“Yeah. I’d say you were pretty much forgotten, until this week.”
She smiled and looked at the tabletop in front of her—a sort of inward smile that suggested some private thought now occurring to her. She swept the table with her palms, as if she were cleaning it.
“What we think of as forgetting really isn’t,” she said. “Not strictly speaking. We never actually forget things. We only lose the path back to them.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I read this thing recently,” she said. “There was this study about how memory works. This team of physiologists, molecular biologists, neurologists, they were trying to figure out where we keep our memories. I think it was in Nature. Or Neuron. Or JAMA.”
“A little light reading?”
“I have many interests. Anyway, what they discovered is that our memories are tangible, physical things. Like, you can actually see the cell where each memory is stored. The way it works is, first, you have a perfectly pristine, untouched cell. Then that cell is zapped and gets all deformed and mangled. And that mutilation is, itself, the memory. It never really goes away.”
“Fascinating,” Samuel said.
“I’m pretty sure it was in Nature, now that I think about it.”
“You’re serious?” Samuel said. “I’m baring my soul here and you’re talking about a study you read about?”
“I liked the metaphor,” Faye said. “And besides, you weren’t baring your soul. Not even close, not yet.”
The lawyer cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should return to our topic?” he said. “Professor Anderson, sir? If you’d like to begin your direct examination?”
Samuel stood up. He paced one way, then another. There was a single small bookcase along the wall, and this is where he went. He could feel his mother’s eyes boring into his back as he inspected the shelves: mostly poetry, a large collection of Allen Ginsberg. Samuel realized that what he was really looking for was a copy of the famous magazine his story was published in. He realized this when he felt disappointed not to see it.
He spun around. “Here’s what I’d like to know.”
“Sir?” the lawyer said. “You’re out of microphone range?”
“I’d like to know what you’ve been doing these twenty years. And where you went when you left us.”
“That, sir, is probably outside the scope of our inquiry.”
“And all this business about you in the sixties. Getting arrested. What they’re saying about you on TV—”
“You want to know if it’s all true,” Faye said.
“Yes.”
“Was I a radical? Was I in the protest movement?”
“Yes.”
“Was I arrested for prostitution?”
“Yes. There’s about a month of 1968 unaccounted for. I had always thought you were in Iowa, at home, with Grandpa Frank, waiting for Dad to come back from the army. But you weren’t.”
“No.”
“You were in Chicago.”
“For a very short time, yes. Then I left.”
“I want to know what happened.”
“Hah-hah!” the lawyer said, and did a little drumroll on his briefcase. “I think we’ve traveled slightly far afield, yes? Now perhaps we could get back to our subject?”
“But you have other questions, right?” Faye said. “Even bigger questions?”
“We could get to those. In time,” Samuel said.
“Why wait? Let’s get it all out in the open right now. Go on and ask me. There’s only one real question.”
“We could begin with the photograph. The photo taken of you at that protest, in 1968.”
“But that’s not why you’re here. Ask your real question. The thing you came here to find out.”
“I came here to write a letter to the judge.”
“You did not. Go ahead. Ask your question.”
“It’s not relevant.”
“Just ask. Do it.”
“It’s not important. It’s nothing—”
“I’d agree with that!” the lawyer cut in. “Immaterial.”
“Shut up, Simon,” Faye said, then leveled her eyes at Samuel. “This question is everything. It’s why you’re here. Now why don’t you stop lying and ask it.”
“Okay. Fine. I want to know. Why did you leave me?”
And Samuel could feel the cry coming almost as soon as he said it: Why did you leave me? The question that had tormented his adolescence. He used to tell people she was dead. When they would ask about his mother, it was easier to say she’d died. Because when he told them the truth, they’d wonder why she left and where she’d gone and he didn’t know. Then they’d look at him funny, like it was his fault. Why did she leave him? It was the question that kept him awake night after night until he learned to swallow it and deny it. But asking the question now let it break back out—the shame and loneliness and self-pity washed over the question so that he was barely able to pronounce the last word before his throat tightened and he could feel himself on the verge of crying.
They considered each other for a moment, Samuel and his mother, before the lawyer leaned across the table and whispered something into her ear. Then her defiance seemed to fizzle. She looked into her lap.
“Perhaps we should return to our topic?” the lawyer said.
“I think I deserve some answers,” Samuel said.
“Perhaps we could get back to the subject of your letter, sir?”
“I’m not expecting to be best friends,” Samuel said. “But answering a few questions? Is that too much to ask?”
Faye crossed her arms and seemed to curl into herself. The lawyer stared at Samuel and waited. The sweat blobs on his forehead had grown thick and bulbous. At any moment, they could rain down into his eyes.
“The thing about that article in Nature?” Faye said. “The one about memory? What really struck me was how our memories are sewn into the meat of the brain. Everything we know about our past is literally etched into us.”
“Okay,” Samuel said. “What’s your point?”
She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, a gesture of impatience and irritation that Samuel recognized from his childhood.
“Isn’t it obvious?” she said. “Every memory is really a scar.”
The lawyer slapped the top of his briefcase and said, “Okay! I think we’re done here!”
“You haven’t answered any of my questions,” Samuel said. “Why did you leave me? What happened to you in Chicago? Why did you keep it secret? What have you been doing all these years?”
And Faye looked at him then, and all the hardness in her body dissolved. She gave him that same look she’d given him the morning she disappeared, her face full of grief.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t.”
“I need this,” Samuel said. “You don’t even understand how much. I need to know.”
“I’ve given you all I can.”
“But you haven’t told me anything. Please, why did you go?”
“I can’t,” she said. “It’s private.”
“Private? Seriously?”
Faye nodded and looked at the tabletop. “It’s private,” she said again.
Samuel crossed his arms. “You goad me into asking this question and then you say it’s private? Fuck you.”
Then the lawyer was gathering his things, turning off the microphone, sweat dropping onto his shirt collar. “Thank you so much, Professor Anderson, for all your efforts,” he said.
“I didn’t think you could get any lower, Faye, but congratulations,” Samuel said, standing up. “Really, you’re like a virtuoso. A maestro of being awful.”
“We’ll be in touch!” the lawyer said. He ushered Samuel toward the front door, pushed him from behind with a warm, wet hand. “We will be in contact to touch base about how we can move forward.” He opened the door and walked Samuel through it. Liquid BBs hung on to the skin of his forehead. The area under his armpit was now a soggy mess, as if he’d spilled a movie-theater-size drink there. “We’re very excited to read your letter to Judge Brown,” he said. “And good day!”
He closed the door behind Samuel and locked it.
All the way out of the building, and for the whole long ride back through Chicago and into the suburbs, Samuel felt like he was going to crumble. He remembered the advice from those websites: Have a support network. He needed to talk to someone. But who? Not his father, clearly. Not anyone from work. The only people he regularly communicated with were his Elfscape friends. So, once home, he logged on. He was greeted by the usual barrage of Hey Dodger! and Good to see ya! He asked a question in guild chat: Any of you Chicago folks want to meet up tonight? I feel like going out.
Which was met with an embarrassed silence. Samuel understood he’d crossed a boundary. He’d asked to meet in real life, a request usually made only by creeps and stalkers. He was about to apologize and tell them all to forget it when Pwnage, their brilliant leader, the guild’s Elfscape savant, finally, mercifully, wrote back.
Sure. I know a place.