Remember Me

by Deborah Bedford

  “Dad. Look at this. Do you remember this swim cap of Mom’s? Brenda and I used to beg her to wear it because those rubber flowers came off and we got to dive for them in the drain.”

  “Which swim cap? Oh, that.”

  They chuckled their way through pictures of Edward’s baggy Bermuda shorts and a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt that looked like a billboard for pineapples. They laughed at Sam’s buzzed hair. At Terrie’s waist that looked about as big around as a candlestick in her skirt and broad leather belt. At Brenda’s cat’s-eye sunglasses with bright yellow stones arrowing from each of her temples while she stood under the shade of a Myrtlewood tree.

  There came a photograph of Terrie rolling Brenda’s hair and they made rude comments about the brush curlers Terrie had been using. They remembered Brenda’s screaming while her mother impaled her head with each pink holding pin. “Why on earth were they doing their hair in the first place, Dad? We were at the beach.”

  “Oh, you know.” Edward replaced the orange juice in the refrigerator. “Women.”

  Edward’s statement, Women, brought them full circle to where this conversation had begun. Their laughter died. Father and son eyed each other somberly. “Such a shame, isn’t it,” Edward asked, “that Terrie can’t be there for Brenda right now? She could sure use her mother at a time like this. The way she’s lost Joe, and all.”

  “I know.”

  “Brenda could sure use her mother’s advice, trying to raise that son of hers.”

  “I know.”

  Sam laid the photographs on the counter again and Edward picked them up. “This is the one I was sure would get the reaction from her,” he said, pulling out one particular snapshot. Sam glanced over to see one Brownie Starmite photo of Terrie on the bridge of the Westerly, an awful grimace on her face, holding up the dead weight of a lingcod. “This was the only time I convinced her to go in the boat with us and catch something. She was always running into town to go shopping instead of fishing, remember?”

  Sam nodded.

  “You ever wonder what happened to those McCarts?” Edward asked. “We used to have so much fun on those boats.”

  “No,” Sam lied.

  “What a life, hanging out at the wharf for a living, bringing in fish for the tourists. Why, if I had to do it all over again, I’d . . .”

  Sam waited, thinking his father meant to finish the sentence. When he didn’t, Sam broke the silence. “What? What would you do all over again?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Son. I was just talking.”

  “You ever wish you could go back, Dad? Knowing how things turned out? Do you ever wonder if you had the chance to live those years again with Mom, if you’d do it differently?”

  Edward shifted his weight from one foot to the other, propped himself against the green-tile counter with his hip. Sam could see sweat soaking through the chest of his father’s fray-necked T-shirt, a wet shape where the shirt read 5K TOWN RACE: A RUN TO WIPE OUT CRIME.

  “Why ask a question like that?”

  “If there might have been one moment that changed something, would you go back and change it now?”

  Edward sounded almost angry. “Drive myself crazy like that? Trying to figure out which moment it might have been that altered everything? Are you kidding?”

  Sam slumped in the kitchen chair where he’d sat ten thousand times before and pried the heel of one sneaker off with the toe of the other. No sense bothering with shoelaces. He peeled off his socks, the odor of which made him wince, and a smattering of tiny rocks skittered across the wooden floor.

  “Is that the way you’ve decided things are, Sam? One person doing one right thing at the right time?”

  Sam tried to clean up the tiny pebbles that had fallen out of his shoes. He raked them into a pile with his hands and looked in the broom closet for the dustpan.

  “You think everything depends on that?” his father asked.

  Sam swept the dirt into the pan, dumped it into the trash. Then, he turned each filthy sneaker upside-down and pounded it against the trash can rim.

  “I would have thought, with the things you profess to believe in, Sam, that you wouldn’t place so much stock in your own power.”

  Edward dealt the photograph onto the table the same way he would deal an ace. Sam glanced down and there, in front of him, was a picture of Aubrey McCart.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on in your life, son? Why you walked the whole trail this morning without telling me one story about those people over at the church that you care so much about?”

  Sam returned the dustpan to the closet without speaking.

  “You didn’t say much at all while we were walking.”

  When Sam had emptied his sneakers into the trash, he’d noticed the can was full. Now he lifted the bag from the can, cinched it, and knotted it tight.

  “I’d say that means something’s up.”

  Sam made it almost to the back door with it clutched in his arms before he stopped and stared at the ceiling. “What would you think if I traveled somewhere, Dad? Would you and Brenda be able to handle things with Mom if I left town for a few weeks?”

  Their eyes met at last. Edward waited, and Sam knew his dad understood there was something more.

  “They’ve asked me to take a sabbatical. I don’t have any other choice but to go.”

  “Son.”

  “I feel like I’m running away.” The hinges rasped as Sam shoved open the screen and carted the bag outside. When he returned, his dad held the door open for him. “I feel like I should be there right now, fighting for my position, telling Grant Ransom he’s made an awful mistake.”

  “Maybe the Father isn’t calling you to fight.”

  “Maybe that’s the only thing I know how to do.” Then, “I’ve always believed that fighting defines the very essence of faith.”

  “Maybe it isn’t your fighting he wants anymore, son. Maybe it’s your relinquishing the fight to him.”

  Outside, an empty dump truck rattled past on the road. Ginny had her big head lodged beneath a chair, trying to reach one of her huge collection of balls. Sam dug it out for her and lobbed it across the room. Ginny bounded after it and caught it mid-bounce. Edward crossed the kitchen, clapped a hand across his son’s shoulders in consolation.

  “I’ll come to terms with it on my own, Dad. Now it’s you and Mom I’m worried about.”

  “Since when do you get to worry about us? We’re the ones who are supposed to worry about you.”

  “Since—” But Sam didn’t finish the sentence. Because they both already knew what he would say. Since Mom stopped remembering.

  “You’ve been taking care of everyone else but yourself for a long time, boy. We’ll be fine. I don’t want you to worry about us.”

  “If she had a good day, if she wanted to see me, I wouldn’t be nearby.”

  “If she asks, I’ll tell her where you are. I’ll tell her what you’re doing. I’ll tell her you’ve been a good fighter for a long time.”

  The old photograph from Piddock Beach still lay on the table. At last, Sam picked it up and looked at it.

  Edward said, “That girl. What do you suppose ever happened to her?”

  Sam stared at it without saying a word.

  “What was her name? I don’t remember. You two were such good friends back then. Andrea? Alice? Alice McCart?”

  “No, Dad. Aubrey. It was Aubrey.”

  “Cute little thing, always hanging around those boats and wanting to help her father.”

  “She was a good friend.”

  “You two lost touch, didn’t you? She left town or something. I remember now.”

  After all these years, how odd it seemed to speak Aubrey’s name. It shocked Sam that even listening to his father mentioning her in this small, trivial way brought him pleasure. He was instantly catapulted back to summers along the coast, the chime-like clamor of fishing-boat riggings on windy days, the rustle of the dunegrass, the flow of the ocean against t
he shore.

  “You decided where you’re going on this sabbatical?” his dad asked.

  “Guess I could go anywhere I wanted.”

  “I guess you could, at that.”

  Edward began working his way out of his T-shirt. “I’d better get going. Let you get to the office.”

  “I’d better head in that direction.”

  Sam returned to the chair and began to loosen his laces. He slid one foot in, then another, yanked the strings taut. For a long moment, he focused on them as wholly as he’d focus on rethreading a guitar string. “I’ll stop by and see Mom before I leave.”

  “That would be good.”

  Sam had, as yet, to tie the laces into bows. His fingers remained still a long time. “I don’t doubt God, Dad. I doubt myself,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ve done anything right to this point.”

  Edward removed his keys from the peg beside the door. Sam finished his shoes, grabbed his jacket, whistled for Ginny.

  “You remember when we were trying to make the best decisions for your mom, Sam? You remember when you said to me, ‘If you make a decision in honest belief, Dad, even if it’s the wrong decision, God can get things on track again?’”

  “I don’t remember saying that to you.”

  “Well, you did.”

  On their way out, Sam stopped to examine the snapshot one last time, and decided it must have been taken when Aubrey was thirteen. She’d had a certain look about her at thirteen. He would never forget the mystery of it, as if she were ages wiser than she’d been at twelve; as if she’d crossed some threshold, as if, already, she’d journeyed to a place from which she could not return. She wasn’t fourteen yet in this picture; Sam was certain. Other changes had come to her when she was fourteen—woman changes, which had made him the slightest bit uncomfortable, changes he would never forget.

  How many years ago had that been? Sam started to add, then grinned with irony when he realized the years went beyond addition. He would be forced to multiply instead.

  “Makes sense, a man’s biggest doubt being himself,” his dad said. “I’ve been feeling the same thing about your mom. How scary it is to go forward, knowing you’re incapable of something, knowing you’ve got to do it anyway.”

  Sam bit his lower lip, nodded his head slowly. “Nothing’s turned out the way I thought it would.”

  “Doubt can feel a lot like fear. I don’t want you to be afraid of yourself, Sam. God wouldn’t want it, either.”

  “Advice,” Sam said, finally laughing. “I knew you’d end up giving me advice.”

  He waved his dad good-bye in the driveway and pulled the car door shut behind him. And as Sam drove home to begin packing, he kept seeing the thirteen-year-old girl in the picture, her brown hair riffling against her shoulders, the jetty in the background. If she spoke at all, he knew this is what she would be saying, “Did you know that a cat has thirty-two muscles in each ear?” Or, “Did you know that human beings are born without kneecaps?”

  It felt uncanny how imagining her voice drew him back, how Aubrey’s green eyes still seemed to peer into his soul.

  Mary Grace Pokorny was the last person Sam spoke to before he left town. He was on his way out the door. He wouldn’t have answered except her number came up on his cell.

  “Hello?” Then, “Mary Grace?” after he’d waited what seemed an inordinate amount of time. “What’s wrong? Have I forgotten something?”

  It had taken him precious little time to set things to rights in his office. He’d thrown away the half-empty bottle of V-8 Splash he kept stashed beneath his desk chair. He’d draped his vestment over a wire hanger and left it on the coat rack so the interim pastor could find it. He’d stowed his guitar in its case, fastened the clasps with three quick snaps, and had lugged it out to the car. That had been the extent of his packing.

  “You haven’t forgotten a thing.” Then, “I just—”

  “What?”

  “I just need to talk to you before you head out.”

  It occurred to Sam that there were certainly things he needed to say to Mary Grace, too. He needed to thank her for being his confidante, someone he’d been able to trust with the matters of his flock. He needed to thank her for her laughter, which often strengthened him. He needed to thank her for looking beyond the superficial and advising him when something subtle begged to be seen. He’d been so focused on his own hurt that he hadn’t stopped to think how this would affect her.

  “Thank you for everything, Mary Grace. You’ve been such a great help around this place.”

  “You talk like you aren’t coming back.”

  The low, measured tone of her voice left him puzzled. Sam hadn’t been certain how she’d respond to his leave-taking, whether she’d argue against it or express pity toward him or tell him that she thought he was right to go.

  She did none of these things. Instead she said in that subdued voice, “I want you to take care of yourself. Do you hear me?”

  He wasn’t certain what he should say. “Are you lecturing me about this?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You almost didn’t catch me. I was just on my way.”

  “Keep your cell with you,” she said. “Just in case something comes up. You could call—”

  “I will.” He realized he was pressing his cell tight against his skull.

  “Sam?”

  He fumbled with his phone, readjusting it against his ear. “Yes?

  “You remember you’re not leaving behind just a place or a problem, Sam. You remember you’re leaving behind people who care about you.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Hunter slumped on the passenger side of the car with his arms crossed behind the headrest and his sneakers buttressed against the dashboard. His cap brim, which he wore tilted toward his ear, bore a graffiti logo for some rap singer that, for all Sam could tell, might as well have been in Japanese. Hunter, Mr. Sullen and Silent, had kept his eyes narrow and aimed straight ahead ever since he’d pitched his duffel into the trunk and they’d driven away.

  Not even Ginny, who nosed around in the seat behind them and occasionally planted her head on Hunter’s shoulder, had been able to make him thaw.

  They’d headed westward into the sun and the heat of the day, with the air-conditioning bellowing to keep up. Now that the light had dissipated behind the broad Nebraska grasslands, Sam no longer had to squint into the glare. He slowed a little before they reached I-80 and cracked the windows so Ginny could poke her head out and lap up some fresh air. A whiff of feed lot wafted in. “Ah, the open road,” Sam said. “Ginny, now there’s a—”

  But he stopped. He’d been about to say, Ginny, now there’s a fragrance for you to roll in, my dear. But he realized any mention of cattle would bring them onto perilous ground. Hey, Hunter. That smell remind you of Omaha Steaks? You suppose that’s what became of the poor cow you bashed into with my Mustang?

  Sam snapped his lips shut and drove on for another fifteen miles without saying anything at all.

  For the umpteenth time since they’d left Iowa, Sam found himself thinking of Covenant Heights. No matter how hard he tried, he could not stop thinking about his church. It was Tuesday. What would they be doing on Tuesday? Well, the staff meeting, for one thing.

  Stop it, Sam. No reason to torture yourself. He sent up a prayer for them and called it good.

  He unwrapped his fingers from the steering wheel and closed them over it again. He made himself focus on Hunter instead.

  “We could listen to your music. I wouldn’t mind.”

  But Hunter didn’t answer, not a grunt or anything. It was Sam’s fifth attempt in as many hours to start a conversation with the boy. Hunter stared straight ahead, chewing his bottom lip, slapping out some sporadic angry rhythm on his knee.

  So Sam turned on his music instead. He slipped a CD into the player and turned the volume loud. “Mockingbird,” the duet between James Taylor and Carole King. Sam burst into song. “Mock-yeah! ing-yeah! bir
d-yeah! Yeah-yeah!”

  “Okay,” Hunter gasped in desperation. “We’ll listen to my music.”

  “I thought so,” Sam said. “Give me something and I’ll put it in.”

  Hunter seemed to use every ounce of energy he could muster to heave himself off of his rear end, push Ginny out of the way, and dig around for his CD case. He swung back to the front seat with a black nylon holder that was three times as thick as Sam’s Bible. He flipped through the plastic sleeves until he found something acceptable.

  “A seatbelt would be good, too,” Sam said, before he realized that would bring them to dangerous territory again. Good thing you were wearing your seatbelt the night you wrecked my Mustang.

  Hunter picked something with red letters, slid it into the player and instantly the car filled with sound—the same furious beat and timbre as the tensions raging between them. The CD played through three different so-called “tunes” before Hunter slouched against the headrest and heaved a sigh loud enough to be heard across three counties. “I don’t see the point of this. I really don’t.”

  Sam kept his aviator sunglasses trained on the interstate, his spine rigid, his mouth in a careful, emotionless set.

  “This is stupid.” Then, with his head thrown against the headrest again, “There isn’t even anything out here.”

  Sam settled his shoulders lower against the seat, held the steering wheel at arm’s length. “Oh, we’ll get where we’re headed eventually. You’ll see.”

  Hunter punched up the volume another notch, folded his arms across his chest, and stared out at the passing sea of crops and meadow.

  Scotland, Sam told himself. If he’d had the money to really travel, he could have gone to Scotland. He’d always thought if anything happened like this and he ended up on the open road with no one to answer to except himself and the heavenly Father, he would go somewhere he’d never been. He pictured himself searching out his heritage, listening to people with new ideas, considering things he hadn’t thought of before. He’d try to see himself out of context, maybe buy everyone wool sweaters.