Free The Memory Artists by Jeffrey Moore

like.”
    Mrs. Holtzberger rolled her eyes. “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Burun. But you will be hearing from us very soon. No, I’ll see myself out.”

    A bad day, Noel said to himself as he put his mother to bed. Big deal, nothing to it—we all have bad days. Things will be better tomorrow …
    Mrs. Burun blinked rapidly to quell tears, sensing she’d done something wrong, sensing she’d let her son down. “What’s wrong with me, Noel dear? I feel like something’s wrong but I don’t know what it is.”
    He had heard this before, many times, yet he could barely stop himself from collapsing into tears. It was simply heartbreaking. “Don’t worry, Mom.” He smiled bravely. “Tomorrow’s another day. We’re in the twenty-first century—things are bound to get better. We’ll have a riot tomorrow, you wait and see. Oh, I almost forgot. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
    Mrs. Burun stopped crying, distracted by these words like a small child. In the cheval glass beside the bed Noel could see her reflection. He crossed the room and brought back a bouquet of flowers.
    “Look what I got for you, Mom. Amaranth.”
    His mother’s eyes sparkled as she smelled the flowers and caressed their petals.
    “Remember when you read me ‘The Rose and the Amaranth’? From Aesop? The undying flower? No? Doesn’t matter. It was eons ago.” Into a juice glass he poured out a frog-green liquid from an unlabelled amber bottle. “Take a bit more of this, Mom. It should help.” And hopefully without side-effects. “I’ve got some new ideas, new tricks up my sleeve, you wait and see.” He watched his mother drink. “Oh, I almost forgot, something unbelievable happened. You’ll never guess who I met. Are you ready? Heliodora Locke. In Montreal of all places!”
    His mother gazed at him vacantly.
    “Heliodora Locke!” he shouted, unnecessarily, as if sheer volume would jog her memory. “You know, The Bride and Three Bridegrooms ! You remember, Mom …”
    Mrs. Burun had a look of fear on her face as her son encouraged her with broad facial expressions and charade-like gestures. “Remember? We loved that movie. It’s one of our favourites. Heliodora Locke, the girl with kaleidoscope eyes. Remember you used to tease me about being in love with … never mind.” Noel smiled, tried to hide his frustration. “That’s OK, Mom. Don’t worry about it. It’s not important. Couldn’t be less important, in fact …”
    His mother’s expression gradually changed. “She found three men on the seashore. Shipwrecked. They were all unconscious.”
    Noel’s features froze, his breathing stopped.
    “She nursed them back to health, and they all fell in love with her.”
    Noel stared at his mother, incredulously. And then launched himself into her arms, laughing, rocking back and forth on the bed. “Yes, Mom, that’s right. I knew you’d remember! This is good news, very good news.” Vorta’s drugs are kicking in, he said to himself. I knew this would be the right batch!
    His mother began to stroke his hair, as she used to. And then out of the blue she said, “Your father … had a passion for family trees. But what you didn’t know, what I never told you, was that he was easily taken in. Despite his … brilliance.”
    Noel tried to stop his heart from pounding, shocked at this new lucidity. “You mean … Byron’s really not my ancestor?”
    His mother merely smiled. “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, your father used to say.”
    Why did she remember that line? Noel wondered. Because of the amaranth? 11 His brain began to generate rows of coloured letters but with effort he shut the generator down. “I … I never heard him say that, Mom.”
    “Your father was unhappy with the acknowledged legislators.”
    Noel desperately wanted to hear more—she had never talked of his father’s unhappiness in this way—but his mother’s mind leapt abruptly to another subject. “I’ve got some stuff