The Weight of Memory

by Shawn Smucker

The oddest part of it all is Tom. He sits in an armchair in the corner, not saying much. I think I saw him fall asleep at one point, but besides that he simply sits, resting, observing. It all feels rather professional. I have a strange fear that he will charge us for these hours, that I won’t be able to pay him. At one point he walks over to the deck doors and stares out over the lake. Other than that, I don’t see him get up.

  “Do you mind if I go into town?” I ask him. You are still asleep on the couch.

  “Go for it,” Tom says. “If she wakes up, I’ll have a chat with her, try to get a conversation started. We’ll go from there.”

  I walk to the front door.

  “Take my car,” Tom suggests.

  “That’s okay. Thanks. I’ll just take mine.”

  I hate to leave you, but a few things compel me to go back into town. First of all, I need to see if it’s really as dire a little village as it seemed when we first arrived. I want to see if there’s a school, other children, a potential life here for you. I’m feeling more and more urgent with each passing day to find you a landing spot after I’m gone.

  Anytime to three months.

  Second, and perhaps even more urgently, I have this inexplicable desire to go back to the diner. I feel like there’s something there, something I missed. The story you made up when we were there, and especially the things you said about the waitress, have left me wondering.

  The drive reminds me of everything I grew up loving about Nysa—the forest that borders the lake, the wide-open fields, the way the roads bend and turn. I’m smiling to myself, and I open the window a few inches. I wish you were with me and think about going back, but you were sleeping so peacefully, and I really do hope Tom has a chance to talk with you about the woman. I press on.

  Even in the midst of this beauty, a cloud rises from the direction of the town. Getting closer, I see it’s black smoke billowing from a farmer’s burn pile. I close the window to keep out the acrid smell, and as I pass the farm, I can see the fire roaring in the middle of a harvested cornfield. An old man and his wife take things from the back of a dilapidated pickup and toss them into the flames, retreating from the heat after throwing each item.

  I slow down and look over into the field, and the couple stops what they’re doing, returning my stare. He slouches, loops his hands in his jeans pockets, and she leans heavily on a shovel. Their faces are flat, inexpressive, and I instinctively wave. But they don’t move a muscle. For as long as I can see them in the rearview mirror, they watch me drive away.

  The town emerges from the fields and the trees and the blue sky. I drive in on Main Street once again, and the town is every bit as quiet as it was when you and I arrived. I half expect to see a rolling tangle of tumbleweed blow past. I think about stopping at one of the churches, but I pass each one. The diner is still calling me.

  Somehow, though, the air changes as I pull into the diner’s parking lot. I don’t know if it’s because I’m alone or if the chilly air of my favorite season is reviving my spirits, but I feel a lightness there as I park. The sun glares bright off the glass, and when I get out of the car, I can smell the greasy fare of my teenage years: French fries cooking and hamburgers on the grill.

  Inside, the counter is fifty percent occupied, and there’s almost a busy hum to the place. I walk behind the stools and make my way to what I still think of as my booth. The sticky floor squeaks under my shoes, and the sound brings a smile to my face. This crazy old diner. So many memories.

  Why am I here? I feel deep in my soul that I’m here for a reason. That this is precisely where I should be. But why?

  The same waitress we had before comes to the booth, and she seems downright pleasant. I wonder if she has changed or if it’s my mood that’s changed the way I see her. I order a burger and fries and watch the door swing behind her as she goes back to the kitchen.

  Seated at the counter are a few distinct groups: three old men hunch together and take turns talking, smiling at each other; two businessmen nod at each other’s advice; at the far side of the diner sit the three men who were here when Pearl and I first arrived. The bell above the door rings, and two women each wrangle a stroller through the swinging door. One of the businessmen gets up and holds the door. The two women find a booth right inside the door and place their respective children on the bench seat beside them. The children are small, maybe two or three years old, and they stand there staring out the glass, putting everything they can find in their mouths.

  So there are children in Nysa.

  The door swings open, and the waitress brings out my food. In that flash of a moment when the door is open, I can see into the kitchen. The shelves are full of supplies, and I think of Pearl’s hypothetical. The witch queen of Nysa. A thousand stairs down.

  I look up at the woman, and a flash of the old darkness passes over my eyes. I realize she’s been talking to me.

  “I’m sorry. Pardon me?”

  “Is this everything?” She chews her gum, mouth wide open with each smack.

  “Yes, yes, of course. Thank you.”

  She turns to go, but words erupt from me, unexpected words.

  “Did you grow up here?” I ask.

  She turns back toward me, suspicious. “My whole life.”

  “Did we know each other?” I ask, although I knew so few people in high school. And after I met Mary, I didn’t care about meeting anyone else.

  She sighs. I’m not going to give up, at least not easily, and I can tell by the look on her face that she’s weighing her desire to keep her name to herself with the hassle that might ensue if she doesn’t tell me. She gives in.

  “Jenny Hudson.”

  I know that name. Don’t I? “Did we know each other? I’m Paul Elias.”

  She can’t possibly be more disinterested. “I don’t know.”

  Again she turns to go, when a name emerges from my deepest subconscious.

  “Gillian Hudson,” I say. The girl who drowned at the beginning, when everything else started. Even though Jenny has taken a few steps away from me, she stops in her tracks. “Any relation?”

  She turns around with a skeptical look on her face. And one a bit frightened as well. “You knew Gillian?”

  “Not really. Only the name.”

  Tiredness descends on her face, and she puts one hand on her hip. “Then why are you asking about her?” But it isn’t an accusation as much as a plea. She unties her apron and pulls it off in one smooth motion before poking her head in through the door that leads to the kitchen, shouting, “I’m taking a break.”

  A panicked voice shouts back, “Right now?” But she doesn’t reply. She crouches down and slides into the booth beside me, leaning forward on both elbows. Everything about this situation startles me.

  “I remember when she drowned,” I say, picking up a French fry and putting it back down again. Her eyes are sad. It’s a wonder to me how I can misread someone so much.

  “That was a long time ago. Why bring it up now? Why come back?”

  “I wanted to show my granddaughter where I grew up.”

  Jenny is the first person who isn’t taken in. “Sure,” she spits out. “Okay. Why else are you here?”

  I weigh telling her everything. “My wife died here, in Nysa, many years ago. She had . . . mental challenges. She saw a woman who wasn’t actually there, a woman with silver-white hair.” I shrug. “Maybe you knew her? Mary? Her mom worked here.”

  Jenny nods. “I remember her.”

  “Now my granddaughter is seeing the same thing, the same person. I don’t know if that’s why I’m here. But it all feels connected.”

  Jenny’s face is frozen. I can’t tell if she is going to slap me, stand up and walk off, or go on staring for the next thousand years.

  She doesn’t do any of those. She leans back in the booth, rubs her temples, and shakes her head. “My friends and I saw her.”

  “Who, my wife?”

  “No.” She shakes her head again. “After my siste
r drowned, we were devastated. Not only my family. Everyone. All of my friends, all of Gillian’s friends. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We started going down to the lake a lot, like a pilgrimage. We all wanted to be close to the water. That sounds strange, I know. You’d think that with everything that happened, we’d want to be as far from there as possible.” She pauses. “But something drew us there. We couldn’t stay away.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I sit there. I’m aware of my food growing cold, but I have no interest in it.

  “Anyway, I was sitting there one night, oh, probably a few years later, on the banks of the lake, and out of nowhere there’s this woman sitting beside me. It was dark, and I couldn’t get a good look at her. All I could see was that she had this silvery-gray hair, almost white. Figured she had come out with our group of friends or was a parent coming out to pick up her kid. I don’t know. There were so many of us.”

  She stands abruptly, and I think I’ve lost her, but she bustles to the coffee maker, pours herself a cup, and raises a flat hand to a few customers who call out “Ma’am!” after her.

  “I’m on break!” she says.

  She settles into the booth and looks up at me as if I was the one talking. When I don’t say anything, she recovers.

  “Right, right.” She shakes her head once more. “Here’s the thing. This woman, she tells me that when my sister died she took something of hers. This woman was missing something. She asked if I could help her find it. I didn’t know what to tell her.”

  “Do you know what she was missing?” I ask.

  Jenny shakes her head. “My sister never would have taken anything. She was a scared little wimp.” She laughs. “Anyway, this woman got a little pushy, made me mad, so I told her to bug off.”

  “And that was that? You never heard from her again?”

  “Not me. But when a few of my friends started acting weird, I managed to pry it out of them. She’d approached them too, asking for help to get this thing my sister supposedly stole.”

  “Do you think they’d share their story with me? I’m trying to help my granddaughter.”

  Jenny takes a deep breath. “My friends? No, I’m sorry. They disappeared soon after I saw that woman.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “It happened one night while we were out there by the lake. One minute they were there, the next they were gone. They were fun girls, not into any serious kind of trouble. They never would have run away.”

  “Where do you think they are?”

  “Where are they?” She gave a cynical laugh, but there were tears in her eyes that she tried to blink furiously away. “I think they drowned, like my sister.”

  Heavy Things

  It is nearly dinnertime. After I got back from the diner, I fell asleep on the floor beside the couch, and now I’m waking up, yawning, looking around and feeling a bit disoriented. Tom turns on the reading lamp beside the armchair, and the rest of the house is so dark. Fall is here, and with it comes early dusk and cold breezes through the open windows.

  Tom stands and walks over to the couch where you are cocooned in your blanket. “Could we have a little chat?” he asks.

  You nod, your face placid.

  “Why don’t you sit up, Pearl?” I say.

  With a sigh you bring yourself up to a sitting position and remove the blanket from your head, still keeping it close around the rest of your body. Tom comes over and sits in one of the padded, antique wooden chairs perpendicular to the couch. I walk away, across the room to his armchair, the one he had been perched on all day. Interestingly enough, I can see the lake from there, through the glass deck doors. I didn’t know he could see the water from that spot.

  “Now, Pearl,” he begins, and there is something fundamentally different about him. I can’t quite put my finger on it. The easy explanation is that it’s his counselor persona, but I feel that it’s something deeper. “I want to have a heart-to-heart with you.”

  You give a resigned sort of nod like you know what’s coming, aren’t looking forward to it, but see no reason to avoid it.

  “Your grandfather says—”

  “Grampy,” you interrupt. “He’s my Grampy.”

  “Of course,” Tom says, smiling agreeably. “Of course. Your Grampy says that you’ve been talking with an older woman the last few days.”

  You nod, and your face is like calm water. “She’s not older. At least I don’t think she is. Not old like you and Grampy, even though she does have silver hair. I can’t really see her face very clearly all the time. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s in her late forties. But she’s in very good shape.”

  Tom seems impressed with the detail you’re providing, although I can’t tell if that’s part of his strategy or if it’s genuine.

  “Does she have a name?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Hmmm. Doesn’t that seem a little strange to you?”

  “Not really,” you answer. “There are plenty of people we don’t call by name.”

  Tom raises his eyebrows in a question.

  “You know, like a police officer. You call them ‘Officer.’ Or the lady who works in the crosswalk. I always call her ‘ma’am,’ but I don’t know her name.”

  “That’s a good point, Pearl. I understand. What should I call her, you know, when we’re talking about her?”

  You shrug as if this is the last thing in the world that matters to you. “‘The woman,’ I guess.”

  “When did you first see the woman?”

  “I guess it was in art class, although I think I saw her around the city a couple of times, back when I used to go for walks.”

  When you used to run away, I want to interrupt, but I have a feeling Tom wouldn’t be happy with me if I did. Probably something about invading the process or some such nonsense.

  “In art class?”

  “She helped me draw my map.”

  “It’s a fascinating map.”

  “Thank you.” Your face brightens at the compliment.

  “For example, how did you know so much about this area without ever having been here?”

  “She told me about it.”

  “Your Grampy?”

  “No, the woman.”

  “Perhaps you overheard your Grampy talking about Nysa with someone else. That’s possible, isn’t it?”

  When I speak up, I immediately feel like it’s a mistake. “I’ve never talked about Nysa since I left. Not once. Not with anyone.”

  When Tom looks over the couch and finds my gaze in the corner, there’s a flash of annoyance in his eyes. But he defuses it well.

  “Were you afraid of her when you first met?” he asks you.

  “You mean in the art room?”

  Tom nods.

  “No,” you say thoughtfully. “There were lots of people around.”

  “Did anyone else see her?”

  You shrug. “I don’t know.”

  Tom pauses, his head cocking to one side. “So if you weren’t afraid of her in the art room, are there ever times when you are afraid of her?”

  You take a deep breath, and it comes out in a sigh. “Sometimes.”

  “What’s one time you felt afraid?”

  “I was afraid today, when I saw her under the water and she told me to follow her.”

  “She told you to follow her under the water?”

  You nod.

  “I can understand why that would be scary,” Tom says, and the conversation dies.

  I feel a wave of nausea coming, but I don’t want to miss anything, so I sit there and fight it down. When it passes, I feel exhausted, and the knot is throbbing. The ache streaks down my neck, down my back, all the way to my knees, and I can’t tell which direction the pain is going—up or down.

  The pain is me, I think.

  “Does this person remind you of anyone you know?” Tom asks.

  I can tell by the setting of your shoulders that you don’t want to answer.

  “Pearl
?” Tom asks quietly.

  You reply, but neither Tom nor I hear your answer.

  “What was that?”

  “You.” Your head ducks.

  “Me?” Tom asks, jolted out of his counselor persona.

  You nod.

  “How does she remind you of me?”

  “You’re both good at keeping secrets.”

  Tom’s face goes blank, white. The air in the room feels charged, and I grip the armrests of my chair. Darkness leaks in as the sun drops, and now the only light in the house is the lamp beside me. I watch you and Tom in the shadows.

  Tom seems to be drifting away, losing himself. You, on the other hand, seem to be finding yourself. When you speak, your voice sounds clear, as though you and Tom have switched roles.

  “Shirley saw the same woman,” you say.

  Tom nods, seemingly unable to talk.

  “What did she tell you about her?” you ask.

  Tom’s voice comes out flat, like he’s talking to no one. “She said she was kind, that she asked Shirley to go with her.” He looks over you to me, and our eyes meet. “She said the woman was Death, but not someone to be afraid of. The woman said she needed Shirley to do her a favor.”

  Your voice is gentle now, and I feel pride rising in me. But that pride freezes after what you say next.

  “Today, when she pulled me under, she said that you know what that feels like, putting someone below the water.”

  Tom stands. His limbs are rigid, his jaw clenched. “That’s enough for now.”

  “Tom,” you say, “secrets are heavy things. They’ll drag you under if you don’t let them go.”

  He turns and walks through the kitchen, through the darkness, disappearing in the direction of his bedroom.

  I stand up and walk over to the couch, sit down beside you, and don’t say a thing. I have no idea what to say. I have no idea what it is that I just witnessed.

  You turn to me with sadness in your eyes. “There are too many secrets in this house,” you whisper. “Too many secrets.”

  She’s Gone

  I scrounge up some dinner for you and me from the kitchen. We eat without talking, and the house feels empty. After finishing, we walk together slowly back through the winding hall to your bedroom.