Andrew Klavan - The truth of the matter

“See you, Larry,” I said.

He waved and shuffled away from the door.

She came in and handed me the tray to set down on my lap. Eggs, toast, hash brown potatoes. I was so hungry, I could barely get out a “Thank you” and say a silent grace before I tore into it. Margaret sat in the chair and watched me shovel the food into my mouth with a small smile on her lips.

“You say grace?” she asked me.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“All right. Well, it’s good to see you eat, that’s for sure.”

I answered with my mouth full. I could barely stop eating long enough to get the words out. “How long have I been here?”

“A night and a day. It’s getting toward evening again now.” She had a soft, kind voice. It was like her face: tired but somehow peaceful. She looked and sounded like a woman who was on a long, hard journey but knew she was headed for a good place.

“You have a nice son,” I said to her.

“Yes, I do. Thank you.”

“Why did he say that? About me fighting for freedom.”

She only smiled.

“I guess I’ve been talking in my fever, huh?” I said.

She nodded slowly. “You have.”

I guess I should’ve been upset about that-you know, upset that I’d given myself away and all. But for some reason, it didn’t bother me. I knew instinctively that I could trust this woman. It wasn’t just that she’d protected me from Rose or taken care of me in my delirium or that her husband had been a Marine. It was partly all those things, I guess, but it was also just something about her, something about the way she was.

“Did I tell you everything?” I asked her.

“I guess. It was all pretty confused, but I guess you told me enough. It’s quite a story.”

“I’m only remembering it now myself.”

“So I gathered. They gave you something?”

“Some kind of chemical, yeah. It made me forget the last year.”

There was nothing left on my plate by this time but the yellow yolk of the eggs and a piece of toast. I mopped up the yolk with the toast and took a bite.

“I’m sorry about your husband,” I said.

“Swallow first. I can’t understand you.”

I worked the toast down. “I’m sorry about your husband.”

She didn’t answer right away. She nodded. After a moment, she leaned forward in her chair, putting her elbows on her knees and looking down at the floor. “It broke my heart,” she said. “He was the best man I ever knew or ever expect to know, and I miss him every day and our boy misses him.” She lifted her head and looked at me with a peculiar, intense look. “But now I’m going to tell you something about that. All right?”

“Yeah… sure,” I said.

“No, I mean, really. Look at me, Charlie.”

I looked at her, the last piece of bread lifted halfway to my lips.

She said: “A broken heart is not the worst thing in the world. And neither, when it comes to that, is death. You can’t get through a good, strong life without coming upon both of them one way or another, without looking them both straight in the eye. But if I could go back in time and protect myself from my broken heart by living my life in fear, by saying yes to every bully and slave driver who came along, by scuttling away from my duty and from my country and from the things I love and believe in, I wouldn’t do it, and my husband wouldn’t have done it, and he wouldn’t want me to do it. You understand what I’m telling you, Charlie?”

Still holding the toast, I half shook my head. I wasn’t sure I did understand.

“What I’m telling you is that your mama is going to be all right. You did what you had to do. And a woman who raised a boy like you is going to understand that one day and it’ll serve to heal her heart, trust me.”

Suddenly, tears sprang to my eyes. It happened so fast, it took me by surprise, and I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t stop it. Embarrassed, I set the toast down and wiped the tears away with my palm as quickly as I could. I was afraid if I didn’t, Margaret would come over to the bed and try to comfort me, and then I knew I would break down for real.

She was a smart woman, though. Instead of coming to my side, she stayed right where she was, in her chair. She studied the floor until I was done.

“I hated to hurt her,” I said. It was hard to speak. “Until now, I’d forgotten about that part of it, you know. Now that I remember, I remember how much I hated to hurt her…” I wanted to say more-a lot more, but that was all I could get out just then.

“I know you did,” said Margaret. “And she’ll know too one day. But for now, it’s better she have a broken heart than a son who can’t stand up for what’s right when the time comes.”

I nodded. I opened my mouth. I was about to talk again when I felt a terrible pain-as if a fist had grabbed me on the inside and twisted my stomach. I gritted my teeth and doubled over.

“Oh, no!”

Margaret was out of her chair and at the bed in a moment. She took the tray away and set it aside. She sat down next to me.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

I clutched at my stomach. For a minute I couldn’t answer. “I have these attacks… memory attacks, I call them. They gave me the antidote for the amnesia medicine. It’s bringing back my memory, but it makes me…” I grunted with pain. “It makes me sick.”

She put her hand on my forehead. Her palm felt cool against my hot skin. “Can you fight it? Keep it off. I don’t think your body can take much more punishment right now.”

I closed my eyes, trying to will the pain down. As I did, scenes flashed through my mind. I couldn’t tell if they were memories or dreams or even memories of dreams. I seemed to be traveling through that dark maze again. It was like a scene from a first-person-shooter video game. The trellis walls with their thorny vines came at me and went past.

Then I was back in the little room again. I opened my eyes.

“You okay?” said Margaret.

I nodded. The pain in my stomach was beginning to subside. “I think it’s going away,” I said. “For now.”

“All right,” Margaret said. “I want you to lie down again. I want you to get some rest.”

“I think I’m all right.”

“I don’t care what you think. Lie down,” she said quietly. “Go on now. Do as I say.”

I let her gently push me down onto the bed again. I watched her face as she pulled the covers up around me. My eyes were already sinking shut…

I woke up suddenly. I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep. All I knew was I had the powerful sense that something very important had just happened.

I lay in the bed, very still, listening. I could hear the television playing in the next room. There was the sort of silly music and funny voices that usually go along with cartoons. I could hear Larry speaking to his mother-not his words, but the tone of his voice. I could hear the low, warm tones of his mother answering. I breathed a sigh of relief. There was nothing wrong in the house.

What was it, then? Something had happened while I was asleep. I felt a twinge in my stomach and it started to come back to me: more dreams… or more memories…

Yes. I remembered. I had been back in the garden. Back in the maze. The maze of my memory. I had been in that central square. I had seen the figure there again in the darkness. Suddenly, a light had flashed on. Suddenly, I was not in the maze, not at all. I was in a small white room somewhere, cluttered with shelves and files, brightly lit-so bright that, after the shadows of the garden, I was nearly blind. I was squinting so hard I couldn’t even see the man standing right there in front of me.

Protecting my eyes from the bright light, I turned away. There, behind me, were the twisting corridors of the maze again. While I stood there, watching them, a wild thing happened. The maze began to bloom. The stark, thorny branches that covered the maze’s trellises suddenly burst into flower everywhere. Rich, bloodred flowers blossoming all up and down the maze’s corridors while I stood and stared and then…