Memories of the Future by Robert F Young

Author:Robert F Young [Young, Robert F]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Anthologies & Short Stories, Anthologies, Science Fiction, short stories, Literature & Fiction
Amazon: B004I6EID2
Publisher: ElectricStory.com, Inc.
Published: 2001-10-29T05:00:00+00:00

“Whenever I say those lines, Jerry,” Robinette breathes into my ear, “I know it’s all right for me to be in your bed.”

* * *

I have my own bit of Tennyson. The words run often through my mind—

She is coming, my own, my sweet,

Were it ever so airy a tread,

My heart would hear her and beat,

Were it earth in an earthy bed;

My dust would hear her and beat,

Had I lain for a century dead;

Would start and tremble under

her feet,

And blossom in purple and red.

We wear our masks by day, but sometimes they fall off and bare our faces. Robinette’s friends begin giving us curious looks, and when we walk into cocktail lounges the buzz of voices momentarily ceases. Bartenders leer at us whenever we stand at bars.

Robinette tells me again and again that we are the same thing as second cousins. And she is right. But she cannot see the middle class because she is inside it.

My grandson is not a fool. Yet he is one of the last to tumble. And I do not think he would have tumbled even then if my granddaughter-in-law had not whispered hearsay into his ear.

He tiptoes down the hall one night to my room. I hear him coming. But Robinette and I are not fools either, and in the naked radiance of his flashlight he finds me all alone in my bed. She does not come to me till afterward, when he is snug in his.

At breakfast we sit like innocent children, our masks in perfect place. But the seed has been planted, and even without nutrition will grow into a horrendous tree.

* * *

Robinette finds me packing my bags. “Jerry, please don’t go.”

“What are the lines? ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, Lov’d I not honour more.’ ”

“But you’re not going off to war!”

“No. I’m just retreating from the field.”

“I won’t let you.”

“Everybody knows about us, Robin.”

“So what if they do? We’re not the first cousins who ever fell in love!”

“You know as well as I do that they see us in a somewhat different light.”

“If you’re going to go, I’m going with you.”

I sit down on the bed.

“Look,” Robinette says, “next month after I become part of the law firm we’ll be living in the city, and no one will ever guess we’re related.”

“They’ll find out.”

“Even if they do, it won’t matter. People living in the city don’t give a damn about such things.”

“About this they will.”

“Then let’s just thumb our noses at them, Jerry. There’s no law that says we can’t be lovers.”

No. Not yet. “I was only thinking of what it’ll do to you.”

“What do you think it’ll do to me if you run away?”

I am weak. I do not get up and finish packing my things. I go on sitting on the bed.

* * *

My daughter writes me a vicious little note and leaves it in the mailbox in an envelope addressed to me:

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