A Traitor to Memory

“I don't know how I'd forgotten that I saw her. I don't know how it works when you forget, but that's what happened.”


He was looking at Libby, but she could tell he wasn't seeing her, and he seemed to be talking to himself. He sounded so filled with self-loathing that she hastened to reassure him. She said, “Maybe you didn't know who she was. It'd been … what … years and years … since you were a kid that you last saw her. And you don't have any pictures of her, do you? So how would you even remember what she looked like?”

“She was there,” he said dully. “She said my name. ‘Do you remember me, Gideon?’ And she wanted money.”

“Money?”

“I turned away from her. I am too important, you see, and I have important concerts to give. So I turned away. Because I didn't know who she was. But I'm at fault for that, no matter what I knew or when I knew it.”

“Shit,” Libby murmured as she began to realise what he was implying. “Gid, heck. You're not thinking you're, like, responsible for what's happened to your mom, are you?”

“I don't think,” he said. “I know.” And he moved his gaze away from her, fixing it on the open doorway, where the daylight had faded and what remained of it were shadows that created great wells of darkness.

She said, “That's bullshit. If you'd known who she was when she came to you, you would've helped her out. I know you, Gideon. You're good. You're decent. If your mother was on the ropes or something, if she needed cash, you wouldn't've ever let her go under. Yeah, she ran out on you. Yeah, she kept away from you for years. But she was your mom and you aren't the kind of guy who holds grudges against anyone, least of all your mom. You're not like Rock Peters.” Libby gave a humourless laugh at the thought of what her estranged husband might have done had his mother shown up in his life asking for money after a twenty-year absence. He'd've given her a piece of his mind, Libby thought. He'd've given her more than a piece of his mind. Mother or not, he'd've probably given her the sort of smacking around that he reserved for women who righteously pissed him off. And he would've been righteously pissed off at that: having a deserting mom show up on his doorstep asking for money without so much as a how've-you-been-son first. In fact, he might've been so pissed off that—

Libby put the brakes on her runaway thoughts. She told herself that the whole idea that Gideon Davies of all people would lift a hand to harm even a spider was plain idiotic. He was an artist, after all, and an artist wasn't the type of man who would run down someone in the street and expect to keep his creative flow flowing afterwards. Except that here he was with the kites, unable to do what he'd earlier been able to do with ease.

She said, although her mouth was dry, “Did you hear from her, Gid? I mean after she asked you for money. Did you hear from her again?”

“I didn't know who she was,” Gideon repeated. “I didn't know what she wanted, Libby, so I didn't understand what she was talking about.”

Libby took that for negation because she didn't want to take it as anything else. She said, “Listen, why don't we go inside? I'll make you some tea. It's freezing in this place. You gotta be an ice cube if you've been out here awhile.”

She took his arm and he allowed himself to be helped to his feet. She switched out the light and together they felt their way through the gloom to the door. He seemed like a heavy burden to Libby, leaning against her as if all his strength had been depleted in the hours he'd spent trying to design a simple kite.

“I don't know what I'm going to do,” he said. “Mother would have helped me, and now she's gone.”

“What you're going to do is have a cup of tea,” Libby told him. “I'll throw in a tea cake on the side.”

“I can't eat,” he said. “I can't sleep.”

“Then sleep with me tonight. You're always able to sleep with me.” They didn't do anything else, she thought, that was for sure. For the first time, she wondered if he was a virgin, if he'd lost the ability to be close to a woman once his mother deserted him. She knew next to nothing about psychology, but it seemed like a reasonable explanation for Gideon's apparent aversion to sex. How could he take the chance that a woman he grew to love might actually abandon him again?

Libby led him down the steps to her kitchen, where she discovered in short order that she didn't have any of the tea cakes she'd promised him. She didn't have anything to toast at all, but she bet that he did, so she hustled him up to his own part of the house and sat him at the kitchen table while she filled the kettle and rustled through his cupboards for tea and something edible that would go with it.