The Forgetting Time: A Novel

by Sharon Guskin

  They all watched him. Noah, subdued, stood between Denise and Janie, holding Janie’s hand. Charlie had an arm around his mother’s shoulder.

  Of course, no amount of data could convince someone who wasn’t open to being convinced. People came up with the answers they wanted. Always did. Always would. Anderson had tried to guard against this in his own work, hired researchers to check and recheck his data and colleagues to review his articles, urging the highest standards of skepticism, but it was inevitable there would be some bias. His colleagues were his colleagues; they had wanted to trust him. He had believed for so long that if he rid his work of even the slightest tinge of subjectivity it was only a matter of time before his data was accepted; it was part of the battle he’d been fighting, only now it was late morning and the air was warm and the scent of the soil was rich and fresh and he felt the fight beginning to lift out of him. Let people believe what they wanted to believe.

  Detective Ludden, for instance: the answer that made the most sense to Detective Ludden was ESP. It never ceased to amaze Anderson. Here was this rational professional man with his razor-sharp intellect and world-weary outlook, grasping at some idea of Noah’s super extrasensory perception as inherently more likely than that some fragment of Tommy’s consciousness might continue in some fashion after his death. A samosa vendor on the streets of New Delhi, a taxi driver in Bangkok, would laugh themselves silly at such naïveté. But psychic powers were a phenomenon the police departments in America had at least had some experience with—they had all heard stories of clues being generated this way; some had even employed psychics themselves from time to time. So little Noah Zimmerman was an amazingly powerful psychic intuiting the last moments of Tommy Crawford’s life. Whatever floats your boat, Detective.

  And he had to admit, once he had made his peace with that aspect of the case, the detective was surprisingly game. Before they had even positively identified the remains, he had interviewed Noah. Taken careful notes and used them to fill in the blanks, to elicit a more comprehensive confession, not that the killer was holding back. But the detective wanted the facts presented as fully and clearly as possible, Anderson understood this, he wanted to know what happened, and isn’t that what we all want?

  Everything squared, more or less, with the evidence. The bones, the bullet-shattered ribs.

  The father wanted the killer dead, but the mother felt that there wasn’t much point in that. And the prosecutors had taken the death penalty off the table, since he had confessed, and had been a young teenager when the crime had occurred. And, after all, he may as well work through his guilt in this life. No point in bleeding it on into the next. So Anderson had agreed with Denise on the uselessness of the death penalty, although she still refused to use the word reincarnation.

  Tommy’s spirit, that’s how she put it.

  Whatever floats your boat, my friend. Whatever floats your boat.

  * * *

  He had been thinking more seriously about karma lately. He had never focused on it in his work—it was hard enough to find verification that consciousness continued, without getting mixed up in the complexity of ethical ramifications across time—but occasionally he had run searches of the data, trying to see if there was a connection between the kinds of lives people led and their next lives. There was nothing conclusive, although a small fraction of those in peaceful or affluent conditions remembered previous lives in which they’d meditated or behaved in a saintly way. He’d had his own thoughts lately, though, that ignorance and fear and anger, like trauma, could perhaps be transferred from one life to the next, and that it might take multiple lifetimes to overcome them. And if anger and fear could persist—then also, of course, stronger emotions could as well, such as love. Was that what drew some people back to reincarnate within their own families? Was that what caused some children to remember their past connections? And if so, then perhaps this phenomenon, these children’s memories he had studied so carefully, was not against the laws of nature, after all. Perhaps it was the foundational law of nature that they were proving, what he’d been documenting and analyzing for over thirty years without knowing it: the force of love. He shook his head. His brain was going soft, maybe.

  Or maybe not. He’d kept so many of these questions at bay all these years, and now they whirled around him, touching him with something like awe, on their way to someplace else.

  Thirty-Eight

  Denise would never get over it. She knew that.

  Tommy’s bones at the bottom of the well.

  She and Henry had spent some time with those bones. When the police had finished testing and tagging and photographing them, the funeral parlor had given them time before the burial. She’d clutched them to her chest, run her fingertips along the smooth sockets that had held his shining eyes. There, but not there. Some part of her wanted those bones, wanted to put the femurs under her pillow at night when she went to sleep, to carry his skull around in her purse so she’d be with him always; she understood now how people went crazy and did crazy things. But another part of her knew that it wasn’t Tommy. He wasn’t there.

  Tommy’s bones, where Noah had said he’d drowned; she supposed that was proof, if that’s what you were looking for, but she wasn’t looking. Somehow it had ceased to matter to her.

  Yet how could it not matter whether this boy carried some little piece of Tommy deep inside of him? Some fragments of his love. Tommy’s love for her, surviving, inside of Noah. That was something, wasn’t it?

  But surely we all carried some little piece of each other inside of us. So what did it matter, whether the memories belonging to her boy existed inside this other one? Why were we all hoarding love, stockpiling it, when it was all around us, moving in and out of us like the air, if only we could feel it?

  She knew that most people couldn’t follow her where she’d gone. Would think, like Henry, that she’d gone off the deep end. How could anyone understand what she herself didn’t understand?

  Her heart—something had happened to it. That’s what she would say, if she thought he could listen. She’d known it had been cracked for good. Shattered beyond repair. But she hadn’t counted on it cracking open.

  She would never get over losing Tommy. She knew that.

  Neither could she go back to the person she’d been. There was no resistance left, nothing held back, after a lifetime of holding back. She could feel every stray breeze penetrating to her core. It was terrifying, but there was nothing to be done. Her heart was cracked open now and the whole world could come on through.

  * * *

  Henry pulled her aside after the burial. The others were standing by their cars in the heat, giving the two of them a moment to grieve alone. They stood by the turned earth and scattered flowers, that surreal yet familiar tableau which called out, Believe it. Denise squinted her eyes in the sun at all the graves running in orderly rows and the trees arching over them. Trees and stones and earth and sky, as far as she could see.

  Henry took her hand in his and she felt her skin jump with the relief of feeling his flesh against hers again. He squeezed her fingers and said, “I’m not coming to the house.” Everyone was gathering at her house for the reception after the funeral. She had hired a caterer. She felt too overwhelmed at the moment to handle Henry’s resistance. He had to come.

  “Just for a little while, Henry. Please.”

  He was holding her hand, but he was glowering. “I can’t stand to be in the same room with those people.”

  She knew which people he meant. “They won’t bother you. It doesn’t matter, Henry.”

  He let go of her hand. “What do you mean, ‘It doesn’t matter’?” He raised his voice. “And it doesn’t matter that they’re crazy, that doesn’t matter, either, I suppose?”

  She had hoped that if he could spend a few moments with Noah, it might be good for both of them: Henry might see what was there to be seen and take it whatever way he wished. And she knew Henry’s coldness hurt Noah. During the fun
eral service she’d noticed the boy glancing up at him with wounded eyes.

  “It might help you, to talk to him. And I think it would help the child.…”

  “I cannot believe that you, of all people, Denise…” Henry’s voice was raspy. He bent his head down, and she wanted to touch that familiar haze of black and gray she knew so well, but stopped herself. His eyes, when he looked up again, were beseeching. “I know it’s hard, it’s brutal,” he said. “But I never thought you’d fall for something like this. Maybe I should’ve known, the way you thought Tommy’d still come back to us. And now you found yourself a way to continue to believe that, didn’t you? In the face of everything.”

  “You think it’s all a fantasy.”

  “I think you’re doing everything you can to believe Tommy is still alive. You think I don’t want that, too? You think I don’t look for him everywhere, you think that I haven’t been seeing my son in every child’s face in a crowd? But we need to hang on to reality.”

  Reality. The word stung her like a slap. “You think I don’t know Tommy’s dead? We’re standing at my son’s grave. I know he’s dead. I know he’s not coming back.”

  “Do you?”

  “Not as Tommy. But—” She groped for the words. “There’s some piece of him here. Oh, Henry. I don’t know how to say it, and even if I did you wouldn’t believe me. But, I swear, if you spent some time with him. The doctor—”

  Henry snorted.

  “Dr. Anderson says the boy can score baseball games. Nobody taught him that. You taught him that, Henry.”

  Henry was shaking his head.

  “Otherwise how could he know something like that, without being taught?” It was not the argument she meant to have, but the real argument wasn’t made up of facts, no matter how many Dr. Anderson collected. The facts were important, she knew that, but she also knew no long list of traits or statements was going to sway this man. She didn’t know what would.

  “I don’t know,” Henry said. She could tell from the heaviness in his voice that she was losing him, that his stamina for the conversation was running out. If only she could find the right words. She felt keenly that her marriage, what was left of it, was hanging in the balance.

  Henry turned to her, the lines of his face sagging, as if grief had increased the pull of gravity. “I know my son is dead. I know it because I’ve held his bones in my hands. And I know it in my soul, if there is such a thing, which I highly doubt. To be honest, Denise, I’m disappointed in you. You always were one of the most reasonable people I knew. And now you’re leaving me alone with it. Our son is dead, and you’re leaving me alone with it to go listen to some crazy little white boy.”

  “He’s not crazy. If you could only—”

  “You’re killing me with this shit. You know that? You’re murdering me right here where I’m standing. You’ve lost your damn mind.”

  She looked at the man who was still her husband. He was suffering, and she couldn’t help him. She was making it worse. She put her hand on his shoulder and felt his muscles tense beneath her fingers, the pain running from his body to hers like water finding a new vessel.

  “Maybe so.” Her thoughts were not her thoughts; that much was true.

  Henry’s eyes softened. Denise felt the relief rising in her chest.

  “We can get you some help, ’Nise.” He put his big arm around her waist. They were holding each other now, swaying slightly. “Makes sense with all this—” He motioned at the grave, the cemetery. “It’s understandable. I see that now. We’ll find you a new doctor, if necessary. I never did like that Ferguson.”

  A breeze took up, whipped around them. She leaned back into her husband’s strong arms and let herself fall into that familiar comfort. She’d missed it. She’d missed him. The lilies on Tommy’s grave moved to and fro in the wind, as if they were shaking their heads. The too-sweet smell of flowers fought in her nostrils with the heavy smell of upturned earth. Underneath the earth, the box, the bones. Tommy’s bones. Not Tommy, though. He was everywhere, connected to everything, including the wind, including Noah. She didn’t know how that could be, but she couldn’t pretend otherwise. Not even for Henry. She released herself from his grasp and squatted down, letting some of the dirt fall through her fingers.

  “I’m sorry, Henry. I don’t want to leave you alone with it, I truly don’t. I miss him, too, every second of every day.” She scooped up another handful and let it trickle down, a dry rain beneath her fingers. She thought of Tommy’s face. She concentrated on his smile. She couldn’t look at Henry. “But Noah’s not crazy. He has some of Tommy in him. Some of Tommy’s memories, and some of his—love. For you, too—” she started to say, turning, but Henry’s wide, receding back was already moving away from her.

  Thirty-Nine

  Every funeral reception was different, Janie supposed. She hadn’t been to many of them. The Jews also sat shiva, a different sort of party, albeit with the same theme.

  And some people, like Tommy Crawford, had a wake. That event had taken place the night before, in a hushed, crowded room in the funeral home. She and Noah had lasted only a few moments in that room, staring at that shiny wooden box covered with flowers. The casket holding Tommy’s bones, the photograph of the child propped right next to it.

  Noah had stared at the picture. The smooth brown skin, the mischievous grin. “That’s me!” Noah had yelped. “That’s me!”

  She’d had to hurry him out of there. Heads were turning in their direction, muttering. She caught side of Tommy’s father glowering at them as she pulled him from the room and down the corridor and out into the night.

  That was a wake. But why did they call it that? Wake, like the rocking waters after a passing boat, the instability that followed some major event? Wake like that?

  Or wake, the imperative?

  Wake up, Janie.

  She speared some cubes of turkey with a toothpick and put them on a plate with some potato salad and a pickle for her and some cheese and pineapple for Noah, balancing the plate on her open palm. The room was filled with people she didn’t know wearing dark suits and dresses. People who had known Tommy. Everyone chatting, catching up. Tommy had been dead for years now, and the freshness of shock and sorrow had transformed, turned inward.

  A group of teenagers clustered together by the food table, awkward in their suits. They didn’t know what to do with their plates, either. They held them shakily in their hands, shoveling unwieldy spoonfuls of potato salad into their mouths.

  Denise passed by, calling out, Thanks for coming, thanks for coming. She was on fire. There were no other words for it. Janie would say it was probably grief if she had to call it something. But you couldn’t look away from her.

  The room seemed to slow. The clink of cutlery, the murmurs: over now, at rest. A river of sound flowing through the room. Noah was standing across the room from her, next to Charlie, the lizard on his shoulder, the big teen’s head angled downward. The sun sharp in the living room windows, glancing off Noah’s hair. A warm day, the heat glistening on their relaxed faces, a sickly sheen on the surface of the potato salad on Charlie’s plate.

  Noah talking to Charlie, telling Charlie something, one more thing she’d never know. A droplet in that ocean.

  Wake up, Janie.

  A line from an Emily Dickinson poem floated back to her.

  As Lightning to the Children eased

  With explanation kind

  The Truth must dazzle gradually

  Or every man be blind—

  The heat of the bodies in the room. Noah standing in the sunlight. There was nowhere to sit, the room was sliding before her, the walls shooting up into the sky—

  She squatted on the carpet. Her plate in her lap.

  So many strangers: old people hugging, shaking their heads. The glum, embarrassed teenagers. Anderson, standing by the wall, watching. Denise. Charlie. Noah.

  She was the only one here who hadn’t known Tommy, except for Anderson.

&
nbsp; And Noah, of course, who you really … couldn’t … count.

  The giggles came scrabbling up her throat like hungry mice. Up and out. She covered her face with her hands.

  But it was okay, actually, because she wasn’t really laughing. She was crying. She had the tears to prove it, right there on the Styrofoam plate, dripping onto the cheese squares. And that was okay at a funeral reception. Maybe preferable. Hopefully the people there thought she had known Tommy. Maybe they thought she was his piano teacher. She looked like a piano teacher. Didn’t she? Though she couldn’t play a note. Maybe she should learn. Noah could teach her the theme to The Pink Panther.…

  Her nose running against her fingers, the slickness of snot, the salty splash of tears.

  “You all right?”

  Denise stood there with a plate in each hand.

  She looked up. “I—”

  “Come with me.”

  * * *

  Denise’s bedroom was sunny. The curtains were pulled all the way back, and Janie had to shade her eyes from the glare. She sat on the bed. She was hiccupping, and her eyes were tearing. Denise brought her a box of tissues.

  “I could give you a pill, but it might knock you out.”

  “I think I’m already knocked out.”

  Denise nodded curtly. She seemed efficient now, a brisk nurse. “Do you want some ibuprofen?”

  It wasn’t what she needed, but she’d take it. “That’d be good.”

  She lay down on the bed and tried to quiet herself as Denise bustled around in the bathroom. Then she bolted to her feet.

  “Oh! Noah. I need to get back—”

  “Charlie’s looking after him.” She was back in the room with a pill in her hand and a glass of water in the other. “And that doctor is there.”

  “Yes, but—”