Remember Me Like This

by Bret Anthony Johnston

  Laura wrote the words little man in her Moleskine, drew a box around them.

  “He’s holding up,” Eric said, then looked to Laura for her assent. She nodded.

  “He’s sleeping a little better,” Laura said. “I think talking with you helps. He seems to feel better afterward.”

  Letty’s hands steepled. She wore two gold rings and a green Bakelite bangle. She said, “He has many admirers around here. He’s become a source of great inspiration.”

  In her notebook, Laura wrote: Admired! Source of great inspiration!

  Eric said, “How do you think he’s doing? Has anything become clear in your time with him?”

  “What’s most clear is he’s happy to be home.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” Eric said.

  Laura’s eyes went to the ferns on the window, the fronds lightly stirring in the air streaming from the ceiling vents. She wondered how long Letty’d had those particular plants—then it occurred to her that the story about Turner’s nursery was very likely fictional. Letty seemed like someone who could keep ferns alive. Maybe the plants had been sent from patients she’d helped. Laura thought to bring one of the plants from home for her.

  Letty had been talking. She said, “You’re in the midst of a huge adjustment, and even positive adjustments come with confusing pressures. Some parents in your situation suffer from post-traumatic stress, depression, panic attacks, you name it.”

  Laura considered writing this down, but didn’t. It sounded trite to her, and selfish.

  “Treat yourselves from time to time. Go to a nice dinner, maybe a movie, or stroll along the beach. The boys can tag along, but it’s not a bad idea to leave them alone occasionally.”

  “Justin hasn’t wanted to get out much,” Laura said, maybe too pointedly. She wanted the discussion to move back toward him. “We love having him to ourselves, but it’s something we’ve noticed. He hasn’t wanted to see anyone.”

  “Another aspect of Stockholm,” she said. Her palms went flat against the desk. “It happens. He’s afraid to let go of friends he had in the Away Life, and afraid the friends he had before won’t embrace him. He feels tainted. But he’s only been home a couple weeks. I’m not concerned right now. I suspect he’ll thaw sooner than later.”

  Laura wrote: Away Life. Tainted? Aspect of Stockholm. Will thaw.

  “It’s also possible that his social development will become arrested. It can just stop. There can be disturbances of every kind—eating disturbances, disturbances in his sexuality and attachments, disturbances in fear-based behavior. Victims of childhood trauma often won’t have the vocabularies to describe their emotions.”

  “He told his brother about friends he’d made in Corpus, but he hasn’t directly mentioned them to us,” Laura said. “He’s pretty tight-lipped about everything. He doesn’t say much at all.”

  “He hasn’t shared much here, either. We have to be patient. My guess is Justin doesn’t want to hurt your feelings, while at the same time he’s coming to terms with losing his old friends. He knows he’ll never see them again.”

  “Is that set in stone?” Laura asked. “With his friends? We know nothing could happen for a while, but if his friends were a source of, I don’t know, shelter for him, is there a chance he could reconnect with them at some point? Is there a chance that would be useful?”

  “The friends he was closest to in Southport have moved away,” Eric said.

  “I would strongly discourage any interaction, now or later. His friends in Corpus are, I’m sure, great kids, but they’re best left undisturbed. When he’s ready, he’ll make new friends or reconnect with old ones from home.”

  “We just want him to feel loved, supported,” Laura said.

  “He does. He absolutely does,” Letty said. “The children who survive this kind of trauma often do so because of what they were forced to leave behind. He was able to find meaning in each day, a reason to believe he should keep going, and more often than not, that was something instilled in him long before he was taken.”

  “Thank you,” Eric said.

  “Yes,” Laura said. “Thank you.”

  She made a note to check the library for books on Stockholm syndrome.

  The room went quiet, which made Laura feel rushed, as if she needed to squeeze more out of their time together. She said, “We’re just worried he’s bottling everything up. He seems really, I don’t know, kind of fine, and I worry he’s not.”

  “He’s not fine,” Letty said. “He’s home and safe and things are getting better and better, but he’s hurting. He’s absolutely hurting. Maybe we’ll see signs of this soon, maybe later, maybe never. This is a long and slow process. We can’t ask the questions we want to ask. He’ll open up when he’s ready, if he’s ever ready.”

  “We trust you,” Eric said. “We appreciate everything you’re giving him.”

  “He’s a good kid, a strong kid, and everyone’s working to give him the life he deserves. He’s also a teenager, a boy who should be learning to drive and falling in love with a new girl every other day. He understands this better than we do. He absolutely does. Our job is to assure him that these terrible things that happened to him are not who he is.”

  “Driving,” Eric said. His voice was light, dreamy.

  “Do what?” Laura said.

  “It hadn’t even occurred to me. He needs to learn how to drive. He’ll turn sixteen in November.”

  “Absolutely,” Letty said. “You probably still think of him as an eleven-year-old. It’s very natural, very understandable. The family’s development can become arrested, too.”

  “He had a girlfriend,” Laura said. “That’s something else he told Griff.”

  “Marcy,” Letty said. “The redheaded athlete.”

  “Is she in the same category as the other friends?”

  “I think so. I’m sure she’s sweet as can be, but I don’t see her benefiting Justin anymore.”

  “Thank you,” Laura said.

  In her notebook, she wrote: No friends. No Marcy. Never.

  WHEN THEY PICKED JUSTIN UP FROM GARCIA’S, HIS SPIRITS WERE high. So were his father’s. It was as if they’d woken from a perfect sleep while Laura had been pacing the halls all night. She sat in the backseat, watching their car’s reflection stream past on the windows of the downtown buildings. If anything, she thought she would’ve been pleased to leave Justin’s girlfriend—athletic, redheaded Marcy—in the past. But she still felt petulant, passed over. It felt as though Letty had dashed some hope that Laura wasn’t aware she’d been nurturing. She leaned her head against the window, closed her eyes. The backseat smelled vaguely of chlorine and fish; the shirts she’d worn at Marine Lab were still on the floorboards. Maybe she missed Alice. The possibility that her dourness had nothing to do with Justin was bracing. She pinched her dolphin pendant between her thumb and forefinger.

  As they were ascending the Harbor Bridge, the girders overhead intermittently blocked out the sun as if Laura were batting her eyes. Justin said, “How many times did she say ‘absolutely’?”

  “I noticed that, too,” Eric said, his voice full of energy. The car sped up, pulling against the bridge’s incline. “Maybe four. Five?”

  “She got nine in yesterday, but I wasn’t counting in the first hour.”

  “She seems nice,” Laura said. “Do you like talking with her?”

  “Absolutely,” Justin said. Eric laughed.

  “She says everyone admires you. You’re inspiring a lot of people.”

  Justin twisted his neck until it popped. Laura always grimaced when he did this, and she knew a time would come when she’d ask him to break the habit. She didn’t know if cracking your joints was detrimental, but she’d say it was. She might claim to have read a study.

  Justin said, “We just talk. There’s not much to admire.”

  “That’s nothing to sneeze at,” Eric said.

  They crested the Harbor Bridge. Its arcing silhouette rippled o
n the ship channel. Hazy late-afternoon sunlight dappled the water. Eric said, “Traffic’s not bad right now.” It sounded unlike him. Or maybe it sounded like the Eric from before. Laura couldn’t remember. What she recalled was how Eric had once told her that his parents, during their courtship, used to steal bowling balls and roll them down the Harbor Bridge at night. Laura had never been able to reconcile the image of Cecil doing that with the man she knew now. When she and Eric had first started dating, she thought of the stolen bowling balls every time they crossed the bridge—she could close her eyes and see them gathering so much speed they bounced and went airborne down the ramp—and she always expected him to suggest they try it, but he never did.

  They passed Marine Lab. Paul’s truck was in the caliche parking lot. There were two other cars beside the building, though she didn’t recognize them. She wondered how many volunteers had come and gone in the last two weeks. She wondered if Paul viewed her with the same disdain that he did everyone else who’d abandoned the cause. Or maybe he’d forgotten about her. She remembered the man who’d volunteered with her the day they found Justin, the one with the pregnant wife, and as Laura watched the wetlands pass, she wondered if the woman had given birth yet. That day seemed a lifetime away. She had a feeling of vertigo. Then they were moving through Portland, the bland shopping center and sprawling boat dealerships. Until recently, all of those windows would have had Justin’s flyers displayed.

  The clouds had dispersed. Light flooded the sky. Justin pulled down his visor. Eric eased off the accelerator somewhat, which made Laura think he’d spotted a cop idling in a stand of live oak ahead. She looked, but saw nothing. The road was open in front of them, sizzling, puddled with heat. A pickup hauling a boat on a trailer rattled alongside them, then pulled ahead. They continued to slow. Laura could feel the brake depressing. Justin glanced at his father, then at Laura. She shrugged. She looked through the back window, thinking they were being pulled over. The only car on the road was a sedan, a half mile back. Eric clicked his blinker on and guided the car onto the shoulder. She thought he was going to be sick again.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are we okay?”

  “We’re fine,” he said, shifting into park and undoing his seat belt. “We’re doing just fine.”

  “Is it overheating again? Are we out of gas?”

  “Neither,” Eric said. He switched the hazard lights on and looked in the rearview mirror. A few miles ahead stood the Alamo Fireworks stand, and just past that, Justin’s billboard.

  “Are you going to be sick?” Laura asked. She felt vulnerable on the side of the road. The hazards dinged, dinged, dinged.

  Eric said, “What I’m going to be, in about five months, is the father of a son who’ll be taking his driving test.”

  Justin looked confused, but now Laura understood. There was an exhilarating tremor between her skin and muscles. The sedan passed them. And then Justin understood, too. A smile like she hadn’t seen in years. He cut his eyes to her, and she smiled, allowing him to believe she’d had something to do with this treat. He was beaming as he unlatched his seat belt. Laura was jealous of her husband’s revelation, grateful for it.

  “I think it’s high time we got some miles under your belt,” Eric said. “Sound like a plan?”

  But Justin was already out of the car, jogging around the front bumper. Then his father was stepping out, too, and tossing him the keys.

  12

  AND THEN LIFE SLOWED DOWN. IT WAS GRADUAL, AND PEACEFUL, bringing to Eric’s mind images of floating down a long and indolent river. He could call up the scene so easily that he wondered if he hadn’t recently dreamed it: the four of them, Eric and Laura and the boys, maybe in the swath of the Guadalupe south of Austin. The water is clear green, glinting in light that occasionally plunges through a canopy of black hickory. His family lounges in inner tubes, paddling lazily with their hands when the current lags, drifting toward the banks and then propelling back into the center by kicking off from the exposed roots, the water eddying and clouding and, finally, calming again. The surface is sun-warmed, but underneath there’s an enveloping cool, and the contrast is refreshing. The smell of sweet grass. There is the sound of rushing water in the distance, maybe rapids coming over jagged rocks or a set of falls, but it’s growing quieter. In the weeks after he and Laura met with Letty Villarreal, Eric could hear noise silencing. And with the quiet, a crystallizing hope: Maybe his family was not, as he’d feared, being swept toward a cliff. Maybe the worst lay behind them.

  Most days he took Justin driving. Depending on their obligations—Justin’s meetings with Garcia and Letty, Eric’s summer school classes—they would set out either in the late afternoon or in the early evening. They usually drove Eric’s truck so Justin could get comfortable with a manual transmission, but sometimes they took Laura’s car. Laura and Griff had accompanied them on a couple of drives, and yet Eric always endured a rush of selfish relief when they stayed home. Cecil had taught him to drive, just the two of them on the bench seat of an old Chevy with a three-on-the-tree, so Eric thought of it as a father’s duty and his duty alone; it was a tradition, and with Justin, also a prize. Justin stayed quiet, concentrating on the road, though once when they passed the yellowed field behind the high school, he confided that he enjoyed watching football and might eventually want to try out for the Southport Mustangs. “The team could sure use your help,” Eric said. They drove the residential streets in town, the open highway toward Corpus, the narrow farm roads that meandered through the wetlands heading up into Refugio. Justin was a solid driver. He was confident behind the wheel, but not hasty. He didn’t hit the gas as soon as a light turned green, and he didn’t change lanes without checking his blind spot. Parallel parking gave him problems, so lately they were working beside the curb in front of the Catholic church. Eric borrowed a couple of orange cones from the school gym to stake boundaries. “You borrowed them the way I used to borrow clothes from the cleaner’s,” Laura had said, smiling. He’d also swiped a driver’s ed textbook from the school’s book room, and while everyone else slept, Justin stayed up memorizing the rules of the road.

  One night on Farm Road 386, Eric asked, “If you’re going down a steep hill, should you shift into neutral to control your speed?”

  “No. Keep it in gear.”

  “Bingo,” Eric said. The quizzes had become a regular facet of the drives, and though he hoped they might foster other conversations, that hadn’t panned out. He said, “If you have a rear tire blow out, what do you do?”

  “Slow down by easing off the gas. Don’t hit the brakes.”

  “You’re on fire tonight.”

  Dusk was coming down. The headlights of a car heading toward them illuminated, and Justin reached to make sure his were on, too. Eric was trying to think of another quiz question when Justin said, “It’s pretty sick you teaching me to drive.”

  “You’re a natural,” Eric said. “With a student like you, there’s not much teaching. Take a left up here at the light.”

  Justin clicked his blinker on, shifted into neutral.

  “Good,” Eric said. “Perfect.”

  LAURA READ BOOKS ON FAMILY REUNIFICATION AND STOCKHOLM syndrome—and at least one on the intelligence of mice—and she scribbled notes in her Moleskine. She dug up her mother’s old recipe book and made dishes she’d liked as a teenager: salmon patties, pot roast with honey and thyme, gazpacho. In bed at night, they whispered about the day: I think Justin liked the German potato salad, but Griff mostly pushed it around his plate. Fiona, too. Parallel parking went a little better today. He only knocked the cone down twice! One of the worst things about Stockholm is what’s called “learned helplessness.” I made a note to ask Letty about it, maybe see if there’s anything else we should be on the lookout for. He said Buford used to laugh and say, “Sometimes you have to thin the herd.” What does that mean? It’s ranching talk. You kill off cattle when the herd gets too big. Oh. While y’all were out driving, Griff and I let
the mice run in the hallway. When I picked up Waylon, he latched on to my hair and started climbing it like a vine! Griff was cracking up, but it hurt! It did!

  The mice had become a source of joy for her. She sprinkled cornbread crumbs into their aquarium, cooed at them through the glass, and taped together old paper towel tubes for them to run through. She was still on her so-called maternity leave, and although Eric wondered how long she intended to keep from working, he hadn’t broached the subject. He wanted her to enjoy her time with Justin, wanted her to feel supported. Laura was also starting to weigh the decision of what to do about Justin’s schooling. Whether they went with homeschool or enrolled him at the high school, he would graduate a year late. Maybe two. He would be tutored throughout the fall. As far behind as he was and with the trial starting in September, there was no other choice.

  Griff was preoccupied with Fiona, and Eric was grateful for the distraction she provided, even if guilt sometimes overtook him. He worried that Griff felt relegated to the sidelines with all the attention being paid to Justin. How could he not? The house was crowded with the plants and flowers that were still being sent, and their voice mail was clogged with messages from reporters and photographers wanting to come over. With Fiona around, though, Griff seemed to exist in a heady daze of contentment. She visited the house regularly enough that Laura started cooking supper for five, and her manners were so refined that Eric wondered if she’d taken classes; he had also started seeing her green hair and black wardrobe as camouflage, a hostile costume masking a timid soul. Each night, Griff walked her home, and each night, they set out earlier and earlier until they were leaving a full hour before her curfew. When Griff returned, he seemed addled and secretive. “Do y’all think I should follow them?” Laura had asked one evening after they left. “Do you think he’s scared to walk home by himself?”

  “No,” Justin said. “I think he’s pretty happy with the current arrangement.”

  “Oh,” she said, and then seconds later, understanding, “oh!”