© Marianne Paul

Your hands are deft and the peel is thin. You slice into the apple, feed me the pieces, even the bruise, your fingers to my mouth. I lick your skin and taste the salt.  It seems the men in my life are moved to feed me.

I laugh, and you ask what is funny.

I tell you about Thomas.

Start with the leaving.

It is as good a place as any to tend memory…

Thomas turns, shifts position.

He mutters words, protesting a bad dream. I hold my breath, think about slipping into bed to appease him, to move him back into sleep, but don’t. It would only arouse him. The slightest touch does that to Thomas.

I open drawers quietly, remove socks and underwear, roll the socks into balls, pull on the underwear, two pairs, one over the other - what you carry on your body, less to carry on your back. Search the floor for tossed clothing, some mine, some not, it doesn’t matter. Take a flannel shirt in my hands, push it into my face. Smell the scent, sweat and after-shave and cigarette smoke, linger in it. The scent is as close as I will get to a home.

I feel a moment of sadness at my leaving, a nostalgia for Thomas. It passes, and I keep his flannel shirt as a memento, roll it up, pack it.

This is a trick I’ve learned, rolling clothes in a tight log, stacking them like a woodpile into the bag. Efficient packing is an art. So is efficient leaving. Dawn is best. Get out before the rest of the world knows what you’re doing. No tears, no angry words, no begging that you stay.

Then I shut the door behind me, tiptoe down the creaking stairs past the other rooms, different stories snoring behind each door, step out on the street. The sky is the color of elephant skin.

I walk to the highway at the edge of town. You know the highway that I mean, it is always there, no matter the dot on the map. The road that takes you right into town, as if it can’t wait for you to arrive, and then takes you right out of the town, as if it can’t wait for you to leave.

A BMW. I think I’ve hit pay dirt, stick out a thumb. The car whizzes by, spitting stones at me. I give the driver the finger.

A trucker blasts his horn at the gesture. He doesn’t stop either, sends more stones flying. So I hitch up my skirt, stick out a leg, dare the bastards to follow the line wherever their imaginations lead. Frilly lace panties, black garter belt, butt-splitting thongs, or no underwear at all. None will imagine the truth. That I wear men’s jockey shorts, faded blue, needing a wash, and “borrowed” from Thomas. Imagination is such a liar, but no one really cares, particularly not the trucker who screeches to a halt at the shoulder of the road, kicking up dust like a cowboy.

I haul myself into the rig. The cowboy doesn’t say much, just keeps grinning as if he’s roped the calf. The gray sky gives way to rose-pink, and I imagine it is the color of the inside of the elephant’s ear. If you lift up the flap, take a peek, you’d see rose-pink.

We weave in and out of the traffic thickening with day. From the cab, even the limousines look inconsequential. The cowboy cuts a path finger-width-close to a bitch in a Fiat convertible, her hair blowing in the wind. She looks up at us. Fear flashes across her model face, and I hoot as we leave her behind.

At high noon we pull off the highway into a service station. It snakes with people. I itch for coffee, stand at the tail end of one such snake. The cowboy has gone to piss. I feel like a viper, spit words at the woman in line ahead of me. She jumps at my hissing. I feel impatience in my body, shift foot to foot to foot. Waiting in line is like staying in one town too long.

Then it happens - like being stoned, but I’m clean.

Something flutters from my hand. 

Softly, as if caught in a current, like a bird catches air beneath its wings. Like the wind lifts the fluff of a dandelion seed. Time moves differently, and I’m inside the difference. The moment is slow. Clear. Like cold air.

I act, without thinking. Reach for the object.

But object is a flawed word - it implies weight.

This thing has no weight. It flutters like a feather from a hummingbird’s breast.

Then the moment shifts.

Clarity is gone, and the air is hot. Legs close around me, and the snake uncoils. Time speeds up.

I grasp the object in my fingers just before it touches the floor, look at it. A dime.

A fluttering dime. How can that be?

~ An excerpt from the novel, Tending Memory