The Memory Cloth

A work of creative nonfiction
by Margaret A. Frey

For Janet J.

Your daughter called.

Alexis telephoned on an ordinary Saturday morning, and after a cordial exchange of hello, how are you, I rattled on about the holidays, explaining how John and I had swung through the old neighborhood and how the weather, unusually warm, inspired the ducks to waddle from the bushes then paddle across the backyard pond. And how, when you'd insisted—no demanded—that I sign the tablecloth with permanent marker, adding my name to the considerable list, I paused, unsure what to write.

Words escaped me, but not the pleasure of your kitchen, the smell of apple and nutmeg wafting through the house. A double-crusted, diet-breaking pie.

You waved off the worry. Why not? How glorious you looked—sleek and shiny. The close-cropped hair set off your high, to-die-for cheekbones, and your skin had an amber glow, the burnished sheen of copper pennies.

"Pregnant?" I asked.

You rolled your eyes. "Been on that merry-go-round long enough. But I'll miss the excitement once Josh leaves for college."

You stroked Silky, your ancient, arthritic cat. The animal flattened his ears, humped up his scrawny hindquarters and purred. We laughed at that.

From the table, we had a clear view of the backyard and adjoining golf course with its pond situated near the twelfth hole. Each summer, our sons had waded the murky water, pushed aside spiky cattails and feathery milkweed to collect stray balls then wash and buff them for resale. Budding entrepreneurs!

Eyebrow arched, you nodded to the pen and swath of linen.

You called it a memory cloth, a family tradition. Or was it something you'd read about, possibly heard on the radio? I don't recall. Unique, different, but that was your way, holding on to people with snapshots and scrapbook mementoes, things I routinely lost or threw away. Yet I kept the photograph you'd taken of the boys sledding down Bishop Hill, the dogs yapping at their heels. You caught the airborne moment: the sled, the boys, even the pups hovering above the snow in an icy halo.

It requires stillness, a rare patience to capture an image like that.

I smiled and picked up the pen.

We sipped cinnamon coffee. You expected us to stay for dinner, but I begged off with another hastily made engagement. While John and Ulysses talked computers, we spoke of family, our mothers mostly, old and ornery, fuss-budgets about cleanliness and order, standards we'd compromised for the sake of children and careers. Your mother spread newspaper over freshly scrubbed floors, while mine encased the world in plastic. I remembered clearly—

"You don't know, do you?"

"Know what?"

"Mommy's dead."

My knees went soft. Alexis's voice wobbled ever so slightly, but she described how you awoke one January morning only to collapse on the bathroom floor. The threat had been silent, invisible for years. No warning that day in your kitchen while we talked about kids, middle-age spread, or the grand vacations we dreamed of taking. Maybe you knew. Maybe even then you felt the dark web spreading in your skull, a pregnancy of a different sort.

Take your time, you'd said. Make the words personal.

Alexis would later tuck the cloth beneath your hands.

For the life of me, I don't remember what I wrote, but I recall my worry that the ink might bleed through the pale linen and mar the marble tabletop. Yet on that day, when the ducks came out and the November sunlight spilled like buttermilk across the kitchen tiles, I never guessed my words were anything but a sentimental autograph, a silly souvenir.

You held on to people, saved us in bits and pieces, even when we shrugged and said we didn't care. You said the small, ordinary things were memorable and important.

I should have fit the puzzle pieces together—the day, the cloth, your firm persistence. Or like an old cat, humped my back, called on my furry instincts to see beyond the peculiar request. Maybe then my words would have been better. Maybe then I might have known how a simple day or a rambling conversation is so easily lost between ragged breaths or a skipping heartbeat.

June now. My garden is a riot of texture and color. I pick up a pen, yearning to jot down my first heady impressions—cerulean sky, gaudy greens, heat funnels rising off the redwood deck.

I lean back. Shadows shift, colors change. Not yet. Not quite yet.

I take your cue, friend of my middle years. I wait for the stillness to come.

Copyright 2006 by Margaret A. Frey