Memory. The word has a lot of definitions. It can be a particular act of recall or recollection. Or an image or impression of one that is remembered. It may not be accurate. Time and circumstances may rewrite what happened into what we think happened. This is the month for our 700-word short stories. D.Z. looks at what happens when a sunset triggers a memory from the past. Janet tells a tale about three people who have different memories of something that happened years ago.
Have you ever been standing idly, watching the sun sink into the ocean, only to have the calm disturbed by a memory? A flash of something remembered, all but forgotten. I have. Last night.
Near the equator, the sun dips into the ocean, and that’s that. Day to night. Night to day. No fading, not really. Just gone. That’s what I remembered. Well, that and the two men, shadows struggling, grunting, roaring words and blows at each other.
Maybe if I’d been with someone, I might have gone toward the fight, but I was alone, female, young, and in a pair of short shorts I should not have been allowed to wear in public. It was the tropics. That was my excuse. Truthfully, there was this young man staying at the same hotel as my family with his parents. They were Canadians who came to Barbados every year, dodging the cold. He was cute in that clean-cut, clean-living, clean-thinking sort of way. He even had an adorable way of saying process, house and finishing his sentences with random ehs.
He noted me with shy smiles. Waved behind his parents’ back. That night, I wore the shorts for him. He followed me to the beach where the incoming waves tickled the shore. I walked barefooted toward a line of bars lacing a cul-de-sac, the ocean playing with my toes.
The fight broke out at my back.
A steel drum band pounded out a calypso version of The Girl from Ipanema at the bar nearest to the beach. I ran there in my bare feet and short shorts. Dark faces turned my way as I entered. The wonderful lilt of the Barbadian accent tumbled from the lips of the man collecting the cover charge. I didn’t have any money in my shorts. Skintight, no pockets. The halter top I wore had its limitations as well. I held my hands palm up.
He smiled. I thought it a bit sly. But he was open and engaging, I tumbled out that I’d come for help, two men, fighting ferociously on the beach. He shook his head, said something like: it happen time to time.
Hearing me, a lithe young man came to the entrance and peered over the older man’s left shoulder. Said he was John. I repeated my concern. John ticked his head and offered to accompany me to my hotel. Best done, he said, his eyes traveling up and down my legs. It happened and not infrequently. I was tall, a bit thin, but, from the looks, the length of my legs was my best asset.
I nodded a yes, thinking what my parents would say if they found out I was alone on the beach, in my short shorts and halter top at sunset. My father had already shot narrowed eyes at the Canadian boy for smiling at me.
John, his eyes no longer on my legs, squeezed past the older man. Ahead, flashing lights lit the palm trees. Silhouettes moved in and out of the trees. An ambulance sat ready to receive. But no one rushed.
Best tell them what you saw, John said, placing a hand on the small of my back to urge me toward the dancing lights. We tromped across Bermuda grass, clawing its way to the sea. My bare toes caught the long runners. Each time I stumbled, John caught me.
I never knew who died that night. I was no sort of witness. All I offered was the shadows and sounds of two men struggling. John walked me to my hotel. My dad was furious. He snarled at John. I made him apologize.
I never saw the Canadian boy again, his family left for home early the next morning. Our always chipper maid, theirs as well, was tense and quiet as she cleaned our room. She covered the towels in her trolley. I swear there was a smear of blood on her apron.
I wondered about that boy. Then forgot. There was college and marriage, and children and life. Then, unbidden, the flash of light of the sun set stirred up the past.
What if I hadn’t worn those shorts and the sun hadn’t set?
For as long as I could remember, Lila and Mimi didn’t get along. They were sisters, my cousins, a few years older than me, and from what I could see, polite to each other in social settings. But everyone in the family said it was a bad idea to get the two women alone in the same room.
They were here today, at the annual family reunion. The gathering was hosted by Aunt Elsie at the old farmhouse, with its huge backyard and big patio. Relatives of all ages were scattered throughout the house, some in the big kitchen where Elsie had just put her famous green chili casserole into the oven. Lila was there, removing a bakery cake from its pink box as she traded gossip with another cousin. Earlier, I’d spotted Mimi in the backyard, standing alone on the covered patio, sipping wine as she watched the little kids splashing in the wading pool.
I carried a bowl of tortilla chips and a container of salsa out to the patio, where one table was laden with an assortment of salads and casseroles, baked beans and relish trays loaded with veggies, cheese and dips. Another table was devoted to pies, cakes and cookies, while a third held beverages. We wouldn’t go hungry or thirsty, but then, we never did.
Lila came out to the patio and set her store-bought cake on the dessert table. She took a beer from the nearby cooler and sat on the wicker settee, talking with another aunt. I could almost feel the daggers shooting from Mimi’s eyes.
My cousin Doreen stood next to her husband Dave, who presided over the big gas grill where the mouthwatering aroma of chicken and ribs filled the air. She walked over to join me.
I opened the lid on the salsa and dipped a tortilla chip, then looked at Doreen. “Explain it to me.”
“Explain what?” She topped off her wine glass.
“Lila and Mimi.”
“Oh, that.”
“What happened between those two? I mean, they’re sisters. Surely at some point in their lives they got along.”
Doreen sipped wine. “You probably don’t remember. They were in college. You were in middle school, and you lived in a different town.”
“That’s ten, twelve years ago? And they’ve been carrying grudges ever since?” I glanced at the two women again. Lila always seemed like an easygoing extrovert, but Mimi was abrupt and intimidating even on a good day.
“Yeah. But they both remember it differently.”
Doreen seemed reluctant to go into detail. I kept looking at her until she sighed. “They fell out over a guy. Mimi went out with him, then Lila did. Mimi went off like a firecracker. They had a screaming fight and they’ve been pissed off at each other ever since.”
There had to be more to it than that. “You said they remember it differently. How so?”
Doreen took another swig of wine. “Lila’s memory is that Mimi told her she wasn’t interested in this guy. Lila figured the field was clear, so she made her move. Mimi’s memory is that she and the guy were in love and talking about marriage.”
Mimi had never married. Was this the reason? Lila had married after college and divorced a few years ago. Was her ex the guy? Or was it someone else? I wondered about the man who’d caused a rift between the two sisters. “How did he remember it?”
Doreen smiled. “He remembers it differently, too.” She looked across the patio at her husband, who saluted her with his beer bottle.
My jaw dropped. “Dave? Your husband?”
“Yeah. Hey, I met him two years after this happened, so I had nothing to do with the blow-up between Lila and Mimi. The way I remember it, he dated my cousins and then he moved on.”
That explained a lot, I thought as I reached for another chip. The way Mimi held everyone at arm’s length and the way Lila wasn’t particularly warm to Doreen and her husband. I considered three different takes on the same situation and wondered how much of any of these recollections reflected what had really happened.
Funny how selective memory can be.