The Memory Tree Read online

  He nodded. “Guess you don’t have a lot of time to dwell on memories in your line of work. You’re sure that’s all it is?”

  Even before I could answer, he marched out of the room.

  Nor did I tell Jenny. Not a peep. She picked me up later that day, packed up my meager belongings at the hospital, and carefully loaded me into our two-year old Toyota Camry. Almost time to trade it in. I did think about telling her, but she’d know I was as nuts as Doctor Kyzer would have. Then what?

  So, I kept my secret. It wasn’t the first time I had kept secrets from Jenny. There were lots of things she didn’t know about me. She knew only the bare bones of my life, since I had tried to bury as many secrets as I could, not being able to really talk about a lot of things. She knew the jist of the story, but I could never tell her details. The events that shaped my life were shadowy generalities, and that was all I was able to give her. It felt like lying by omission, but I think she understood, and she never pressed me. Somewhere, I think she knew my buried secrets would come surfacing one day.

  Jenny was wonderful when we settled back home. She really took care of me without making it seem like she was spending her entire day hovering around. She had taken a week’s vacation to be home, and I found I really appreciated it. She spent a lot of time reading beside me on the couch, holding my hand or putting her foot next to mine.

  After a day, she asked, “Where’s your diamond?” She was rubbing her own ring as if she were afraid she’d lose hers as I had lost mine.

  I so much wished I could share my trip with her, but the words were trapped inside me. I looked at her and was at a loss for words. “I don’t know. Maybe somebody at the hospital took it when I was knocked out.” I know it was a lame excuse, and I looked down at the thin white strip circling my finger. I didn’t know what else to say.

  When she finally went back to work at her used bookstore, I thought I’d better do a bit of research, and I logged onto the Internet, pulling up google.com from my Favorites list. I tried dozens of searches, starting with “dissolving body.” I didn’t even really understand the hits that came back, some pages linking back to web sites for rose bushes and others related to spiritual healing. Nothing even close to being relevant.

  I tried a different tact, searching for hallucinations, memory, trip, experience, childhood. All of this was pretty much useless. The only hits I got back were totally off the mark. Most of my attempts just gave me a million pages of crap.

  So, I changed strategies again. I went to a web site specializing in the paranormal. I thought there might be some leads there. I spent days searching through blind alleys, some of which looked temporarily promising, but again, nothing concrete came up.

  It seemed like I was unique.

  Alone.

  I was only half surprised at this discovery. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had expected that if this had happened before to anyone, I would have heard about it. It would be an oddball story stuck on page 20 of the paper, but I would have heard of it. I read every word of the local paper every day. Just one of my addictions.

  I gave up the search after two weeks.

  With Jenny at work, I grew restless in the house and started to wander from room to room, just looking for something different. We own a large house overlooking Puget Sound, with a nice wooden balcony just out the back, where I could sit and watch the sailboats float along in the distance. Sitting there always seemed to help the time go by.

  Peaceful. Just like my nighttime visit to 1968 . . .

  The rest of the first month of my convalescence went painfully slow. I was careful not to do anything that might strain myself. I could still feel the echoes of the tingling in my chest, a palimpsest that might never leave, like the itchiness in the arm amputees sometimes feel long after the arm is gone. At times, various parts of my body would start to itch, but scratching never helped. I always stared at the finger or elbow or whatever was itching, waiting in fear for it to start to dissolve.

  The worst part of my recovery was the deep and overwhelming sense of weakness throughout my body covering me like a shroud.

  Slowly, time began to heal my tired bones, and I did recover enough to start some elementary exercises. I hired a physical trainer to get me started, and he was careful to watch everything I did.

  During this time, although Jenny and I slept together, we didn’t once make love. I knew I wasn’t up to that, and I guess I wondered if I ever would be again. That thought scared me. Jenny was very supportive, and we had lots of great hugs. I recognized her enthusiasm and optimism from her mother’s death bed.

  One morning, frustration started to overpower me. I woke up just wanting to hit something. I could feel my fists clenching. What the fuck happened to me? I shouted internally.

  I climbed out of bed, needing to find a way to release the tension, and it was all I could do to not shake Jenny, wake her up, slap her.

  She slept, unaware of how angry I was feeling. Angry at her, angry at the world, angry at myself.

  I forced myself to leave the bedroom and went out to the balcony, hanging my head as I gripped tightly to the rails. Eventually, my temper calmed down. I felt shame for even thinking of hitting Jenny, and I leaned over, holding my head in my hands. I’m sorry, I apologized to her in my mind. I’m sorry for all the times.

  I gradually wanted to believe I really did hallucinate the journey back to Nelson. I could still clearly remember the visitor when I was a little boy, but maybe that thought always had been there, hidden, and maybe I created this fantasy in my mind to meet that memory. That sure sounded like the most plausible explanation. I was glad I hadn’t told anyone of the trip earlier.

  Every once in a while, though, I’d open up my wallet and see the ticket to Tod Clark’s Pawn Shop. My ring was waiting for me in 1968.

  I was off work for three and a half months.

  When I went back to the office on June 6, it was mentally hard. The stock market was already open when I arrived, and everybody was glued to their computers, buying and selling, monitoring the bid and ask for their favorite stocks, talking on the fancy headsets they all wore. The chatter sounded like pure chaos. Few people noticed me slip into my office and sit behind my desk, and that was just fine by me.

  My desk was clean. Sterile. Nothing like I had left it, when there had been dozens of scattered worksheets littering the top. Now, there was no paper at all. Just my pens, my phone (with no blinking lights for the first time I could remember), my computer stuff. It was as if I really had evaporated, but I knew that when I left, others had swallowed my clients, and they needed all those bits of paper to make any sense of their accounts.

  Shelley arrived about ten minutes after I did, at her normal start time of nine o’clock. She alone came in and greeted me, giving me a hug and saying, “God, Sam, it’s so good to have you back.”

  It sounded like something she had pre-planned to say. An artificial welcome. Even so, she was a good kid, and it felt nice to have her say it.

  As she turned to leave, the second attack hit me. I grunted, and she turned around. The last thing I heard was her scream for help.

  I looked down at my hand and watched the crackling green and white lights jumping on its surface, as bits and pieces of me started to dissolve.

  Part 4

  It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters only who I remember he was.

  Anne Sexton

  Chapter 11

  And woke up in 1968.

  I guess I wasn’t really surprised this time. When I opened my eyes, it was the dead of night, and although several months had passed in my own time, I knew in my gut I was waking on the same lazy June night I had left earlier. I had been surprised then by my long dead father, who caught me off guard by yelling at me. Back again, I could still hear him muttering in his home next door. My childhood home.

  Apparently, Dad hadn’t been particularly bothered by me collapsing. That was pretty typical of him. Anything that didn’t directly aff
ect him was relegated to the scrap heap at the basement of his consciousness. I could have died then and there and he simply wouldn’t give a shit.

  Asshole.

  I slowly pulled myself up, noticing again there were no pains in my chest, no tingles in my hands, no sense of dissolving. The attack I was suffering remained decades in the future.

  I slowly walked to the far end of the yard, and all at once, several aspects of my experiences coalesced into my mind, clarifying my situation like a lens sharpening sunlight. It felt like the first time I had been able to think clearly since this whole ordeal began. Needing no prompts, I ticked off several points on my mental notepad.

  First, whatever was happening to me, it was going to continue to happen. I’d live in 1968 for some period of time, go home, then be bounced back. I knew this would continue to happen until . . .

  I didn’t know how to finish that sentence.

  Second, this was real. This wasn’t a fantasy I was dreaming in St. Michael’s Hospital. This really was my childhood home, my life available to be revisited and reviewed. Critiqued? Modified?

  Third, it was pointless to try to talk to anybody about this. Nobody would believe me.

  Fourth, and maybe most important, I knew deep down in my soul that I was here for a reason. I was here to learn or to teach or to intervene or to change history

  or . . . something. Whatever that “something” was would become clear to me as time went on. At least, that’s what I was hoping for.

  That was the extent of my understanding so far.

  When I had been back in my own time, somehow I had a suspicion I might be pulled back to 1968. The first visit didn’t seem to accomplish anything other than a bit of sight-seeing. It felt like I had to come back. Something drew me here.

  That’s why I made sure I kept a stash of my old currency with me wherever I went. I shoved my hand into my wallet to be sure, and yes, I would have no trouble with money this trip. At least not for a while.

  I went back to my room and slept the rest of the night through, peacefully.

  Chapter 12

  June 28, 1968. Friday. God, it all still seemed so strange. I wandered around the western side of the city core, the area I used to prowl with the Beauty Shop Gang, back when I was, well, when I was the age I was right now. Sometimes, my verb tenses seem to be out of whack, but I’m trying to be as clear as I can.

  I had slept until almost eleven, and finally forced myself out of bed, washed my face, and pulled on the same set of clothes I had worn the day before. I was going to have to set up some kind of wardrobe in Mrs. Williamson’s little basement apartment.

  I made myself an instant Sanka coffee, which tasted awful after being a devotee of Starbucks for so many years. There was a can of white powder in a cupboard, and I mixed a teaspoon of it into my drink. It was a cream substitute, but it just turned the coffee a dirty bronze color without adding any flavor.

  I miss my cappuccino.

  I had to get out and get some fresh air. I chose the west end of town for old time’s sake, curious how my memories stacked up with reality. I felt a certain longing to visit my old stomping grounds.

  Large shade trees hung over Washington Avenue, a cross-street intersecting Main where I now lived. 162B Washington Avenue. The “B” meant basement.

  It was a nice quiet stroll. A few mothers walked their babies in old-fashioned metal baby carriages (that seemed so primitive compared to the fancy strollers of my day), and a few retired folks sat on their porches watching the world go slowly by. The city was actually radiant with positive thoughts; everyone expected an optimistic future. Most men were out working -- I didn’t get the sense unemployment was a problem.

  And no beggars, I knew.

  My Seattle was full of them. They seemed to travel west to get away from the colder parts of the country, but I knew all large American cities had their fair share of the homeless. Not here. I frowned at my naivety, not having a clue what had happened to create the environment that allowed people to be abandoned.

  I had no idea why that seemed to matter all of a sudden. I knew I was as guilty as anybody, rarely giving a shit about the poor slobs who had to beg for change to buy a sandwich. Being the ever-money-grubbing stockbroker I was, I simply didn’t have time for those wastes of humanity.

  I was too important.

  But, today, things seemed different, as if I were seeing our world through a totally different pair of eyes, eyes that weren’t jaded by time. In fact, time seemed to be non-existent here. Time was simply a place-keeper marking the events of our lives. Until now, time had been an enemy; here time was a friend.

  There was a large orphanage on the next block,

  kitty-cornered to where I was. Now, that was a place I remembered clearly. I had to walk past there (hurriedly) whenever I went to the library, which was quite often in my teenage years. I’d rush by, because of the haunted faces of the children that always stared back at me. I remember watching a movie as a teen called Village of the Damned. That was what I always called the orphanage. The faces of the little boys and girls staring out the iron bars of the fence surrounding the place always filled me with fear. I knew no matter how bad things were at my own home, at least I had one. These kids had nothing, and I dreamed of daily beatings, little food or water, and when I was older, I imagined more hateful activities, as the terrible staff took even more liberties with the children.

  But, it wasn’t happening that way. I leaned on the iron-barred fence (at least I had that memory right) and saw a handful of kids, five, six, maybe up to eight years old. They were laughing and playing catch with an orange basketball. Two young women were supervising them, and they were laughing just as much as the kids were.

  That can’t be right.

  I kept watching, and eventually, one of the young women noticed me and came to see what I wanted. “Can I help you?” She had curly auburn hair, hanging loosely down to her shoulders. She was maybe 25 or so. I was still so surprised at seeing the kids enjoy themselves, I didn’t respond right away. “Sir?” she asked. She smiled and looked back over her shoulder. “It’s very rewarding working here.” As she turned back to me, she said, “Are you interested in adopting?”

  “Oh,” I stumbled over my words. “No, I’m just new to town and was surprised to see -- I mean -- ” I fought for words. “They seem so happy.”

  “Well, yes, of course they are.” She frowned at me, perhaps mentally drawing a picture of me in her mind in case I ever did come back to adopt. “I mean, they’d rather not be here, of course, but we do everything we can.”

  “You must get very attached to them.”

  She nodded. “It’s hard when they leave. But, of course, we’re ecstatic for them. They often come back to visit.” After a slight pause, she added, “I grew up here myself.”

  And with that, the last thought of terrors in the orphanage vanished. Where were the abusive custodians who treated the children so badly? I had to admit my memories were flawed.

  “Thank you,” I said, looking into her eyes. “You’ve done me a service today.”

  She looked at me as if I was nuts. Maybe I was.

  That was when I realized I needed to trust my eyes and ears more than my memories. What hit me the hardest was this: the vision I had in my mind of the orphanage was strong and clear. No ambiguities. It was an evil place where the children were mistreated and were desperately unhappy.

  If I was so wrong about that, what else was I wrong about?

  My father?

  Uncle Bob?

  My mother’s role in all this?

  I decided instantly I needed to re-discover my own sense of the times. My senses needed to be wide open, so I could see, hear, smell, taste, and touch the city of my childhood, the people I had known and the problems I faced. I couldn’t assume my father was the evil person I remembered anymore, and all of a sudden I had the realization that --

  No, that couldn’t be true.

  I walked back over to M
ain Street as thoughts flittered through my mind, and I looked around and paid attention for the first time.

  The grandiose store on the street was Woolworth’s. It wasn’t large by any modern sense, but the granite and brick building overwhelmed the smaller stores nearby. It was a corner building that was three floors tall. There was a lunch counter on the main floor. I only vaguely remembered the building.

  Nearby was a used furniture store, a couple of grungy restaurants, a shoe store, a small bookstore (what would they think of Barnes & Noble here?) and a few other odds and sods. It wasn’t nearly the metropolitan shopping area I remembered. In fact, it was barely a shopping area at all, but I couldn’t think of anything that was actually missing.

  At the end of the short string of stores was a large white church, which I remembered being Presbyterian. I’d joined in for some kind of kids’ craft fair or something one warm summer evening.

  In theory, I had belonged to a Unitarian church several blocks away. In practice, I only went there when my mother dragged me, which was rare. Even she didn’t seem to get much out of the sermons. She went when she was sad.

  As I walked farther down Main Street, the stores changed from goods to services (two beauty shops, a barber sandwiched between), a couple of professional buildings (a doctor, two accountants, and a lawyer, who I expect had little business).

  Eventually, houses started to spring up between the shops and then the stores petered away to nothing, as small run-down homes marched down the rest of the street.

  That was downtown.

  I turned back and thought about what wasn’t on the street. McDonalds and other fast food chains. Strip clubs. Fitness centers. Music stores. Eyeglass stores. Computer stores. The landscape of retail was very different from my own time. I smiled, thinking things were so much easier here. Simpler.

  No stock brokers, either. I did wonder what people thought of the stock market here and decided to find out at some point. I suspected very few of the people I knew ever invested, because of the high commissions needed to hire a full-service broker, which was the only option back then. Back now, I mean.