He Never Forgot

by P. D. Workman

  “You getting a drink?” Burton asked, his eyes sliding over to the bar.

  Zachary nodded. If he was going to be talking, he would need something to combat the dry mouth that went along with his meds. He didn’t order a Coke this time, but water. It arrived with ice and a wedge of lime on the glass. Burton eyed it dubiously.

  “Don’t know how you can drink the stuff.”

  “It isn’t exactly hard.”

  “If it was hard, I’d drink it,” Burton joked. “Don’t know how anyone can go without ever drinking. At least last night, it was a Coke.”

  “I’m good with water for now.” It wasn’t like Zachary had to worry about the calories. His doctor was still on his case to put on more weight. But he didn’t want to be drinking cola all afternoon, or however long it took to get what he needed from Burton.

  “So, you’ve had a little bit of time to think about what impressions you have of when you were younger.” He jumped right into the interview. “And to remember some of the stories that you told other people.”

  Burton nodded. He sipped his drink thoughtfully, staring out the window into the afternoon light. He turned his head away from it and rubbed his eyes. “So, I’m pretty sure it must have been here. I always felt like this was where I came from. I don’t remember specifics, but this was where I felt like I belonged. I didn’t belong there. And… the other kids knew that wasn’t where I belonged either. You know how sometimes kids can just sense… that you’re an outsider. You never quite get into any of the groups or develop those friendships that the other kids have.” His mouth turned down in a frown.

  Did Zachary know? He knew what it was like always to be the new kid. The outsider. But Burton had been adopted when he was five. Before any of them had started school. He’d been there for his entire school career. He wasn’t a newcomer. But he’d still been an outsider. Why?

  “I’ve been there. Did you feel good or bad about being from here?”

  “I don’t know. Just… like I didn’t fit in. Like an alien from another planet. And that was why. Because I wasn’t from around there.”

  “Do you remember some of the places that you went to when you were young? A park? Grocery store? Neighbor’s house?”

  “Yeah… I guess there must have been other places. I remember walking down the street. The sidewalk, I mean. I feel like I was by myself, but I must not have been if I was five or younger. There must have been someone with me. Maybe walking behind while I led the way.”

  “And what did you see when you looked around?”

  Burton closed his eyes. “I don’t know. A dog. Big German shepherd. I like dogs. I must have liked them back then too.”

  “Probably. Do you know who was walking the dog? Was it a neighbor, someone you knew?”

  Burton shook his head slowly, eyes still closed while he tried to visualize it. “I don’t think so. A man. Not someone I knew. Talked to me. Maybe… ruffled my hair and called me buddy. You know how people do. Men don’t really know how to talk to kids.”

  “Did he talk to your mom or dad? Were they there with you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember anyone being with me.”

  “Did he let you pet the dog?”

  A smile grew on Burton’s face and he nodded. “Yeah. He let me pet it.”

  “Did he tell you its name?”

  “That’s asking a lot…” Burton shook his head. “Maybe. Maybe it was the dog who was named Buddy.”

  Zachary didn’t press the point. He knew that every question he asked could alter Burton’s memories. When people were asked to remember things that they couldn’t or were told that something had happened to them when it hadn’t, their brains built the missing memory to fill the gap. And people became convinced that the retrieved memories were real. A brain wasn’t a bank vault. You couldn’t take memories out, examine them, and put them back unchanged. Every time Burton told his story, his memories would shift slightly.

  “What do you like to do?”

  “What do I like to do?” Burton’s eyes opened. “What do you mean?”

  “You enjoy some activities and not others. What would you rather be doing right now?”

  Burton grinned. “Drinking in my room.”

  “But you’re drinking here. So what is it about your room that you miss?”

  Burton’s eyes flicked over to one of the wall-mounted TVs, thinking about it. If he liked to drink and watch sports, he could do that while he was sitting there talking to Zachary. If he preferred something else…

  “When I was younger, I liked bugs,” Burton offered abruptly. “That’s something you can’t say about everyone.”

  “No.” Zachary could remember playing outside with his siblings, catching bugs, putting them in jars or racing them on the sidewalk. Or dousing anthills with water to watch all of the ants come swarming out. Other things that were not quite so nice. He couldn’t say that he liked bugs, but he’d been interested in them when he was a kid with scraped knees. They were something to play with for a kid who didn’t have the latest toys and games. “Did you want to become an entomologist?”

  “A what? No, I didn’t want to do it professionally. I just… was really interested in bugs. Got books about them. Read about them at the library or watched kid videos about them. Just… they were really interesting.”

  Zachary nodded. “So, where did you collect them or watch them?”

  Burton rolled his shoulders. “Anywhere. In the back yard. In the park. When we went out for a walk. When I was in school, if the teacher screamed at a spider or something, I was the one who would put it outside. I wasn’t ever scared of them or squeamish.”

  “Did you catch them in the back yard of your old house?”

  He watched Burton’s eyes, alive and glistening instead of looking dissolute as he had when Zachary had walked up. It was something that interested him, and maybe there was a flicker of recognition or memory there.

  “I don’t think… not in the back yard,” Burton said slowly. “Maybe… in the basement? Sometimes bugs get into the house. Spiders, centipedes, ants. Lots of kinds of creepy crawlies can live in the dark corners of the basement.”

  “Yeah. Did you catch them or just watch them?”

  Burton’s hands made an involuntary movement. As if, just for a split-second, he was reaching out to catch something. “I’d catch them. Put them in jars. At my house in Colchester anyway. Maybe here. I don’t know.”

  “That’s okay. We’re just going over things, seeing what pops into your mind. Did you have a friend that caught them with you?”

  “No, none of my friends were ever interested in anything like that.”

  “Any siblings?”

  Burton shook his head. “I told you I didn’t have any siblings. I was an only child.”

  In his adoptive family. Zachary wasn’t sure about in Burton’s biological family.

  5

  What kind of car did you have?”

  “When I was a kid? Let’s see… mostly station wagons, probably. Maybe an SUV or van. I wasn’t a big car guy. Not like some people who can tell you every vehicle they ever had since they were born. I don’t know what my parents drove most of the time. Mom and dad vehicles. Nothing hot.”

  “Yeah.” Zachary nodded, smiling. He’d ridden in a lot of mom vehicles. “And you always wore a seatbelt, right?”

  Something flashed across Burton’s features. He touched his shoulder. “Yeah. Of course.”

  “What was that?”

  “What?”

  “What did you think of when I asked if you always wore a seatbelt?”

  “I don’t know. Just… how uncomfortable they were to wear when I was a kid. I hated having my freedom restricted. I wanted to be able to move around. Lie down on the seats. Look out whichever side I wanted. But you can’t, with seatbelts. You have to just… stay put.”

  Zachary nodded. He made a couple of notes in his notepad. Had Burton worn a seatbelt before he was adopted? Or was he allowed
to do those things that he had mentioned? Had he ridden in a car that didn’t have seatbelts or where wearing them was not enforced? An old car? Broken down? Parents who didn’t care? Or just something that Burton had always hated to do?

  “What did you see when you looked out your bedroom window?”

  “Back yard. Grass, garden. Back fence. Nothing special.”

  “You grew up looking at that sight every day.”

  Burton nodded his agreement.

  “Did you like it? Do you remember ever being interested or excited about it?”

  “No.” Burton’s head wobbled back and forth. A negative head-shake, but something else too. Not just back and forth. There was too much up and down movement. The kind of ‘tell’ that some people had when they said something that wasn’t the truth.

  Zachary wrote a note about the bugs, waiting for Burton to think through the lie. Did he know he was lying, or was it something that his body knew, but his conscious brain would not release?

  “I was… kind of scared of looking out my window when I was really little. Like… I might fall out of the window and land on my head.” Burton rolled his eyes. “I got over it. Eventually. I’m not afraid of heights or anything.”

  “But you used to be?”

  “I guess so. But kids are scared of a lot of things. And you grow out of them as an adult.”

  Sometimes. Certainly not all the time. And some people added fears and phobias as they grew up and gained experience. Especially when traumatized.

  “What else were you afraid of?” Not bugs, clearly. Not dogs.

  “I was afraid of a lot of things. A real mama’s boy. But I grew out of them.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Things that might be too hot… fire, stoves, things like that…”

  Zachary breathed, then took a few sips of his ice water, trying to anchor himself in the sensations and not to be drawn into a flashback to the fire.

  “The dark. But all little kids are afraid of the dark. And things hiding under the bed or in the closet. You know how it is. Kids make things up to entertain themselves, and then get scared of them, like they were really true.”

  Zachary nodded. What kid hadn’t spooked himself at one time or another?

  “Uh… I don’t know. Doors slamming. Sirens. Not scared scared, but… they get me here,” Burton drilled a knuckled into the center of his chest, and Zachary could feel the heavy pain of anxiety and dread himself. He noted that Burton had used the present tense. He claimed to have outgrown his childhood fears, but he had just used the present tense. Things he was still afraid of.

  “Do you take anything for anxiety?” The night before, Burton had said that drinking didn’t really have much effect on meds.

  “None of that stuff works. You want something to make you better…” Burton indicated the drink in front of him. “That’s what makes you feel better.”

  “But it’s a depressant. It will make you feel worse afterward. Make you swing lower.”

  “There’s an easy fix for that.” Burton leaned forward as if he were about to tell Zachary a secret. “Just don’t stop drinking.” He leaned back again and laughed loudly. He took a couple more gulps from his glass to demonstrate the point.

  Just stay in a permanent state of drunkenness, and then you didn’t have to worry about hangovers or crashing afterward.

  “How old were you when you started drinking?”

  “What does that have anything to do with? We were talking about when I was a little kid. When I lived here. Believe me, I didn’t drink when I was five!”

  “So how old were you when you started?”

  Burton shook his head. “Who knows. A teenager. I don’t remember when my first drink was.”

  “Were you copying someone else? Acting grown up?”

  “Are you saying that my parents drank in front of me? They didn’t. I knew they were against drinking alcohol, but that didn’t make any difference. I didn’t do it to act like a grown-up. I just…” He considered, a crease forming between his eyebrows. “I knew it would make me feel better. Even the most naive kid can’t avoid seeing people laughing and drinking on TV. See how much better it makes them feel. Even if you don’t know anyone who drinks, TV still tells you how much fun it is.”

  “And you drank to feel better, back when you were a teenager.”

  “Yeah. That’s right. So what?”

  “You told me you had everything you wanted growing up. Your parents provided for everything you needed. They were good. Not abusive. So why did you need something to make you feel better?”

  “Because I had some trauma? Some child molester messing with me? There wasn’t anything like that. Just… it’s a chemical thing. A problem in the brain. That’s all. It isn’t the way that you were raised that makes you happy or anxious. It’s just… the way your brain is wired.”

  Zachary had heard many different explanations for mental illness, and that was as good as any. “Sometimes, it’s just the way you were born,” he agreed. “In your DNA. But sometimes it is caused by trauma or abuse.”

  “And you think I must have gone through something awful before my mom and dad adopted me. But that’s not the way it was. I don’t have any memories of being abused before I was adopted.” He took a drink and stared at Zachary. “And I would remember that. Trust me.”

  His certainty didn’t convince Zachary. Quite the opposite, in fact. A lot of people would have been intrigued by the suggestion. They would have spoken softly and thought back, trying to put a thumb down on the shifting shadows of memory to test if it were true or not. But Burton was certain. He wouldn’t even countenance thinking about it. That said something about him. And it wasn’t that he had never been through trauma or abuse. The brain protected itself. It could wall away secrets for years. Decades. But that didn’t necessarily mean they were gone forever.

  The mind and the body still remembered.

  6

  Do you remember any of your birthdays?”

  Burton nodded. “Sure. I’ve had some pretty good ones. Not like my parents are rich and always got the latest and greatest, I mean. But I had good birthdays. They put effort into making it nice for me.”

  Zachary nodded. “What was your best birthday present ever?”

  “No question.” Burton didn’t have to think about it. “My ninth birthday. A dog. Just a mutt, nothing special. No breed in particular. A Bitsa, my dad used to say. Bitsa this and bitsa that.”

  “A dog. You must have been over the moon.”

  “Oh yeah.” Burton looked nostalgic. A good memory. Lots of good times with that Bitsa dog.

  “What was the worst birthday you ever had?”

  “The worst? Hell, I don’t know. Like I said, they always tried to make things nice for me.”

  “How about before you were adopted?”

  Burton looked blank. He shook his head. “I don’t know. Don’t remember any before that.”

  “What do you think they were like?”

  Still nothing. No changes to his facial expression, not even a twitch. “I have no idea. I probably didn’t have any before I was adopted. Why have a birthday party when your kid is too young to know what’s going on and won’t ever remember it? You might as well put your resources into something else.”

  The best birthday present Zachary had ever received, and the first, had been a camera. Mr. Peterson, his first foster father and the only one Zachary kept in touch with, had given it to him for his eleventh birthday. His first birthday in foster care. Zachary had been elated to get a present. It was a second-hand camera, but Zachary had kept it for decades. It wasn’t until the second fire, the one that burned his apartment around the time he had first met Kenzie, that he lost it. He’d lost all of his possessions. He had been able to replace the essentials, but he still mourned the loss of that old camera.

  His birthdays before that hadn’t been anything to remember. They barely even rated a mention.

  “Most people still
celebrate those early birthdays, even if the child isn’t going to remember them.”

  Burton shrugged. “Well, we didn’t.”

  It wasn’t a tentative statement. He was certain that he hadn’t celebrated birthdays. Not just that he didn’t remember them.

  “How about other celebrations?” Zachary inquired, bringing up his least-favorite holiday. “Christmas?”

  “Nice times with my parents… but before that? I don’t remember.”

  “Nothing? No tree? No lights or presents?”

  “I don’t remember any.”

  “Maybe your family wasn’t Christian. What about… those Jewish candles?” Zachary’s brain wouldn’t produce the name, even though he knew it. “Or the songs or the…” Zachary made a spinning motion with his fingers, trying to remember the word for the toy top. “Uh… dreidel?”

  “Nah,” Burton scowled and shook his head. “I’m not Jewish. I wasn’t anything like that. Jewish or Muslim or some other thing. I don’t know if they were Christian or not. I don’t really have a faith.”

  Zachary accepted this. People didn’t need to be Christian to celebrate Christmas. But Burton was quite sure he wasn’t something else. So probably not raised in some strange cult or sect. If his birth family didn’t celebrate, it was probably the result of poverty rather than religious beliefs. Their search would, Zachary was pretty sure, lead them to the less affluent areas of town. Hopefully, that didn’t mean that Burton’s old house had been bulldozed to make room for another development or parking lot.

  Zachary sipped his water and swished it around his mouth, trying to combat the dryness that came from his meds and from talking to someone in a stressful situation. He wasn’t the one in the hot seat, but he still had memories of his own that he would rather not have to bring to light, and he was worried that any similarities in Burton’s memories might bring them back. He turned his mind to what other things might trigger memories for Ben Burton.