Chương 78: George’s Run (XIII)

Begin the first memory? George was alone in the scenario room. For once, rather than a chamber built around the possibility of death, the room offered a cozy scene. The fire looked like it had been burning for hours, the logs resting on a thick pillow of ash in the grate. There was a bar, but no one stood behind it. The chalkboard on the wall listed the menu in looping script. Brass taps stood in a neat row along the bar. Faint orchestral music was playing quietly somewhere.

It was dark outside and George could see rain pattering against the windows. George walked to a wide wingback chair in front of the fire and sat down. The prompt to begin the first memory was waiting in his vision, but he didn't accept it yet. Nod was quiet. George thought about what had just happened. Adrenaline still hummed through him. As he watched the fire, he felt his mind go blank, as if his thoughts and feelings just drained away.

He stayed like that for several minutes, just breathing and watching the fire. Then Nod brought him back. >>Seven memories, George. Are you ready? >>After that, we'll see what comes next. George took another deep breath, mentally assented to the prompt, and the first memory began. Memory One: The Burned Hand Teaches Best When the memory began, George was standing in the kitchen. A tall figure stood over him. He was angry and was waving his finger at George's face, inches from his nose.

The man's own face was turning red. George felt a rush of shame. They were in the kitchen. He recognized the old green cabinets. There was the speckled formica countertop where his mother used to let him sit while he watched her cook. The man shouting at him was his father. George remembered what was coming. His father pulled a chair over and turned it around in front of the sink. He said, "Come here, Georgie." But George didn't move.

His dad snapped his fingers and pointed to the chair, and George shuffled forward. He felt a sob break from his mouth.

"How many times do I have to tell you the same thing over and over again? I want you to do what I tell you to do when I tell you to do it. Now, get on the chair." His father pointed to the chair again. George climbed up onto the chair, first one knee, then the other, then he stood up.

"You seem to be having a hard time remembering, but I am going to help you remember." George's father put his hand on the small of George's back and pushed him forward until he bent over the sink. He turned the faucet on and moved the handle all the way to the left—the side with the red H for hot.

"Hold out your hands." George shook his head no, and his father grabbed both of George's arms by the forearm and gripped them inside his large hand. He pushed them beneath the stream of water and held them there. It was cold. Painfully cold. But it was going to heat up.

"I want you to repeat after me. Say, 'I will remember better.'" George shook his head and let out a whine. George's father shook his arms roughly and growled.

"Say it!" George mumbled, "I will remember better."

"I think you will, son," his father said.

"I don't think you're going to forget after this. The burned hand teaches best." The water had become tepid, but it was heating rapidly.

"Say it again."

"I will remember better," George said.

"Say it again."

"I will remember better." The water was warm now and rounding the corner to becoming hot.

"Again," his father said.

"I will remember better," George said.

"Dad, it's starting to hurt."

"Again." George started to cry.

"Daddy, shut it off!"

"No." The water was as hot as his baths now. George tried to pull away, and his father wrapped one arm around George's chest and held him against the edge of the sink, keeping his two hands tightly gripped under the faucet. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Steam rose from the sink and from George's hands. He screamed.

"I am helping you, George. You'll see. You need to learn to remember." George started crying. His hands had turned red and it felt like the faucet wasn't spewing water down on them, but fire.

"Daddy, it hurts!"

"Say it again." George screamed it over and over.

"I will remember better. I will remember better. I will remember better."

"That's it. Only a few more seconds," his father said.

"Ten…nine…" George was thrashing against the sink, but he couldn't shake his father's strong arms.

"Five…four…three…" George would never forget again. He would always do what his father said.

"One… zero…" The memory ended. George came out of the memory gasping and flexed his hands. They weren't small, red, and steaming anymore. They were large and clad in black gauntlets. He felt that there was a vast, uncharted gulf of time between that memory and the present moment. Begin the second memory? >>Oookkkayyy. Wow. We really went deep into little Georgie's sad memory lane there, didn't we? >>Your hands have… uh… been through a lot.

>>Maybe one of those shard powers will turn out to be "Post-Traumatic Regeneration." >>Hang in there, champ. One memory down, six to go. George braced himself for the next memory and nodded. The second memory began. Memory Two: The Scar The next memory started in a kitchen, too, only this time George was an adult. Jane was there. Jane was there, shouting at him just like his father had. He was washing his hands in the sink. The water was hot, but only hot enough to clean, not hot enough to burn.

George snapped off the water and moved to the cutting board. When Jane got like this, he found it was best to keep himself busy. She would run out of steam eventually and talk herself out of the idea again. He chopped the onions and dropped them into the stockpot where they sizzled, and then he moved on to the chilis, slicing each one lengthwise and cutting out the seeds.

"I only ever wanted to be a mom, but it feels like you never wanted to be a dad. You just did it because that's what you were supposed to do. And now, we have three kids, and they're all afraid of you," Jane said.

"I am probably crazy for wanting another one, but I want one." He stayed focused on the soup and told himself he was going to keep his peace. But even as he promised himself that, he could feel the needle on some internal pressure gauge starting to rise. Jane continued her rant. He didn't respond. There was no use. They'd had this conversation before. A baby would only complicate their lives. Less sleep. More stress. More fighting.

More time apart, right when they should be entering the stage where the kids could finally take care of themselves. He was finally in a place with the firm where money was no longer an issue. They should be getting a new house, not a new child. Then he thought of Sonya. The knife slipped and sliced into the meat of his thumb. He cursed and whipped a towel off the oven door and pressed it to the wound. It was deep. He turned around to tell Jane he'd cut himself, but the words died on his lips.

Jane was holding a stack of plates she'd been setting around the table. She glanced up at him. She saw the bright red blood slowly filling the white dish towel. Her expression was blank. She wasn't concerned. There was no empathy, surprise, or fear. It was as if she noticed the cut but it meant nothing to her. She could have gone for the first aid kit, but instead she just glanced up and kept setting the plates on the table one by one. That was when the anger simmering in his heart boiled over.

He crossed the kitchen toward the table and felt angry words clawing their way up out of his chest like feral animals.

"Goddammit, Jane. I don't want another kid. I didn't want a third kid. I didn't want a second kid. Sometimes, I didn't even want a first one," George said.

"We could have been happy, but instead all I get is complaints and anger and a long list of things I did wrong. I'm done, Jane. If you want another kid, why don't you go find someone else to have one with." As he walked into the dining room, he passed the basement door and glanced down. Max was having a sleepover with two friends tonight and they were all huddled at the bottom of the stairs listening to the fight.

As George passed the door, he made eye contact with Max for a frozen instant and saw the horror on the boy's face. But it didn't matter. The angry animal inside him had clawed its way up from his heart, and it was happy to be set free. It felt good. It felt righteous. He hit Jane with all the words he had. He found things coming out of his mouth that he'd never let himself say before. His head was pounding, and he'd dropped the dish towel. His wounded hand was bleeding a steady drip drip drip onto the carpet.

Tears welled in Jane's eyes as she clamped both hands over her mouth. He picked up the plates she'd placed on the table.

"And these! I got you these plates for Christmas but I could tell that they weren't good enough the moment you opened the box. You looked so disappointed and annoyed. You didn't even say thank you. You just shrugged and looked away. You said you wanted to host more, but you never invite people over. I bought you china. I bought you this table. I bought—" Jane cut him off.

"I don't invite people over because I'm scared of you! You are always so mean!"

"You haven't seen me mean, Jane!" George picked up one of the plates and hurled it at the wall. She flinched as the plate exploded, ducking down with a shocked expression. He threw another plate at the wall on the other side of the room, and another one into the kitchen, where it crashed and broke in the sink. And then he turned around and threw one toward the doorway to the living room just as he saw Kit's small face come around the corner. Kit was five, maybe six.

The plate seemed to slow as time thickened in the room, but it kept moving and hit the doorframe just as Kit passed into the room. The plate shattered, and one shard sliced across Kit's face just below his eye, opening a red line that sent blood running down his cheek. It shocked George to stillness. The boiling pot of his anger went cold in an instant. Jane pushed George aside and ran to Kit. She scooped him up and pressed him close. Kit screamed when he saw his own blood on his mother's shoulder.

Jane shouted at George as she swept Kit out of the room, "Call the ambulance!" Then the memory ended.