A Traitor to Memory

He sat looking like the living dead … although Libby winced when she came up with the analogy. She chatted about her day in an attempt to distract him and she found herself putting so much energy into the effort that she built up a sweat beneath her leathers. Without a thought, she unzipped the top and started to work her way out of it as she talked.

The tabloid she'd stuffed inside fell out. Just like a piece of buttered bread, it fell with the part she wouldn't wish to find face up exactly that: face up. The screaming headline managed what screaming headlines always seek to do: It got Gideon's attention and he bent from his chair and pulled the paper to him as Libby made a grab for it herself.

She said, “Don't. It'll just make things worse.”

He looked up at her. “What things?”

“Why put yourself through more shit?” she asked him, her fingers closing over one side of the tabloid as his fingers closed over the other. “All it does is dig everything up all over again. You don't need that.”

But Gideon's fingers were as insistent as hers and she knew that she could either let him have the paper or they would rip it in half between them like two women battling over a dress at a Nordstrom's sale. She released her half and mentally kicked her butt for having brought the tabloid with her in the first place and for having forgotten she had it in the second place.

Gideon read the article much as she had done. And just the same, he made the jump to the double spread of pages four and five. There, he saw the pictures that the paper had disinterred from its morgue: his sister, his mom and his dad, his own eight-year-old self, and the other parties involved. It must have been one hell of a slow news day, Libby thought bitterly.

She said, “Hey. Gideon. I forgot to say. Someone phoned when I was banging on your door. I heard a voice on the answer machine. You want to listen? You want me to play it back for you?”

“That can wait,” he said.

“Could've been your dad. Might've been about Jill. How d' you feel about that anyway? You never said. It must be so weird to be going to have a little brother or sister when you're old enough to have a kid yourself. Do they know what it's going to be?”

“A girl,” he said, although she could tell his mind was elsewhere. “Jill had the tests. It's going to be a girl.”

“Cool. A little sister. What a trip for you. You'll be, like, so totally excellent a big brother.”

He got to his feet abruptly. “I can't cope with any more nightmares. I don't sleep for hours when I go to bed. I lie there and I listen and I watch the ceiling. When I finally fall asleep, there're the dreams. The dreams and the dreams. I can't cope with the dreams.”

The kettle clicked off behind her. Libby wanted to see to the tea, but there was something in his face, something so wild and despairing in his face…. She hadn't seen such an expression before, and she told herself that she was mesmerised by it, drawn into it in such a powerful way that any action other than looking at him was completely impossible. Better that, she thought, than go in any other direction … like wondering if his mother's death had pushed Gideon over the edge.

That couldn't be the case because what reason was there? Why would a man like him wig out if his mom died? If his mom whom he hadn't seen or heard from in years just died? Okay, so he saw her once, so she asked him for money, so he didn't know who she was and refused…. Was that something to totally lose it over? Libby didn't think so. But she knew that she was distinctly glad that Gideon was seeing a psychiatrist.

She said, “D' you tell your shrink about the dreams? They're supposed to know what they mean, aren't they? I mean, what else are you paying them for if not to tell you what your dreams mean so that you can stop having them. Right?”

“I've stopped seeing her.”

Libby frowned. “The shrink? When?”

“I cancelled my appointment today. She can't help me get back to the violin. I've been wasting my time.”

“But I thought you liked her.”

“What does it mean that I liked her? If she can't help me, what the hell's the point? She wanted me to remember and I've remembered and what's been the result of that? Look at me. Look at this. Look. Look. Do you actually think I can play like this?”

He held out his hands, and she saw something she'd not noticed before, something she knew hadn't been there twenty-four hours ago when he'd first come to her and told her of his mother's death. His hands were shaking. They were shaking bad, like her grandpa's hands shook before his Parkinson's medication kicked in.

One part of her wanted to celebrate what it meant that Gideon had stopped seeing the psychiatrist: He was beginning to define himself as more than a violinist, which was definitely good. But another part of her felt a prickling of unease at what he was saying. Without the violin, he could discover who he was but he had to want to make the discovery, and he didn't much sound or look like a man willing to embark on a journey of self-actualisation.

Still, she said gently, “Not playing's not the end of the world, Gideon.”