Selective Memories
By Deborah Gaines
My mother has started bringing her pit bull to poetry readings.
She lives in a retirement community, Windsor Estates, that offers every kind of activity for seniors: bridge tournaments, concerts in the great hall, shopping excursions to Whole Foods. There’s even a small library where she likes to pick up Agatha Christie novels, then return them and borrow the same ones again.
One afternoon in the heat of summer, we were strolling the grounds with my mother’s black-and-white Staffordshire, Pepper, when her friend Berenice called through the open library door. “Risa, did you get my message? We’re having poetry readings every Tuesday.”
“Of course I did,” my mother said grandly. She no longer remembers how to check voicemail — I do it for her during our weekly visits — but as she would say, that’s none of Berenice’s beeswax. “Why do you think I’m here?”
She took a hard left and entered the library, preceded by Pepper, who was straining at the leash. Finding an empty seat, she bribed the dog to lie at her feet using a stale roll from the pocket of her shorts.
I watched from the doorway as the other attendees, several of whom were in wheelchairs, gave Pepper the side eye. Berenice had to cough several times to get their attention. She sat in an armchair at the front of the room, holding a pile of loose papers that looked to be original work.
As she began reading, I remembered that my mother had declined to put in her hearing aids before leaving the house. She was sitting up straight, the picture of attentive listening, nodding occasionally to suggest that something had hit home.
Pepper finished her roll and began chewing gently on the table leg. My mother reached down to stroke her short fur, more like a horse’s coat, and the dog grunted with pleasure.
Now Berenice was reading from a dilapidated book with a green cover called The Child’s Garden of Verses. “The same one we gave you for your birthday,” my mother said later.
“I remember.” How I had loved that book! When I closed my eyes, I could see her sitting on the edge of the bed in my childhood room, with its white furniture and wallpaper of pink cherry blossoms. She was reciting her favorite poem, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Recuerdo,” her black hair spilling over the page and obscuring her pale, aristocratic face.
After Berenice finished reading, everyone clapped politely and began wheeling themselves away. My mother remained in her chair.
Berenice came over. “Thanks for joining us,” she said. “I hope you’ll come again.”
“I will if I’m not busy,” my mother said.
Berenice crossed her arms over her chest and cleared her throat. “Just leave the dog at home. It’s not allowed in the library.”
My mother stood up. Even hunched over from sciatica, she was several inches taller than the other woman. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, icicles dripping from her voice. “You see, I don’t like your poetry, but Pepper finds it instructive.”
She swept out without waiting for a response, the dog trotting at her side. I had to run after them to catch up.
Somehow, the poetry readings became a weekly event. My mother would walk Pepper along the route she took every day, and the dog would pull her through the library door to the seat next to the bitten table leg, then look up expectantly for a treat.
Neither of the two women recalled any unpleasantness. In fact, one Tuesday, at Berenice’s request, my mother read a Pablo Neruda poem my father had been fond of quoting in their youth:
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
Later, she remarked on how strange it was that she barely remembered my father’s final years, after a series of strokes had restricted his movement and robbed him of his voice. But she could easily conjure him, flushed with passion and barely old enough to shave, shouting poetry into the wind late one night as they rode the Staten Island Ferry.
