window. She paused a millisecond and then unlocked the door. He slid in beside her in a rush of air and body heat, so vivid with his smooth pink cheeks and black hair and red scarf that it hurt her eyes to look at him. It was a mistake to have come here. So many mistakes today. She focused her attention on the steering wheel.

  “Denise. It’s so good to see you.”

  “I was just passing by on my way home. I work over at the Oxford Home now, you know, on Crescent Avenue.”

  “I’d heard that.”

  He rubbed his hands together. He was wearing winter gloves. “Some spring, huh. Hard to believe it’s April.”

  “Yes.”

  “And how’re they treating you over at the home?”

  “Oh, fine, thanks. They’re good people, most of ’em, anyway.

  “Glad to hear that. It’s so cold in here, can you—?”

  She turned on the car. The heater whirred to life.

  They sat there, warming up. “That’s better. Isn’t it?”

  She nodded.

  “We’ve missed you, you know. I’ve missed you. Best first grade teacher we’ve ever had.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  He put his gloved hand on top of her bare one and she let him, the muffled warmth of his flesh working its way slowly through the leather. Her principal; they’d worked well together for years. Just over six years ago now. No time at all, and yet she’d lived a hundred thousand lifetimes in between.

  They had never talked about what had happened between them, and she’d been grateful for that. And yet it was one of the few memories she came back to—that she could stand coming back to—a half hour of time, six years ago, after the Valentine’s Dance at the school. Eight months after Tommy had gone missing.

  Those were the months, early on, when she thought maybe she could pick up where she left off, that it would be easier to go on with the life she’d had, taking care of Charlie, teaching her classes. She still checked findTommynow.com every night, of course, and put up fresh flyers in the library when the old ones became encroached upon, Tommy’s chin covered by someone else’s yoga lessons or baby and me classes. She no longer threw the offending flyers in the trash but simply moved them aside, tacking them a good few inches away from her boy’s sweet face, and got herself out of there.

  Dr. Ferguson thought going back to work might not be the worst thing for her—anything to ground her. The somberness never entirely left the other teachers’ faces when they looked at her—laughter stopped when she entered the faculty room, though this had always been the case, actually. She was never sure why. Maybe they thought she was too proper for the kinds of jokes they told, when at one time she would have enjoyed hearing them. The parents, too, were uncomfortable with her, but she didn’t mind. She was a robot, not a woman, but no one needed to know that. The kids were a little scared of the woman whose son went missing, and they knew something wasn’t right with her, but they couldn’t put it into words.

  She was fine. Especially when there was work to do. That’s why she had volunteered to chaperone the Valentine’s Day Dance, and why she’d stayed late, cleaning up.

  They’d been the last two left. Dr. Ramos had told the other teachers to go—she was the only one who resisted. They worked silently, swiping down the streamers like candy-colored cobwebs, sweeping the cupcake crumbs and the sparkles and paper hearts from the floor. “You really should go home, Denise,” he’d said after a while. “I’ll finish up here. I’m sure your husband’s waiting for you.”

  “No,” she said. She didn’t really want to leave. She had nothing to do at home.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I just meant, Henry’s away on tour and Charlie’s on an overnight with his grandma. Why don’t you go, maybe you can pick up some flowers for your wife—”

  “Cheryl and I are separated.” He sat down heavily on the bleachers and tugged his hair with his hands. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  “I didn’t realize. I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too. It just happened.” His eyes watered suddenly. “Damn it all. I wasn’t going to do this. I’m so sorry, Denise. I’m such an ass.”

  He had never called her Denise before. It was always Mrs. Crawford. She sat down next to him.

  “What are you sorry for?”

  “For sitting here feeling sorry for myself when you—”

  “Don’t do that.” She cut him off fast. “You can’t work it out with your wife?”

  “She doesn’t want to. I think there’s—” He grimaced quickly. “Someone else.” He shrugged, his eyes reddening. He pulled a flask from his jacket pocket and took a sip, shook his head. “Damn. I’m sorr—”

  “Can I have some of that?”

  “What?” He glanced at her, startled, and for the first time looked her in the eyes. “Of course.”

  She gripped the flask, took a sip, and then another. The liquor burned her lips, smooth and rough at the same time.

  “What is that?”

  He smiled at her reaction.

  “Very good whiskey. You like?”

  “I—it’s interesting.”

  “Yes.”

  They sat there drinking for a while, the warmth of the whiskey sloshing through her. The room was silent and too bright, glittery piles of candy hearts and crushed carnations heaped here and there on the shiny wooden floor. A limp forest of half-cleared red streamers swayed from the ceiling. A too-familiar room enmeshed in strangeness. She took another sip and licked her lips. “It’s good.”

  “Yes.”

  She watched a pink balloon become unmoored from the ceiling and drift slowly down.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” he murmured. “Keep on going like you do. You’re an amazing woman.”

  “No.” She was weary of these sorts of conversations. As if she could choose what she could bear. She put her hand on his arm. Her vision was pleasantly blurry.

  “You’re a good man, and she’s a stupid woman. Any woman should be happy to have you.”

  There were other things she meant to say that she couldn’t. Things that had to do with the way Henry was gone for weeks at a time now, the way he sounded on the phone when she called him on the road, a faraway quality in his voice as if wherever he was had too strong a pull on him for him to try to be there with her for even a few seconds. And she home with Charlie, night after night trying to be a mother to him, giving him dinner and a bath and books before bed when she was all emptiness inside. She didn’t let her
self say these things out loud, but maybe Roberto heard them anyway. He turned to her with a question on his face and she kissed him, or let him kiss her, or in any event their lips were pressed together and she felt her phantom heart unspool, turning rapidly round and round until there was nothing of it left … the old Denise would never do this, would never lie on the hard metal bleachers and kiss a man with such force she felt it throughout her whole body. She felt the nothingness inside her filling up with the stale air of the gym, the smell of basketballs and sweat and plastic mats and carnations and the taste of the whiskey, desire rising and filling every empty crevice, like smoke.

  She didn’t know what instinct made her pull back a little, placing her two hands against his chest with the tiniest bit of force, the tiniest push that she herself did not want or mean but which was enough to cause him to reel back, mortified, and flee the room, scattering apologies in his wake. It must have been the mother in her, still alive, even then, drawing her back from the oblivion she craved so very much. She stayed there in the gym for over an hour afterward, sweeping up, rubbing the carnation’s ragged, slippery petals against her burning lips.

  It wasn’t something she could do again. The whiskey or the man. Not when the pull was so strong and Charlie still so young. She called in sick the next day and the day after that and then she didn’t come back to the school anymore. She didn’t answer any of Roberto’s calls or messages. She submitted her paperwork and she stayed home. No one else questioned her about it; it was as if they’d been expecting it all along.

  “If you ever wanted to come back,” Roberto was saying now, fingering the edges of the glove compartment like a safe he might decide to crack, “we could find something—we could use another reading specialist.”