Invisible Women

Women & Memory 3

Although the woman down the hall is not old, she forgets everything. Yesterday, she left her glasses in the foyer and unable to see, tumbled down two flights of stairs. She broke nearly six bones. Two weeks ago, it slipped her head to turn off her oven and her entire kitchen went ablaze. Then, poor dear, she forgot the number to the emergency fire department — nonemergency she had committed to memory, it’s true — so she dialed her pediatrician who promptly came to her rescue, not that there was much he could do to salvage the wreck of her apartment.

We ask the woman down the hall why her memory is so shoddy.

She says, “It is the way it needs to be. It is simply the way it needs to be.”

We ask her what she means.

She says, “Something, this is the better way.”

Then, she turns and retreats into the burnt hole that is her home.