False Memory

of distaste from his mother, and displayed his bare torso. “Bullet wounds!” he announced with amazement and a curious pride.

Four wicked bruises with ugly dark centers and overlapping aureoles marked his wasted chest and stomach.

Relieved to see Skeet alive, joyous, but puzzled, Dusty said, “Bullet wounds?”

“Well,” Skeet amended, “they would have been bullet wounds if me and Fig—”

“Fig and I,” his mother corrected.

“Yeah, if Fig and I hadn’t been wearing Kevlar vests.”

Dusty felt the need to sit down. Martie was shaky, too. But they had come here with a sense of urgency, and it might be a mortal mistake to lose it now. “What were you doing in Kevlar vests?”

“Good thing you didn’t want them for New Mexico,” said Skeet. “Me and Fig—” A quick, guilty glance at his mother. “Fig and I figured we might as well make ourselves useful, so we decided to tail Dr. Ahriman.”

“You what?”

“We followed him in Fig’s truck—”

“Which I made them park in the garage,” said Claudette. “I do not wish that vehicle to be seen in my driveway.”

“It’s a cool truck,” Skeet said. “Anyway, we put on vests just to be safe, and we followed him, and somehow he turned the tables on us. We thought we lost him, and we were out on the beach, trying to make contact with one of the mother ships, and he just walked up and shot us both four times.”

“Good God,” Martie said.

Dusty was trembling, overcome by more emotions then he could name or sort out. Nevertheless, he noticed that Skeet’s eyes were brighter and clearer than they had been since that celebratory day, over fifteen years ago, when the two of them had packaged a box of dog droppings and mailed it off to Holden Caulfield, the elder, after Claudette had thrown him out in favor of Derek.

“He was wearing a ski mask, so we couldn’t positively identify him to the police. We didn’t even go to the police. Didn’t seem like we’d get anywhere with them. But we knew it was him, all right. He didn’t fool us.” Skeet was beaming, as if they had pulled one over on the psychiatrist. “He shoots Fig twice, then me four times, and it’s like being slammed in the gut with a hammer, knocks all the breath out of me, and I’m almost unconscious, too, and I want to suck air, but I don’t because even with the wind howling, he might hear me and know I’m not really dead. Fig’s playing dead, too. So then before he turns back to Fig and shoots him two more times, the guy says to me, ‘Your mother’s a whore, and your father’s a fraud, and your stepfather — he’s got shit for brains.’”

Icily, Claudette said, “I’ve never even met this purveyor of pop-psych drivel.”

“Then both me and Fig, Fig and I, we knew Ahriman went away in a hurry, but we laid there, ’cause we were scared. And for a while we couldn’t move. Like we were stunned. You know? And then when we could move, we came here to find out why he thinks Mother’s a whore.”

“Have you been to a hospital?” Martie worried.

“Nah, I’m fine,” Skeet said, finally lowering his sweater.

“You could have a cracked rib, internal injuries.”

“I’ve made the same argument,” Claudette said, “to no avail. You know what Holden’s like, Sherwood. He’s always had more enthusiasm than common sense.”

“It’s still a good idea to go to a hospital, be examined while the injuries are visible,” Dusty advised Skeet. “That’s admissible evidence if we’re ever able to get this shithead into court.”

“Bastard,” Claudette admonished, “or sonofabitch. Either is adequate, Sherwood. Pointless vulgarities don’t impress me. If you think shithead will shock me, better think again. But in this house we’ve never thought William Burroughs is literature, and we’re not going to start thinking so now.”

“I love your mother,” Martie told Dusty.

Claudette’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.

“How was New Mexico?” Skeet asked.

“A land of enchantment,” Dusty said.

At the end of the hall, the swinging door to the kitchen swung, and through it came Derek Lampton. He approached with his shoulders back, spine ramrod-straight, chest out, and although his bearing was military, he nevertheless seemed to slink toward them.

Skeet and Dusty had secretly called him Lizard virtually from the day he arrived, but Lampton was more accurately a mink of a man, compact and sleek and sinuous, hair as thick and shiny as fur, with the quick, black, watchful eyes of something that would raid a chicken coop the moment the farmer’s back was turned. His hands, neither of which he offered to Dusty or Martie, featured slender fingers with wider than normal webbing and with slightly pointy nails, like clever paws. The mink is a member of the weasel family.

“Has someone died and are we having a reading of the will?” Lampton asked, which was his idea of humor and the closest thing to a greeting he would ever offer.

He looked Martie up and down, his attention lingering on the swell of her breasts against her sweater, as he always forthrightly examined attractive women. When at last he met her eyes, he bared his small, sharp, white- white teeth. This passed for his smile — and perhaps even for what he believed to be a seductive smile.

“Sherwood and Martine actually were in New Mexico,” Claudette told her husband.

“Really?” Lampton said, raising his eyebrows.

“I told you,” Skeet said.

“That’s true,” Lampton confirmed, addressing Dusty rather than Skeet. “He told us, but with such flamboyant detail, we assumed that it was less reality than just one of his dissociative fantasies.”

“I don’t have dissociative fantasies,” Skeet objected, managing to put some iron in his voice, although he couldn’t meet Lampton’s eyes — and instead stared at the floor when he raised his objection.

“Now, Holden, don’t be defensive,” Lampton soothed. “I’m not judging you when I mention your dissociative fantasies, any more than I would be judging Dusty if I were to mention his pathological aversion to authority.”

“I don’t have a pathological aversion to authority,” Dusty said, angry with himself for feeling the need to respond, striving to keep his voice calm, even friendly. “I have a legitimate aversion to the notion that a bunch of elitists should tell everyone else what to do and what to think. I have an aversion to self-appointed experts.”

“Sherwood,” said Claudette, “you don’t advance your argument whatsoever when you use unintentional oxymorons like self-appointed experts.”

With a remarkably straight face and measured tone, Martie said, “Actually, Claudette, it wasn’t an oxymoron. It was a metonymy in which he was substituting self-appointed for the more vulgar if more accurate arrogant asshole experts.”

If he’d ever had the slightest doubt that he would love Martie forever, Dusty knew now that they would be bonded through eternity.

As if she had not heard her daughter-in-law, Claudette said to Skeet, “Derek is absolutely correct, Holden, as to both issues. He wasn’t judging you. He’s not that kind of person. And you do, of course, have dissociative fantasies. Until you acknowledge your condition, you’re never going to heal.”

Getting across the threshold, although difficult, was always less of a challenge than moving beyond the foyer.

“Holden has stopped taking his medications,” Derek Lampton told Dusty, while his gaze slid down and lingered again on the shape of Martie’s breasts.

“You had me on seven prescriptions,” Skeet said. “By the time I took all of them in the morning, I didn’t have room for breakfast.”

“You will never be able to realize your potential,” Claudette admonished, “until you acknowledge your condition and address it.”

“I think he should have stopped taking his medications a long time ago,” Dusty said.

Looking up from Martie’s breasts, Lampton said, “Holden’s recovery isn’t facilitated when he’s confused by uneducated advice.”

“His father facilitated his recovery until he was nine, and you’ve facilitated it since.” Dusty forced a smile and a light tone that he knew fooled no one. “And so far all I’ve seen is a lot of facilitating and no recovery.”