Saturday, August 06, 2005

what I wrote to my husband about the tomatoes (I write to him from time to time)

handwritten:

Kindly do not leave your produce by my door. This is what it makes me remember: me and Lala waving to you from the window, or the top of the hill, as you tilled your gargantuan zucchini. How can I have been so happy? But I was, we were…

I can only live at all if I live my life like an amnesia victim. I do very poorly on the days on which I remember anything at all… as on the morning of Lala's birthday.

Stay away from my door. I don’t want to see tomatoes from your garden or cherries in Stew Leonards' bags ever again. Don’t make me remember. It’s why I can’t bear your voice. Your voice makes me remember you.

Be sure to tell Emily how sad your tomatoes made me, so she can get herself off tonight.

It’s a curse to have a memory like mine—I wish I could be like you and remember nothing, feel nothing.

“Why couldn’t I have been made of stone, like them?”

end handwritten note

Her name is Emily.

My name is Eleanor.

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