Almost Remembered

by Marilyn Tracy

  She mouthed his name without giving voice to it. But he shuddered as if she’d pressed a kiss to his chest and held her even more tightly. Warmly. Safely. And with something more, something filled with his own longing and wants.

  Now that Thelma was gone, now that her own life was in chaos and disarray...now he wanted her.

  She pushed away from him, not swiftly, but with finality. Without quite meeting his eyes, she spoke to his laugh lines, the evidence of both his age and his time in the sun, his warmth, his compassion.

  She forced a false smile to her lips. “Well, Chas, that was certainly a welcome.”

  He didn’t say anything, though she could feel a new tension radiating out from his still body.

  “We could use more of that kind of thing in New York,” she added, and stepped away from him, hoping her legs would support her. She moved carefully, refusing to allow him to feel the slightest tinge of pity for her limp.

  “In New York,” he echoed.

  She flicked him a quick glance and couldn’t read his expression. “I do have to go back, you know,” she said.

  “Back.”

  She felt a stirring of resentment. Had he really thought a single kiss and a too warm hug after fifteen years would make her forget her responsibilities, her career, however turbulent that might be at the moment?

  “Of course. I do have a life, you know,” she all but snapped, and was sorry the second the words slipped from her tongue.

  But was sorrier still when she saw the way he seemed to harden as though being slowly turned to stone.

  His eyes darted to hers, then away again. But the darts found their way to her damnably unwary heart.

  “Of course you do,” he said. “I just wanted to welcome you home—back to Almost.”

  Now he stepped back, away from her, edging toward the door. “I guess I’d better say hello to everybody. Town politics. You know how that is.”

  She said she did and she felt nearly ill with the way she had distanced him and demeaned that kiss.

  He wrenched the back door open with a controlled violence.

  When she would have said something more, though she had no idea what that might have been, he raised a hand to forestall her and spoke himself. “It’s been a long time, Allison. Maybe too long for some things. But I don’t think it’s just seeing us again after all this time that’s making you jump every time you hear a noise. You’re acting like someone on the run.”

  She didn’t know what to say. She felt stripped of all defenses except that news mask she’d so carefully honed over the years. And even that seemed to be melting beneath his discerning study.

  He sighed and looked nearly resigned. “I’ll be around if you want to talk, Allison.”

  She couldn’t speak, though everything in her wanted to.

  “We could always do that, couldn’t we?”

  She shook her head slowly. That was the one thing they had never been able to do...talk

  He knew what was wrong with an animal just by touching, by looking at it, by gazing into its tortured eyes. Just as he’d always been able to do with her. And she could talk to anyone on earth, drawing secrets out that would be revealed to the world. But talk? The two of them? Never.

  “It’s not such a hard thing, Allison,” he said. “You just have to want to let someone in.”

  With that he left the porch, letting the door drop shut behind him.

  Soft as the sound was, it felt like a slap.

  “I want to,” she whispered, staring at the closed door. “Oh, Chas...I’ve always wanted to let you in.”

  Allison lay in the darkened guest room listening to the night sounds of her sister’s home. All the townspeople had gone home a couple of hours earlier, leaving her to face Taylor, Steve and the boys without the protective mass of well-wishers. After two hours of nearly excruciating awkwardness, she’d pleaded exhaustion and a headache and fled to the sanctuary of her room.

  She longed for the quiet and comfort she’d once known in her apartment in New York City. There she could have curled up in the big padded chair on her narrow balcony and listened to the hum of the city, the pulsing beat of so many million people’s hearts, aches and needs.

  In the safety of that lonely chair, she wouldn’t have been forced to lie in the dark, aching and needing to understand the dynamics of a family she didn’t even know anymore, or ponder another panic attack and yet another loss of two or three hours.

  There in that empty expanse of an apartment, she could have pretended her life was complete. Often did so, in fact. And though she would have known it for a lie, she would have felt comfortable with the falsehood because there would have been nothing to contradict it, nothing to flay her with the truth.

  Now, after two months of unmitigated confusion, with the soft laughter of a sister she hadn’t seen in fifteen years, the teasing rumble of a soon-to-be brother-in-law she hadn’t even met before today and the cracking voices of three identical boys, she felt more alone than she’d ever felt in her life. She felt forced to confront the emptiness of her life, the superficial elements that composed her everyday world.

  Where was the warmth, the laughter? The jokes among colleagues, the teasing, the frenetic pace of her world in the city and in the news department was certainly exciting and rich, but once home, where was the simple human warmth?

  What had she called it earlier, while afraid to get out of the car and greet her sister? Empty-life syndrome. The latest in pop-psychology disorders. There would undoubtedly be groups forming in every neighborhood soon. ELS Meeting, 8:00 p.m., In The Library. Refreshments Served.

  Throughout the long evening, she’d been forced to brave the past at every turn. After his kiss on the back porch, Chas had gone inside and had stayed, for the remainder of his short visit, on the other side of any room she’d entered. But somehow some chemistry between them had seemed to alert everyone in the room that the two of them should be talking together. Eyes would swivel from one to the other, faces poised and eager.

  Aunt Sammie Jo had approached her many times, touching her, talking of Susie as if Susie might have appeared at the door at any moment. And she’d stood before Allison, looking so frail and tired with her leathered hands and her face drawn and pinched.

  Just glancing at her had torn Allison’s heart into ragged pieces. It was my fault, she’d nearly blurted out a hundred times. If it hadn’t been for me, Susie would still be alive. But she’d kept silent, guilt choking her.

  Uncle Cactus, Sammie Jo’s husband, hadn’t said much at all, only hugged her a little longer than she ever remembered him doing so in her youth. And his craggy snow white brows had twitched as he’d looked away from her, his eyes suspiciously shiny with tears.

  And the boys, Taylor’s amazing triplets, so much like Craig, their uncle, but so different, too, had pummeled her with questions, statements, stories and demands for her attention. Reminders all three of a life she could never have, of children that would never be.

  And Chas, with his callused hands, silver in his hair, and soft, pliable lips, calling back every emotion she wanted buried long ago.

  And his son, Billy.

  Too much memory was far, far worse than too little, she thought in disgust. And she, of all people, would surely know.

  She sat up abruptly and swung her legs from the bed. She limped across the dark room to her suitcase, digging inside until she found the pack of cigarettes she’d carried with her since quitting three months before. She also unearthed a slender pack of matches from a restaurant she loved in New York.

  She shook a crunchy-dry cigarette free from the rumpled pack and struck the match. Her fingers were shaking, both around the cigarette and the match. The flame flickered and danced, orange light playing across the walls of the room.

  She took a deep breath, then shook the match out and, with a hitched sob, dropped the unlit cigarette into the trash can beside the dresser. She opened a window to blow away the sulphur odor and knelt before narrow a
perture, drinking in the clean, cold desert night air.

  She could feel winter in the night where she couldn’t during the day, could smell it in the dry, cold scent of the unfurrowed, frost-covered fields.

  She closed her eyes and felt a desperate longing for that girl she used to be. The one who trusted easily, who believed in all the promise of the universe. The one who wasn’t scared or frightened or couldn’t remember some things. And she wanted the hard, tough reporter she used to be at Timeline, the cool customer in the face of adversity and deadlines.

  She didn’t want this soul-sick confusion of past and present colliding. She didn’t want to confront the demons from the past when she could scarcely recall with any degree of clarity a single day in the past two months.

  She opened her eyes to stare out the window at the white vista of flat lawn, flat, empty field beyond the highway and felt that sob she’d stifled earlier fighting for escape.

  She wouldn’t cry. She’d had tears well in her eyes, even had a few spill free in this strange afternoon, but she hadn’t given way to crying in the strict definition of crying. And she wouldn’t now.

  She clamped her jaw tight, holding back the sob. Forcing that flood of undirected emotion back to the depths from which it had sprung.

  “No,” she said aloud, forcing herself to comply, exerting the self-discipline she’d learned years before to come into play, the same discipline that had so eluded her of late.

  Both facets of herself, the young, trusting girl and the hard and polished woman, seemed so far away, so buried beneath the confusion that swamped her now. They were elements lost in the fragments of memories that seemed, scrambled and unconnected, in the panic that would steal in and make her tremble only to disappear with equally inexplicable swiftness.

  She pressed a finger to her lips, holding in the sharp, hot keening she felt rising. Strangely the touch reminded her all too well of the feel of Chas’s lips on hers. Warm, strong, demanding and somehow offering a safe haven.

  A tear streaked down her cheek as she stared out the window.

  Some shadow shifted out front, looking for a moment like a man lurking in the dark. Her heart jumped, and she felt a jolt of terror streak through her.

  Just beyond the window, she saw a man’s arm, stretching out, ready to...to what?

  She didn’t know. She didn’t care. Her heart raced, her breath caught and held, snared in her throat. Panic. She clamped her hands over her mouth to hold back her scream of terror.

  Not here. Not in Almost. Not when she was with her family.

  She felt herself gag slightly against the urge to shriek out her fear.

  But the wind strengthened and gusted across a rose of Sharon bush, causing its leafless, spindly limbs to wave with more vigor and the man-shadow became a bush once again, the evil arm a mere branch.

  After a few seconds of utter disbelief, Allison was able to draw a deep breath and swipe the tears from her cheek. She dragged her hands through her hair, lifting her fluff of blond hair from her forehead, and waited for the rhythm of her heartbeat to steady and slow.

  What on earth was wrong with her? The doctors in New York had said it might take a while for her attacks to pass and that she would soon be fine. She could only wait for the moments to pass, for her heart to steady. And somehow, now that she was back home in Almost, welcomed back into the fold of the neverending community, she thought that she might just be able to beat whatever tortured her. She might just be able to survive the mysterious malady. Like the flu, she might just get over it.

  As she had gotten over Chas Jamison?

  But she had done that.

  Until she saw him again.

  The man with the greasy black hair and stained clothes stood outside the house with the yellow trim, watching the darkened house, one window in particular. He’d seen her clearly outlined in the brief flicker of a match.

  He’d held his breath, wondering if she would actually light the cigarette he knew she wouldn’t want, would never want again. But he saw no telltale glow from a lighted tip. She’d dropped it. Abandoned the attempt.

  Good girl. She’d given them up three months ago. For him. Because he’d asked it of her. He’d demanded it of her. Not that she’d ever thanked him for it.

  When she opened the window to her bedroom and had knelt in front of it, he’d felt her longing from where he stood in the shadows. He’d felt her aching and had reached out for her only to realize it wasn’t him she cried for so sadly. It never had been for him.

  How he loved her and how he hated her. Polarities. He drew back into the shadows, but lingered there, buffeted by a bitter, cold desert wind that seemed echoed in his heart. And he vowed to keep watch over his lady until such time came as she would be his forever.

  Which wouldn’t be very long at all now.

  “Dad?”

  Chas turned from his blank concentration on a test tube to see his son framed in the open doorway of the clinic. “Hey, there, kiddo. Dishes all squared away?”

  “Naw. I decided we waste too much time on dishes, so I just threw them all away.”

  Chas tossed a pencil at his smiling son and grinned himself as the boy caught it without even glancing at it.

  Instead of just saying a quick good-night and heading for his room and whatever homework awaited, Billy stood just inside the door, tossing the pencil up into the air and catching it. Idle, dexterous, even agile, but his face too carefully neutral.

  “What’s on your mind?” Chas asked, sitting back in his chair.

  He’d seen that particular studied indifference before. It usually preceded the more intense discussions he and Billy had. Sex. Girls. Thelma’s illness.

  Billy cut him a swift, assessing glance, then flicked his eyes to the pencil flipping end over end in the air. He caught it again before he answered. “Taylor’s sister...you know, Allison.”

  Chas’s stomach knotted swiftly. He forced himself to relax. If the mere mention of her name could affect him so, he’d better get a grip on himself. She’d made it clear the past was the past and that was the way it should stay.

  But even knowing that, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about the way her silken skin had felt beneath his hand earlier that evening. About the way her lips had parted for him.

  “What about her?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Did you know her? Back when, I mean?”

  If anything, he found himself tensing even more. “Yes, I knew her.”

  Somehow putting it the past tense seemed a betrayal of sorts.

  Or a lie.

  He couldn’t quite look at Billy, but had to ask, “Why do you ask?”

  “I dunno,” his son said. The pencil pinwheeled again, and deft fingers plucked it from midair.

  “Sure, you do. What’s up?”

  Billy shrugged. “I just wondered, that’s all.”

  “Wondered what?”

  Billy’s eyes cut from the pencil to Chas in a swift, nearly apologetic glance. “Oh, nothing. Just something Mom said once.”

  Chas felt like that whirling pencil, tossed into the air without any awareness of how he’d gotten there.

  “What was that?” he managed to ask calmly enough.

  Again the eyes. Again the pencil. “Oh, it was a long time ago, you know.”

  Chas waited.

  The pencil became a miniature baton. Up and over. Up and over, caught between middle finger and forefinger, endlessly spinning, but so controlled.

  “Mom said that you and Allison were...well, you know, like...”

  “Like what?” Chas asked through utterly dry lips.

  The pencil clattered to the floor, and Billy swiftly snatched it up, rolling it in his fingers. “Like...lovers or something.”

  Billy wasn’t looking at him, but Chas knew he would soon. He instinctively felt that if he didn’t manage to school his features to some semblance of calm, his son would see every truth on his face. Every raw and painful truth. And some truths a child should n
ever see. Ever.

  Chas felt a moment’s anger at Thelma for having told the boy anything at all. Immediately following this anger was a supreme pity for Thelma, for a woman who had been a good and loving mother, though a sad one, for a woman who had tried the best she could to make a family, a home. And he felt the sorrow he’d known from the first moment with her, the sadness of knowing she would always dream of another man while never truly loved by the husband she had.

  “That was before your mother and I married,” Chas said, letting the stark honesty in his voice cross the few feet to where his son stood uncomfortably rolling that slender pencil in his fingers.

  The pencil froze, and Billy’s eyes lifted to meet Chas’s. Clear blue eyes, questioning but not doubting, locked with his own brown eyes. “Did you love her? Allison, I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  How simple it was to tell the truth to Billy, the simple truth he’d never once really told Allison. The entire universe seemed open to him at that moment. Like an epiphany, it seemed to slam into his soul, into his heart; he’d never said the words to Allison. The words.

  “And now?” Billy asked.

  “Now?”

  “Yeah. Like she’s back. And like Mom’s, well, you know, like that’s not a problem.” Billy stopped fingering the pencil and frowned heavily. “That sounded bad, but you know what I mean, right?”

  Chas smiled, even though a grin had never felt more strained on his face. The simplicity of youthful thinking: the world was a huge, colorful place but conveniently pigeonholed with tidy boxes.

  “That was a long time ago, Billy.”

  He heard the echo of Allison’s words and restrained a grimace. Ambivalence is all I feel. He knew exactly how she must have felt. He felt it now and understood her. Ambivalence didn’t have anything to do with indifference; it was being ripped into two parts, equally drawn to the torn halves.

  “Yeah, but feelings don’t just go away or anything, right?”

  Out of the mouths of babes, Chas thought. And was still thinking about Billy’s innocent question six hours later and miles from sleep. And he still had no answer to give him and less than none to give himself.