Then he went for another drawer, and another, and he dumped them all. He took the drawers not only from the kitchen but also from the pantry, hallway, and dining room. He left everything heavy, all dishes and silverware, but took every drawer full of random little shit and dumped it. No sign of earplugs, but this project had become something else anyway, a purging, a burning back into sanity, a burning away of the old and useless.
Here’s your past, he said.
What? Her voice muffled. The shed not a great facilitator of conversation.
Here’s your past, he said more loudly, and then he had an inspiration. Your photos, he said.
What are you doing to my photos?
Nothing yet, but I think they’re about to join this pile. Everything can burn.
No. You leave my stuff alone, Galen.
You’re welcome to come stop me whenever you’d like.
Galen!
He entered her room and just stood there and looked around. This was the last time he would see all her things, the last time her room would be her room, and that seemed worth taking a moment. He would try to remember what this had looked like.
Mom, he said. Mom. He was trying out the sound of that, the accumulation of all that made the illusion. This room was part of it, this room that pretended a past, that stretched all the way back through her childhood. It was all illusion but had a convincing weight. Everything from the time period: the old wooden toys, the clothing, even her childhood drawings on the walls, of a house and family, the four of them holding hands under an enormous sun. That distorted sun should have been the clue.
Her bookshelf had the photo albums. He grabbed two of the older ones, the white covers like faded linoleum, and walked out to the lawn.
Got a couple albums, he said. Memory lane.
Leave those alone.
Goats, he said. A lot of goats, right out here in the orchard, and you in your sundress.
I don’t have copies of any of those, Galen.
The goats were looking at the camera, posing along with Galen’s mother and aunt. His aunt older, much taller, and with no bow in her hair. She already looked unhappy. His mother smiling her cutest smile, performing, her head tilted a little to the side. You were kind of like Shirley Temple, he said.
Put those away, Galen.
Is that who you were trying to be? Is that who you’re being now when you’re all fake and weird?
Galen waited, but his mother didn’t respond. Never mind, Galen said. I know you don’t answer when it’s anything real. The cute moments are a sacred thing that can’t be talked about. He yanked the page out of the album and crinkled it, the layers of card stock and photo and thin plastic film.
No! she yelled. You stop that right now.
This is kind of fun. I like the shed. I can do whatever I like. I hope you have an eyeball stuck to one of the gaps between the planks so you can see all this. I’d hate for you to miss out.
You’re worse than anything I could imagine, worse than anything I can say. I don’t even have a name for you.
Try son. The word son might be a possibility. Here’s a photo of the walnuts. The fucking walnuts, and all the drying racks laid out.
Put that away.
Grandma and Grandpa aren’t that old here. I can almost imagine them having real lives, being people who weren’t just born old.
Their lives were real.
I don’t know, he said, but it does seem possible in this photo. The problem is that there are no answers to anything. Why did he beat her? Why did he work all the time? How did she lose her memory?
You’re talking about entire lives. No one can explain an entire life.
Wow. You’re talking with me about your parents, sort of. This is new.
I’ve always talked about them.
No you haven’t. You’ve never said anything real about anything important.
Galen.
It’s true. Why did he beat her?
He didn’t beat her.
See?
None of it was the way you think it was.
Well then enlighten me.
We were a family.
No. That’s one thing you were not. Because the word family means something special to you, and your family has never fit that word. You know what’s odd about this photo with the walnut racks?
No answer from his mother. What’s odd, he continued, is that they’re still working. They don’t stop for the photo. They just kind of look up for a moment. But they’re still bent over the racks. And the racks go on forever. That’s what your father’s life was like. Just work that stretched forever in all directions, work for work’s sake, and nothing else. No family.
I was there, so I’m the one who knows. We were a family, and we didn’t just work. Dad played the accordion, and Mom played the piano, and we’d sing songs together.
Grandma plays piano?
Yeah. Almost everything is something you don’t know.
Okay. So let’s say I want to believe in that family. I still have to get everything to fit. So why did he beat her?
Damn you. He didn’t beat her.
Galen ripped the photo from the album and crinkled it up.
Stop! Her voice broke, ragged and spent.
Save your voice, he said. The photo’s no loss. None of this happened, after all. He didn’t beat her, and there was no family, and there were no drying racks, no walnuts.
Galen could hear his mother sobbing now, but he didn’t care. He looked at the other photos and ripped them out, a page at a time.
Here you are with a new bicycle, he said, and he ripped out that page. Here you are with a dog. What was that dog’s name again?
Schatze, she said, and this made her sob harder.
Just a dog, he said, and not much of a dog. Those legs are about three inches high. What kind of dog is that again?
A dachshund.
Yeah, that’s right. What a mistake of a dog.
I loved Schatze.
What’s the name mean again?
Mein Schatz is my treasure or dear one or my love.
Galen ripped the page out. Well there are a lot of photos of my love, but not after today.
I hate you.
Yeah, I know. We’ve already covered that. Time to move on to something new.
I’m your mother.
Covered that point, too.
You have to let me out.
And again the familiar ground. I had hoped to get through these albums before going for the earplugs, but I may have to get them sooner.
You’re a monster.
Yeah yeah.
You’re not my son.
Uh-huh. He looked at another photo of Schatze, by the Christmas tree. His mother in a holiday dress that looked thick, like it was made of velvet, maybe. And the tree huge, out in the main room that was two stories high. Tinsel and hundreds of ornaments and a star on top. A blanket of felt underneath, and all the presents, piles of presents. Schatze with his paws up on her, straining to lick her face, and she had both arms around him, was laughing and trying to get her face away from his tongue. It almost looked like what she said. He could almost imagine the family she was claiming. And maybe they had good times. Maybe the good times stretched on and became most of the time. Maybe the beatings and favoritism and fakery were only occasional, the exceptions to how their lives were. But he would never know. His mother couldn’t be trusted, because she was trying too hard to protect and deny. His aunt couldn’t be trusted because she was trying too hard to destroy. And his grandmother couldn’t remember. These photos were too brief, only moments. They couldn’t describe what a day felt like, how all the hours of even one day moved along. And this was all a distraction anyway, the deepest form of samsara, the belief in belonging, the belief in being tied to a family and a place and time. The final attachment, the one that was the foundation for the illusion of self.