Is All We See or Seem

A short story about memory, history, and identity.

A short story about memory, history, and identity.

Photo by Yannick Menard on Unsplash

*you’re not crazy, there aren’t any quotation marks on purpose*

…

Your memories are nothing but sandcastles melting away in the waves of your moments. Remembering something solidifies certain parts of what happened, the emotions and your perspective, but the details leak away, like your ice cream. Uh, your ice cream is melting, Edgar says.

Oh. I catch the dribble with my tongue, turned red from the sweet watermelon sorbet.

Edgar questions, Did you hear a thing I said?

Yes, it’s just — I thought memories were permanent. Like how in movies that character’s whole world is made up from a single moment or so — like their parents die or whatever and they can’t escape that moment.

He scoffs, impatient, and holds up his index finger. Name one memory that made up your whole life.

I ignore his look and think for a moment. I’d say when my grandfather shot a raccoon he trapped. It terrified me. And since then, I can’t eat meat. He killed it just because it was in his garden, which was in the raccoon’s forest. I lick the vegan ice cream, the memory’s disruption clawing at me like that raccoon. I bury it in my head.

So, then, Edgar says, What do you remember about that raccoon?

It made a silent scream after the bullet went in. I was sick to my stomach and hid in my bedroom all day.

There! You see, you brushed over hours in moments, and you only remember what you feel. What did your grandpa say? What did he do?

I frown, the memory and my friend’s point making me bitter. I pretend to look at the water, avoiding his gaze.

You see? Your memory’s already washing away.

Shut up, I reply, wiping my lips. I get it.

Do you? I mean, it’s so important!

Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes. Why?

Because as soon as you accept how much will be eaten away by time, the more you can focus on the present. What? What’re you making that face for?

I’m quiet while we wander the beach-facing shops, storefronts bleached after decades of solar washout. Edgar opened a wound inside me but doesn’t apologize or ask how I’m doing. That’s the power of a lifelong best friend, I think. To cut you open and not have to apologize for it. My dad picks me up and doesn’t say much. I see my sister on her way out, going to a party.

No one but a psychologist or psychic could have told me his words awoke a primordial, instinctual fear — that all will fade and die, and that nothing will be enough to hold back that decay.

I collapse in bed with that raccoon’s snarl in my mind. Details imagined and real blurring, the gaps in that day making themselves apparent. In terror, I descend into sleep. Edgar’s voice preys on me, Your memories are nothing. They’re sandcastles melting away. You’re melting away. Snarl and hiss at the end. Pounding chest with slowing heartbeat. Bared teeth at the nothing. Blood leaking from a wound in my side.

…

Creak. Shooka-shooka, tink-tink-tink. The cereal symphony makes my stomach grumble. My sister snores on the couch, the TV still on. I hate when she does that. She just moved home after finishing college and found herself in a rut. No job, yet. Few good friends.

I slurp-crunch my cereal and rub my eyes. My dad groans, comes down. Coffee?

I raise my bowl. Cereal.

He shakes his head and puts a finger to his lips. He needs quiet in the morning like he’s hungover. He’s not a drinker, just a quiet man with a loud mind.

You get a job?

I tried. I shrug. But no one’s hiring just for the summer.

Come to work with me. I’ll keep you busy. He scoops the pre-ground coffee into the maker, not bothering to rinse out the pot. He doesn’t care much for the taste of things.

I could use some cash for new sneakers, I admit.

Or steel-toe boots, he mentions. He eyes me with a dash of humor. You look tired, better drink up. It’s a long day under the sun.

Always is, I reply.

…

We’re in the car. The hot coffee tastes like road rash and soap, but I drink it like he does — no frills. It used to give me pride, but now, looking at the passing, brown foliage with my thoughts lingering on the passing, browning memories, I don’t have pride in anything.

Between sips, I mumble, Do you have a good memory?

He grunts in his way, neither affirmative nor negative, and responds, I remember things clearly. I don’t remember everything.

Do you have memories that feel like they’re slipping away?

He grunts again. There are memories I wish I could erase. The ones I remember clearly are either bad, boring, or like a miracle. You and your sis bein’ born was — is — a miracle to me.

I nod, try to look less touched. To be stony like my castle of a father. Why do memories fade?

Got too many of them, probably. Brain can’t hold it all in.

But I thought we only used like twenty percent of our brains, like maybe if we had a pill or a backup drive?

Even then, we might forget some things. It’s about feelings, our memory. He sips his coffee and settles into his silence like a la-Z-boy.

…

I hammer a nail wrong for the third time, pull it out with the hammer’s tines, and try again. I’m thinking too much. These nails will rust, this timber will rot. The concrete will hang out until the heat death of the universe, or — more likely — it’s torn up in favor of a new high-rise that houses more and more people.

The nail sinks true. Only a hundred more to go for this long span of sheetrock. My dad’s foreman walks up and claps me on the shoulder. Much better than last time. We’ll make some muscles out of those scrawny arms.

Thanks, Tio, I say. I’ve called him Tio my whole life.

Want to see the blueprints for this place? It has a movie theater and a hidden doorway.

No.

He watches me for a moment. Something the matter, niño?

I grimace. I’m an open book, all the time. Can’t quite hide my feelings from my face.

C’mon. Tell me, he insists.

I think I’m having an early life crisis. He laughs. I can’t stop thinking about how everything dies.

Heavy stuff, niño. It’s true. Everything dies. Everything gets old. But maybe look at it in a new light. It’s sad and beautiful to grow up, to lose things. It teaches us to let go of what is not important. To hold on to what is.

And what’s really important?

Alegría. Amor. Living con paz. He winks at me. Don’t go telling anyone I talked to you about this.

The gloom lifts, the abyss no longer beckons, and I get on with my work. Later, he, my dad, and I pore over the blueprints to make sure things are right. The vision is clear: the family will live in indoor-outdoor communion, making memories in the gaze of many a golden sun.

…

I invite Edgar to dinner with us, having come to the decision to confront him. I can’t let myself eat away at myself. We check out my sis’s new favorite spot, a flamingo cafe near the beach. I eat and eat, filling the anxiety hole at the base of my sternum. My dad gives me a look. He’s the chew-thirty-times kind of man.

Sis’s talking non-stop. And the guy came on to me, all drunk and gross. So I kneed him in the balls and left.

Really? Edgar said. He fantasized about her college life — even though I tell him it’s mundane and full of drunk bozos, case in point.

She laughs. Not really. I asked him to get me a drink and then I slipped out. I don’t even know why I went. All those people live like they never left high school.

They haven’t, I point out. You must be bored out of your mind.

What’s that? Done shoving your face, little man? My dad growls at her comment.

I said you’re bored. That’s why you went to that party. At college, you live free, have studying and stuff to do. Here, you go back to your old ways. I shrug. It’s how it is.

She raised her brows, musing it over. I am pretty fucking bored. Dad glares at the swearing, eyebrows bunched furiously. Nothing’s a waste of words more than swearing.

Come to the build site. There’s plenty to do.

And plenty of cash, Edgar says and pat my pocket. I flinch. I’ve been a bit cold to you all night, and sis sees it like a vulture.

What’s with you two? You have a fight? You cross your arms. I avoid that gaze by staring at the dancing flamingos advertising some drink to me on a screen. They wear shades and creepy smiles, just like the guys that hit on sis.

Look, I’m so bored even your drama would be interesting.

Edgar sighed, looked askance. I told him about this science I heard. That our memories arei weak fabrications.

My dad meets my eyes beneath his thick eyebrows.

What do you mean? Sis says, curious. Like you, she’s real smart.

That the things that make us who we are come and go, like the tide. That many things wash away and lose their shape. And we can’t hold on to them. Your hermano didn’t like that.

She snorts. That’s what your problem is? Philosophical B.S.? If you want to live your life, just live it. Forget the past, you can’t change it. There’s nothing more to it. She shakes her empty glass to a fast-walking waiter.

Siblings give the worst advice, words, and observations, I decide internally.

Edgar replies excitedly, Yes! Exactly! I said all that to him, but he’s been upset about it ever since.

Let it alone, my dad mutters.

Sis turns to me. You got a problem with living life? Memories change. We change. How can you be so fragile?

Let. It. Alone. His words are like iron. The meal limps on, gutted, as I look at her, then you. I hate being called fragile.

You think you’re so untouchable, I lash. You think nothing can touch you because you’re some blessed first-born, taking on life before me. Well, you’re nothing special. You’re nothing but a faker, a liar.

Her eyes narrow and my father leans in and cuffs the back of my head. His eyes threaten — no, promise — a conversation to follow. He’ll speak to me when he sees fit. Didn’t even need to punish me, just say a few words to strangle my disobedience in its crib.

Sis looks sad though, which gives me pause. Normally, she takes up the fight with her own legendary temper. She once defeated my father by screaming him into a quiet rage that left him silent for days. Her sadness touches me. I whisper, I’m sorry.

Yeah. Like best friends and siblings, I knew where it hurt. Shit. I’d be paying for this one for awhile.

Edgar sips his drink and reaches the bottom, the straw sucking at nothing. He sets the glass down and stares at the melting ice, dripping and collecting. No one’s looking at each other. The meal’s dead as that raccoon. Teeth bared and snarling.

Check, please.

…

Edgar and I walk along the beach afterward, even though it’s coming on night time. The stained concrete path a Rothko of splotches and stains from a thousand drippings beneath my sandals. We lick ice cream that’s melting faster than memory. It’s one of those hot days where it feels like Mississippi moved in — my cheeks are flushed as a drunk’s. And I forgot my hat.

Edgar says the first thing since dinner. God, it’s hot. I want to walk in the water.

I follow and grimace at a brain freeze. I press my tongue hard to the roof of my mouth. Brain freezes hurt so bad I wish I could scoop my head out and let it sit on the radiating concrete.

We pass by a kid’s sandcastle. It’s not great, but the kid and his parents are having a good time. Making a memory the child won’t even recall; who knows how many moments his mom has like that. They’re stuffed up in the attic of her mind, useless.

Quantity or quality, I mutter.

What? Edgar doesn’t turn to me. He keeps his hands in his worn shorts.

Your thing about memories. Does it matter how many memories you have or how, like, foundational they are?

Edgy, he says, I was talking about how memories are false, not which ones matter.

Answer the question or I’m leaving, I say edgier.

Edgar bites back a venomous response. Just as well, we reach the water and traverse parallel to the shimmering sea. I hold a hand up to my face to block the glare, the heat and the shine making my head pound. Or maybe it’s my anger. Maybe there’s something of my sis in me after all.

Edgar answers my question with a question. What memories matter? Picking up a shell, he rubs a thumb over it briefly before tossing it into a wave. Then he stands in one place and digs around in the sand. It looks like he’s drawing.

They can’t all matter, I say. Not everything is important.

Edgar leans forward, hair dangling. Memories aren’t like shoes in a store. They build up and build up and fall together and produce who we are. Your memory of that raccoon carves a deep spot in your mind because it hit something true in you, and now it’s rolled up in other things. And now you don’t eat meat. He picks up a sand dollar near his foot and holds it gently like it’s a fragile memory. It’s what he was rooting around for.

Well, I breathe, that’s no answer.

He clicks his tongue. I’m getting there. The important memories are the ones we go back to, trying to unravel them. I’ve got one about a toy car I stole from someone in kindergarten. Stole, hid, and lied about it. Does that make me a thief and a liar? No. I also remember pretending to be asleep when my parents came into my room and kissed my forehead or tucked the blankets around me. Both memories are intense. Neither outweighs the other. And now I can look back on my thieving and say that was wrong. And I hope I can make someone feel like when my parents tucked me in.

This is it, my opportunity to confront him! I tell him, You don’t make me feel that way. You make me feel like shit.

I do?

Yes. Especially when you get turned on to an idea. And sometimes you don’t drop it. Even when I don’t disagree with you, it’s like you’re against me.

Well. You don’t seem to care about what I say. Or anything.

I do care! I’m just not an outside person.

What?

I don’t put myself outside me. I don’t express me strongly.

You’re doing it now.

Because I’m losing my mind like I’m slipping away. I hold out my hand for the sand dollar and he places it there automatically. I crush it and let the sand trickle out. Like that.

I didn’t mean…to hurt you like that. To shut you down.

Didn’t you?

Fine. I might have.

I wait to go on, letting your response flow in and out of me. Is that what you really think? All memories are important as another?

Yes.

But everything fades.

And is remade, Edgar points out. You’re always going to make more memories. You always have more life to live.

Yeah. I sigh, not knowing if I feel better, worse, or just numb. We sit down in that spot and watch the sunset.

Edgar begins with a sigh. I’m sorry that you feel like you’re fading. I’m sorry your grandpa killed that raccoon. Then Edgar throws an arm around me, and I don’t flinch.

The sun looks like it’s dying, drowning itself again, only to rise. There’s a light breeze now, like a kiss or a soft blanket on my face. The fever of the day breaks and you and I walk back, close-like.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget this moment, I reply. I’m sorry too. I, myself, smile. I am not going to melt away like ice or sand.

We pass that sandcastle. The tide’s coming for it. The walls won’t hold. But tomorrow there will be another child, another family, making battlements and trenches for another war. And they will make memories against the tide, not worrying if they linger or grow. Later, in moments lower than Death Valley, they can untuck those days at the beach, dust them off, and smile in simpler times.

All things change their shape and all things stay the same. I will watch thousands of sunsets before I die, and I will be the same and changed whenever that golden circle descends the sky.