"Suit yourself." The major looked around, vague-ly dissatisfied. "When you get finished, there's a trunk of your mother's you need to go through. See if there's anything you want in there. The rest of it we'll get rid of. Give it to charity or something."
Sam winced, wondering if there was anything he should save for Missy. Now there was a reason, as if he needed one, for getting out of here quickly: to let her choose her memories of her mother.
Though come to think of it, perhaps she would best like to have no memories at all.
The trunk was shoved into the back of a walk-in closet, as if it contained useless things, things which would never be called for but were too good to throw away. Sam wrestled it out of its corner and pried open the lid.
Two pairs of violet eyes peered over his shoul-ders.
"Oh," one of the boys said-Sam thought it might be Paul, though to be honest he couldn't really tell them apart. "That's just paper and junk. There isn't any good stuff."
Sam tossed him a grin. The trunk contained a length of Irish linen tablecloth; lifted away, it revealed a layer of several cardboard boxes and manila folders. He lifted out one of the folders, paging through it at random. It contained recipe clippings and notes on sewing patterns. The first two boxes contained dusty, very much out-of-style shoes. The boys, bored, wandered out of the room.
He continued to burrow. Another folder held report cards for Missy and Tom, dating back to nursery school. Still another contained all the bills for therapy received, beginning in September 1961 and continuing for the next twelve years. Tucked in on top was a notation on Missy's broken arm, with a note from the doctor indicating the patient could not recall how the injury had happened.
One of the boxes contained black-and-white and color photographs in various stages of brittleness, including pictures of Missy's and Tom's graduations, hoodings, and robings from the eighth grade through doctorate-Missy's, at least; Tom didn't seem to have gone past the MS.
There were other things in the boxes, too. He sorted, stacked, and eventually returned almost everything to the trunk, unable to decide what to keep and what to throw away.
But there was one item he kept out. He'd show it to Tom, he decided. Maybe it would help. Help what, he wasn't sure.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.
"Nothing will be the same again."
-Willy Brandt, November 1989 He came out of the bedroom and into the living room to find Tom staring down at his sons, a look of utter disgust on his face. Sam could see why. The once-pristine blue suits were rumpled and dirty, and one of the boys had torn a hole in the knee of his pants.
"I can't believe you didn't have the sense to change clothes," their father was saying bitterly.
"We were playing," one of the boys said.
"Don't you talk back to me! Damn you, don't you talk back to me!" He raised his hand, and Sam moved forward to prevent the blow. But he stopped himself; seeing the lift of the boys' heads when they caught sight of Sam moving in, he turned around.
"Can you believe these kids?" he said wearily. "Look at them. They'll never be able to wear those suits again."
"They'd probably grow out of them before they had the chance," Sam said, watching him carefully.
"Don't make excuses for them. They come up with plenty of their own. They're always talking back. I can't believe it. You and I never talked back the way these kids do."
Sam, who had never heard the kids in question talking back, and remembering all too vividly what happened when Missy and Tom had done so, held his peace.
"Have you seen the news?" he asked instead. "They're tearing down the Berlin Wall."
Tom nodded. Then, almost as an afterthought, he turned back to the boys. "You're dismissed. Go get cleaned up and changed. And I don't ever want to see you playing in your good clothes again. Not ever, do you understand me?"
"Yes, sir," the two mumbled in chorus, and took off at a dead run.
Tom looked after them, shaking his head and run-ning his hand through his hair. "Honest, I don't know what to do with those kids sometimes. Maybe they would have been better off with their mother after all. Though she never heard of discipline. Lets them run wild every time they go visit. It's hell getting them squared away again once I get them back. Going back and forth is hard on kids."
Sam nodded. "Um, Tom, could we talk about that a little?"
Tom laughed. "What, is my baby sister the psy-chologist going to teach me how to raise my kids now?"
"Do you really not remember how Mom used to beat us?"
Tom's face became a mask. "I remember she was strict with us. There's nothing wrong with that. Kids have to learn to respect their parents."
"She was more than strict. Don't you remember how she hit me the morning of the alert, when I didn't eat a soft-boiled egg fast enough?" Behind Tom, he could see the Door slide upward, and Al come out to join them.
"He wasn't there for that," Al said. "He was still in his room, packing to run away. But don't let that stop you, Sam, you're on the right track."
"No," Tom said, tightlipped. "I remember telling you I didn't want to talk about this stuff anymore, though."
"Don't you remember helping me clean up the mess that day? That was the day you ran away.
That was the day I broke my arm. The day Mom-" he stumbled, realizing suddenly that Tom might verywell never have been told that his mother had tried to kill herself. He wasn't sure whether using a euphemism at this point would help or hurt matters. "The day Mom took the pills and liquor," he said, opting for the exact truth, "and we had to call the ambulance."
"I remember when she got sick," Tom said. "But not the rest of it. I don't think the rest of it ever hap-pened. You're just making all this stuff up, using it as an excuse not to get married and have a family."
He shook his head. "This psychology crap of yours never did anybody any good. Mom or anybody."
"It probably kept her from killing her daughter," Sam said, his voice very soft. "You really don't remember, do you? You've blocked it all out."
"Well, either I've blocked it all out or it never happened to begin with," Tom responded sharply. "And since I seem to be doing okay with my life, I know which answer I think is right."
"Yeah? You're not doing all that okay," Al jeered. "You got divorced, you got fired, you lost a promotion at your last job. Real okay, huh?"
"Do you remember this?" Sam said, holding out what he had been carrying, what he had found in one of the boxes in the trunk, carefully preserved.
Something flickered in Tom's expression as he took the model biplane in his hands, turning it around and around, carefully, as if examining the workmanship. "What's this, one of my old toys? Where did you dig this up?"
"It was in the trunk. Mom saved it. Are you sure you don't remember? This is the one that got broken the day you ran away. She saved it. She tried to fix it. Look." There was a glob of glue, inexpertly applied, on one wing, holding it to the body of the plane.
Tom bit his lower lip and shook his head. "Nope. It's a broken toy. God knows we've got enough of them back at the house. Those kids can't keep their toys in one piece. You planning on keeping this?"
"I was hoping you would," Sam answered quietly, beginning to lose hope. He had really believed that the sight of the little biplane, so carefully preserved for so long, would have evoked the memories in Tom, so that he would see the connections between what he was doing to his sons and what had been done to him, so many years ago.
"It isn't enough," Al said. "He really has buried it deep."
The Observer and the Project Director watched as Tom Robicheaux tossed the toy into a convenient wastebasket. "Does this conclude our session?" he asked. "Send your bill to my office, little sister. And quit bugging me about it, okay? I've had just about enough of your fantasies of being beaten. You're the sick one, if you ask me."
"I'm open to suggestions," Sam said later, talking to Al in the back bedroom. He had excused him-self from dealing with Tom and the major, telling them he was going to sort clothing. Meanwhile, he'd rescued the model from the wastebasket and was trying in vain to straighten a warped strut. "I really thought seeing this would have made him remem-ber."
"Maybe he does remember," Al suggested. "He just doesn't want to admit it. Missy says she's afraid he's going to go the same route Jane did. Carry-ing abuse forward another generation. It happens a lot. Most child abusers were abused themselves, she says. They don't think it's abuse because that's what they grew up with. They think it's normal discipline."
"I can't believe anybody really thinks that hitting a kid is the right way to discipline him."
"You never got spanked when you were a kid?"
"Well, yeah, once or twice, but only when I deserved it."
"Jane only hit her kids when they deserved it, too," Al pointed out. "It's all in the eye of the behold-er.
Or in the standards you grew up with."
"I wasn't abused," Sam said, swift to the defense of his parents. "I knew my parents loved me."
"Nobody said they didn't. But one or two spank-ings over a childhood isn't the same thing Tom and Missy grew up with before Jane went into thera-py."
"So what happened, did she find a magic bul-let and quit, just like that?" Sam was getting frus-trated.
"There aren't any magic bullets. But she learned to control herself once she realized what she was doing. She loved her kids, too. Just like Tom loves his."
Sam nodded, recalling the folders and pictures. "So what am I supposed to do?""You've already figured it out," Al informed him. "You're here to break the chain of abuse. To stop Tom before he really gets started. Otherwise those kids are going to be damaged the same way he was, and it's never going to end."
"How am I supposed to do that when he won't even admit he was abused? He doesn't even want to talk about it!"
Al shrugged. "You got me," he said. "I thought the model airplane would do it, myself."
"Does Ziggy have any ideas?"
"Sam, if you're out of ideas, and I'm out of ideas, it isn't very likely that Ziggy's going to be able to come up with anything. I mean, he's smart, but he's still a computer."
"What about Missy? What about Verbeena?"
"Verbeena says that if an abuser acknowledges the problem, that's more than half the battle. Tom just won't, that's all."
"I wish you could play back for him that day," Sam murmured. "He may think he's forgotten it, but I'll bet he hasn't. I don't see how anybody could possibly forget something like that."
"He hasn't forgotten it, he's denied it ever hap-pened." Al pecked at the handlink. "Maybe if we could do a hologrammatic light show for him-Nope. Ziggy says it won't work. I don't know how you're going to do it, Sam. But Ziggy says that you've got to find some way, or you aren't going to be able to Leap."
Dinner that evening was an uneasy meal. Sam realized early on that Missy's father and brother expected the woman in the house to take care of the meal, so he took the boys into the kitchen with him and made spaghetti, ignoring the futile attempts by Al to taste the sauce and offer culinary criticism. They were good at setting the table, only having to go back once for the right number of place settings. A massive china cabinet in the dining room held the crystal and china he remembered, but he opted to use instead the more workaday, modern almost-china and plastic glasses from a cupboard over the dishwasher.
He set David to tearing lettuce for salad, and Paul to peeling carrots, while he set water to boil for the pasta.
"You aren't really going to use one of those mixes for the sauce, are you?" Al mourned. "Sam, all you gotta do is get some fresh oregano. . . ."
Sam, unable to respond because of the presence of the twins, closed his eyes and thought dark thoughts. Despite the dubious assistance of the hologram, the chef and his assistants managed to put together a reasonable facsimile of a meal. Al finally gave up and returned to the Project to fix an Italian meal of his own-"without using one of those damn mixes," as he informed Sam.
The major and Tom appeared to approve. They ate, at least, with every evidence of enjoyment.
"A round of applause for Paul and David," Sam insisted, as Tom polished off the last piece of homemade garlic bread. "I couldn't have done it without them."
"We did the salad all by ourselves," David said shyly.
"Well, I think you did a damn fine job," the major growled, and applauded as directed. After a moment Tom joined in, and Sam looked at the boys' glow-ing faces. How could Tom see this, and not under-stand the. difference between this and the lack of expression his sons habitually wore? He thought they respected him. Sam called it fear.
"So you're going to grow up to be chefs and wear white hats?" Tom jibed. "You'll look pretty silly."
"We won't be silly," Paul said.
"If I say you're silly, you're silly." It sounded like a joke, but it wasn't. The major stopped clapping and looked at his son.
But he said nothing. He saw what was going on, Sam realized, just as he had seen bruises twenty-eight years before. But he was willing to accept those bruises as the result of an accident then, and he was going to let Tom's remark pass as a joke now.
And Sam was trapped too, because if he made an issue of it now, it would exaggerate the entire inci-dent out of proportion. But he had to say something. "You might look silly," he offered, "but you'd still be very good chefs."
The instant the words were out of his mouth he was disgusted with himself. Surely he could have come up with something more devastating to Tom, more supportive to the children?He'd probably think of something, three Leaps from now.
Meanwhile the boys were giving him grateful glances and Tom was shaking his head to himself.
They finished dinner, and the men moved into the living room to continue talking about world events and football, while Sam and the boys remained behind to clean up. Paul scraped carrot peelings and other salad scraps into the disposal, while David rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. Sam finally realized he was in the way, and stood back to let them work.
"You do this all the time at home?" he asked.
"Yes," they chorused. "Is something wrong?" David added, standing in the middle of the kitchen floor with a plate in his hands. "We're doing it right. Aren't we?"
"Sure you are," Sam reassured him. "You're doing it fine."
They finished up, and he sent them back into their room to play with some toy trucks. He paused at the door to the living room, listening to the conversa-tion about Gorbachev and Honecker, perestroika and glasnost, the opening of international borders, the fall of the Wall. He could remember being involved in conversations like that, years ago, when he worked on Star Bright.
But he had no desire to become involved in a discussion of them now, and they showed no inclina-tion to invite him to participate anyway. The major glanced up and said, "I could use another cup of coffee, hon,"
and went on talking.
Sam took the cup back to the kitchen, refilled it, and brought it back. He sat in one of the armchairs, slipped off his shoes, and pulled his legs up under him-a very comfortable posture in this body. The conversation continued. He made one or two contri-butions, largely unnoticed. After a while Al showed up again, took in the situation, and claimed a corner of the couch opposite the major, adding a running commentary of his own. The information that Ziggy hadn't come up with anything new was incidental.
The major didn't want his children to leave in the morning, Sam could tell. He was pouring out months of conversation, observation, instructions meant to show that he was still the Father, still an important man in his house. But as it got later, he began to fade, and he finally caught himself stifling a yawn and abruptly decided to go to bed.
Sam and Tom and Al remained, sharing a few moments of peace and quiet, Tom finishing his cof-fee and Sam trying frantically to think of a way to convince the man to deal with the past before he left Portland and the influence of his sister forever, Al polluting the atmosphere of the Imaging Chamber with a good cigar and vast contentment.
"You ought to do this more often," the Observer informed Sam. "It's been a long time since we've had a bull session like this one."
Sam blinked, exasperated. He couldn't respond directly. And there were more important issues to deal with.
"They're good boys," he said at last.
Tom smiled. "You aren't going to start again, are you?"
Sam's skin crawled. The threat was implicit in the words, not the tone. It was as if that pattern of words had been used before, innumerable times, and each time the incident ended in violence.
And each time ... he wondered. How could Tom not remember? How deeply barricaded were those memories that it was so desperately important that he not let out?