All Is Not Forgotten(66)

Parsons hung up. It was only a matter of days before Bob would be interviewed, before he would know he was in the mix somehow. He would then go to Charlotte, and she would tell him about the recovered memory of his voice and how Jenny had mixed it up in her head. What then? That was the question. Where would the wind blow next? What else would the fire burn? Bob’s marriage? His run for office? Charlotte?

I went home after that call. I could not concentrate. I could not listen to anyone else’s problems. I took more lorazepam. The dose was small. It was barely enough to smooth the edges of my anxiety.

My excitement at the gift, the wind and the fire it fed, was fleeting, and I realized that a great darkness was covering my sky. I don’t know how else to explain this to you. Some of you will understand. Those of you who come to my office and sit on my sofa and tell me the things you have done that cannot be undone, or the things that have been done to you. All of life is just a state of mind, isn’t it? We are all just walking slowly to our graves, trying not to think about it, trying to find meaning, to pass the time pleasantly. Look around you. Everyone you can see will be dead in one hundred years: You. Your spouse. Your child. Your friends. The people who love you. The people who hate you. Terrorists in the Middle East. The politicians raising your taxes and making bad policies. The teacher who gave your son a bad grade. The couple who didn’t invite you to a dinner.

I have gone down this mental path when things have upset me. I find it puts life in perspective. It can be a good thing, to remember that there is very little that truly matters. A bad grade. A dumb politician. A social slight.

Unfortunately, there are things that do matter. Things that can ruin what little time we have here. Things that cannot be done over or remedied. These are the things that we regret. And regret is more devious than guilt. It is more corrosive than envy. And it is more powerful than fear.

Why did I take my eyes off the swimming pool? Why did I take my eyes off the road? Why did I cheat on my wife? Why did I steal from my clients?

People fight every day to control their regret, to keep it from stealing their happiness. Sometimes they fight just to function, to work and drive their kids to school and make dinner without jumping off a bridge. It is painful. Brutally painful. The skillful ones manage to outmaneuver it. Then they go to sleep and it finds its way back to the throne. Morning comes and they awake again as slaves to this ruthless dictator.

I pulled into my driveway, a slave to my own regret. I could already see how irreparable my actions were. I felt stained by the kind of stain that never comes out. The kind of stain that would make you throw the thing out. Red wine on a white tablecloth. Blood on Charlotte’s blouse. I thought about Bob Sullivan. A cheater. A liar. But an innocent man. I thought about Sean Logan. A hero. A tortured soul. And now the anger at Bob Sullivan was festering within him. I thought about Jenny, I thought about her blood spilled on that bathroom floor and how I was so close to giving her back her memory, and with it her very life. These things I had done, I might as well have slammed into these innocents with my car while my eyes were looking away. Maybe it’s worse than that. This was no accident. This was me driving down the road, my son on one side and these innocents on the other—and no room to pass safely between them

My wife was in the kitchen, making a snack for my son. I could hear that f*cking game on in the TV room, my son’s laughter, gunfire, explosions. More laughter.

What’s wrong with you? What’s happened? my wife asked me.

I did not know this at the time, but I had been crying. Fury at having to save him this way and fear that escaped from the box on the shelf seeped from my eyes. There were a lot of tears that day.

I walked past her to the TV room. I did not stop to turn off the game. I grabbed my son by both arms and pulled him to his feet.

Dad—he started to say.

I took the remote from his hands, and I threw it at the TV. I shattered the screen. My wife screamed and ran in from the kitchen. She had the plate of food in her hands.

Alan!

Holding my son’s arms, I shook him, hard. “You tell me right now! Why were you in those woods? What were you doing in those woods!”

I wasn’t! I told you!

I shook him again and again. My wife set down the plate and rushed to my side, grabbing hold of my arms, trying to pull me away from our child.

“Do you know what you’ve done? Do you know what might have happened? Tell me! Why were you there? Why were you in those woods?”

Julie stared at him, waiting for an answer. The more time that passed, the more she had come to wonder whether he had raped Jenny Kramer. I could see it in her eyes, the sadness that had crept in.

I saw his phone sitting on the couch. I grabbed it. I knew the password because my wife had told me. I also knew from my wife about the porn she’d found on his computer. I opened the home screen and checked the browser history.

What are you doing! Stop that! Jason screamed. He lunged for the phone, but I was faster. His arm swept through the air, missing me completely.

I let an image load, some porn star’s hairless * with a giant cock about to enter. The picture started to move into video. The image of people fornicating on the screen. The sound of people fornicating on the audio. My wife gasped, her hand drawing to her mouth.

Mom … Our son turned to her for help. She looked at him and then to me. My emotions had infected her.

“This is how you’re building your house? This is what you want the police to see if they get your phone? You want one more thing that makes you look like a rapist?”