The Forgetting Time: A Novel

by Sharon Guskin

  Or he could go back to Asia. It’d feel good to be on Asian soil again. And what was stopping him? Nothing. He could go now if he liked. He could take the next flight out.

  Thailand. The dense, humid air, the chaos of its streets.

  Why not go? He felt the excitement beginning to pulse through him as he thought about it. He could visit the enormous Reclining Buddha, with its 108 auspicious signs carved in mother-of-pearl on the soles of his feet. He could start to meditate. He’d always been too nervous that a spiritual practice might undermine or influence his scientific objectivity, but that was irrelevant now. And if the Tibetans were right, then meditation could lead to a more peaceful death, which might positively influence his next life (though his own data was inconclusive on that score).

  Maybe he’d even stop at a beach. The Phi Phi islands were supposed to be something to see. White sand like silk between your toes, blue water clear as glass. The present moment. Surrendering to that. He’d heard you could take a boat ride and see the strange limestone outcroppings rising out of the mist like something in a Chinese scroll painting: those scenes of painted mountains twisting up into the coiled, unseen sky, while one lone human lingered in a boat down below, so tiny as to be almost invisible.

  He’d have to buy a bathing suit. He couldn’t wait.

  Forty-Four

  Janie leaned her head against the taxicab window, her arm around her dozing son, taking in the familiar sights. There was the broad expanse of Eastern Parkway, its apartment buildings and yeshivas and stately trees; the Met Foods where she bought groceries, and the dark swath of Prospect Park. The sameness surprised her, as if she had expected to find the world at home transformed. They passed the diner in which she’d met Anderson for the first time, where the waitress had YOLO tattooed across the back of her shoulders.

  You Only Live Once. That’s what people said, as if life really mattered because it happened only one time. But what if it was the other way around? What if what you did mattered more because life happened again and again, consequences unfolding across centuries and continents? What if you had chances upon chances to love the people you loved, to fix what you screwed up, to get it right?

  They were outside her brownstone now. The gas lamp flickered in the night like a friend happy to see her. She paid the driver and hauled her heavy, sleeping boy in her arms and out of the cab, feeling stung with gratitude that they were home, and lived on the ground floor.

  In their apartment, Janie carried Noah straight into the bedroom and put him down on his bed without turning the lights on. She curled up beside him, facing him in the narrow bed, and pulled the comforter over them both. He stirred and rubbed his eyes, yawning.

  “Hey, we’re home.” He sighed, and nestled up against her. He threw his foot over her hip, placed his forehead against hers. He put his hand on her shoulder in the dark.

  “What part of the body is this?” he whispered.

  “That’s my shoulder.”

  “This?”

  “That’s my neck.”

  “And this is your noggin, noggin, noggin.…”

  “Yes.”

  “Mmmm.”

  Silence. Then a sound from deep beneath the bedcovers. A sleepy grin. “I farted.”

  And, like that, he was asleep again.

  Janie slowly got out of the bed. She moved quietly across the room and paused in the doorway.

  Noah shifted; he was on his back, now, sleeping under the stars. They glowed above him, all the man-made constellations, that map that was all most of us could handle of the universe that went on and on without end. Years ago, she had placed the plastic decals up there, creating Noah’s own big dipper, his own Orion, thinking that for the rest of his life when he saw the stars he’d feel at home. She tried to remember herself as she had been then, but she couldn’t go back, any more than she could mistake the pasted-up stars for the real.

  Noah’s lips slid upward, as if he was having a very pleasant dream.

  She stood in the doorway for a long time and watched him sleep.

  Epilogue

  Nothing about the trip to New York was what Denise had expected.

  For instance, the fact that Henry decided to come with her: that had floored her.

  You never knew what you’d get lately with Henry. There were days when he woke up whistling “Straight No Chaser” and made blueberry pancakes on Sunday mornings for Charlie and her. Other times he stayed up all night, drinking beer in the living room, the TV on loud on any dumb show, and if she got up to check on him or ask him to turn it down, he growled at her to go back to sleep. She always made an effort the next morning to wake early and get herself together and go over her lesson plans for the day, because she knew it would take a while, pushing him out of bed and making sure he got himself dressed and on his way. Sometimes it felt like she had two surly teenagers in the house. It was amazing the three of them ever got to school on time.

  “This is me now. You want me, fine, this is what you get. You don’t, that’s fine, too,” he’d said when he offered to move back home. His face was hard and he’d shrugged as he said it, as if it didn’t matter much to him either way, but she’d seen right through him, as if he were one of her own children, saw plain as anything how much he wanted her to take him back. And how much she wanted it, too.

  She was happy to have him back. He had that heaviness in him from Tommy’s death, she didn’t expect that would ever go away, but he could savor a plate of good food, and she found herself loving again the simple pleasure of cooking, putting a little of this in with some of that and having it come out of the oven steaming, the whole house smelling delicious, and then eating every bite of it. “You’re putting meat on your bones again,” that’s what Henry kept saying, poking her in the new soft layer over her ribs. And it was good for Charlie. That was clear. The boy was a clown, always had been, and she could see now how much artfulness there was in it. There was nothing she liked better at the end of a long day than seeing Henry throw his head back and send that belly laugh of his out over the dinner table after Charlie had said something funny, and the flush of pleasure stealing over Charlie’s face as he ducked his head shyly, taking it in. Sometimes after dinner they played together in the garage, Charlie on drums and Henry on bass, the sounds vibrating through the walls and out into the neighborhood, drowning out even the neighbor’s dog, and she felt that everything was probably going to be all right.

  They didn’t talk about Noah. Neither of them wanted that fight; there was no winning it and no end to it. When spring rolled around and the idea of visiting Noah intruded into her thoughts as she went about her day, she’d pushed it aside at first, afraid to upset the new and delicate balance at home. She’d sent Noah a gift instead, on Tommy’s birthday, though she hadn’t mentioned that in the card.

  She had talked to Noah a few times on the phone those first few months, but it was usually a disaster; whether that was due to the boy’s youth and natural impatience with the telephone or the oddness of the circumstances, she wasn’t sure. He’d been eager to talk to her for the first five seconds, often pestering his mother to make the call. Yet he answered her questions about kindergarten in a shy, monosyllabic way and (after reviving briefly to ask about Horntail) was clearly relieved to get off the phone a few moments later. It always took her the rest of the afternoon to recover from the intense feelings that followed. After a while, the calls had tapered off.

  By summer she was determined to see Noah in person. She thought she could handle it now. Janie had agreed to it, though she sounded cautious: “He doesn’t really talk about Tommy very much,” she’d said, and Denise thought that was just as well.

  She booked the ticket before telling Henry. Charlie had a job at the Stop & Shop bagging groceries and another as a lifeguard at the pool, so he couldn’t come. When she told Henry she was going to New York to see Noah, he stood there wincing at the name, and she wondered if the risk was too great.

  “I’ll go with you
, then,” he’d said at last, as if he’d suddenly become somebody else’s husband. “If that’s all right? Got a couple old friends I want to look up.”

  He had spent a few years there, when he was young and a promising bass player.

  She let him come. She didn’t ask any questions. She didn’t want to know, maybe, what his real motives were, and she wanted his company. She had never been to New York.

  Another thing she hadn’t expected: to have so much fun with him.

  Their first night in the city they went to the Blue Note and got a seat right by the stage. They drank glowing blue drinks and listened to Henry’s old friend Lou tearing it up with his sax and then afterward they went out somewhere else with the band, laughing and drinking and eating cheap, good food ’til the early morning, listening to the musicians’ easy banter and their stories about staying in somebody’s cousin’s house on the road with the smell of chitlins blasting from the kitchen, their tales of tightwad band leaders and musicians who stumbled out of the bathroom with their noses dusted white and their pants down, and that time Lou’s Seattle girlfriend flew out to see him play in San Francisco and ran into both his Oakland and Los Angeles girlfriends that same night.

  Back at the hotel she and Henry hungered for each other like the old days. The force of it surprised her. It was nice to find out that was still possible, after everything that had happened.

  She hadn’t expected Henry to come with her to Janie’s apartment the next day, or that Janie’s apartment would be so small and old-fashioned—she’d imagined a big modern loft, like those New York apartments on television, not this quaint place with its ornate woodwork like something in her mother’s house.

  It was a hot day. When the two of them straggled in, Janie took one look at them and said, “Let me get you some water. Or would you like ice coffee?”

  Denise shook her head. “Wish I could. If I drank coffee now, I’d be up ’til dawn.”

  While Janie went to get their drinks, Denise stepped into the living room, where Noah was.

  He was almost six, that tender age when the baby plumpness starts to melt away from children’s bodies and you can see, in their newly angular faces, the people they might become. He was absorbed in a book, sitting cross-legged on the couch, his hair bright and wild on his head. (Why didn’t she ever take that boy in for a haircut?) He didn’t seem to notice them.

  “Noah, look who’s here,” Janie said when she came back with the waters, and he looked up.

  Denise stood in the middle of the room, clutching the gift she’d brought, feeling her mouth go dry as Noah met her gaze with cheerful, unrecognizing eyes.

  She hadn’t known until that moment how deeply she had cared. She hadn’t expected that at all.

  “This is your Aunt Denise, don’t you remember?” Janie said, stepping forward.

  “Oh. Hi, Aunt Denise.” He smiled politely, accepting her present and her presence in his life the way a child did, not questioning where she’d come from.

  She sat down and cradled the icy water in her two hands as somewhere far away from her Henry introduced himself to Noah, and the child ripped the wrapping from the box in two quick strokes. Inside was Tommy’s old baseball glove.

  He pulled it out with a cry—“Hey, a new glove!”—and she took pleasure and pain in his open, uncomplicated glee.

  * * *

  They walked to the park. It was a bright day, the air kicking with a bit of wind.

  “So. I’ve got one question for you,” Henry said to Noah, as they walked. He turned to the boy with his gravest expression.

  “Yeah?” Noah looked up worriedly.

  “Mets or Yankees?”

  “Mets, all the way!” Noah said.

  Henry grinned. “That’s what I wanna hear!” He high-fived the boy. “What do you think about Grandy? Think he can bring it?”

  That was all it took, apparently. They talked animatedly about baseball for the rest of the way to the park while Janie and Denise walked quietly side by side. Denise was mute with disappointment.

  “I’m sorry,” Janie said, her voice low. “I didn’t know what he would do when he saw you. He doesn’t talk about it anymore, but I didn’t know.… I guess he’s just Noah now.”

  They walked on a bit in silence.

  “He still likes the things he likes, though,” she continued. “Lizards and baseball and new things, too. You should see what he can make out of Legos. These beautiful buildings.”

  “He’s like his mom,” Denise said at last.

  Janie blushed, shrugged. “He’s happy.”

  They got to the park and found an open stretch, a meadow. An elderly couple walked by arm in arm. A large Hasidic family moved down a path, corralling their children, keeping them from veering too close to the pond at the meadow’s edge. People were feeding the ducks, a frenzy of beaks and crumbs. A girl stood in the grass twirling a Hula-Hoop around and around like someone from another time.

  Janie and Denise settled on a blanket under the protective limbs of a large tree and took out containers of oily mozzarella balls and hummus, grapes and carrots and pita chips, weighing down the napkins with the thermoses so they didn’t fly away. They had brought a baseball with them and the glove, and while they set up the picnic Henry and Noah crossed over into the open grass and tossed the baseball back and forth, Henry catching the ball in his bare hand, like he used to do.

  Denise watched them. Noah was happy. Denise could see that. It was nice to see him happy, like any child. It was for the best that he had forgotten her, Denise knew that, though knowing didn’t make it hurt any less. She was grateful that nature had righted itself but couldn’t shake off the feeling that something had been taken away from her that might have been precious, if only she’d been able to find a way to make it so.

  She leaned back on her elbows under the fluttering green leaves. Henry threw the ball in a steady, relaxed rhythm, his face as friendly and neutral as Noah’s. She realized what she had already known: Henry didn’t believe any more than he ever had but was doing this for her. Because he loved her. The sound of that love was in the thwack of the ball in Tommy’s old mitt, and the sound of her love—for Henry and Tommy and Charlie and Noah—was in the clicking of the wind in the leaves overhead, all of it making a web of sound that caught her and held her in this moment, right here, right now.

  She sat back and watched Henry and Noah toss the ball back and forth, back and forth, like fathers and sons and men and boys anywhere, anytime.

  “Now let’s see you try a pop-up,” Henry said, and he threw the ball straight up into the sky.

  * * *

  Janie wrote to Anderson. She thought it might be useful for him to keep track of what was happening with Noah, in case they did a new edition of his book. Now that normality reigned in her land in all its hectic glory, she liked to remind herself sometimes of where they had been. She and Jerry hadn’t been friends, but they had shared a deeper connection: they were allies. She wrote about Denise and Henry’s visit, giving him all the pertinent data: how much Noah had enjoyed it without recognizing either one of them. She sent the e-mail, and then another one, but he didn’t write her back.

  She hoped he was all right. She had seen him only once, when he had stopped by to visit and give her a copy of his book, a few months before he left the country again for good. The reviews of his book had been mixed; some critics had responded to his research by attacking him playfully, as if it was all a misunderstood game of telephone or fraudulence, nothing to take seriously; and others had been interested in his findings but hadn’t known what to make of them. Anderson hadn’t seemed to care, though. He’d been much quieter, and also somehow looser, as if some tight string had been snapped. He was wearing a white shirt with pockets, the kind of thing island people wore. She had mentioned that and he had actually laughed. “That’s true. I’m an island person now,” he’d said.

  Janie didn’t want to forget everything that had happened, but she couldn’t help her
self. Daily life was too insistent. She was busy with work, the pleasure of creating harmonious spaces, the headache of quibbling clients. To her great surprise and delight, Bob, her erstwhile texting fling, had entered her life, responding to her sheepish text “If you still want to get together, let me know?” with enthusiasm; they had been seeing each other once or twice a week for six months now, long enough for her to begin to believe that it might actually be happening, and to think about (maybe, someday) introducing him to Noah. And, of course, there was Noah to look after: monitoring his homework, handling his dinner and bubble bath (how much pleasure she took now in ordinary life!), keeping up with all the needs of his ever-evolving self. He was getting older. Sometimes, when they were riding their bikes in the park, she let him pull a little bit ahead of her on the path, and as she watched his blond head and narrow back and small pumping legs cycling away from her and around the bend she felt a pang of loss that she knew was only ordinary motherhood.

  One night she woke up in a panic, sure she was losing something precious, and she went to Noah’s room and watched him sleep (the nightmares, thank goodness, had stopped long ago). Once she was content on that score, she turned on her computer and checked her e-mail.

  There it was, at last: Jerry Anderson’s name in her in-box. No subject heading. She opened it quickly. BEACH, he had written. All caps. Nothing else. The word resonated through the silence of the apartment, causing ripples of alarm and relief. “Are you all right?” she wrote. The screen cast a strange, pale light in the darkness, and she felt his presence rise up at that moment as if he were right there with her. “Jerry?”

  I’m fine. She imagined him saying this, though he’d written nothing back. It was a feeling she had, though whether it was true or made up, she didn’t know. Still, it calmed her to think she could feel him there, across that vast space.