The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

When she gets home he doesn’t mention it.

Sitting across from him at the dinner table, she can’t decide if he’s better or not. Is he handling a fork better?

“Gus?” she says. “Do you want to look at some photographs after dinner?”

“Okay,” he says.

She sits him down on the couch and pulls out a photo album. She just grabs one, but it turns out to be from when Dan was in first grade. “There’s Dan,” she says. “There’s our son.”

“Uh-huh,” Gus says. His eyes wander across the page. He flips to the next page, not really looking.

So much is gone. If he does get smarter, she’ll have to teach him his past again.

There is a picture of Dan sitting on a big pumpkin. There is someone, a stranger, off to one side, and there are rows of pumpkins, clearly for sale. Dan is sitting with his face upturned, smiling the over-big smile he used to make every time his picture was being taken. He looks as if he is about six.

Mila can’t remember where they took the picture.

What was Dan that year for Halloween? She used to make his costumes. Was that the year he was the knight? And she made him a shield and it was too heavy to carry, so Gus ended up carrying it? No, because she made the shield in the garage in the house on Talladega Trail, and they didn’t move there until Dan was eight. Dan had been disappointed in the shield, although she couldn’t remember why. Something about the emblem. She couldn’t even remember the emblem, just that the shield was red and white. She had spent hours making it. It had been a disaster, although he had used it for a couple of years afterward, playing sword fight in the front yard.

How much memory did anybody have? And how much of it was even worth keeping?

“Who is that?” Gus asks, pointing.

“That’s my mother,” Mila says. “Do you remember my mother?”

“Sure,” Gus says, which doesn’t mean anything. Then he says, “Cards.”

“Yeah,” Mila says. “My mother played bridge.”

“And poker,” Gus says. “With Dan.”

The magpie mind, she thinks. He can’t remember where he lives but he can remember that my mother taught Dan to play poker.

“Who is that?” he asks.

“That’s our neighbor on South Bend,” Mila says. Thankfully, his name is written next to the photo. “Mike. That’s Mike. He was a volunteer fireman, remember?”

Gus isn’t even looking at the photos. He’s looking at the room. “I think I’m ready to go home now,” he says.

“Okay,” she says. “We’ll go home in a few minutes.”

That satisfies him until he forgets and asks again.

***

Dan comes in the door with his suitcase.

“It’s nice, Mom,” he says. “It’s really nice. The way you talked I thought you were living in a project.”

Mila laughs, so delighted to see him, so grateful. “I didn’t say it was that bad.”

“It’s plain,” he says, his voice high to mimic her, “it’s just a box, but it’s all right.”

“Who’s there?” Gus calls.

“It’s me, Dad. It’s Dan.” His face tightens with… worry? Nervousness, she decides.

“Dan?” his dad says.

“Hi Dad,” he says. “It’s me, Dan. Your son.” He is searching his father’s face for recognition.

It is one of Gus’s good days, and Mila has only a moment of fear before Gus says, “Dan. Visiting. Hello.” And then in that astonishingly normal way he sometimes does, “How was your flight?”

Dan grins. “Great, Dad, it was great.”

Is it the treatment that makes Gus remember? Or is it just one of those odd moments?

Dan is home for Christmas. It’s his Christmas gift for her, he says, to give her a break. It’s no break because she’s been cleaning and trying to buy presents off the net. Thank God for the net. She’s bought Dan cookbooks and cds, a beautiful set of German knives that he’s always wanted but would never get because he never cooks at home. She’s spent way too much money, but what would she buy Gus? She’s bought Gus chocolates for a palate gone childlike. A couple of warm bright shirts. A puzzle.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she says, and she can feel her face stretched too wide.

“I’m here,” he says. “Of course I’m here. Where else would I be? Lisa says hello.”

Lisa is the new girlfriend. “You could have brought her,” Mila says.

Gus stands there, vacant and uninterested.

Dan says, “Dad, I’ve met a really nice girl.” She’s told Gus about Lisa, but mostly it’s to hear her own chatter and because Gus seems soothed by chatter. Whether the magpie left of his mind has noticed the name, she doesn’t know.

“I didn’t bring her,” Dan says. “I thought I would be enough disruption.”

Gus doesn’t even appear to try to follow the conversation.

“I’ll show you your room,” Mila says. She’s putting Dan in the guest room, which means she’ll have to sleep with Gus. This week he has been going to sleep at ten or even earlier. And sleeping until early morning, say, five or six. That, she thinks, has to be the treatment.