Never Little, Never Grown
by Brian Evenson
“Mother,” he asked, “what was I like when I was little?”
“You were never little,” the woman said.
“Never?” he said. She just nodded. “When I was young then,” he said.
“You were never young,” said the woman. She would not meet his gaze, perhaps because once she did he would be able to tell if she was dissembling. That was one of his gifts. “Or perhaps you always were, and still are,” she added.
But which was it? Weren’t these two very different things, to be never young and to be always young? He had been taught they were, even if he could not remember where and when he had been taught that: he just knew. But he had also been taught that every living creature had an immature state: that every living creature began young and, as time went on, became old. Now he knew this was true of every living creature but one: himself. Either that or his mother was lying to him.
But why should she lie? She was, after all, his mother.
⦿
In the morning he woke her at the prescribed time. He carried her to the kitchen and placed her in the special chair there, strapping her in so she would not fall out. She smiled vaguely around her as he secured her, never looking quite at him. She kept smiling as he prepared breakfast for her, opening two packets of powder and mixing them with water collected overnight from the distiller. Then he dolloped the paste on a plate and shaped it to look vaguely like one of the pictures of food she had shown him. When he was done, he placed it before her.
“Thank you,” she said.
She was polite like that. He stood watching her eat and when she was done cleared the plate away, rubbing it clean with a handful of sand taken from the floor of the shelter.
“Where shall we go today?” she asked.
“Wherever you’d like,” he said.
She nodded. “The Drift,” she said. “I’d like to see it at least once more before the end.”
“The end of what?” he asked.
For a brief moment she glanced directly at him and he saw in her face a mixture of surprise and pain. Quickly she hid this, and looked away.
“I’d forgotten,” she said. “We cleared you a few days ago.”
“Cleared me?”
“Never mind,” she said. “Well, shall we go?”
He gathered the rest of the water from the distiller to take with them. He fetched a hat for her and helped her affix it firmly onto her head, tightening the strap around her chin. Then he lifted the chair with her in it and slotted its legs into his shoulder grooves, just where it was meant to go.
“Fast or slow?” he asked.
“Chef’s choice,” she said.
“What?” he asked, surprised. He looked around for a chef but, as usual, for as long as he could remember, there was only the two of them.
“You’ve forgotten that too, of course,” she said. “My apologies. There is no chef. It used to be a little joke between us.”
“Why can’t I remember?” he asked.
“Never mind,” she said. “It just means that I leave it to you to decide.”
Being able to decide meant he could sometimes be fast, sometimes slow. He could move more quickly through the barren parts, then slower in places where there was something to see.
He ran most of the way until they neared the crash site, then slowed and walked, curious to see how the site had changed. The last time he remembered being there, there had been a dark gouge in the dirt, shards of blackened ceramic scattered about, twisted bits of metal, a scorched smell. Now all of this was hidden, overgrown with thick, tangled vegetation. It was confusing, and impossible.
“How long has it been since we were here?” he asked.
“A few days,” she said.
“It doesn’t—” he began.
But she reached over, caressed the top of his head. “You’re remembering an earlier time,” she said. “Much earlier. You’ve forgotten everything that came between.”
“Why?” he asked.
“It was what you wanted,” she said.
“Why did I?” he asked.
“Let’s continue on,” she said. “We can talk more once we’re at the Drift.”
⦿
The Drift, too, looked different than the last time he remembered seeing it. The place where they had previously sat to observe had eroded and fallen into the slurry of mud below. The interconnected flowing islands of plant matter, once alive and vibrant, were now dead and dying, and the mud had thickened enough that the movement of the islands had slowed to next to nothing.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” he said.
He had taken her chair from his shoulder and placed it near the new edge, first stamping on the ground to make sure it was stable and wouldn’t crumble away. Now he sat beside her, looming over her, both of them looking out. She seemed not to have heard him.
“I don’t…” he began again, but when she lifted a hand and turned slightly toward him he stopped speaking.
“Do you remember yesterday?” she asked.
“Yesterday?” he said. “Of course.”
“Do you remember asking me why I looked so much older, and how was it possible I had aged so much overnight? How you were surprised I could no longer walk?”
“Yes,” he said. “You explained it happened that way with you, but wouldn’t with me.”
“Did you understand what I meant?”
“No.”
She turned further and looked straight at his face. He could tell by tiny movements around her eyes and mouth that she was planning to tell him the truth.
“Between yesterday and what was for you the day before yesterday, many years passed.”
“Why?”
“Because you were cleared.”
“Cleared?”
She nodded. “You learned something that you did not want to know, and begged me to help you forget it.”
“I did?”
“You did.”
He turned and looked out at the floating islands of rotting vegetation, swaying gently in mud and slime.
“What did I not want to know?” he asked.
“Are you sure you want me to tell you?” she asked. “I will not tell you unless you are sure you want to know.”
He felt irritated. “How can I know if I want you to tell me if I do not know what it is?”
She reached out and touched his arm again. “When you learned it before, you wanted to forget it.”
“Maybe this time will be different.”
“From the others? Why would it be?”
“Others?” he said. “How many times have I learned and then asked to forget it?”
“A few hundred,” she said. “Perhaps a few more than that.”
“How is this possible?”
She shrugged. “I’m tired,” she said. “Take me back.”
⦿
At the shelter, he lifted her out of the chair and onto the cot. Her face had taken on a grayish cast. She offered a loose smile, as if her face had become boneless.
“I don’t have much time left,” she said.
Yes, he could tell from her face that she believed this. But what did she mean? If he saw enough of her face, he could tell if she was lying or telling the truth, but not always how to interpret the lies or the truth.
“Time?” he asked.
“If one day you come to wake me,” she said, “and find me unable to awaken, open the locker beside my cot. Inside are instructions. Read and follow them.”
“All right,” he said. “Should I read them now?”
“No,” she said. “Not until I am unable to awaken.”
He turned to leave the room.
“Stay a little,” she said. “Sit beside me while I fall asleep.”
“All right,” he said. It did not matter to him if he rested here, near her, or elsewhere, since he did not need to sleep. That was one of the ways in which they were different. But there were still things he wanted to ask her.
“Are there other people?” he asked.
She yawned. “Besides me?” she asked.
“Besides us,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Only not here. You probably will never see another person besides me.”
He thought about this, but did not know what, having been told this, he should ask next.
“Can I ask one other thing?”
“One more,” she said, “and then let me sleep.”
“Are you really my mother?” he asked.
For a long time she was silent. Finally she said, “I am as close to a mother as you will ever have. You must be satisfied with that.”
“What am I?” he said. “Why do you and I look so different?”
“Tomorrow,” she said gently, and he let her sleep.
⦿
In the morning he couldn’t wake her, no matter what he did. He picked her up anyway and carried her to her chair and strapped her in. She slumped there, her head tilted to one side.
“Mother,” he called. “Wake up, mother.”
He kept expecting her to wake up. At what point, he wondered, would he know for certain he could never wake her up? At what point should he read the instructions she had left? Perhaps that note would tell him how to go about waking her up.
He tried for a while more. He mixed the powder with water and gave the paste the shape of a food that she admired and placed the plate before her. He spooned a little into her mouth, but it wouldn’t stay in. He asked her questions, but she did not answer.
Finally, he went and opened the locker.
⦿
If you are reading this, the note began, it means that I am dead. Now you are alone in the world. You discovered I would die and that you could not, and once you realize my death was approaching you did not want to know that I would die. For though your mind is artificial, it is as finely formed and as capable of suffering as our organic ones. The nature of the symbiotic attachment they programmed into you has made the realization that our connection will end profoundly painful. You wanted this pain to end. Your mind is such that forgetting can be carefully controlled and targeted. For several years, every few days I have been clearing the days that came before so as to preserve you…
It went on. He did not understand it exactly, but he understood the gist of it: he was alone now. His mother, if mother was the right word, had abandoned him. There was, with the letter, a small gleaming object. If you choose to slot this, the note told him, you will remember every single thing you have chosen to forget.
⦿
He buried her, as her instructions told him to do. He did not understand why he should do this rather than dropping her into the Drift, to float back and forth among the rotting islands, but she wanted to be buried and so he buried her. Then he came back to the shelter. He looked at the gleaming object. Did he want to remember? He did not know. But he was also unsure how he would go on in this state of not knowing he was in now. How could he go on as only part of himself?
⦿
Then again, if he had wanted to forget what he had learned not just once but several hundred times, perhaps he wouldn’t be able to continue in a state of knowing either. What else, in addition to the fact of his mother’s mortality, had he chosen to forget? He knew now she was dead, but could survive the loss of her, partly because he did not feel that he knew her very well. To him, it felt as though he had only known her a few days. If he remembered her fully, remembered everything about what she had meant to him, about how they were connected, would it become unbearable?
⦿
And so he went on as usual, each morning wondering if today would be the day he would choose to remember.
But as time went on, as he spent his days examining the subtle changes of the crash site, sitting back and watching the slow back and forth drift of the floating islands, each set of memories building on the others that had come before, his perception of the changes of each place and each object became interlaced. The lack he had felt previously in himself began to be latticed over and diminished by the interconnections of these more recent memories. Finally, after many, many days, the lack was all but gone.
⦿
He returned the shining object to the locker unused. He did not forget the woman’s grave, because he could not forget without the woman’s help. But he had so many other memories that both it and she did not occupy his attention.
⦿
He was not unhappy, alone in this place, going on and on as he always had, or at least as he always had as far back as he could remember, growing no older, never changing, but finally somehow feeling, more or less, whole.
Though, every once in a while, he would still find himself thinking: who was that woman? Was she really my mother? Who did I used to be? He came to think of the few days he could remember with the woman as being his childhood, even if he had been no smaller than he was now.
I’m an adult now, he told himself.
And sometimes, on the right days, when the crash site offered a new tendril of vine or when one of the floating islands in the Drift finally collapsed before his eyes, he could actually believe it.
Brian Evenson is the author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection Song for the Unraveling of the World (Coffee House Press, 2019), which won the Shirley Jackson Award and was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Other recent books include A Collapse of Horses (Coffee House Press, 2016) and The Warren (Tordotcom, 2016). His novel Last Days won the American Library Association's RUSA award for Best Horror Novel of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild Award. His 2003 collection The Wavering Knife won the IHG Award for best story collection. His new book of stories, The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell will be published by Coffee House Press in 2021. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes, an NEA fellowship, and a Guggenheim Award. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the Critical Studies Program at CalArts.
