A series by November

Chapter 66: The Years Burn

“I used to be a little boy,
so old in my shoes.
And what I choose is my choice,
What's a boy supposed to do?”
--Smashing Pumpkins

The next day Logan woke early and remembered where he was after a few seconds. He could hear Mariah down in the kitchen. He kissed Marie’s cheek and let her sleep.

“Hi Ma,” he said, coming down fresh from the shower, hair wet.

“Hi Darling.”

“Morning.”

“Good morning.” She hugged him, just because she could.

“Does Marie want breakfast?”

“Naw. I want to let her sleep. She never gets to sleep in.”

“How do you take your coffee, dear?”

“Two sugars, please.”

She poured him a cup. “What can I fix you for breakfast?”

“Whatever you’re having. Don’t go to any trouble.”

“Oh, baloney. What do you want?”

“Bacon, two eggs over easy and one of those English muffins would be fine,” he grinned. He loved his mother’s feisty attitude.

“That’s better.”

“So mom, why don’t you have a boyfriend?”

“At my age?”

“At your age what?”

“I’m getting a little old for dating.”

“Bullshit,“ he echoed with a grin. “Chuck likes you.”

She laughed. “Somehow I think you’re the only one who calls him Chuck.”

“Pretty much.” he laughed, thought how good it felt to laugh.

“So we’re going shopping today?”

“Yeah.” It was Logan’s secret that he liked shopping, in moderation. And now that he had so many people in his life, he wanted to buy things for them. “Let’s get back by five and I can start on my painting.”

Marie emerged, sleep-ruffled and pretty, in a summer dress. “Mornin', baby.”

“Good morning, good morning,” she said to them both.

“Breakfast, dear?”

“Um, just some juice please. Can I help you?”

“No, you sit tight and relax.”

Marie eyed the photo albums on the counter. They weren’t there last night.

“Would you guys like to look at pictures?”

No! Logan thought. He was afraid that if he remembered this place, he would remember the lab too.

“Yeah,” he lied.

Marie’s heart was pounding. She was dying to get a glimpse of Logan’s other life. She came around to the same side of the table as them and scooted close to Logan, warm hand moving calmly on his back, soothing.

The first album was faded blue. For a baby boy, he thought, impossibly.

The first page had a faded sepia photo pasted in. It was of a generic peanut-like baby with a squished up head. It wore a long white dressing gown and a little cap on its head, probably blue. It could have been any Caucasian’s baby picture. It was as foreign a thing as he’d ever seen.

“That’s him?” Marie asked. Logan glanced sideways at her and felt calmed by the soft smile on her face.

“That’s him,” Mariah said gently and turned the page.

On the next two pages were four pictures, all taken the same day, all black and white, all of Mariah holding the baby. They were in a back yard under an infinite sky. Sitting on an antique car. Sitting on the couch. Petting a black cat, plump hand reached out to touch. Mariah wore a white dress and Marie was startled to see that her hair had been jet black. She was stunning.

The baby had morphed from misshapen peanut to a fat beautiful smiling little boy. He had grown fine dark curls. His eyes were bright.

“Aww, look at the little hand,” Marie cooed. She glanced sideways at Logan and took in the look on his face. It was part bemused, part terrified, part something else.

“I think you were about six months here.” Mariah gently slid the photo with the cat out of the corners that held it. On the back, in faded pen, was “Logan, 6mo.”

The link of the name he knew with the past, with a past that involved cats and mothers holding babies and not torture felt impossibly good, and he started to unravel. He willed tears from his eyes.

Mariah turned the page. Logan here was a little older, sitting up, playing amid blocks. Marie could make out the shape of Logan’s lips, the wide set of his eyes. His hair was longer, curly.

In the second picture, Logan was sitting on the lap of a man who looked much like he did now. The mouth was identical. He didn’t need to ask who it was. The man’s smile was sweet and amused.

Of all things he’d expected to unhinge him, he didn’t think it would be a picture of his father. He felt the tears rise hotly to his eyes and an embarrassed flush warmed his face. He willed himself to breathe. It didn’t work.

He stood up abruptly. His chair clattered backward.

“I’m gonna take a walk,” he said emotionlessly, and walked out the door onto the deck. They watched as he walked quickly down the deck steps and disappeared.

Mariah watched him go with tears in her eyes. “What did I say wrong?” she asked. Mariah looked uncharacteristically lost and her pitiful tone made Marie want to cry.

“You didn’t say a thing wrong. He gets like this. He needs his space to sort things out. All we can do is let him go. He’ll be back.”

Mariah nodded, tears slipping onto her tan face. “You think he remembers?”

“Maybe. He was on the verge of tears so if not consciously then unconsciously maybe.”

Mariah was overcome with a sudden wave of resentment that this little girl knew Logan better than she did.

Marie pushed the photo album aside. She was dying to see the rest but she wouldn’t look at them without Logan. She wanted to experience it with him, as much as possible. She knew he felt out of control. He trusted her, but she didn’t want to be a step ahead of him.

He walked down the dusty road, under an eternal sky. His strides were long and quick. Sweat quickly soaked his tee shirt and he stripped it off without breaking his stride, tucked it in the back of his jeans.

His face was red and beaded with sweat. His eyes were unfocused somewhere in the distance. Tears spilled out to mingle with his sweat. He had a sensation of things pouring out of him. He didn't try to control them. His mind was reeling and he was struggling to process the reality of the life he'd lost, of the family who had lost him.

There was sweetness, sadness. The image of Per-Andrew Christensen was emblazoned in his mind. As was his own. The tiny plump hand, the wide baby eyes. Big hands sprawled across his whole torso, holding him steady.

The photographic evidence that he was a real person. He tried to process the emotions that were drowning him but couldn’t.

After walking the better part of a mile he calmed and started back. He wiped his eyes on the drying shirt. He felt calm and empty and thirsty.

Eventually Logan returned, sweating. “Sorry,” was all he said, and went to take another shower. He emerged and they went into Santa Fe. He rode shotgun and watched the scenery as it morphed into red desert, adding to the sense of surrealness that filled him. He was quiet and he felt an unusual calm. He smiled back at Marie, answering her unasked question, allaying her concern.

The shops were everywhere and expensive. He bought silver jewelry for Marie, despite her protests, and dispatched her to buy a turquoise necklace for Mariah while he kept her distracted. He bought an opal necklace for Maggie with earrings to match, and tiny butter-soft moccasins with stone beads.

They shopped until four and returned. The light was warm and long and Mariah sat for her portrait on the deck. Logan told Mariah to wear one of her button-down white shirts and gave her the turquoise necklace he'd bought. "Put your hair behind your ear. Okay. Look that way. Great. Now hold still.”

He started sketching quickly, a long canvas full of big sky and Mariah. His composition was unusual, with her in a corner foreground of the painting, looking off at an angle different from the one in which he faced her. Despite the tranquil sky it lent a tension to the painting, which contrasted to her calm face. It also had a maddening air of mystery. What was she looking at?

He sketched the details and began mixing a palette of skin tones and terra cotta color. The light seemed to last forever.

Marie came out onto the deck with bare feet and three glasses of lemonade.

She had thought to bring a straw for Mariah, so she could sip her lemonade without moving from her pose. She squinted in the harsh sunlight. “Thank you dear,” Mariah said.

“No problem. Drink up, I’ll make more.”

Marie had never watched him paint before. It was fascinating and impossible. She could never in a million years imagine being able to create a universe with brush strokes.

He kept going until the light faded and cast shadows. Then, he declared that they were done for the day.

“Can I see it?” Mariah asked.

“I don’t care.” He rubbed his brushes onto an old cloth that hung from his jeans.

Mariah stretched stiffly and walked around to look at the canvas. “Wow. This is a very unusual composition. It’s great.”

He shrugged. He had a policy of not thinking about his paintings, especially ones in progress.

Jimmy and Marisol arrived with a bottle of wine and a six-pack of Dos Equis. Marisol was a painfully thin woman in her early fifties, with long dark hair. She hugged them warmly. Her hair was curly and her laugh was earnest and disarming. Their son Enrique was about Logan’s age, inexplicably huge next to his parents, with a dark beard and disheveled hair. He shook Logan’s hand and his eyes popped a bit when he saw Marie.

Logan bristled but soon they sat down to eat and the food and alcohol took the edge off. The green chili was hot and spicy. Mariah fried delicate sopapillas they dipped in honey to cool their burning mouths.

After eating, they lingered around the kitchen table and talked. Jimmy told them a story. He said that one day he was watching Logan, who was about two years old. He went to move his car, and little Logan, who thought he was being abandoned, ran out into the driveway buck naked to look for Jimmy, shocking the next-door neighbors who were washing their car across the street.

Marie laughed so hard Dos Equis came out her nose. Logan smiled, amused. It all seemed so real.

That evening they looked at some more pictures. Logan was ready, and they looked at the ones up until he was about ten before he said he was going to turn in.

There were more pictures of a beautiful feisty little baby, soon turning into a beautiful feisty little toddler, then into an adorable four-year old. Logan could handle this. It was so far outside of what he had believed to be the realm of possibility that he could deal with it, now that the initial shock was over. It was the pictures leading up until he was college-age that he feared. That was just before he was taken to the lab.

Though Logan turned in early, when Marie came upstairs from looking at bridal magazines with Mariah he was still awake. He didn’t feel the need to feign sleep for her.

“Hey, love.” She slid into the covers and cuddled up to him, rubbing in the place between his chest and his belly that relaxed him so. He kissed the top of her head.

“I love you,” she said softly. “You ok?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry about today.”

“Oh Logan, don’t be.”

He was quiet for a long time. “I get these little...pings, thinking it might be a memory, almost, but I didn’t remember a thing. It’s just so bizarre to see me as a baby. With parents and everything.”

“It’s wonderful.”

“Just a little overwhelming.”

“Well, tomorrow your mom and I are wedding dress shopping. I’m assuming you’d rather eat shards of glass than come along, so you’ll have some time alone.” She always knew what he needed.

“What if I want to come along?”

“You can’t see the bride before the wedding day. Bad luck."

She didn’t talk anymore and as she rubbed him he began to purr softly, the image of him as a baby like an afterimage in his head, watching over him as he slept.