Remembrance of Things I Forgot: A Novel

by Bob Smith

  I looked at my mother and tried to believe that she would watch her tongue for the next fifteen years without my having to address her troubling relationship with her daughter. She loved Carol. I had no doubt about that. I believed my mother could change her ways in order to save her daughter’s life. My fantasy ended when I thought, We have to hope for the best. In our family hoping for the best was a notion that children gave up before they stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy. You need to take action and can’t just sit around hoping.

  “You two will fight a lot over the next fifteen years and you’ll need to be careful about what you say to Carol. It hurts her and she never forgets anything.”

  Junior frowned slightly before my mother let me have it. Her temperament was essentially easygoing, but questioning my mother’s conduct with her children brought out the mama bear in her. I’ve noticed how naturalists never mention that mama bears protect their reputations more aggressively than they defend their cubs.

  “Don’t you come from the future blaming me for her death! She’s the one who likes to fight. I don’t.”

  I didn’t point out that she seemed to be enjoying the dispute she was having with me.

  “Mom, I’m not blaming you. I just don’t want to leave any bases uncovered. We don’t know what might help her so we have to try everything. We all just have to be more aware of Carol’s problems.”

  “Don’t call me ‘Mom.’ I just met you! She starts the fights.”

  I looked angrily toward Junior, waiting for him to back me up. It’s not like he couldn’t; my sister and mother had been battling since Carol was in high school.

  “Mom, you both say mean things,” Junior said.

  “Don’t team up with him! How do we even know he’s telling the truth?”

  Junior rubbed his chin before answering her. It was strange to witness a habitual gesture that I recognized but had never seen before.

  “Because only someone from our family would know how screwed up your relationship with Carol can be.” We both knew his statement could infuriate my mother, and I admired Junior’s diplomatic use of “screwed up” instead of “fucked up” and “can be” instead of “is.” “And if he’s me— and he is—then he knows that will piss you off and only something as big as Carol’s death would make me kick over that can of worms.”

  My mother considered this and calmed down, but couldn’t resist adding, “If we’re screwed up, it’s her fault.”

  Junior walked over to where my mother was seated on the couch and sat down next to her. I sat in a rocking chair, comforted by the back-and-forth oscillation, which mirrored my own indecisiveness. Taylor was seated in my father’s orange velour recliner, his face fixed in an expression of polite horror. I couldn’t imagine Taylor wanting to date Junior. The normal course of dating is that you meet the family and witness how fucked up they are only after you’ve fallen in love. This free sample of family would make me think twice about buying the product.

  “That’s the problem,” Junior said. “At this point we can’t figure out whose fault it is. We don’t know who cast the first stone, because you’re both surrounded by rock piles. We just need one of you to stop it.”

  Junior’s eloquence surprised me. I was proud of him and, I guess, of myself.

  “Well, if I have to change, then what about you and your brothers?”

  Junior looked at me, signaling with his eyes that it was my turn to answer her. It was kind of nice having a tag-team partner to assist me in an argument with my mother, and I wondered if identical twins felt a mutual advantage also. “Yes,” I said. “There’s . . . that . . . I . . .” I glanced toward Junior and changed pronouns. “We all need to do things differently. I made at least one decision that I deeply regret.” I explained that I should have flown out to California when my sister suddenly dropped out of rehab for her addiction to painkillers. I was on the other side of the country, driving to a stupid comic book convention, and we had talked for hours on my cell phone as she reassured me that she knew what she was doing. (First, I had to explain to my mother how everyone would have cell phones in twenty years—including her—then I explained that that month I went over my allotted minutes and my next cell phone bill was six hundred dollars.) Carol had claimed the rehab center wasn’t what she’d expected; it was dirty and depressing and she could find a better rehab program closer to home. I wasn’t there to verify her story, and yet she had always seemed sensible and I sort of believed her, although I also suspected she was lying. I asked her if she was just backing out of rehab and she answered no. And then I asked her if she was lying to me, which in retrospect seems like the dumbest question ever. My sister had a long, freely confessed history of deception. I don’t think she ever had a job where she didn’t end up committing some form of white-collar crime in order to get back at her stupid, malicious, and frequently sexually harassing male bosses.

  It had never occurred to me that she would kill herself. Violent suicide was the one vice that didn’t appear to run in our family; we preferred more sedentary forms of self-destruction. Many of my relatives spent decades reclining in front of their televisions, looking as if they were rehearsing for being laid out in a box. In our family, food, alcohol, and tobacco were the Three Graces of suicide; their irresistible appeal was that they allowed you to enjoy life while you ended it.

  When my sister needed help, I didn’t understand that in order to save someone’s fucked-up life, there are no shortcuts, and you can’t throw someone a life preserver from the comfort of a deck chair. I begged Carol to stay in the city where the rehab center was located and told her I’d join her there in two days. She said yes, then the following afternoon she called to inform me that she’d flown home. At the time, it was easier to accept her promise that she would go into rehab near her house than it was for me to drop everything and fly to her and insist that she stay in rehab. It was a monumental miscalculation, and while I didn’t pull the trigger on the gun that killed her, I convicted myself of being a coconspirator. Her death created unappeasable guilt, because whatever I could have done seemed in retrospect so small a price to pay in comparison to my loss.

  “It doesn’t matter that I didn’t know she was suicidal,” I said in summation. “I still wish I had a second chance.”

  Junior, Taylor, and my mother were understandably subdued after my confession. My mother broke the silence. “It’s not something you could know. If we went around thinking everyone might be planning on killing themselves, we’d be more nuts than them.”

  Junior and I laughed at her logic, which was irrefutable, making my mother smile.

  “I’m right,” she declared. “Aren’t I?”

  “You’re right,” Taylor said. He could have never known beforehand— even her children wouldn’t have known for sure—but his affirmation didn’t strike my mother as supportive, it struck her as interfering. She glared at him. “Tell me why you’re here again?”

  Taylor glanced at Junior and me, asking for permission to speak. I nodded, realizing the future was already present. My mother had lost a daughter, she might as well gain a son-in-law.

  “I’ll become John’s boyfriend and invent a time machine.”

  My mother took this in, then glanced at his hair. “Will you still have that blue streak?”

  Everyone laughed, and I assured her he wouldn’t.

  “Good,” my mother said before she smiled warmly at Taylor.

  I saw a bowl filled with sponge candy sitting on the coffee table and remembered something else I needed to tell my mother.

  “Carol’s going to gain a lot of weight over the next fifteen years and you’re going to say things about it that will hurt her.”

  “She’s going to get fat too?” my mother asked. She sounded as if that were reason enough to kill yourself.

  “That kind of comment doesn’t help,” Junior said.

  Her reaction convinced me that saving Carol’s life was going to be tougher than I thought. There were so many u
ncontrollable variables, even with foreknowledge to guide you. There was one reason to be optimistic, though: clearly I was disrupting the past, irrevocably fucking up my life and possibly Taylor’s and my mother’s and even my sister’s in order to save my sister. We weren’t assured of success, but at least we wouldn’t regret not having tried to do something.

  My mother sighed. Her expression was grim but stoical. “Well, thanks for dropping by; the next fifteen years sound like fun.”

  “Don’t worry about the next fifteen,” I responded. “If we save Carol, the rest of our lives will be much happier.”

  She considered what I’d said and her mood brightened. “You’re right. Helping Carol’s the important thing.” I was always impressed with how, no matter how riled up my mother became, she could always step outside of herself and focus on someone else’s plight. She had worn slippers in a psychiatric hospital, and the experience seemed to give her a universal ability to walk in anyone else’s shoes. When I had called home immediately after my brother had told my mother the news of Carol’s death, I heard her uncontrollable wailing in the background, and my brother told her I was on the phone. When she sobbed, “Oh, John . . . ,” I said, “I’m sorry, Mom,” but couldn’t continue, as I began to violently bawl in the lobby of the hospital. My mother abruptly stopped crying and said to my brother, “Oh, John loved Carol.” She would cry again over the next weeks and months, but in an extraordinary display of compassion, she would concern herself with comforting her sons with their grief rather than addressing her own pain. She smiled at Taylor. “You look like someone just hit you.”

  “It’s a lot to take in,” he said. “One minute you’re telling the vice president to get the F out, the next, we’re hearing something unbearably sad.”

  His comment wasn’t a criticism of our family, but my mother bristled at the suggestion of imperfection.

  “At least we’re not dull.”

  “I still can’t believe you gave him the boot,” Taylor observed.She smiled proudly. “I’m festy.”

  Junior and I glanced at each other. Our mother mispronounced words frequently, and her neologisms usually became prized additions to our family’s vocabulary.

  “‘Festy’? Mom, it’s feisty,” Junior corrected her.

  “Oh, shut up. Or I’ll tell you to get the F out.” Her choice of wording suddenly seemed questionable and her expression became solemn. “I’d better not say that anymore.”

  We heard my father’s car door slam, and my mother looked out the window. She insisted we couldn’t tell my father about Cheney’s disappearance or Carol’s suicide. “He doesn’t need to know. It will only upset him.” We rarely questioned my mother’s policy of keeping certain information from my father. It sounded dubious that she maintained that a tough cop who’d been in brawls, hostage standoffs, and prison riots would crumple under the blow of an indiscreet revelation. But her view of his character was ultimately proven right. He was fragile and couldn’t handle his retirement. As my father walked in the back door carrying a twelve-pack of beer, it seemed unthinkable to tell Junior and my mother, “Oh, hey, I forgot to mention Dad’s going to drink himself to death.” They’d rightfully want to kill me and then have to deal with three deaths in the family.

  My father asked, “What happened to Congressman Cheney?” There was a split second of indecision before Junior explained that he received an urgent phone call about some UFO sightings over Niagara Falls. “He said that he would be in touch.”

  “It’s too bad; I was going to invite him to stay for dinner.”

  My mother harrumphed. “Then you’d have to cook it. I wouldn’t feed that bastard.” My mother hated cursing, but she used “bastard” frequently and without apology.

  My father appeared to be slightly surprised but didn’t say anything. We all moved into the kitchen, and my mother opened the refrigerator and removed several large packages of hamburger. The first rumble of thunder caused everyone to stop and listen.

  “It’s gonna pour,” my father said as he put the beers in the fridge. “I don’t think we’ll get out on the river tonight.”

  Everyone, except my father, pretended to be crestfallen, but we were happy to stay home. My mother bustled around the kitchen, clapping together hamburgers for the grill while Junior and Taylor sat in the living room, flipping channels as they flirted with each other. In some ways, their mutual attraction was as predictable as a high school science experiment, proof that if you mix two known ingredients, the same chemical reaction would result.

  As we sat down at the dining room table, my father asked, “After dinner, do you guys want to go to Dom’s for a beer?” Dom’s Tap Room was a bar on Military Road. Buffalo’s neighborhoods were filled with first-named joints called Mickey’s, Stan’s, or Dom’s, always established on the ground floors of grimy, two-story asbestos-shingled houses. These bars always had an apartment above them, suggesting to me that Mickey was a considerate alcoholic who felt guilty about all the time he spent out drinking with his buddies when he should be at home drinking with his family. Then Mickey had a brainstorm and suggested to his wife that they convert the ground floor of their house into a gin mill where he could drink at home with his buddies.

  I winced inwardly when Junior eagerly accepted our father’s invitation. He didn’t know our father would die from alcoholism. As we passed a plate of hamburgers, a platter of corn on the cob, and bowls of potato and green salads around the table, I had no appetite and felt scared. I’d decided to broach the subject of his impending alcoholism with my father. It had the feel of a Last Supper where I was going to tell the host his body was going to turn into Scotch and soda. My father might say I was insane and ask me to leave. It would be just our luck that the only conspiracy theory he’d refuse to believe would be that a lone drinker was going to assassinate him. Junior and my mother would be hearing the news for the first time and would surely become furious and turn on me. But it had to be done, because we were leaving the next day. I’d never discussed my father’s life with him before, and it felt presumptuous that now I was going to talk with him about his death. It also seemed unfair that I was preparing to out my father as an alcoholic before he became one; it felt unconscionably premature, as if he’d rushed me into discovering my sexual orientation at age eight by pointing out exactly why I enjoyed watching Mr. Universe taking off his shirt on that episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. I hated my life right then but thought maybe I could save my father’s life.

  The meal began on a slightly awkward note as Junior and I refused the potato salad—it contained big chunks of celery and little bits of onion—our duo of don’t eats. My mother seemed to forget who I was because she asked me, “Would you like some potato salad?”

  “No thanks,” I said.

  “You don’t like potato salad?” my mother asked. Junior and I looked at each other.

  “No,” I replied. “I’m not big on celery.”

  “Really?” my father said. “John doesn’t like celery either.” He was amused by our seemingly coincidental dislikes, but our mother became so rattled that she almost blew my cover and spilled some white wine on the tablecloth.

  “People like different things,” she said with put-on good cheer as she blotted the stain.

  Near the end of the meal, when our plates were splattered with ketchup and smeared with mayonnaise, I cleared my throat. I picked up my glass of water and gulped down half of it. My hand shook as I set it down.

  “Tom,” I said, addressing my father. “You know that time machine you heard about. It actually does exist. I’m your son John from the future. I traveled here in a time machine, and I have to warn you that six years after you retire from the state police, you’ll drink yourself to death.”

  My father listened attentively, but his blank expression made it appear that if he looked in a mirror he wouldn’t be able to tell what he was thinking either.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Taylor said, staring at me with disbelief.

  My m
other shouted at me, “What is wrong with you?” while Junior spat out, “You liar!”

  My father turned toward Junior and my mother. “You knew about this?”

  “No,” they shouted in unison.

  “Is this why a congressman from Wyoming suddenly showed up in our backyard?”

  “Well, sort of,” Junior said. My mother became angrier and hissed at him. “This is all your fault! Look at the asshole you’ll become.”

  “It’s not my fault. I barely know him. He lied to me.” Junior turned on me. “You said they wouldn’t die.”

  “I didn’t want to bum you out.”

  “Shouldn’t I be the one who’s bummed out?” my father asked.

  No one answered him, but our silence was a reply.

  “Do you believe him?” my father asked, looking around the table.

  Junior and my mother nodded and in turn mumbled, “Yes.”

  My father was startled by my mother’s corroboration. He might have doubted the veracity of Junior, but my mother’s acceptance of my story was significant. She was routinely agnostic about everything from God to her correct weight on the bathroom scale. If she bought her time-traveling son then it had to be true.

  My father studied Junior and me closely. “You do look alike, but I just thought all gay guys looked alike.”

  “I thought the same thing,” my mother admitted.

  Junior looked at me then turned his head away in disgust. “Thanks for letting me know that I’ll become a lying weasel in twenty years.”

  “What was I supposed to do? Let Dad drink himself to death? Would you rather I hadn’t said anything?”

  “Yes!” my mother and Junior answered jointly.

  “I don’t know if I’d like that,” my father said dryly before he turned toward Taylor. “What’s your part in all this?”

  “I invent the time machine and become John’s . . .” He seemed to be weighing whether he felt comfortable saying boyfriend to my father. “His . . . um, partner.”