And thus began the slow spiral of conversation. “I’m your friend. I came to talk to you.”
“That’s right,” he said, waving curtly with his hand, as if wiping grime from some invisible window. “I remember, you just said that.” His words held a mixture of embarrassment and anger, the latter caused by the former. He knew he couldn’t remember anything, and he hated it; he was ashamed and embarrassed and angry at everything in the world—himself most of all, for who else could he blame? It was the most heartbreaking gesture in the world, the most painful tone of voice to ever hear, but it was one of the primary reasons I came here. Three weeks from now, as the sand in my mind leaked relentlessly away, I’d make that same gesture, say that same thing. I remember.
The biggest lie in the world.
Part Three
I worked in the morgue, driving the hearse during the night shift, because it was the best way to stay in constant, non-suspicious access to the recently dead. It was steady work, and if it kept me out of contact with the rest of the world, no matter. So much the better, really. I closed my blinds and slept by day, and by night I worked in the garage, maintaining our three hearses, keeping them clean and ready. The man on the day shift was nice enough. His name was Jacob, and I talked to him sometimes as I arrived for work and he was leaving. Sometimes he got sick and asked me to cover his shift, but I always made other arrangements, even paying for a temp out of my own pocket. I knew too many of the dead, and I knew their families, and I couldn’t bear to see them weeping over me when I was right there, alive and well, and why are you crying over me? Let’s leave this place and never come back. My own wife and children and parents and friends, as real in my memories as they ever were in the memories of the dead. I’d never gone to my own funeral, but I knew the temptation to talk to loved ones would be strong, so I stayed away.
That’s why it was such a shock, one week after Billy Chapman, when I saw Rosie at the grocery store.
My cart was full—cucumbers and olives and capers and feta, for I had brushed past a sheepskin coat in the aisle, and I remembered my days on Crete with such crystal, visceral clarity it brought me to tears, and I wanted a meal like we ate in the old days. I was walking to the checkout, wondering if it would taste right—if the American ingredients would hold the same flavor, or if my memory of some magical ur-salad would overpower any real salad I tried to recreate—when suddenly there she was, arriving at the line at the same time I did, as familiar by my side as she’d always been, and I said hello without even thinking about it. She nodded back, friendly but distant, with a sadness in her eyes that broke my heart. I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong before I remembered that her husband was dead, poor Billy in the ground not three days, and it wasn’t me who remembered her but him, and she didn’t know who I was. My hand was already reaching toward hers, and I pulled it back in terror.
Rosie, right here, real and physical and right here.
“Are you okay?” Her voice was lilting and sad and concerned—so like Rosie to feel concerned for others when she was already in so much pain herself. I’d heard that voice in lazy mornings, in joyful songs, in cries of passion, in heartsick wails that we could never have children. I loved that voice, but it wasn’t for me, and I felt like a voyeur even thinking about it, yet I couldn’t stop. I tried to speak but I couldn’t say a word, and she asked me again, “Are you okay?” I knew I had to speak or she’d just keep talking. I wanted to let her, but I knew it was wrong.
“I’m sorry,” I said, pulling my cart backward. “Please, you go first. I’ll find another checkout.”
“You’re very kind,” she said, and I tried to smile, but I had to turn away to hide the tears in my eyes.
My Rosie, who was never truly mine. I left the cart in the next aisle, and then I left the store, walking slowly so I wouldn’t make a scene. Her car was there in the parking lot, the same color I’d seen a hundred times, the same bumper sticker I’d begged her not to get, the same box of tissues that had been in the rear window for years. I turned and walked the opposite direction, leaving my car, stumbling through the ice, part of me crying out to go back to her and the other part insisting that no, I could never see her again, she wasn’t really my wife, there was nothing I could do. What could I possibly say? “Hi, you don’t know me, but I’ve known you for ten years, and I was married to you for eight, and I’m your husband, I’m Billy, I’m so sorry I went away.” She’d call the police. She’d mace me and run and scream that I was a maniac, that I was a stalker, that I was a psychopath. I loved her too much to do that.
I wandered the streets for two frozen hours, shivering in my coat, watching the streetlights through the snow. When I went back for my car, she was gone.
Part Four