“What’s going on?” I said.
“Something at Sea Pigeon Gulch,” Mick said. “I don’t know what. I just heard Galen yelling. Something bad.”
Out on the slope, I felt like an overstimulated newborn, startled by the most ordinary things. The sun was too big and bright. The wind was a bucket of ice water, upended over my head. Mick kept his arm looped through mine, preventing me from bolting. In the distance, I saw the coast guard house bobbing along as I stumbled forward. Maybe I could head back there now, shut the door behind me, and never come out again.
A group was gathered at the water’s edge. Sea Pigeon Gulch was a tiny inlet, a crevice with high, granite walls. The sun never shone into that cold gorge. My heart was now pounding hard enough that it interfered with my vision. At the crescendo of each beat, the world danced a little.
Mick picked up the pace, frowning. Forest turned and grimaced at us. He lifted a hand. It was a strange, indeterminate gesture, as though he were waving us away and summoning us onward simultaneously.
“I’m not sure you should—” he called, then paused. “It might be better for you to. . Or else maybe. .”
I was surprised; I had never seen him at a loss for words before. After a moment, he turned helplessly to Galen.
“Let them come,” Galen said.
Mick broke into a run. He let go of my hand. In his wake, I lost my balance and stumbled. Lucy was on her knees, rocking back and forth. As I watched, she gave a high-pitched, inhuman sound, an ambulance’s wail. Charlene crouched beside her, but Lucy batted away her embrace. Charlene, too, was wiping away tears.
“Oh, no,” Mick said, gazing into the gorge. “Oh, man.”
I moved forward slowly. It was an odd sensation. I did not seem to be walking, but rather drifting on a current, carried inexorably toward the shore. Galen stepped aside to let me pass. The stone opened outward in a jagged vee. Inside, the sea was dark and frothy, sucking at the walls.
There was someone in the water. Facedown. The waves jiggled him from side to side, his arms and fingers bobbing on the wash. I stared for a while, making sure. I knew that rangy frame all too well, the marble skin, the broad shoulders. He had been in the water long enough that he did not look completely human anymore. He might have been a clever simulacrum — a blow-up doll or a crash-test dummy. His blond hair was disfigured by dirt and blood. For once, he was not wearing his red stocking cap. Squinting closer, I saw a nasty wound on the back of his skull. His pants were torn. His ankle looked swollen. Andrew wore only one shoe.
13
I SOMETIMES WONDER HOW much about you I really remember. I have held on to what I can, of course, over the years. There was the day you and I had a picnic on the National Mall. I remember the heat of that golden afternoon, the glare on the dry grass, the drone of honeybees. There was the evening you and Dad got into such a terrible fight that it woke me up. I remember creeping down the hallway in my nightgown, trembling with cold and nerves, listening to your voices in the kitchen. You lost your temper to such an extent that you hurled a tomato across the room, leaving a splotch on the paint (scary at the time, hilarious in retrospect). There was the morning I found a rabbit in the backyard, its throat worried and bloody. For the next few hours, you and I worked in vain to save it, bent over its small form like doctors in the ER. I remember the day you spilled coffee down a brand-new skirt and cried. I remember the evening you and I made a mobile out of rainbow pipe cleaners. I remember events. I remember stories, since they can be told and retold, memorized like poetry for a recital.
And yet a great deal has been lost. Nowadays, I can’t call up the exact timbre of your voice. I am not sure whether your eyes were hazel or unmottled green. Was it you who liked to take the time to give yourself a full pedicure, separating each toe with a roll of cotton and applying several meticulous coats? Or was that a character from a TV show? Was it you who watched the presidential debates before each election with a beady eye, hunched in front of the television, hollering out your own questions and rebuttals? Or am I remembering the mother of a friend? I have lost so many details. Whether you wore earrings. Whether you were afraid of spiders. Whether you had inside jokes from childhood with your twin sisters. Many things are gone forever. If time is a river, these are the memories that have slipped to the bottom, too heavy to be carried on the current any longer — tumbled in the dirt, hidden in the silt.
I even wonder what parts of your personality I may have fabricated. It was all so long ago. Surely, some of what I recall must be my own creation. Maybe you didn’t spill coffee on an expensive new skirt and burst into tears in the middle of the street. That recollection might have come from a nightmare; it does have a lurid, dreamlike quality in my mind. Perhaps we never found an injured rabbit in our backyard. Come to think of it, that does sound like the plot of a short story I once read.
Each time we remember something, we change it. This is the nature of the brain. I imagine my recollections like rooms in a house. I can’t help but alter things when I step inside — tracking mud on the floor, moving furniture out of alignment, kicking up swirls of dust. Over time, these small alterations add up.
Photographs speed this undoing. My work is the enemy of memory. People often imagine that taking pictures will help them recall exactly what happened. In fact, the opposite is true. I have learned to leave my camera in the drawer at important events, since snapshots have a way of superseding my recollections. I can either have the impression in my brain or the image in my hand — not both.
To remember is to rewrite. To photograph is to replace. The only reliable memories, I suppose, are the ones that have been forgotten. They are the dark rooms of the mind. Unopened, untouched, and uncorrupted.
One thing I am sure of — one thing I do remember — is that you believed in God. I am as certain of that as I am of anything. You and Dad used to debate the matter, working yourselves up into a lather of erudite references and philosophical rhetoric. My father was (and is) a devout agnostic. He stands firm in the conviction that he doesn’t know everything and never will. You, on the other hand, went to church every Sunday. I remember the long, sleepy mornings I spent at your side, watching the light shift through the stained glass. I remember those uncomfortable patent leather shoes. The rise and fall of the minister’s voice. The pungent odor of floor wax. I remember the look on your face during services — elated, confident, as radiant as a bride. You would follow every word of the sermon, nodding in agreement like a student in class. You sang the hymns with gusto, your voice sweet but out of tune.
Church was coal for the furnace of your mind. You would spend the rest of every Sunday mulling over higher matters. All three of us would head home and settle in the living room. Dad reading the newspaper. Me perusing the comics section. You chewing on your pencil, thinking and thinking and thinking.
Back then, it bothered me that I did not share your conviction. I could not revel along with you. You prayed often, sitting with your face turned toward the sun, eyes closed. When Aunt Janine was having trouble at work, you gave her a gold cross on a necklace to support and sustain her. I remember hearing you on the phone with Aunt Kim, urging her to have faith. You offered me the same advice when things were not going well at school. It gave me a squirmy feeling.
Even then, I was in my father’s camp all the way. The Bible stories were silly. Sunday school was a bore. The sermons contradicted each other. Sitting in the quiet, sun-drenched church, I felt nothing, no power, no release. The hymns left my soul unmoved. In short, I have never believed in God.