Conjured

“I want … to hear your memories. I’m hungry for memories.” It was the best way she could think of to put it. It felt like hunger, vast empty spaces yawning inside her that wanted to be filled.

“You are the weirdest kid that I have ever met.” Aunt Nicki sped up again, making a cheese sandwich and plopping it into a pan. It sat there, sad and unsizzling. She selected a cup of soup and put it in the microwave.

Eve sank into one of the kitchen chairs. Not looking at Aunt Nicki, she fiddled with the edge of a placemat. It curled as she kneaded it. She only had a few memories of her own, rattling in the emptiness inside her, and so few of them made sense. “Why do I have memories of them, the people on the bulletin board? And why do I know they died? Was I … was I there when they died?”

Aunt Nicki didn’t turn. Looking up at her, Eve saw that the muscles in her neck and shoulders were tense. “It’s what you choose going forward that defines who you are,” Aunt Nicki said. “Not what you chose in the past.”

“What did I choose?” Eve asked. “Why didn’t I stop their deaths? Could I have …” Her voice failed her, and she sat in silence. She clenched her hands in front of her on the placement.

Aunt Nicki flipped the sandwich. It was still pale yellow with unmelted chunks of butter on the other side. “Ah, yes, heat will help,” she said, falsely merry. She turned on the stove. “There we go.” She fetched a plate and a bowl and a spoon. Folding a napkin, she adjusted it so that it tucked neatly under the side of the plate.

“I need to know,” Eve said softly.

“You asked about my memories.” Aunt Nicki sat opposite Eve and uncurled Eve’s fingers. Eve had bunched up the corner of the placemat. Aunt Nicki smoothed it flat. “I spent a lot of time trying to forget my past. My childhood … Let’s say I did not have a perfect one. Spent a lot of time … Well, when I hit eighteen, that was it. I left it all behind.”

“I didn’t choose to leave my past behind,” Eve said. “It was taken from me.”

“Are you sure about that?” Aunt Nicki asked gently. The microwave dinged. She popped out of her chair, retrieved the soup, and flipped the sandwich. At the stove, her back to Eve, she said, “My father drank. My mother drank. My older brother … dead in prison by eighteen. Hanged himself. Or had someone help him. No one was ever sure. Can’t say I was sorry. He used to put out his cigarettes on my arm, at least until Dad stopped him with a baseball bat. After that, he left home, and Dad left soon after. Now, it’s just Mom and my baby brother. He’s in California, as far away as he could get. She’s in a nursing home and needs twenty-four-seven care, which I can barely afford. Alcohol ate her brain cells. She’s fifty-eight and barely knows her own name … She reminds me of you, actually, but you drool less. And so I chase down petty fugitives to pay her bills, when I’m not babysitting for someone who doesn’t know me and barely knows herself. But it’s my choice, to be the responsible one, to be the caretaker, to be the person who …” Aunt Nicki took a deep breath and turned around. “Point is, I invented me … maybe as a reaction to them … definitely as a reaction to them. I am myself in spite of my memories.”

“So are you saying I shouldn’t remember?” Eve asked.

“God, no,” Aunt Nicki said. “Lou would have my head. Especially now, with the latest developments. You need to remember faster.” She pushed away from the table and returned to the stove. A minute later, she flopped the grilled cheese sandwich onto a plate and slid it next to the soup in front of Eve. “Eat.”

Eve sipped her soup. It slid warmly down her throat. She bit into the sandwich, and the cheese singed the roof of her mouth. She puffed air to cool her mouth.

“Dip it,” Aunt Nicki suggested. She mimed dipping the sandwich into the soup.

Eve tried it. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s comfort food.” Eating it made the agency and the hospital and the visions feel far away. She couldn’t bring herself to ask about the “latest developments.” Most likely Aunt Nicki wouldn’t explain anyway.

She ate in silence and didn’t try to remember anything. If she couldn’t remember everything, she wondered if it would be easier if she remembered nothing. Aunt Nicki busied herself cleaning the kitchen. At last Eve asked, “Do you think I could do that? I mean, invent myself like you did.”

Aunt Nicki stopped. “I have absolutely no idea.”

As she turned that thought over and over in her mind, Eve finished the soup, running the last of the sandwich crust around the bowl.

Aunt Nicki cleared her dishes. “Get some sleep. That boy from the library is anxious to see you at work tomorrow. He’s been calling nonstop for the past week.”

Zach! Eve stood up. “I can call him back—”

Aunt Nicki shook her head. “Sleep. One more night won’t kill him.”

“Can you promise me that?”

“He’s not the primary target,” Aunt Nicki said. “I can promise you that.”