The Nix(75)
Soon he would be only Fridtjof again, blessedly. He’d remember only Norway. He’d remember only his expansive youth in the northernmost city in the world. The fires they kept going all through the winter. The gray midnight sky of summer. The green swirls of the northern lights. The splashing schools of blackfish he could spot from a mile away. And maybe if he were lucky the walls of his memory would enclose only this one moment, fishing from the back of the boat, pulling up some grand thing from the depths.
If he were lucky.
If not, he’d be stuck with the other memory. The terrible memory. He would watch himself watching that salmon-red house. Watch it shrinking in the distance. Feel himself growing older as it faded. He would live it out over and over again, his mistake, his disgrace. That would be his punishment, this waking nightmare: sailing away from his home, into the darkening night, and judgment.
6
SAMUEL HAD NEVER HEARD Grandpa Frank talk so much. It was a constant bewildering monologue with occasional moments of clarity, moments when Samuel managed to seize a few critical details: that his mother had gotten pregnant and left for Chicago in shame, and that all the records from Faye’s childhood were stored here, in boxes, at Willow Glen.
About the boxes, Samuel asked the nurse, who led him down into the basement, a long concrete tunnel with chain-link cages. A zoo of forgotten things. Samuel found his family’s heirlooms under a skin of dust: old tables and chairs and china hutches, old clocks no longer running, boxes stacked like crumbling pyramids, dark puddles on the dirty bare floor, the light a hazy green mist of overhead fluorescents, the sour smells of mold and damp cardboard. Amid all this he found several large boxes marked “Faye,” all of them heavy with paper: school projects, notes from teachers, medical records, diaries, old photographs, love letters from Henry. As he skimmed through them, a new version of his mother took shape—not the distant woman from his childhood but a shy and hopeful girl. The real person he’d always longed to know.
He lugged the boxes to his car and called his father.
“It’s a great day for frozen food,” his father said. “This is Henry Anderson. How can I help you?”
“It’s me,” Samuel said. “We have to talk.”
“Well, I would love to interface with you one-on-one,” he said in that polite, artificial, high-pitched lilt he used whenever he was at work. “I’d be happy to discuss this at your earliest convenience.”
“Stop talking like that.”
“Can I tell you about an upcoming webinar you might be interested in?”
“Is your boss, like, standing over your shoulder right now?”
“That’s an affirmative.”
“Okay, then just listen. I want you to know that I figured something out about Mom.”
“I think that’s outside my area of expertise, but I’d be happy to send you to someone who could help you with that.”
“Please stop talking that way.”
“Yes, I understand. Thank you so much for bringing this up.”
“I know that Mom went to Chicago. And I know why.”
“I think we should put in some face time on this. Shall I schedule an appointment?”
“She left Iowa because you got her pregnant. And her dad kicked her out. She had to leave town. I know this now.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Samuel waited. “Dad?” he said.
“That’s not true,” his father said, now much more quietly, and in his normal voice.
“It is true. I talked to Grandpa Frank. He told me all about it.”
“He told you?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you?”
“Iowa.”
“That man hasn’t spoken ten words to me since your mother left.”
“He’s sick now. He’s on some pretty heavy-hitting medication. One of the side effects is loss of inhibition. I don’t think he knows what he’s saying.”
“Good lord.”
“You need to tell me the truth. Starting now.”
“First of all, Frank is wrong. It was all a dumb misunderstanding. Your mother wasn’t pregnant. Not before you.”
“But Frank said—”
“I know why he’d think that. And he believes it’s true. But I’m telling you that’s not what happened.”
“Then what happened?”
“Are you sure you want to hear about this?”
“I need to.”
“There are things you might not want to know. Children don’t have to know everything about their parents.”
“This is important.”
“Please come home.”
“You’ll tell me?”
“Yes.”
“No more lying? The whole story?”
“Fine.”
“No matter how embarrassing it might be to you?”
“Yes. Just come home.”
On his drive back, Samuel tried to imagine himself in his mother’s shoes, making that first trip to Chicago, going to college, her future all precarious and full of mystery. He felt like they were both going through this at the same time. A new world was about to open up. Everything was about to change. He almost felt like she was there with him.