Turmeric

“Definitely the theater fight,” Louise said.

“Absolutely,” Ian agreed, “That one’s a no doubter.”

“What was up with you that night?”

“I was hungry. That’s really just it. In a bad mood to begin with because it was a shitty day at work, and then I hadn’t eaten since lunch, and all of a sudden you were sweating me for being a little late, and I just lost it,” Ian explained, “I’m sorry.”

“Why couldn’t you just say that” Louise said, “I thought you were really pissed at me for something and I didn’t have a clue what I’d done. And it was so humiliating."

“I know. And then I was getting mad at you because you were embarrassed and I thought you were overreacting but then it was like my fault for the fight, but not for being late, and it just got all mixed up together, and I was way too hungry to be able to deal with all of that,” Ian said.

“So you decided to give me death stares through the entire movie?”

“Not exactly ‘decided’,” Ian said, “I didn’t have enough control for that, but yeah, pretty much.”

“Including concessions we paid $50 just to be our worst selves in front of Nick and Emily and like fifty other people we won't remember," Louise summarized, “And the movie sucked, too.”

“I know,” Ian said, “That’s why it goes in the Forget pile.”

***

The first breakthrough was Memory Dampening- it let people in grief dull the pain of their worst memories. It wasn’t that they missed their loved ones any less; it’s just that their loss didn’t hurt quite so much. Like the memory had aged decades in a day.

Next was Memory Preservation. Gone were the days when parents had to record every moment of their young children- annual trips to the Memory Clinic could keep those memories fresh and vibrant for the rest of your life.

The thorniest problem with Memory Preservation was the issue of consent. What happens if the memory you so desperately want to keep is one that someone else wants to have fade through the passage of time? The accepted solution was that whenever a memory was primarily interpersonal, its preservation required the permission of all the parties involved.

Those same fears didn’t extend to Memory Deletion, but it was still tradition for couples to come together annually and rewrite the shared text of their lives.

And that’s how Louise and Ian found themselves sitting around their kitchen table on their anniversary deciding which parts of their lives they would keep forever and which ones would never have happened at all.

***

Louise and Ian walked into the Memory Clinic, took a seat, and fiddled on their phones. It wasn’t long until they were called up as a couple. They both signed the list of memories they were agreeing to make permanent, as well as those they were going to lose for good, and headed to their respective treatment rooms.

“See you on the other side,” Ian said. “In case you wake up unsure, just know that right now in this moment, I’m very aware of both how much I love you and how sorry I am.”

“Ditto,” Louise said with a blushing smile as she opened the door and went inside.

Twenty minutes later they reunited in the lobby and drove home in tentative small talk. They were both sorting out their own feelings as they adjusted to a new memory landscape. As challenging as that was, figuring out yourself was the easy part; determining what your newly adjusted spouse was feeling was much more difficult.

After a few weeks everything was back to normal, or at least a new normal. A normal that felt comfortable enough that they could let their guards down and start hurting each other again.

It started out small like it always did.

Louise would try to talk to Ian about a memory of her recently passed brother that she was thinking of Dampening, but he’d have his mind on work.

“Thanks for being present,” she’d say. He wouldn’t hear her.

Ian would send her a late morning string of texts about the presentation he’d just killed, and he’d sit on R until the next day when she’d ask him if he’d had a chance to talk to his parents about Christmas.

“Thanks for responding,” he'd say. She wouldn't know what he meant.

It all came to a head when Ian prepared a just because dinner for her. They'd been drifting and he thought she’d appreciate what would appear to be spontaneous but had actually been anything but.

He took a half day off work and started running around the city. Lamb from the butcher had been slow roasting for the last three hours, overpriced farmers market vegetables were ready to broil when he heard the garage door open, and he’d been simmering a tagine sauce that had required him to spend fifteen minutes walking up and down the spice aisle until he finally found Turmeric, wtf that was.

“Oh, that’s so sweet of you!” Louise said when she came into the kitchen and took it all in, “But I just ate dinner on the way home! I'm sorry!”

“But we always check in on dinner!” Ian said, heating up already.

“I know, that’s why I assumed that because we hadn’t we were just going to fend for ourselves.”

“I guess, but you could have called to confirm that,” Ian said.

“Or you could have called to tell me not to eat!” Louise shot back.

“But that would have ruined the surprise!”

In just a handful of sentences they’d gone from loving and appreciative to bitter and frustrated. They’d passed many an off-ramp already when Louise decided to say fuck it.

“Ian, I don’t need you to surprise me with Lamb Tagine and heirloom carrots. I need you to surprise me by for once actually being there when I need you.”

It didn’t get any better from there, and the night ended with Ian throwing back beers on Nick’s deck with designs on spending the night on his couch.

“It was just so out of nowhere,” Ian said. “One moment we were good, and the next we were at each other’s throats. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Whatever, man. Couch is yours,” Nick said.

“Hold up- what did I ever do to you?”

Nick sighed.

“Come on,” Ian said, “I know I’m not blameless here, but I thought I could come to you with things like this. If that’s not the case then cool, but-”

“No, that’s not it,” Nick said, “It’s that we’ve had a conversation like this every year for the last five. It’s not that I don’t care; I’m just tired of seeing you two get stuck in the same miserable circle every year. I love you both, and it’s not a lot of fun to watch.”

Ian just sat there.

“I can’t remember them all, “ Nick continued, “but a greatest hits would definitely include whatever that BS was about her reunion and who she might see, that time she embarrassed you by getting a little tipsy at your office party, when you forgot her birthday and then tried to cover it up like you somehow did it on purpose, and it was less than a year ago that you exploded at her in front of us and a half filled theater before a shitty movie on a Tuesday night.”

“I’m sorry,” Ian said.

“I know,” Nick said, “You always say that, too.”

***

When Ian and Louise pulled into the Memory Clinic the following year, his mind was made up. While it was plenty illegal to permanently remember something without the other person’s permission, there was nothing to stop you from not forgetting something that you promised you would.

He’d faithfully gone through their annual sorting process the night before. They agreed to remember an amazing vacation that had gone far from as planned but totally perfect at the same time. Later in the year, Emily had her first child, a daughter named Meghan, and to the surprise of everyone she’d really taken to Ian and vice versa. Their bewilderingly cute time together made the cut, too.

Lamb Tagine did not.

As they headed into their respective rooms, Ian called down the hall after her, “Louise?”

“Yeah?”

“I really promise to do better this time.”

Louise smiled genuinely and said, “Me too.” It was their most connected moment in months.

Ian went into his treatment room. He waited thirty seconds and then headed right back down the hall, out the door, and into their car. Twenty minutes later, Louise came out, opened the door and sat next to him,

“Why didn’t you wait for me?” she said.

“I just got out a couple minutes ago and I thought I’d get the car warmed up,” he said.

“Oh,” she said skeptically, “Ok.”

“It’s still basically morning,” Ian said, “Do you want to go get an anniversary cup of coffee or something?”

Louise turned her head sharply, locking honest eyes with him for an extra searching beat. And then, for the second time in the last hour, she gifted him the most loving and affirming smile, this one just a little more knowing.

She reached out and took his hand off the wheel, placing it in hers, “Yes,” she said, “I think I’d like that very much.”