[13] In time but will not

The problem with stories. The problem is you can’t keep them in your head entirely. You read them and read them, and you reach the end and you’ve half-forgotten how they started, and what’s the point of that? A long time ago, and a long, long time it was, sister Charlotte used to read to me in bed. Our rooms were high up, one flight below the servants’ attic. She slipped into my room after her bath and we curled under the quilt in our cotton nightshirts, you know, with a bitumen fire in the grate. She smelled like the industrial soap uncle made us use, the same kind he sold to the stokers and trimmers from his company stores. She would be cold from the bath, then warmer. That was fun, but I don’t remember a word of what she read to me. It was a big book with dark green covers – I sneezed at the dust – and she acted all the parts to me. This idea Emma has that I don’t look back – I do. Maybe I don’t remember the stories sister read, but I try, and if you ask what happened yesterday, I remember a lot of it. I think of the city around me and see strangers, but our apartment … Emma and I built something I recognize from long ago – our own city up here. The two of us, under the covers together, breathing the same air, walking down the same canal path, wanting the same things, or looking for the same things to want. I yearned for that and sensed how. So I remember what it was like then, and I know what I’ve built with Emma together, and somewhere in all of that is the story I’ve become.