Memory

(Written as my entry for NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction Contest. Didn’t win, but I’m proud of it nonetheless!)

Memory

“Do you remember?”

June looked up at him, a blank smile on her face. He took her hand.

“She was the most beautiful woman in the world, when we met,” Robert said to their granddaughter, sitting in a nearby chair, looking bored. “She still is.”

He leaned over, using his cane for balance, and kissed June on a soft, wrinkled cheek. “I remember, even if she doesn’t. She stood there in high heels, with her hair curled, and I was just this awkward, freckled, red-haired boy.”

June just smiled, blinking without recognition at the girl. “It’s time to go to ….” she started, but never finished. Robert nodded at her.

“Of course it is, dear,” he said to June.

“I asked her to dance,” he said to his granddaughter.

“I think I’ll go get a coke,” the young woman said.

Robert nodded and reached in his pocket, pulling out some change, offering it to her.

“No, no, Pops, I got it,” she said, walking out the door in a hurry, as if trying to make an escape.

Robert frowned and shook his head. “Always too busy for stories, these kids.”

“It’s time to pick the squash,” June said.

“No, not yet, it’s only just Christmas,” Robert smiled at her. “Do you remember when I asked you to dance? You were nearly as tall as me, in those heels, such legs you had!  I didn’t believe it when you said yes. Do you remember, dear?”

June raised the hand she was holding over her head, banging his knuckles into the headboard. Robert winced.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked, but her eyes turned away, and she stammered unintelligibly.

“You danced with me, and I promised myself that day that I’d never let you leave my side,” Robert continued his story to June, though her eyes drifted closed. “I never did let you leave my side, not that night, not any night after. We went on all the rides. Do you remember?”

She started fiddling with the top of her blanket, folding and unfolding it repeatedly, mind in another world and time.

“And we went back. You were afraid of heights, but I was determined to get you on that ferris wheel…we were going to get way up high. I had borrowed money from my dad for a ring. I never did pay that money back.”

He took both her hands from the blankets and held them. “Do you remember what I said when we were up high?”

June looked up at him.

“Do you remember, darling?” He repeated.

June smiled a quiet smile, and squeezed his hands.

“Of course I remember,” June said, her eyes clear.  “I remember.”

Memory by Jennifer L. Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.intellectualblathering.com.
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