Mara Remembers Wrong

Mara's clearest memory of Helen's funeral was impossible because there had been no funeral. They had held a small memorial service three weeks after the death, but Mara remembered standing beside an open grave while Elias held her hand.

She told him this at two in the morning.

"Why now?"

"Because HJ-09 made me think of Mum dying. Then the grave came back."

They sat in Elias's kitchen. The blue cup was on the shelf. Neither looked at it.

"Do you want to check?"

"No. I know there was no burial. She was cremated."

"Then where did the image come from?"

Mara laughed tiredly. "You see? That's your disease."

"Question."

"Same haircut."

She rubbed her eyes.

"Maybe television. Maybe another funeral. Maybe Fallow showed me one. Maybe I dreamed it when I was fourteen and kept it."

"Does it feel real?"

"Completely."

Elias understood. Mara looked at him. "I keep wanting you to tell me it's okay."

"It is."

"And then I hate that because maybe the whole industry began with people wanting that sentence."

He did not say anything. After a while she added, "I remember you holding my hand."

"Maybe I did at the memorial."

"Maybe."

"Does it matter?"

Mara considered.

"Not tonight."

They made toast. It burned.

Elias almost said something about conducting an autopsy, then stopped because he no longer knew whether the joke belonged to his family, First Copy or some engineer in 2009.

Mara saw his face.

"Say it."

"No."

"Coward."

He said it. She laughed.

Whatever its source, the joke was theirs now.

Mara's impossible funeral memory returned after HJ-09. She described standing beside an open grave, holding Elias's hand while rain soaked her shoes. The image was vivid enough that she could name the cemetery gate and the smell of wet cut grass.

There had been no burial.

Helen had been cremated. The family held a memorial three weeks later in a church hall. No grave. No cemetery.

"I know," Mara said. "Still there."

They traced possible sources without reconstructing the scene. A school friend's father had been buried that same year. Mara attended. Photographs showed the cemetery gate she described. A television drama Gabriel watched around the same time included an open grave in rain. Fallow later used cemetery imagery in a grief protocol.

Three plausible contributors. No way to determine the exact path.

"So the answer is boring," Mara said.

"The answer is unresolved."

"Same thing to television."

Elias asked what the memory meant to her now.

She thought for a while. "It used to be proof I was there when Mum was put somewhere. Even though she wasn't. Maybe my brain wanted a location. Cremation is annoyingly administrative."

"That sounds like Lena."

"Don't insult me."

They visited the church hall instead. It now hosted a dance school. Children in bright shoes ran past them while parents waited with phones.

Mara remembered the memorial tables being covered in blue cloth. A photograph showed cream. She remembered Gabriel speaking. He had been unable to. An aunt read his words.

She did remember one thing correctly: Elias had made a joke so inappropriate that she laughed during the service.

"What did I say?" he asked.

"You said Mum would hate the flowers because lilies smell like funeral homes."

"That's not a joke."

"You said it while standing at her memorial surrounded by lilies. Timing made it a joke."

Gabriel confirmed later that both children had laughed and then been horrified at themselves.

"Your aunt thought you were having a breakdown," he said.

"Maybe we were," Mara replied.

The memory became warmer through corroboration, which made Elias wary. He noticed the impulse to improve it.

Mara noticed him noticing.

"You're doing the face."

"What face?"

"The one where a memory has one verified detail and you want to promote the entire scene."

He laughed. "Probably."

Outside the hall, she looked toward a cemetery visible beyond the main road.

"Maybe that's where I got it," she said.

"Maybe."

"You know what bothers me least now?"

"What?"

"Being wrong about the grave."

"What bothers you more?"

"That I spent years thinking the wrongness meant something had been done to me. Sometimes memory is just bad."

Elias nodded.

Mara nudged him. "Say the lilies thing."

"Why?"

"I want to know if it's still funny."

He said it.

She laughed.

Whatever its exact source, the joke belonged to them now.