family, I don’t trust anyone in front of or behind a camera, but with a nod to its futility, I’ll try to keep my bias out of it.
The Original Impulse
He appeared in her sleep like a regular. Sometimes she saw the actual him on the street, then he appeared two, three nights in a row; on the street, because he remembered her vaguely or well enough, it was awkward.
Years ago they’d done a fast dance. Back then, when she studied photography, she believed artists were constitutionally honest; but his thrill had its own finish line. She missed classes, stayed out too late, ate too much, and dormant neuroses fired. She expected a man to love her the way her father did, explosively, devotedly. Months later, near where they’d first met, she ignored him; he rushed after her and apologized. Maybe he knew how bad it felt, but she never said anything. He phoned sometimes, they drove around, drank coffee, talked, not about lies, and two years passed like that, haplessly, when something obscene must have gone down, because he didn’t call again. What words were there for nothing. Nothing.
Her time was full, adequate, hollow, fine, and she felt content enough with love and work, but no one lives in the present except amnesiacs. Her history was a bracelet of holes around her wrist, not a charm bracelet like her mother had worn; that was gone. Someone had stolen it as her mother slipped away. It might be on that woman’s wrist now, the gold rectangular calendar hanging from it, a ruby studding her mother’s birthdate, a reminder she wouldn’t want. It would weigh even more with blanks filled in by anonymous dead people.
Insignificant coincidences—the actual him in a hotel lobby, a bookstore doorway, crossing a street—made loose days feel planned. She moved forward, a smart phone to her ear or its small screen to her face, and anything might happen. She read a story he’d written about an accidental meeting with a woman from his protagonist’s past. First he didn’t recognize her, she’d changed so much from how he remembered her; then he felt something again, maybe for the woman, mostly for himself.
When he spotted her, she wondered if he felt sick alarm too. One Saturday, she didn’t notice he was walking by, watching her, and when she looked up, aware of something, she half-smiled involuntarily. That could have meant anything, there was no true recognition from either of them. Without it, she couldn’t perform retrospective miracles, transform traitors into saviors. When ex-friends’ faces arose, stirred by the perfume of past time, they looked as they did back then. One of them, she heard, did look the same, because she’d already been lifted. But some things can’t be lifted.
Abysses and miseries called down their own last judgments upon themselves. Katherine could recite many of her bad acts; it would be easy to locate her putative wounded and apologize like someone in AA, but what substance had she abused. Love, probably. Most likely they’d claim they had moved on and forgotten her. Besides, they might say, you never really meant that much to me. Or, let’s be friends on Facebook. When the 20th-year reunion committee of her high school found her, she didn’t respond. Formal invitations, phone messages. They insisted her absence would destroy the entire reason for the event. The date approached. She wondered if showing up might help adjudicate the past, and curiosity arched its back. She caught a ride with a popular girl who’d gone steady with a future movie star who’d had a pathetic end. The woman wore the same makeup she’d worn then, her eyes lined slyly with black. Startling, what gets kept.
The reunion was held in the town’s best country club, and in front of the table with name badges, she sank, just the way she had growing up. Someone called to her, “Kat, Kat,” and another, “Kat,” while another fondly blasted “Kat” into her ear, someone whose name she didn’t recognize even
The Original Impulse
He appeared in her sleep like a regular. Sometimes she saw the actual him on the street, then he appeared two, three nights in a row; on the street, because he remembered her vaguely or well enough, it was awkward.
Years ago they’d done a fast dance. Back then, when she studied photography, she believed artists were constitutionally honest; but his thrill had its own finish line. She missed classes, stayed out too late, ate too much, and dormant neuroses fired. She expected a man to love her the way her father did, explosively, devotedly. Months later, near where they’d first met, she ignored him; he rushed after her and apologized. Maybe he knew how bad it felt, but she never said anything. He phoned sometimes, they drove around, drank coffee, talked, not about lies, and two years passed like that, haplessly, when something obscene must have gone down, because he didn’t call again. What words were there for nothing. Nothing.
Her time was full, adequate, hollow, fine, and she felt content enough with love and work, but no one lives in the present except amnesiacs. Her history was a bracelet of holes around her wrist, not a charm bracelet like her mother had worn; that was gone. Someone had stolen it as her mother slipped away. It might be on that woman’s wrist now, the gold rectangular calendar hanging from it, a ruby studding her mother’s birthdate, a reminder she wouldn’t want. It would weigh even more with blanks filled in by anonymous dead people.
Insignificant coincidences—the actual him in a hotel lobby, a bookstore doorway, crossing a street—made loose days feel planned. She moved forward, a smart phone to her ear or its small screen to her face, and anything might happen. She read a story he’d written about an accidental meeting with a woman from his protagonist’s past. First he didn’t recognize her, she’d changed so much from how he remembered her; then he felt something again, maybe for the woman, mostly for himself.
When he spotted her, she wondered if he felt sick alarm too. One Saturday, she didn’t notice he was walking by, watching her, and when she looked up, aware of something, she half-smiled involuntarily. That could have meant anything, there was no true recognition from either of them. Without it, she couldn’t perform retrospective miracles, transform traitors into saviors. When ex-friends’ faces arose, stirred by the perfume of past time, they looked as they did back then. One of them, she heard, did look the same, because she’d already been lifted. But some things can’t be lifted.
Abysses and miseries called down their own last judgments upon themselves. Katherine could recite many of her bad acts; it would be easy to locate her putative wounded and apologize like someone in AA, but what substance had she abused. Love, probably. Most likely they’d claim they had moved on and forgotten her. Besides, they might say, you never really meant that much to me. Or, let’s be friends on Facebook. When the 20th-year reunion committee of her high school found her, she didn’t respond. Formal invitations, phone messages. They insisted her absence would destroy the entire reason for the event. The date approached. She wondered if showing up might help adjudicate the past, and curiosity arched its back. She caught a ride with a popular girl who’d gone steady with a future movie star who’d had a pathetic end. The woman wore the same makeup she’d worn then, her eyes lined slyly with black. Startling, what gets kept.
The reunion was held in the town’s best country club, and in front of the table with name badges, she sank, just the way she had growing up. Someone called to her, “Kat, Kat,” and another, “Kat,” while another fondly blasted “Kat” into her ear, someone whose name she didn’t recognize even
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