I remember these things not from my recent experiences, but from my true childhood.
Biologically, I remember reading that memories are somehow connected to electrical discharges between synapses in the brain.
I prefer to view memories as branches of a tree. Thinking about one branch would bring others into focus, and I could jump off to that branch as easily as stay on the one I was originally balancing on. Memories of my mother could easily switch to my father, then flip to Uncle Bob.
A tree of memories, swaying in the wind.
Chapter 24
I didn’t really plan to follow Marie. It just seemed my feet had their own memory, their own agenda, and before too long, I was caught up with her.
“Marie,” I shouted to her.
She turned with a puzzled look. Her red hair was unkempt and probably uncombed. When she realized who had called her, she looked around guiltily. “You followed me?” she asked in surprise.
“No, no, of course not.” I searched for some reason I would be there. It was two days after her strange phone call. In that time, I remembered Mom always went to pick up the groceries shortly after lunch. Just enough milk and bread to get through to the next day. Maybe some canned salmon or tuna, or other easy and cheap “dinners.” Sometimes a couple of pieces of fruit, but not often. I never learned to like apples, let alone grapefruit or mangos.
“I was on my way to pick up some things,” I finally said.
She nodded. “Me, too.”
We walked together, but I could tell she really was uncomfortable. Her gait was stiff and she stared straight ahead.
“But, I’m glad I ran into you.”
She didn’t answer.
“What did you mean on Saturday?” I asked. “When you called me.”
She slowed her walk a bit and stole a glance at me. “I don’t know what to do, Mr. Johnson.”
“Sam. Please call me Sam.”
“I’m going to lose my son. I don’t know what to do. I just thought . . . you seem to know things. Maybe you know people.”
“People?”
“People who can help him. He was innocent. But, not any more.”
I was getting confused. “What do you mean, Marty was innocent?”
She stopped, took a deep breath, and said, “No, not Marty. My Sammy.”
Marie looked at me with desperation mixed with the tears in her eyes. She knew.
“You have to keep Uncle Bob out of the house,” I said.
That did it. She broke down in tears and collapsed onto me. I held her and then gently guided her to the steps of a nearby office building. We sat together, me holding her, a part of my mind wondering what people would think who were walking by, most of me not caring one whit about that.
She knew what was happening in the room at the top of the stairs.
After a few moments, she wiped her face and moved back a few inches from me. “How do you know about Bob?” she asked. “You’re not even from here.”
“There are Bobs everywhere,” I answered, providing no answer at all. Even to me, it sounded silly. “The important thing is to stop the abuse now.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” she said.
I just looked at her.
“He’ll kill me.”
“Bob?”
“No. Jimmy.”
“He knows about it, too? And does nothing?”
She stood up and started to walk away.
“Marie, wait!”
“No. I shouldn’t have talked to you. There’s something wrong with you, and you have no business interfering with my family.” She raised her voice as she looked straight at me and pointed a finger. “You stay away from me and my sons. You don’t know anything about what’s involved here.”
Before I could do anything, she started to run down the street.
I sat on the office steps for about an hour.
Chapter 25
The rest of the day moved very slowly. I was restless and found myself wandering aimlessly around the town. I twice found myself choking back tears.
Mom knew.
Followed quickly by another thought. And she did nothing about it.
My memories of my mother were not very flattering at the best of times. I stayed away from home as much as I could when I was young, fearing all of the evil that seemed to live there, my father and Uncle Bob personifying that evil.
My mother always seemed to be lost in the shuffle, at the back of my mind, but at times she did come to the fore. In retrospect, I saw she had been a badly abused woman, frustrated, stuck in a hell of her own. What I still had difficulty with was forgiving her for passing that hell onto her children.
I remember Mom yelling, often, without any apparent purpose. I hated the yelling and the less-frequent hitting, but what I really hated was seeing her dragged into the cesspool my father inhabited, getting drunk along side him day after day after day. In her own way, she was as pathetic as he was.
But I had always hoped she loved me, behind the fog of alcohol and tobacco she used as a shield.
Now, I wasn’t so sure that she had.
I arrived at the Riviera early, about four. I knew I’d be too early for Mom and Dad, but I needed to have time to calm my nerves before seeing them. I needed a game plan. I needed to find a way to protect Little Sam.
How weird that sounds.
Anyhow, I finished off about four beers before Jimmy came into the bar. Alone.
He took his seat and raised a finger to Scott, who brought him a beer. No hellos tonight. That must be a tradition reserved for when Marie was there.
The bar seemed even more subdued than normal. Nobody was there except him and me. I could hear some faint rumblings from the storage room behind the bar, like there was somebody working back there, but other than that, the place was silent.
Tonight, there would be no repeat of the Draft Lottery, of course, and the small television Scott had brought in had been removed and taken back to wherever it normally lived.
Dad lit up a smoke and looked over at me. “Sam,” he acknowledged with a nod. I was at the other end of the bar, the same chair I had originally sat in that first night I found them here.
“Jimmy. You’re batching tonight?”
He shrugged. “She’s sick.”
I thought back to my meeting with Marie and knew her sickness was simply not wanting to see me. “Anything serious?”
“Just some fuckin’ women’s thing.” He shook his head. “Dumb bitch.” He blew smoke into the air, seemingly following it with his eyes. “Dumb bitch,” he said again.
After a pause, I said, “You hear who won the game today?”
“Tigers. Six Two.”
“Yeah? Great.”
He took a drink and didn’t say anything further.
I tried a few other conversation starters, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. After another gulp of beer, I asked, “Jimmy, why don’t you slide down here. Play you a game of poker.”
“You got cards?”
“Nope. We’ll use the serial numbers on a dollar bill.”
He snorted. “You must got more fuckin’ money than me if you know games like that.” After a pause, though, he did walk to my end of the bar and planted himself, leaving two empty seats between us.
He stared right at me without saying anything. Even in the dim lighting, I could see his eyes boring into me, blood patterns taking up much of what should have been his whites. The few teeth he had left were more yellow than white, and his face was marked with scratches and scars. I outweighed him by a good fifty pounds, but he still looked mean enough to make me nervous.
“What are you doing in Nelson?” he asked.
“Told you,” I said. “Just passing through.”
“Yeah, you told me that. Doesn’t mean Jack Shit to me. You a cop?”
“Cop?” I laughed. “God, no. I told you I’m a stock broker.”
“Cops are no better’n niggers in my book.”
I stared rig
ht back at him. “You got a real bad attitude, Jimmy. Where’d that come from?”
Scott quietly put more beer in front of each of us, careful not to say anything. I could tell he’d seen my father get in arguments in the past and didn’t want any part of it. He slid away to the other end of the bar, cleaning glasses that were already as clean as they were going to get.
“Where’d that come from?” Dad said. “Where’d that come from? Now, there’s an interesting little question.”
“Do you have an interesting little answer?”
He looked straight ahead, seemingly thinking about an answer. He looked at his reflection in the bar mirror, perhaps questioning himself. When he did talk again, his voice was soft, and I recognized the other side of his Jekyll/Hyde character. “I guess I wanted more out of life,” he said.
I didn’t say anything, not wanting to interrupt.
“When you’re young, everything seems possible. The future seems so unending. You hang around with friends, you graduate high school, you start a job that looks good, marry the girl next door. Everything seems perfect.”
He took a deep breath and lit another cigarette before continuing.
“But the rot was already starting, even back then. I got married when I was twenty-one. Just like that. You could call it a shotgun wedding, I guess. Marie’s father wouldn’t look at any other alternatives. We had to get married right when I was let go from the office I worked at. World War II was starting. They needed people to work at the plants, and I ended up doing shitty old work loading concrete. Couldn’t find anything else.”
Earlier, he’d said he was in the army during the war. Now he was changing his story. I was learning not to trust anything he told me.
“What kind of office did you work at?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing special. Just an office. A bank. Seemed to be a direction up, though. Lots of potential, like they say nowadays. I was lucky to get the job. Not so long after the Depression and all that.”
“You never went back to it?”
“Nah. Shit flows downhill. Marie lost the baby. Then got pregnant again. That one died too but not until after she was born and the doctors sucked every penny they could from me. And then she went and got fucking pregnant again. Just seemed to be a fucking baby factory.” He took a long drink. “Money was hard to come by. The medical expenses just didn’t stop. Marty almost didn’t make it either. We just didn’t have a nickel to spare.”
He shook his head and I could see the sadness in his eyes. He was seeing a past that had evaporated from under him and he wasn’t used to thinking about it.
“I’m no good with the kids. I can’t even say I especially want them around. They know it. You can’t fool kids. They don’t want me around either.
“So, here I am.” His voice started to rise and I saw Hyde’s return. He slammed a fist on the bar. “Stuck in a fuckin’ endless job, working for some nigger who thinks he owns the stinking world, a couple of rotten brats at home, and a wife who’s only good for one thing. And even then, only when I -- ” He struggled for the word he wanted.
“ -- Only when I convince her.”
He told his story with a strong conviction, but even so, it didn’t ring true. Lots of people had worse stories than him, but they didn’t turn into this guy.
He looked back at me. “You happy now, you know about me? So, tell me your story? What makes you such a fuckin’ great man?”
He was steamed, looking like he could lose his temper at any point. I thought of visiting my mother in the hospital when I was young.
“I gotta go,” I said as I put my mug down on the bar. “I’m nothing special, Jimmy. Just a regular guy.”
As I paid Scott and left the bar, Dad moved back to his regular bar stool, staring at nothing.
Chapter 26
The days and nights stretched on. I spent the days learning more about Nelson, studying the newspaper, trying to fit in more. I didn’t see Little Sam except for a couple of times from a distance.
My nights usually included at least a short visit to the Riviera, even if I had nothing to say to my parents. I wanted to be part of their furniture.
A week passed in this uneventful way.
I woke up one morning with a bad headache and an upset stomach. I’d had too much beer in too short a time the night before. I wasn’t exactly inexperienced with drinking, but I also wasn’t used to drinking ten beers in a couple of hours. Served me right, I guess. I still don’t know why I did that.
Sunshine streamed into my little apartment, and as I lurched over the medicine cabinet hoping to find some Aspirin or Tylenol, I thought it would be a good day just to go for a walk and forget about everything that had happened in the past couple of weeks.
There was a pond just to the east of town. I didn’t know the name of it, but I know I spent time there as a boy. I always just thought of it as The Pond, capitalized.
I did find aspirin in the medicine cabinet and scarfed down four of them. Then I took a long shower to help clear my mind and thought of Jenny. I wondered what was happening back in my real time. She would have found some way to get me to the hospital after I collapsed at the Nelson City Hall, and I felt shame and guilt sweep over me again as I toweled off. How could I have taken her so far away from home, knowing at any point I could have another damned attack, leaving her to hold the bag?
Jenny had always been there for me. And I knew no matter what I had said to her earlier, I had taken her for granted for the past twenty-five years. Only since this ordeal had begun had I gradually realized just what she had meant to me for so long. I asked myself a question that had been gnawing at me the past couple of months: Why did she stay with me for all these years? I couldn’t think of any possible answer.
I made a couple of sandwiches, using up a roll of salami I’d picked up from Old Man Jones the day before. I added some Swiss cheese and picked off the bits of lettuce that was still green from the head that had been in the fridge way too long. Packing it all up in wax paper seemed to be the beacon I needed to move forward.
I walked all the way. The Pond was at the edge of town, and it took me about forty minutes to walk. It reminded me a lot of that very first day I found myself back in Nelson, the hot sun beating down on me as I navigated down the gravel road. This time, the sun was a welcome change, as I could almost feel it baking the alcohol out of my system.
The Pond was smaller than I remembered. That didn’t surprise me one whit, as almost everything was smaller than I remembered it.
I moved immediately to the actual pond. It was an oval, about a hundred feet long by about fifty wide. The water had a nice clear appearance, and I could see a concrete foundation underneath. I had never known it was man-made. There were fish swimming inside. I didn’t know what kind, but they looked like large goldfish. It was very peaceful to watch them as they slowly made their circular paths through the water.
I sat with my back against a tall oak tree, watching a small group of Canada geese swimming on the water. A cool breeze made the time very enjoyable, and before I knew it, I had nodded off to a quiet, dreamless sleep.
I must have been asleep for about a half hour, and when I woke, I could hear the sounds of children playing in the distance. There was a baseball diamond not far away, hidden from view by a few dozen trees. I knew the place well, since I used to hike out here all the time as a kid to play ball. Forty minutes each way seemed like nothing back then.
Yawning, I opened up my sandwich and slowly chewed on it, washing it down with a warm bottle of Coke I bought on the way out of town. A glass bottle.
Finally, I opened up Claire’s Remembrance Diary. I still didn’t know how best to attack her work, since every entry was in random sequence. I just let the book open naturally, and found myself looking at October 3.
In 1965, we went to the fall fair today. You were ten, and it was the first year I could afford to take you to the fair. I knew how much you wanted to go, since all your friends were always tell
ing you about it. You never asked for money to go, though, since you knew I would give it to you, and you also knew I couldn’t afford it. You always understood things that were so far more advanced than you should have known.
Did I ever tell you how much I admired that in you? I can’t tell you any more, since you’re gone, my sweet Julie, but you were just the perfect child. I loved you more than I can ever describe in words.
You loved the fair. We did everything! We went on every ride you wanted to, even the shaky old roller coaster. You were screaming your lungs out when we went over that big hill and started down. I think I was a lot more frightened than you were. Your voice carried all along the ride, thrills taking sound. I loved seeing your smile as you yelled, your hair streaming back behind you.
And the food! We had cotton candy and a big red candy apple each, still finding room for corn dogs and French Fries for dinner. My mother would have thought it was disgusting. You and I gobbled it all down.
You wanted to go to the sideshow and see the freaks. I wasn’t sure if we should, but you jumped up and down and talked me into it. It wasn’t that bad, with the snake woman and the ape boy just looking like ordinary people with a bit of makeup. You stared, though, in amazement, lost in your secret fantasies of where these strange hybrids came from.
Ah, the joy of being a child, uncluttered by reality.
I stopped reading. Skimming down, I could see Claire had written several more pages about the fair and the wonderful day she spent with Julie. More details about each ride they went on, playing bingo and the pinball machines in the arcade, watching the carnies selling
knife-sharpeners and other kitchen gadgets. They ended the day by walking home, hand in hand, and they fell asleep together on the couch, exhausted from the day.
I ran my fingers along the inked page, silently thanking Claire for helping me spend a quiet day alone.
The Memory Tree Page 10