To Memory

You are the most unreliable of narrators, but the most convincing. You seem as real as the keys on this keyboard, as real as the dog sleeping beside me, as real as my mortgage. Real as rain.

Part of you is true, the part I rely on to not have to start my life over every single day. I know where we keep the coffee cups and that I drink it black. I remember how to get to the office. I remember going to Madison last summer and driving around the city like I did before we left. We went to Rainer’s grave site and I remember holding him when he died. I remember him.

But mostly, you lie. You lie about little things: the color of my favorite dress when I was in 4th grade, the pictures on the wall in the doctor’s waiting room. You lie about who made those little mint cookies I liked when we would go camping with the Wolfes. You lie about the color of the backgammon board my brother had. You lie about the word I got wrong in the 7th grade spelling bee. I swear it was “orientation.”

We call on you to witness. We ask you to repeat what happened that day. Who got angry first and who started yelling? What did she do when he walked away and how long before he came back? You say she was upset before they started talking, that he jumps to conclusions. She is stubborn but he is wrong. You can’t resist filling in some of the blanks: she left her potatoes on the plate. The picnic table was under the tree, not on the deck. The nephew was sneaking olives and cheese off the deli tray. In the background, a baseball game on the television.

But maybe it was winter. Maybe it was the year after our grandmother died. No one argued, but they wanted to. He is really me and she is really someone I have only just met. I think I am the same person every day. I tell the same story. I remember it all so well.