Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

* *

I got a call from Alan today telling me that Nigel died last night. David brought him home from the hospital on Monday and I’d been planning to go visit him tomorrow. Now it’s too late. Christ, he never even got to turn twenty.

David told Alan that he tested positive as well, but he didn’t want anyone to know because he wanted to keep it from Nigel. “He kept saying to me over and over again,” David explained to Alan,

“right up until he died: ‘At least I know you’re okay.’ How could I tell him different?”

Here’s what AIDS has done to our community: When so many of your friends die, the sheer quantity of death ends up dehumanizing you. You start to lose the capacity to fully grieve each individual. You find yourself no longer as able to share how much you loved them, how much you miss them, not even to yourself. Your grief gets buried under the sheer multitude that we’ve lost.

* *

Plato said everything in the world is just the shadow of some real thing we can’t see. I don’t know if that’s true or not. If it is true, then I don’t want to be in the world. All my life I’ve tried to manipulate the shadows so that things will go my way for a change, but it never works out. I’m so tired of these shadows. Just for once I want to be face-to-face with what’s real. I don’t want to carve a place for myself from the shadows. I want to carve a place for myself from what casts the shadows and let the chips fall as they may.

* *

Alan took me out to lunch today. When we left the apartment I got this sudden tightness in my chest and I almost couldn’t move through the door. I realized that I hadn’t been outside since I’d gone to see Dr. Jane earlier in the week. It took me most of the time I was out with Alan just to get myself to feel that being away from home was normal.

* *

Sometimes, when I’m talking to people, I forget what words mean and I can’t explain anything. I talk, but I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m standing there, my mouth’s moving, and all I hear in my head is “yadda, yadda, yadda.” The only time it’s never happened is when I’m at the Foundation, talking to the kids. I think they ground me, or something.

Those kids. Some of them are so sweet and brave it breaks my heart that we can’t do more for them. But we’re always in a running battle with their parents or the people from the child-services office.

Everybody knows what’s best for them. Everybody’s got advice. Everybody’s got a solution. I say let the kid decide, but nobody wants to hear that.

* *

I finally figured out that I’m solitary by nature, but at the same time I know so many people; so many people think they own a piece of me. They shift and move under my skin, like a parade of memories that simply won’t go away. It doesn’t matter where I am, or how alone—I always have such a crowded head.

When I told Dr. Jane about it, she asked me how long I’d felt that way. I didn’t even have to think about it.

“I’ve always felt that way,” I told her.

* *

I wish I could foresee a better ending for the story of my life. The whole reason for telling stories, even like this when I’m telling one to myself, is to insist that there’s some kind of meaning, or at least shape, to the messy collage of incidents that make up our lives. Most of us have to believe that we’re floundering through the confusion for some particular reason or we simply can’t bear the thought of existence.

I’d like to live for the moment, for the right now. I’d like to always be in the present and not have to carry around the baggage of everything that’s gone before. I’d like to not feel disappointed because all the pieces of my life don’t add up to a story with a coherent plotline and a satisfactory ending.

If I were ever to kill myself, it wouldn’t be to end my life. It would be for a far simpler reason: amnesia.

I

Newford, September 1992

Roger Davis sat at his desk in the Crowsea police precinct and studied his partner’s features as Thompson spoke on the phone. The Mully murder case had led them up one dead end into another, but they’d finally gotten a break. An earlier call from the woman’s husband had had them out looking for Alan Grant again. Mully’s daughter claimed to have seen Grant in the hotel at the right time for him to have done it, all his protestations to the contrary.

He looked good for it. He had the right motive and now they had someone to put in the right place at the right time, but something didn’t feel right to Davis. The man they’d interviewed earlier today had been scared, sure, but not guilty scared. More like, how’d-I-get-mixed-up-in-this/what-am-I-gonna-do-to-get-them-to-believe-me scared. Still, they had the girl’s testimony and Davis had been wrong before. He figured he’d just let the DA’s office sort it all out. Until this call came in, it had only been a matter of picking Grant up and booking him.

When Thompson finally got off the phone, he gave Davis a weary look. “That was the daughter,” he said.

“I figured as much.”

“She says it wasn’t Grant she saw in the hallway.”

Davis sighed. So much for getting a break in the case. “She’s changing her story?”

“Changing her mind, sounds like. Said she was sick of lying.”

“Would it help if we brought Grant in for a lineup?” Davis asked.

“She says she knows what he looks like well enough, thank you very fucking much, and it wasn’t him.”

Tired as he was, Davis had to smile as he imagined the Mully girl saying “thank you very fucking much” to his partner.

“Was that a direct quote?” he asked.

“Fuck you, too,” Thompson told him.

It was the father who’d had them come back to the hotel and made Susan Mully tell them who she’d seen in the hallway. Of course this was after they’d already cut Grant loose. But now the kid was having an attack of conscience and calling it off. He wondered if the father knew.

Davis rose to his feet. “I’ll cancel the APB on Grant.”

Thompson nodded. “Now all we’ve got left is the Indian the desk clerk saw.”

Taking the elevator up to the same floor as the Mullys were on at just about the same time as the coroner’s estimated time of death. Right. His description fit just about every fifth person on the skids in that part of the city and of course he’d have all kinds of motive, wouldn’t he?

The case, Davis realized, was dead in the water and he doubted that it’d ever get resolved. And the thing of it was, it wouldn’t exactly break his heart. He’d never much cared for Margaret Mully—or at least not for the woman he’d seen on the news or read about in the paper. So far as Davis was concerned, the Newford Children’s Foundation was doing a bang-up job and anybody trying to screw them the way she was doing deserved what she’d got. But that wasn’t an opinion he’d share with anyone—not even to his partner.

“Just let me deal with the APB, Mike,” he told Thompson, “and then we’ll talk about where we go from here.”

II

John crouched outside the window, balancing easily on the narrow ledge, and watched the drama as it unfolded before him. He could have applauded when Isabelle stood up to Rushkin, unwilling to admit even to himself that he hadn’t been sure how she’d respond to his offer. He waited patiently as Bitterweed led Isabelle away, watched his doppelganger return alone, listened as Rushkin sent Bitterweed and Scara away to hunt.