Memories

by Fabiana Martínez

If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder.

Plato, Phaedrus, 274c-275 b, Reginald Hackforth, transl., 1952.

“You will have to sign page four and make three copies. One for us, one for you and… I’m confident they will require one at the funeral home, Sir,” the big blonde hospital administrator with one missing fake nail pronounced matter-of-factly.

“Could you pass me a pen, please?” Ted mumbled trying not to look too intensely at the inadequate finger. He grabbed the offered pen but not the blank Post-it and proceeded to write on the palm of his left hand: “Page 4–Sign-Three copies” He was used to the quizzical look the administrator gave him since he had renounced writing important notes on tiny pieces of paper many decades ago on a sunny afternoon like this one.

Ted read the words on his skin one more time when he started his truck and left the hospital parking lot carrying on the passenger seat the shabby bag his wife had carried the day of her stroke and the pristine sense of emptiness that people tend to call widowerhood.

He drove home breathing slowly, squinting his eyes at the blaring reflection of the sun in the windshield. He desperately wanted to invoke sweet memories of the forty-two-year marriage that had abruptly ended some hours ago and of which he had been the surviving half. Before making all the pertinent calls to his sons and relatives, Ted needed to sense the taste of a new state dictated by destiny through a benign tumor that Angela had carried since childhood like a forgotten seed in the depth of her skull. The secretive bulb of cells had decided to stretch its domains one day after their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, on a Sunday morning when Angela’s left eye saw two angels in the church atrium which was one in reality.

Strangely, instead of the sad images of Angela being carried away in an ambulance two days ago or of their clumsy first dance at a wedding that had happened too fast and too long ago, Ted could only remember the sad eyes of a woman he met a week before he had to marry Angela.

The sun’s reflection on the crowded jewelry store window blinded young Ted’s eyes like today through his windshield. Ted was terrified by a future with a girl he barely liked who had announced in a mess of tears and snot that they were going to have a baby. After the Greek-style diatribes in Ted and Angela’s respective religious homes, Uncle Richard drove Ted fifty miles to the city with a very drastic plan: to help his nineteen-year-old nephew buy a cheap engagement ring, a black suit on sale that he should be able to wear for a couple of future town funerals, and a pair of leather shoes that the rest of the family refused to spend money on alleging the superiority of boots in fieldwork. The acquisition of the garments was calculated and boring. The purchase of the ring, on the other hand, left Ted with a bittersweet memory and the quirk the hospital administrator could not understand some minutes ago.

The name on the store clerk’s tag read Suzanna. She had sad eyes, a musical voice, and translucent nails that tapped delicately at the fake diamonds as if they had been cut from moon pebbles smuggled back to Earth by Neil Armstrong. She seemed a little older than Ted and a lot more interesting than Angela. Uncle Richard commanded the enterprise. Ted looked at the many silver settings through the tears that he tried to dab with trembling fingers before gravity took charge. He wanted to swallow the tears, to dissolve in their salty solution the knot of frustration obstructing his throat. Suzanna offered a good price to Uncle Richard and iced water to Ted. One of her polished nails brushed against Ted’s left hand when he returned the empty glass to her.

Uncle Richard drove his nephew back to town with a whimsical smile and some wise words: “You know, Ted, this happens. You will be fine. She will be fine. The baby will be just fine. Your old man will forget. Your mom already did. One day you will remember this ride and laugh.”

Despite his uncle’s wisdom, Ted forgot those words the moment he brought out the plastic box with the ring from the jewelry tiny blue bag. Angela extended her left hand to her fiancé and a thrilled smile of anticipation before her imminent change of status. She immediately frowned at the piece of paper that fell from the bag. “Oh my, so sorry,” Ted quickly grabbed it and shoved it into his pocket, blushing at the idea that Suzanna had included the ring’s receipt in the bag.

While Angela ran to show her shiny adorned left hand to her sisters, Ted unfolded the pink piece of paper and read on the back of a blank order note: “Don’t marry her if you don’t want. I’m running away from this shitty city. Come with me to NY: ZV-5-3158.” Ted’s hand was faster than the beat of his heart. The note was sleeping back in the pocket of his pants when Angela returned and kissed him like never before, hungrily pressing him against her body—populated now, as she liked to repeat, by the fruit of their love.

Three crucial things happened in the following weeks: the cherished note was allegedly lost when Ted’s mother did the laundry the morning after the engagement, Angela and Ted got married in the same church where the bride would see a multiplied angel many decades later, and the groom promised to never again keep crucial forgettable information in random pieces of paper too prone to disappear. A fourth event distracted Ted during their honeymoon weekend, Angela said she had lost her pregnancy the morning of the wedding. A cloud of doubt followed Ted for some months until their first real baby came and time paved their lives with oblivion and chores.

Ted parked the truck outside the home that would be full of mourning and the aroma of caring neighbors’ apple pies for the next weeks. He went through the contents of Angela’s bag in search of the front key. Ted’s written-on hand stumbled upon a red felt pouch that seemed like an old miniature album. Some yellowish pictures greeted him from behind cracked plastic frames: forgotten images of constructed happiness, a wedding kiss, their two sons, the many dogs that had guarded their house with severe dedication, and, tucked in the very last fold, a faded pink piece of paper with a very old phone number and a message that could have changed the course of a man’s all possible recollections.

Fabiana Martínez was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She graduated from UCA University in Buenos Aires with a Linguistics and World Literature degree. She is a linguist, a language teacher, and a writer. She speaks five languages: Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, and Italian. She has lived and worked in Dallas, Texas, for more than twenty years. She is the author of the short story collection 12 Random Words, her first work of fiction, the short story Stupidity, published as an independent book by Pierre Turcotte Editor, the collection of short stories Conquered by Fog, also published by Pierre Turcotte, and the grammar book series Spanish 360 with Fabiana. 12 Random Words, in its three bilingual versions, has won ten awards, and two of its stories were selected to be read in February 2017 as part of the Dallas Museum of Art’s distinguished literary series Arts & Letters Live. The book was also among the six finalists of the Eyelands Book Awards 2022 and won first prize. Six months after publication, Conquered by Fog became a finalist in the 2023 Global Book Awards, the 2023 Eyelands Book Awards, the Independent Author Network Award, and the Royal Dragon Fly Book Awards. Instagram: @Fabielisam and @12randomwords, X: @FabielisaAuthor https://www.12randomwords.com/