Wednesday Fiction Storytellin'

Preservation

Hannah's memory of the trip was splintered. Tiny interlocked triangles of memories, each triangle featuring an almost abstract photographic representation of the blue-green seersucker ocean, the soft stringy bark of a redwood, the outstretched arm of a street performer being used as a perch for ten or more black crows, and the once-white-turned-gray laces of her sister's running shoes. Each memory snippet was locked within it's designated triangle and she viewed them like an art gallery rather than autobiographical moments. The semi-recollected images were unable to bleed into each other like other memories and so "the event" hung two-dimensional on the wall of her brain like a geometric puzzle, a patch quilt of colors and textures with minimal meaning.

The facts had been presented to her over the following year but it was as if she was listening to someone else's story. Jessica, her therapist, lead her back to the quilt twice a week and they explored each disjointed triangle. The headrest of the airplane seat in front of her, the hanging lanterns in China town, the way the fog encapsulated an entire city and it's bridge, the angle to which her sister's bike hung suspended from the ceiling in her sister's tiny studio apartment. Those triangles were benign to view and usually only evoked hunger for orange chicken. But they remained in front of the quilt. 

Back to the blue-gray waters, the striking aqua color of her sister's boyfriend's convertible, the pair of black sunglasses resting on her sister's head. "Sunglasses are ironic in this city sometimes," her sister had said, briefly looking away from the road to check the map Hannah was holding. Hannah and Jessica froze. The triangles had never moved let alone spoken before. Jessica tried to grab Hannah's hand, to endure this section of the quilt, to move forward. There were other unexplored triangles. Triangles that had the potential to answer so many questions that the family ruminated on in whispers when Hannah was upstairs. But Hannah retreated. Quilts weren't supposed to have moving parts and they certainly weren't supposed to talk. "Do you mind if I order some dinner for my mom to pick up? Monday nights have free egg rolls with every entree at the Beijing Wok."

* Inspiration: E (2008) & Jelle Martens
Written with a napping baby in one arm :o)