Carl: Do you remember anything? Of last night?
Steven: Yeah, the beginning; I remember the beginning. You were so sweet to say what you said, and I remember almost crying when you said it, but holding back, because I had to get back out there, get back in plain sight of everyone. It was around then, around the middle of the night in the middle of everything, that I–how should I say it–I turned off.
Carl: You turned off? What do you mean? You seemed as lively and fresh as on any other day. It was only a lapse of memory.
Steven: That’s what I mean, Carl. I turned off the way that a machine turns off–
Carl: –But that’s just it, you were running all over the place, you weren’t turned off, just find another way to say it.
Steven: I want to remember! Then I’ll find another way to say it. Even a computer, or a robot, has that last leg of a charge, and during it it will still show images, it will still walk or roll along the floor, it will still finish its last command.
Carl: You thought you were running along the way that a machine runs along?
Steven: Not exactly that. I was trying to say something important about memory. I think it makes up who we are. I, for one, am obsessed with being able to remember. If I can’t remember something, it seems as if I might as well have not been there. It seems a waste and that I, yes like a robot, like a computer, am just a bunch of bells and whistles putting together a show for a little while, but in reality it’s a blank screen and a device of plastic and metal and glass. That’s how I feel–
Carl: –What, that you’re plastic and metal and glass–
Steven: –That I’m only a body–no–that I’m only a body, and the meaning of what this body’s doing was stripped away as soon as I was robbed of the stitching of memory. You know, how it ties everything together, how it helps–this is what I’ve been trying to say–keep you together?
Carl: I get it, and, believe me, I always want to remember my days as well. But you’re being too hard on yourself, don’t you think? You don’t–we don’t–have to make everything into this epic drama, or into a great existential crisis. Besides, there was alcohol involved. You remember that, I’m sure? You must have drunk down a pint in ten minutes. Who’s going to remember anything after that? I say if you can remember the cause of your lack of memory, or if the cause is in your power to control in the future, and–the big one–if you made it through the night unscathed, then you can rest well. It’s only when it comes disastrously, or suddenly without any cause or announcement, or when you committed some heinous crime under the influence or blacked out that you would never otherwise commit, it’s only then–do you remember Larson’s story about waking up, not in a jail, in prison, how he was forced to go through interrogations for something he couldn’t recall at all?–it’s only then that it is cause for extreme worry of the sort you’re having now. It wasn’t too long ago that Aunt Carmen started going. I remember about five years ago–it must have been early onset–she started to say My mind is turning into MUSH, everything is turning into MUSH, it’s all–muddy. Then–it came like a knife wound when you have just finished fighting, when you don’t take the fight seriously anymore, when I began to think Maybe she is just having a bit of trouble remembering, the brain’s only firing a little slower with her age–she was almost eighty–just like that, like a heartless slap across the face that does more than sting, it leaves a mark, it leaves a wound, you have to account for it, people are asking questions–then she couldn’t remember anything. Not–not even her children, let alone US, she couldn’t remember–anything. Remember that?
Steve: Yeah–uh-uh, I remember. You–
Carl: –THAT’S when you–when you start–worrying! Until then let a lapse of memory be a little thing, a trifle.
Steve: I remember Aunt Carmen, that–that was so sad, going over there and the look she gave us: completely blank, not even a glimmer of recognition. That was like you said, a disaster, and it seemed she was better off–
Carl: –Steve–
Steve: –dead. It did, Carl. I think it was cruel to have her carried around for the last three years the way she was, hoisted up onto her bed, then carried from her bed and lifted down the hall for a meal or for her to use the bathroom–which she wouldn’t make every time–then put into a chair so that one of her daughters could roll her around. I asked myself, when I went on one of these walks with her and Charlene, What does she think about as she’s being carried here and there, as we’re rolling her down Massachusetts Avenue? The way she looked at us, the way you said she looked at everything. Something like a baby but more dreadfully than that: it didn’t have a future. Still, I would ask How does everything appear for her? If she remembered this street it would tie a cord between her and a whole host of things, between her and each building–her grandpa, Uncle Raven, had a glass shop in Mass Ave–it would tie her to all of the lives living on that street, and the lives behind those lives–she had friends everywhere, especially on that street, and it seemed like we were spreading, not joy, but agony through the town when we stopped sixty or seventy times for Carmen to meet with Cindy from piano lessons, or Samantha from the School Board, or Mr. and Mrs. Pavel from the hospital; I could see the tears welling up it their eyes as we greeted one another, I could see that they just wanted to leave and remember better days, forget, if anything is to be forgotten, this, this body, like a mannequin, being rolled around for all to see. How was she seeing all the faces, seeing the faces of buildings, seeing the birds flit through the air, seeing the babies pushed along in strollers or the dogs walking along the sidewalk on a leash with probably someone she knew–before all that.
Carl: Don’t you ever think…
Steve: Carl? What?
Carl: Don’t you ever think it might have been–beautiful. Like everything was shining as though for the first time, or the last time, that they were sending off their insubstantial sparks into the air for the last time? Maybe it’s not exactly like I said, maybe the worry was confined to us. Almost every time I saw her she was smiling! Wasn’t that incredible? Maybe we’re robbed of memory because remembering everything would be too hard. I know that Aunt Carmen’s was a special case, but still, the dead don’t remember, they are remembered. The dead are robbed of their own memory like they are robbed of everything else, but maybe that time not remembering are when things just are, when they are not weighed down with all the stories we have to tell about them.
Steve: Well that’s quite a way to console me, through this painful memory of Aunt Carmen. She was so sweet, and you’re right, she was sweet until the end, even when she couldn’t remember a thing. I don’t know, Carl, I always think during those times, when I’m charging through without registering it, that I hurt someone, I said something stupid or hurtful.
Carl: What has you think that?
Steve: That’s just it, Carl: I can’t remember!
Love the Dust 