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Driving Back From a Weekend at Home
A Memory for Some Peace By Caryn L. Abramowitz
My sister said that I stole her memory. I didn't mean to, I just thought it was my memory. I still do. I vividly recall walking from the parking lot to the movie theater next to my grandmother. I remember looking up at her and holding her hand. I remember the movie, The Black Stallion. I remember a cruise ship, a fire, a small boy and an island and my subsequent – but alas, only temporary – fear of cruise ships and my more enduring fear of fire. I even remember the lights going on and laughing with my grandmother, because we looked around to take in the rest of the audience only to discover that we were the only members of that showing – and I was sitting on her lap, so we took up exactly one seat. I also remember going home and telling my parents the funny story.
But my sister remembered pretty much the same thing. Only she started crying at our reminiscing dinner table, claiming that I was stealing her memory. My grandmother, who was also at the dinner table, can't remember where she put her napkin three seconds ago, so she was no help. My mother, who wasn't at the movies with us, and who frankly didn't remember either, decided to side, as usual, with my sister, the victim of the memory theft. My father, not so discreetly, attempted to change the subject to something less taboo than the clearly very scandalous Black Stallion. So I said mercy to the one with the tears. After all, it wasn't making me cry. She could have it.
A family of sea-horses conversing with a rabbit, a talking head, an ankh, a hand giving me the finger...
"You're transfixed," Andy, my husband said to me as he noticed the top of my head pushed into the headrest, gazing out of the sunroof, staring at the cloudy night sky. Irritated by the clich袭ness of it all – playing that old game of making shapes out of the clouds – I turned to look out the side window and thought instead about the humble row houses on the side of I-95. How would you address a party invitation to the people living in those houses, "24-B I-95?"
