100 Proof

The words ease me into that time again as if it were murky water, the seaweed-slimy memories grabbing my ankles and tangling me there. I try not to panic, but it’s hard to breathe in liquid, and I struggle to keep above it all. Others would dry off and retreat, but I must go in to go forward, even if I can’t see the bottom, even if the shore retreats faster and faster the longer I’m submerged.

Launched, I speed into city or Town, itineraries and map in hand. There is no time to wander when there is so much fun to be had. Routes must be adhered to. Schedules must be followed.

Sometimes I acknowledge how hard it is to breathe sparkle-choked air. Sometimes I worry the happy can kill us just as quickly as the sad.

I wanted, more than anything, for the Ringling Brothers unicorn to be real.

I knew it would not be—I was old enough, smart enough, to know foolishness when I felt it. But I hoped anyway, because there I was, stuck in the States, where I had already lost Europe and Africa. On that bleacher seat in the Armory, I knew if I lost the unicorn, my childhood was over.

While unpacking, I emptied a purse I hadn’t used in years, found a receipt from a stop at an Iowa City Kum & Go: 13.2 gallons of gas and a Diet Coke, purchased four months before I asked him to find a new place to live.

It might have been icy that day. My car wheels might have slipped a little bit as I turned into the gas station parking lot. I might have had friends in the car, or I might have been alone. That day, all I knew is I needed fuel for the immediate journey.

I do not say this lightly: One must choose the memories one keeps visible. Some memories, of course, can never go away entirely, but one must take them and box them, wrapped individually in paper, and set them up on a high shelf and forgotten. The rest can be discarded, left at a corner for pick-up by a charity organization or some such entity, where they can be compressed into cubes with the others’ and sent overseas. In the poorest countries, one’s worst memories might still be someone else’s best.

At that moment, time shifted sideways, not stopping, exactly, just carving out a small space that made no sense at all and so much sense, all at the same time. She wanted to put a palm to this new person’s cheek, she wanted to run away from all the people around them, she wanted time to talk and talk and talk until the mystery had unraveled, until the space that had just opened unexpectedly in her heart reordered the words and used them to explain itself.

They shook hands then. “It’s so great to finally meet you,” she said.

Whatever he said, it sounded great at the time.

“Did you steal that from someone?” I asked. “Because if not, I’m going to steal it from you.”

“It’s all mine,” he said. “I thought you might like it.”

And though I did, at the time, very much, I didn’t take good enough notes. My brain relegated the phrase, the feeling, the sense of having stumbled on something so utterly good to inaccessible memory. Sometimes stories get lost along the way. Sometimes, we lose them on purpose.