The Persistence of Memory
written by: Craig E Harms
Timothy Kimmel and his perfect wife Bethany bounced up the crumbling sidewalk hand-in-hand to the old house they promised to make thirty years of payment on. Just married, Tim was happy and hopeful for once in his life, even more so a few months later when their promise of everlasting love survived its first true test as the newly paired do-it-yourselfers gutted and remodeled the kitchen together without either of them muttering the word annulment under their breath. Finally, life would be good.
His past wasn’t so much. Being the youngest of five boys meant quadruple bullying growing up, made even more prolific because Mom was gone most of the time slaving her life away on minimum wage because Dad drank himself to death on Christmas Eve when he was seven. “And what did Santa bring you?” he liked to ask acerbically whenever conversations with acquaintances turned to childhood memories.
Now old, arthritic, and as bitter as the off-brand coffee he drank black, Tim slumped at the kitchen table of the long-ago paid-off place choking down another lonely breakfast of painful memories regarding his short-lived tryst with happiness and hope: Beth’s long and agonizing war with brain cancer that she lost at 39 left him to raise their two young daughters alone, but that, too, was short-lived because eleven-year-old Janey was struck and killed walking home from school by a car driven by an 83-year-old with dementia who thought she was on her way to church, and her little sister, genetically doomed, went out same way her mom did when she was only nine. “And how did gawd bless you?” he liked to ask acerbically whenever conversations with acquaintances turned to family-related memories.
He stirred his joe and his mind of events past and sighed—this morning’s pathos was triggered by the spoon in his hand that took him back to that first remodeling job and how it had taken him twenty minutes to find one with the kitchen all torn up. Tim closed his tired eyes and smiled, lost in thought about their half-assed renovation project that didn’t end in divorce.
Opening them after this moment of reminiscing, he was shocked to see that he was no longer holding the spoon but now a caulking gun of glue; he became more electrified when he turned to see Beth stretched out on that hideous peel-and-stick linoleum floor, her sweet butt smoking like the cigarette she was holding between her red-nailed fingers. Her job was propping up a sheet of decorative wallboard against the plaster wall with her long hot legs until the adhesive dried.
“By the time your cig is done, it should be stuck enough, then we can get on with the next piece,” he told her, surprised to hear his voice young and strong instead of the ground-down droning monotone it had become over decades of simply surviving. More surrealistically, Tim was no longer in his robe and slippers but was wearing the duds he wore that day—his first pair of gray Nikes and jeans several sizes smaller because it was before Beth’s steady diet of hearty home-cooked meals once the room was finished. He had forgotten all about the t-shirt he now had on–it was one of his favorites way back when. He blinked in wonderment, his wrinkled arms steamed smooth by his youthful thoughts.
“Gotcha, honey,” his perfect wife replied sweetly in her long-ago silenced voice.
He sat erect for the first time in ages, soaking in the memory that somehow had turned flesh-and-blood real, appreciating her inside and out, desiring to consummate their marriage right here on the spot like they did the first time the wallboard dried.
His lust was tantalized by the waft of baking turkey that was suddenly snuffed out by the stench of burning meat. Now his life-like memory turned to that Thanksgiving Day, their first, and watched a panicked Beth standing at the oven in the freshly-painted room, her hands clutching hot pads and the fire extinguisher. Now Janey and Constance joined ‘round the hexagon table, laughing and enjoying their Mom’s turkey that was cooked perfectly on that last Thanksgiving dinner together 42 years before. Now Janey grabbed her coat and Dad, both anxious to go outside to see if the constellation Orion the Hunter was up and stalking across the sky. Him and daughter were underneath the starry canopy staring up in wonder until the furnace kicked on, thrusting Tim forward, back to his depressing existence called the present.
He wiped away tears with the sleeve of his robe and shuffled to the coffee maker for a bitter refill, bummed to be back, when he was startled by a baby babbling “Dada.” Looking down to the floor they had carpeted over, it was Constance toddling into the kitchen excitedly, calling his name for the first time! Now he had to rub his tired eyes to make sure they weren’t playing tricks on him because just a second ago he was holding a mug that had somehow morphed into two Father’s Day cards scribbled in crayon. He smiled as wide as the starry canopy and bear-hugged both girls, savoring this uber-lucid moment of long-ago love and togetherness. Now Beth popped in with a kiss and the chocolate cake decorated with the plastic skeleton and little cardboard tombstones, writhing with gummy worms. It was his 40th birthday—the best of all of them. It was his last happy birthday before it was all blown to smithereens.
The wellspring of sadness rolling down his cadaverous cheeks doused him back to his current abysmal state of affairs. “We had some great times … us four, the Kimmel Patrol,” he lamented, his old voice back and quivering, his tired eyes bawled shut, praying like hell that these realistic flashes of memories could persist.
Opening them after this moment of reminiscing, he and his perfect wife Bethany were bouncing up the crumbling sidewalk hand-in-hand to the old house they promised to make thirty years of payment on. Just married, Tim was happy and hopeful for once in his life, even more so a few months later when their promise of everlasting love survived its first true test as the newly paired do-it-yourselfers gutted and remodeled the kitchen together without either of them muttering the word annulment under their breath. Finally, life would be good.
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