The Weight of Memory Read online

  I close the bathroom door and hear three things: you getting into the bath, Tom’s vehicle coming down the lane, and the distant rumble of the garage door opening. A nervousness rises in me.

  I don’t know if I can tell him about what you’ve done.

  He comes into the house carrying a brown paper bag of groceries, sets it down, and takes in the expansive interior of the house, almost like he’s enjoying the view for the first time. He seems . . . not happier, but perhaps less morose. The day before, when we arrived and even while he and I sat on the deck, there was something deeply sad about him, something that clung to him like a heavy coat. But now he is almost light.

  “What a morning it is,” he says.

  I am thinking the same thing. What a morning indeed.

  “Were you able to find some food?”

  “I haven’t gotten around to breakfast yet,” I say slowly.

  “Did you just wake up?” He smiles, crossing the room and putting the groceries down on the granite countertop.

  “I’ve been up,” I reply elusively.

  He begins putting things away.

  “How are your friends?” I ask.

  “My friends? Oh, yes. They’re fine. They rarely talk about anything new—that’s why I like them. Every morning it’s the same old, same old—local roadwork, trees down, people who died, children living far from Nysa who are now a disgrace to their parents. You know, the sort of local news that means the world to no one except the dozens of people who live within ten miles of it happening.”

  With that, he nearly laughs. I can see it start up around his eyes, and his mouth pulls back. For a moment I see the old Tom, but then he clears his throat and turns away quickly. He folds the empty grocery bag neatly and puts it in one of the cabinets.

  “How’s Pearl?”

  “She’s in the bath,” I say.

  “A peculiar time to take a bath, right before we go out on the boat.”

  I nod. Now’s the time. If I’m going to tell him about the rug, now’s the time.

  But he interrupts my thoughts. “I saw she’s already drawn a map of the place.”

  “A map?”

  “Didn’t you see it? I found it on the coffee table in the living room this morning.”

  I see the map there, as Tom said, spread out. I hadn’t noticed it before. I walk over and sit down on the sofa to examine it.

  “Pretty incredible for a young girl. Have you told her all those stories?”

  “What stories?” But even as I ask, I see how she labeled some of the various points.

  The cabin where Grampy proposed.

  The house where Grampy grew up.

  Nysa Diner.

  The Point where Grandma died.

  “I don’t know,” I say, my voice lost and wandering. The map is completely covered in detailed identification, places labeled, some with events that took place there. It is a hand-drawn version of the first eighteen years of my life.

  “Absolutely incredible,” Tom says again, and now he is standing right behind me.

  That’s when you emerge from the hallway. Your dark hair is shining and braided perfectly. You’re not wearing anything particularly fancy, only blue jeans and a gray T-shirt, but there is something about the flashing of your eyes, the sheen of your hair, and the way you bounce as you walk that scream “life!”

  Tom and I are taken aback.

  “Hello,” you say bashfully, your eyes suddenly dropping. You glance up at me long enough to see if I have said anything about the rug, the floor, the disgrace of a room. I subtly shake my head. You purse your lips and look as though you might tell him yourself.

  “Tom showed me your map, Pearl,” I say. “How did you do it?”

  You give me a serious look. “I had help.”

  Tom walks back over to the kitchen. “Your drawings are very detailed. Do you like to draw?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You’re very talented.”

  You come over and stand beside me. I can’t take my eyes off the map, and that’s when I see a tiny red X on the detailed sketch of our old cabin.

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s where she wants to go next,” you whisper. “That’s where she thinks the door might be.”

  The same old chill races down my spine. I glance over at Tom to see if he is listening. He’s not.

  “Did you tell Tom?” you whisper.

  I shake my head.

  “Now, now,” Tom calls from the kitchen. “No whispering. No secrets.”

  You and I look at each other, not knowing what to do.

  “Let’s go,” he says, pulling some things from the refrigerator and tossing them into a bag. “It’s a beautiful day to be out on the water.”

  And he’s right.

  We walk out onto the deck and go down a flight of wooden steps I didn’t notice before. Tom goes ahead of me and you come along behind, your footsteps light, barely touching the ground. I glance at you once, and you stare at me with hesitant eyes. I can still see the guilt there, and I don’t have any more anger, only sadness that you did it, that you destroyed something precious to Tom. I nod, reach back, give your tiny shoulder a squeeze. You give me a sad smile.

  At the bottom of the steps is a wooden pier, about forty feet long, that goes straight out through a boggy, swampy area of high grass and marsh. It leads out into the lake and ends where the water is deep and a small motorboat thumps against the wooden posts.

  “Here we are,” Tom says in the flat voice I have come to recognize as his. It is nothing like the voice from our teenage years, when it was always on the edge of laughter or teasing or sarcasm.

  He reaches for your hand and helps you down the short ladder and into the boat, beckoning me to follow. It’s awkward backing off the dock and onto the ladder and taking that first swaying step onto the boat. He follows us both down, bringing along the rope that had tied the boat to the dock. He drops it onto the floor, where it curls up like a dead snake.

  “It’s a little cool out here today,” he says. “Sit at the front if you want to stay dry.”

  We slide along the bench seats toward the captain’s chair. He chokes the engine and starts it up, and the gurgling roar of the motor erupts in a cloud of smoke, chasing off the silence that had hovered along the edge of the lake. It feels like there are things hidden in the wooded shore, living things, that watch us leave before slinking away into the late morning shadows. You move closer to me, and I put my arm around you.

  “So who owns the old place?” I have to shout my question so that Tom can hear me.

  “I do!” he shouts back without turning around.

  “You?” I ask, surprised.

  “Shirley and I decided to buy it from the rest of my family about twenty years ago. We never used it though. We wanted to keep it out of the wrong hands.”

  “The wrong hands?”

  He shrugs. “It’s a beautiful location. We were worried someone might try to develop it, or tear down the cabin and replace it with something modern. It seems unlikely now, with the direction the town is going.”

  I reach up with one hand, clap him hard on the shoulder. “Thank you,” I shout into the wind.

  As we ease out into the deep, I close my eyes. All I have is the sound of the motor and the boat slapping the water, the scent of the lake and the cold air, the feel of the wind blowing over us, misty and fresh. There is a particular feeling of the sun on my face that takes me back to those days just before your grandmother left us.

  Sinking

  The heat leaked in around the doors and windows, soaked in through the glass. Mary had been up with Johnny through the night, so early the next morning, she woke me up.

  “Can you take over?” She yawned, handing me that little bundle. “I can’t keep my eyes open.”

  He floated down into my arms, not yet a week old, fragile, so light it felt like his bones must be hollow, like a bird’s. I got out of one side of the bed while Mary walked around and
collapsed into the other side. We were so young. So young. We were kids, barely eighteen. How were we supposed to know? How were we supposed to see clearly?

  Mary fell asleep before I even left the room. I carried John out into the living room of the cabin. I heard someone else waking up, a door closing gently, a toilet flushing, a sink running. I lay down on the sofa with John on my bare chest—he was asleep, sucking on his bottom lip, his eyes flickering with dreams.

  It was still early on a Saturday morning, which usually meant we slept as late as we could. But Shirley was rubbing her eyes and sitting on the rocking chair, pulling her feet up underneath her as she normally did.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. This was the life we had all been dreaming about, planning for. There we were, finally finished with high school and with nothing to stop us. And yet she looked forlorn.

  “It’s Mary,” she said, and those two words sent a ripple of fear through me.

  “Mary?”

  She nodded. “She’s not doing well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was up with her late last night, Paul. She’s . . .” Shirley fidgeted with her hands. She rubbed her eyes and stared through the glass, out over the lake. “Not well.”

  Not well.

  “C’mon, Shirley,” I said, trying not to wake John. I could feel him breathing on my neck, up under my jaw. His hands jerked open. What dreams flash through such a new mind?

  “She’s seeing that woman again.”

  My insides dropped. “She told you that?”

  “She didn’t want to worry you. Doesn’t want to worry you. Now that the baby’s here.”

  “When did she tell you?”

  “She said the woman needs her help. That the woman wants her to go with her somewhere. I don’t know.”

  “She said that?”

  “She said she keeps telling the woman she won’t do it. But apparently she’s very persistent.”

  “Who do you think this woman is she’s been talking to?”

  “Paul, she’s not well.”

  “How long ago did she tell you, Shirley?”

  “A few weeks ago.”

  “A few weeks ago? Why isn’t she telling me this stuff?”

  “She doesn’t want you to worry.”

  “Worry!” I shouted, and John squirmed, his little head jerking up and then lying back down slowly. “Worry?” I whispered.

  “She loves you, Paul. What do you want me to say?” Shirley stood and walked over to the kitchen counter, moved around in the kitchen like she was going to make some food, searched the fridge, gave up, and came back over and fell onto the couch. She was clearly spent. “You need to think about getting her some help,” she said.

  “What, like a shrink?” I asked.

  “Call it what you want. She needs help, Paul. She’s . . . sinking.”

  The worst part was, I knew she was right. I had convinced myself with the same old stories.

  She’s tired.

  She’s stressed out about starting this new life.

  She’s pregnant.

  She had a baby.

  Had it only been a year since our weightless summer at that very same cabin? It had. But landmark events had come and gone, and things were definitely not the same. Mary never came back up. She was never the same old Mary. Her eyes were empty.

  “We should talk to her,” I said, pressing my face against the side of John’s head. His hair was so fine, so new, and it smelled like something from another world, something alive in its own right. “This little guy needs his mom.”

  I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I sniffed, wiped my eyes with the back of my wrist, and stared out through the glass at the lake.

  The Weight of Memory

  And this is that same lake. The same shoreline. The same far-off horizon. For a second, I want to lean forward and shout at Tom to turn the boat around. I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can go back to that cabin.

  But I want you to see it. I feel this strange, deep desire for you to see the last place I saw your grandmother, the last place your father was held by her. There is something important about place, something that grounds us deep into our memories. And without memory, we might float away.

  You lean in closer to me, and I squeeze.

  “Grampy!” you say, laughing. “Not so tight.”

  Tom looks over his shoulder. “Almost there,” he says, and his emotionless words come across more as a warning than an excited announcement.

  I see it from a long way off: The Point. I feel like I might have a panic attack. Breathe in your nose, out your mouth. In your nose, out your mouth.

  “Grampy,” you complain again, shrugging away from my tight grip around your shoulders.

  The rocky promontory rises out of the water, above the trees.

  The Point.

  That was where they said she went under.

  The boat makes a wide turn around The Point, and we rotate toward a deep inlet. In the midst of that inlet, like a shining jewel in the dark, glimmers the cabin. The almost-midday sun glares off the east-facing windows.

  I stand, take a few wobbly steps to the front of the boat, and sit in the seat beside Tom. Approaching that cabin is like approaching the past at light speed from a galaxy away. I see the four of us skinny-dipping under the moonlight, much farther from shore than we should have been. I see Tom and me fishing from the boat, the sun burning our skin, our one-gallon water jug empty. I see Mary and me sitting on the dock, my hand on her pregnant stomach. I lean down and sing against her skin, making her laugh. Somehow I see the three of them heading off in their kayaks, leaving me behind on the couch, holding one-week-old Johnny.

  I don’t see Tom’s face, but I can feel his gaze. You are standing in between us, bouncing with each wave, leaning forward involuntarily as the boat slows and the motor dims into a low rumble like distant thunder. The three of us drift forward like that, right back into the past, and I have a panic-filled moment. What have I done? Why did I bring you here? What monsters might still be lurking in the deep water of those long-ago years?

  Strange thoughts to have when the sun shines so bright, when the air is so clear.

  Mary, where did you go?

  We drift up against the cabin’s pier with a thud, and Tom cuts the engine. I don’t stand up. I don’t know if I can’t or if I won’t, but I sit there staring at the bright glass windows of the cabin. Tom takes one large step up onto the pier and winds the rope around one of the posts before reaching back and lifting you up by one arm.

  “Whoa!” you say, laughing. Tom can’t help but grin too, even though he lets it slide quickly from his face.

  I watch all of this without moving. I’m still sitting, feeling the rock of the boat, the gentle swaying, the up and down, and the occasional knock as it bumps the dock.

  “We’ll head inside,” Tom says. “You take your time, Paul.”

  You follow him along the wooden boards, looking over your shoulder twice to see if I’m coming. You seem nervous, skittish, ready to bolt. I recognize it, because that’s how I feel. This place is too familiar to feel strange, too long ago to feel like home.

  I pull myself up onto the dock, and the firmness of the world under my feet feels comforting. The boat rocks up and down in the small waves, the rope going back and forth between slack and taut. I wipe my wet hands on my jeans and take a deep breath, breathing in that place. Up ahead, Tom opens the back door to the cabin, and the two of you disappear inside.

  I walk slowly up the dock. The outside of the cabin has been recently stained so that the wood shines, and the glass in the oversized windows is so clean it’s almost invisible. The grounds around the cabin have been cleared, at least more than they used to be, and there’s a small patch of grass off to the side. I can’t see the lane from there, but I expect it’s been widened slightly and properly maintained. It seems Tom has become a very responsible adult. Perhaps having money makes that a little easier, if you can hire out t
he work you wouldn’t normally do yourself.

  All in all, the place looks good. Well kept. Tidy. The dock feels firm, not flimsy at all. I slowly open the door.

  I can see Tom has renovated inside. All in good taste, of course—nothing over the top. The countertops are a plain, beige granite, the appliances are all stainless steel, and the living room furniture is new. The floors are hardwood.

  “What do you think of the place?” Tom asks, coming out of the hallway.

  “Where’s Pearl?”

  “Exploring.”

  I smile. “It’s nice. You’ve done a great job on the place.”

  He seems relieved. I get the feeling he cares more about my opinion of the cabin than my opinion of his huge, glorious house.

  “We wanted to keep it sharp, Shirley and I. Nothing too fancy.”

  “Did you ever stay here?”

  “Not often. A handful of times. One of her cousins brought their family here for a week every year, and I had an uncle who used it as a writing getaway. Besides that, not much.” He pauses. “Every so often we’d find beer cans out on the dock. I guess the high school kids camped out here from time to time.”

  “Sounds familiar,” I say, thinking back on our first summer fixing the place up. “You’ve done a better job of renovating than we did that summer.”

  He laughs, and it sounds nice. It’s quiet, not full, but a laugh nonetheless. “That’s because I’m not doing the work. You know, one funny thing we realized is that this place has a basement.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, more of a crawl space, really. When we discovered it, we dug it out, made a proper basement.”

  “Wouldn’t it flood, being so close to the lake?”

  “It did,” he admits. “It does. There’s nothing down there now except a few empty shelves and, occasionally, some standing water that my guy has to pump out.”

  It doesn’t surprise me that Tom has a “guy.” I glance around the place, again taking in the simple class of the décor, plain and yet somehow perfect. There is a bookshelf against the wall that separates the main living area from a small entryway, and the books are lined up like little soldiers. I walk over and run my fingers along the titles, most of which are classics.