Flashback

There are some memories that stick with you forever, even after you've forgotten where or when they happened, or any kind of context for the little thought that bubbles up in your mind, tickled out by a smell or a sound - sometimes even just a particular temperature in the air.

William DeGrassie (never Will or Bill - and especially not Billy) didn't experience that often. His thoughts were too structured and disciplined to allow in anything uncalled-for. So he was surprised when, that Thursday morning on the train, he suddenly found himself thinking about a day he'd thought he'd forgotten about long ago. God knew he'd tried hard enough to forget.

There was precisely nothing exceptional about that morning. He'd followed his routine just as he did every day; had boarded the 7:18 into town (he was frequently annoyed that he was more precise in his schedule than the train was) and had sat down to scan the headlines of the neatly folded paper he carried.

He was halfway through his paper when a sudden impulse made him look out the window. The train was crossing a bridge over a wide river, and the fall clouds had muted the scenery outside into a flat wash of gray and brown. He sat staring vacantly when he abruptly realized he was looking not at the scenery rolling by outside, but at his own reflection in the window, staring back at himself.

And there it was: unbidden and unwanted, suddenly he could see it in his mind, as clear as if it had happened two minutes ago. His own face staring back at himself, reflected in the underwater window of a hotel pool, big buglike goggles on his eight-year-old face. And he remembered how he had grinned, and how it had made him look even funnier, and how he actually started to laugh there underwater, four feet below the surface. And the memory of that moment, thirty years and a lifetime ago, made William DeGrassie close his eyes and press them tight to hold back the rush of tears that suddenly welled up and threatened to run down his cheeks.