By the World Forgot
She'd never let him go. Even after the books had erased, the tapes had erased, his clothes gone, his room gone, his very smell gone . . . she would have supposed her heart would curl up and shatter if she'd lose even these material pieces of him, repeating over and over to remind her. But she hadn't curled up. She hadn't stopped. Even after her therapist – ah, God, her therapist – had told her she had made him up to begin with. A miscarriage. She hadn't really been listening. And her husband said the same. And her friend. And no one had remembered him but her. She hadn't let go. She wouldn't. Let. Go.
The worst thing in the world is to be forgotten. Even death is easier. When she'd been seven, she'd hid from her family in a small storageway under her parents' bed. She hadn't shown up for dinner. Her family had never missed her. When she'd come out, they'd never even known she was gone. It got to her, in the darkest corners and quietest places, for years afterwards – for her whole life afterwards. She'd never tell her therapist things like this, though she thought she told him everything. There was too much pain in it; she buried it too deep. But she held on to it.
And Sam. She said his name and never stopped. Sam. Her litany. Her eulogy.
"The thought I'm going crazy – I mean, they all think I dreamed it up. Do you think I dreamed it?"
"I'm sorry," Ash said, and he nodded. The last hope for memories of Sam, and he'd given up not only Sam but his own daughter. And the police took her away. She'd seen his drunken eyes and knew he really was sorry. He pitied her. It was how people reacted to crazy things. And maybe he was even right – that blue paint on the wall was someone else's, not his daughter's, and she really was already crazy. Yet even as they took her away, in the core of her heart she felt fear, yes, but also pity in turn. Ash had forgotten his daughter; he'd let go.
When they took her home, she tore free and ran. When she wound up by Sam's playground, it was then she wished she even knew how to let go. And as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she condemned herself. "Never think that." It was a whisper, a spit of venom. "Sam." Blonde hair, wide smile, smell of pepper from a foreign country and summer clay and little boy's dreams, voice like, like, like...
She swung back and forth on the swing and could feel it slipping away with each turn of the chains. Fuck. Don't let him go. Voice like a hum far away.
It was the night, and the dark, and the quiet. That was when they stripped the world from you. Anyone could come along, and take away what mattered. That was how the news of Sam's death had come to her, in the night while she was sleeping, Jim's arm over her like heated weight. That was when the tapes and books had erased. Memory was everything when you no longer have anything, and if she forgot, what did Sam have then?
"Hold on to everything we have," she'd told Sam in bedtime stories, in each touch, before he'd even been disconnected from her heartbeat, "because the world will try to take everything away as often as it can."
The chains rattling as she settled on the swing in the cold, that was the only sound save for late night traffic, the under-all city hum far away. So, when she heard his footsteps and the rustle of the bushes, she looked up right away, though her mind was still holding so tight to Sam, who would remain safe in her mind if nowhere else in the world.
His eyes were black, all black, though in the dimness it was hard to see until he was a few feet from her. It was the only thing that let her know there was something wrong with him. It was as if – behind those eyes, he had nothing.
"Telly," he said.
"Yes."
He took a breath. Her nose was running and her coat was too thin against the cold, but when he breathed out no breath seemed to come. "You mind if I sit down?"
Her fingers fumbled inside her coat. "Go ahead."
When he had, swinging back and forth just slightly the same way she was, he said, "You're the woman who won't let go."
Her head snapped up and she met the blackness of his eyes. "No," she said, and found her teeth together so tight her jaws hurt. "I won't let go."
"Why won't you let go, Telly?"
She said nothing, looking him up and down. "You know where Sam is."
"Sam is dead. No one was wrong about that."
Her fingers came up and gripped the chain so tight, she would find bloody marks there much later. "They're erasing him."
"He is erased."
"Not from me."
"You need to let him go."
She just barely kept herself from jumping on him. "Tell me what you're trying to do or I swear to God and Christ-"
"Wouldn't it be better if he had never lived at all? If you never felt this pain?"
Her hand let go of the chain. "No. What the hell are you talking about? No."
"We do this for many people. Not all, but many. Sometimes, the memories, they're so painful – it's better for the things not to have happened at all. We can't do it with all of them. Only the ones that don't result in any good coming out of the world."
She could only repeat, again, "Oh God what are you trying to do?"
He was sitting perfectly unmoving, as he had this whole time, her specter, her phantasm after the insanity had taken her. Though Sam was real, Sam was real. She tried to remember the color of his hair and found it slipping.
"He'll be gone when I leave you and there'll be no more pain," said the still ghost man, and she turned away from him and just thought of Sam. "I'm sorry," he said, to her back.
She said his name out loud, over and over. In the dark and the cold and the sound of her squeaking chains, the word Sam became a chant like native people call for rains.
"I wouldn't do it," the man said, though if she heard it slipped from her mind in an instant, "if it didn't save you pain. We wouldn't. But this is what life is for, after all – pain for a little while, and then the dance again. Let go."
She felt as people feel when waking from the deepest dreams, ones laced with absinthe and lucidity. She would not forget him, and she would not let him drown in being forgotten. "Sam." Oh God, even his name was magic, though it slipped away.
And then, she looked up, and he was gone. She stood up, shivering in the cold. Her jacket was too thin for this weather – and she must really be going a little senile, being out so late. Jim was missing her. Jim. Missing and waiting for her. She had to get home.
For she was the woman who would not let go, and many of the mornings after, when she woke to silence, or when she woke to sound – eating, sitting, talking, fucking, dancing, for she did dance, and often, and had many children – she would think of a boy with blonde hair, who smelled like pepper and summer clay, and whose name was Sam. She would think, maybe, she'd met him once, long ago. Perhaps when she was a child, when memories are just beginning, and all people have yet to be fully formed. And then the thought began slipping away, and she would hold onto it, for just a little longer, if only to know that she didn't have to ever let go.