Jennifer Egan on memory in her Emerald City stories.
I took her wrist and held it. I scraped the pin hard this time and made a thin, bleeding scratch. I kept going, not afraid anymore, and was surprised to find that the sharp point made a sound against her skin, as though I were scraping a piece of thick fabric. It was hard work, and soon my arms were shaking. Sweat gathered on my forehead. I did not look once at Amanda until I had finished an A like the one she’d carved on the pew. When finally I did look, I found her eyes squeezed shut, her lips drawn back as if she were smiling.
“It’s finished,” I told her, and let go.
When Amanda opened her eyes, tears ran from them, and she rubbed them away with her other hand. I found that I was crying, too, partly with relief at having finished, partly from some sorrow I didn’t understand. In silence we watched her arm, which looked small and feverish under its bright tattoo. I noticed the hot light overhead, smells of chalk and disinfectant, my own pounding heart. Finally Amanda smoothed her hair and pulled her sweater sleeve down. She smiled at me—a thin smile—and kissed me on the lips. For an instant I felt her weight against me, the solidness of her, then she was gone.
Alone in the bathroom, I noticed her blood on my fingers. It was reddish orange, sticky and thin like the residue of some sweet. A wave of despair made me shut my eyes and lean against the sink. Slowly I washed my hands and my goat pin, which I stuck in my pocket. Then I stood for a while and stared at the radiator, trying to remember each thing, the order of it all. But already it had faded.
The next morning they stagger through the dunes, giddy with exhaustion. It is still early, and the light is pale, frosted. It bleaches the waves. Jann is unshaven. Bernadette can’t stop looking at him. They’re late. The rest of the group mills restlessly near the shore, turning to check on their progress across the sand. The models’ faces look ghostly in this bloodless morning sun. They will probably guess, thinks Bernadette. She hopes they do.
“It’s strange,” she says. “Going back.”
“To them?” Jann gestures at the group. “Or back?”
Later today they will fly to Nairobi. Tomorrow morning, New York. Two weeks from now she leaves for Argentina.
“Everything fades, the minute you’re somewhere else,” Bernadette says. It’s a mistake to say these things. “It fades.”
“It’s a mistake to say these things” is metafiction at its most elegant—such a simple, perfect counterweight, both ironic and sincere.
jbbartram-illu
dededos
2087
blakekathryn
origamiaround
snowghoul
turnnoffyourmind
discoholicmusic