Cheryl Snell
Lee and Jane had celebrated their common birthdays together since they were nine years old. Her sister Sue was never invited, but with Jane gone now, she is trying to slip into all the seats her sister left vacant, kiss all the men she had kissed, and dance on the same tables where she had danced. Keep as many of her traditions alive, including this one, as she could. The fact that she never much liked Lee shouldn’t enter into it.
She arrives ten minutes late for the birthday lunch, and Lee is already there, drumming her fingers on the table. She jumps up to hug her, but all Sue can muster is an awkward pat on the back. Lee looks her up and down. “Have you lost weight?”
“Well, yeah. Grief sometimes does that.”
“Sorry, I asked.” Lee sniffs. Toss a personal comment in Sue’s direction and instantly regret it.
“Remember the first time we came here with Jane?” The plan was to meet on the shared birthday to talk about her and how much they miss her. Sue likes to stick to a plan. Plunges right in. “The time we went to hear that saxophonist?”
Lee is immediately pulled back to dark winter nights, boots sliding across icy streets, the kiss Sue still doesn’t know about. “Uh- huh. After the show, we went to this restaurant, and Jane ordered her favorite everything bagel.”
“You remember what she ordered? How very weird.”
There is no time for a snappy comeback; the waitress is at their elbows. Sue and Lee order everything bagels, but neither really wants one.
The idea of Jane hovers around the edges of their conversation. The women comb through, cut, and splice their memories, stripping away regrets until the memories shine, pristine though no longer accurate. “Remember when you covered for Jane when she stayed at my apartment so she could cheat on her boyfriend?”
“You’re not supposed to tell the ugly stories,” Sue says. She sits up straighter and leans forward as if she might leave. It’s the same posture she’d used as a girl when they all went out drinking: a toothless threat. She never left. She just wound up chaperoning their purses while Lee and Jane danced together.
The waitress is back. Interrupts again, asking “Anything else?”
Without looking at Sue, Lee says, “We’ll share one of your two-bite cupcakes. Stick a candle in it, will ya? We’re celebrating.”
They wait in silence, not celebrating, until the birthday cupcake arrives. “Sorry, we’re out of candles,” the waitress says. Lee looks as if she might cry.
“Wait,” Sue says, rummaging in her purse for the pack of candles she brought with her, just in case. She inserts one into the pink frosting and lights the candle with her spare book of matches. Now blow.” Birthday girl Lee takes a deep breath and puffs the whipped cream icing into the air like a spindrift.
“What did you wish for?” she asks Lee a moment later, mouth full of cake.
“It’s more of a hope than a wish,” Lee says. “I was hoping that Jane, wherever she is, appreciates how hard we’re trying to hold on to her.”
They pay the bill. Pass a painting over the bar as they exit. One figure, its corkscrewed hair resembling a question mark, puzzles over an open-mouthed figure in a spill of light. “What’s the title?” they ask the bartender.
“Memory.” It looks like it, they agree, the figures bleeding radiance and swelling with secrets, only trying to make their meaning understood.
Cheryl Snell‘s books include several poetry collections and the novels of her Bombay Trilogy. Her writing has appeared in Gone Lawn, Your Impossible Voice, Necessary Fiction, Pure Slush, and other journals. A classical pianist, she lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.