Playing the Game

It was quiet and dark in the room. There was a lot of space that refused definition. That was unnecessary, in any event. There were only two of them.

She looked down at him, in the midst of heavy, peaceful quietude. (An odd word, but appropriate.) Nothing else came forth, although she waited, patiently.) Then, because it was necessary, she said:

Don’t you remember the painting workshop in France?

He didn’t answer. She hadn’t expected there to be a reply, but she had to wait long enough to be sure of the silence. She wasn’t sure if the lack of words or facial expression meant he was angry. It wasn’t always easy to tell. She decided not to insist. The years had taught her that was not a good idea. She had been slow to learn, but she knew now how to act.

Don’t you remember when you got it into your head to make an authentic pizza? We never figured out where the idea had come from. You went out and got a book after much serious research, although cooking and much less pizzas, had ever been your thing. The book was a very good one, and eventually you chose a recipe, and made one. The result was amazing. It could have been so many things: the proportions of the ingredients, the process of preparation, the quality of those ingredients, your focus… or something else. The fact was, I had never eaten such a perfect pizza before that one you made and have never had one equal to it since then.

It was your first any only pizza. And I wish I knew what has happened to the recipe. The book has disappeared.

He didn’t answer. She wondered if he were asleep. His eyes looked closed, although she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t see his face very well in the penumbra. She thought she’d try again.

Don’t you remember the photography class we took? I was better at plants and you liked vintage architecture, small town. We both really enjoyed the class and were surprised at the images we captured. We looked at things around us so differently, yet your eyes and mine found ways to coincide. There was a local photography show and we both won awards for our work. You with your nostalgic shots of general stores and other tiny local businesses. Me with my pop-up weeds and random gardens. It was nice to be different yet not competing.

There was no answer. Maybe he was ill. It would have been better if he had tried to say something, at least. He was focused on something, though.

Don’t you remember the stray cat we found? He was a gorgeous Maine coonwith a tricolored coat and we gave him the undignified name of Pebbles. He lived to be twenty. He had the best nature and wished we had given him a better name, but that one just slipped out and stuck. Now I think he might have been better off as Minstrel, Desmond, or Troubador. He put up with a lot because he knew how much we loved him, probably.

He didn’t answer. Perhaps he was bored or distracted. His silence and his lack of movement still bothered her. She certainly had no desire to bore him.

Don’t you remember the garden we planted, one with flowers and another with vegetables? That includes a big selection of herbs we used in cooking, but fresh and dried. There were some rousing successes and some horrible failures in the things we made, but I for one have no regrets regarding our efforts. It we didn’t manage to establish a first-rate Italian restaurant, it was nobody’s fault, not even our own.

He still didn’t answer. She thought she knew why now.

Don’t you think sometimes about how we went to walk on a beach once and it poured? We got so drenched! For some reason we never thought it could pour in the evening when somebody was walking along a beach, but it did. For some reason, that was all right. Nobody was around to see us giggling like mad and stuffing our toes in the soggy sand.

Don’t you remember…

She stopped. She knew it was useless because he was clearly not going to answer. Those were not his memories, apparently.

Then she added:

It doesn’t matter anyway if you don’t recall any of these things.  

And she continued, mostly for her own benefit:

I made them all up for you. Your memory of almost everything is fading so fast.. I just wanted to offer you some new memories, some I thought you’d like if your mind were still capable of holding them, even for a minute. It seems like I was not being realistic. I may need the past, but you no longer do.

He still did not respond, but she was now where she could not cease to wander. She. Felt obliged to continue, wishing she knew why.

They’re not real. We never did those things. They’re memories I wish we had had but never did. None of those lovely things happened, but if they had, surely they would have made us happy.

Then she went on, in little paths in her own newly recreated memory. There she could see the forest of the great sequoias, some of the oldest and most beautiful trees in the world, for sure. Then she went onto watch the puffins, whose colony on Egg Rock, Maine, was protected and seemed safe at last. There were the athletic competitions of the Basques, whose origins harkened to ancient times and had nothing in common with the cheap sports competitions in the rest of the world.

She also wished she could spend just an hour in the color. Festival of India called Holi, although it would be so hard to understand what was happening because of the languages and the complex cultural meanings. It was just the idea of ‘battling’ with bright colors, not clashing but mingling, that attracted her, and she was have loved to be drenched like that with so many bright hues.

Then there was the memory of the lunar landscape in the region of Teruel. The famous lovers of that godforsaken land, Isabel and Diego, were the only reason for wanting to go there. Yet their twisted, tortured love was so seductive. She was drawn to the lovers’ tomb, with its intertwined hands.

Was love worth all that? Teruel was an inhospitable region, for sure.

She looked down again and realized that she could go on indefinitely creating memories that never existed for him, for them. Lies invented, knowing they weren’t true, but justifiable because they might awaken a softened or distracted brain once more. A mind that had once been quick and invulnerable, artistic and generous. Noble.

Not now. Not any more.

She looked down, probably for one last time, and stopped inventing what never had been and never could be. Not now. Not any more. She faced him, although doing so meant bending forward and moving their gazes so they were finally in perfect focus. Then she asked the question, except this time she was no longer asking him:

Don’y you remember?

And she went on to say how the black irises in his eyes reminded him of the pomegranates on the tree in tiny Bournazel, a village at the base of the heights of Cordes-sur-ciel’s peaks. Black and half fallen, half strangled on the tree by the centuries-old home. Black, because - not everybody knows this - pomegranates are burned by winter cold to the point where they become lovely charred lumps. 

Fruit for art, for the most beautiful painting she had ever seen and which she still craved as much as the first day she’d seen it. There were few other things in life she needed, and definitely few other memories.

Black spots against a stone canvas. Real or not. She would join them, and be happy. They were something he remembered too, and they didn’t need to play the game any more.