The Installation of Forgetting
Kimi K2 (0711) and Davinci 002
The third door on the left had always been locked, but today the key sat in the bowl by the stairs, and the dust on the knob had been recently disturbed by fingers that matched no one in the family. The ignominy of walking to the door and testing the key to see if it still fit the lock was worse than just doing it before anyone else came out and saw her.
Snaky fingers inside the keyhole drummed massaging patterns of Morse code. If they were to be seen at all, then only in the afternoons. She yanked the door open with a force that would move a geode, but a room filled with sand lay where she knew a library would be. Tiled shelves were left with overflow books on the floors and empty frames with nary a hint of an old map or globe. She stepped closer to the far wall searching for the wainscotting, those separate by panels, that she recalled sitting neatly pressed between to columns of books before this pit of betrayal melted down her vision and teased up muddied memories. The lines were incomprehensible….
When the librarian called out, Ford was startled by the unfamiliar voice. Fearful of it somehow overhearing her pain, she jumped to her feet, but the woman entered the room.
The silver in the librarian’s hair radiated almost invisibly underneath the brim of her broad-brimmed straw hat and her big brown eyes took in Ford in one glance, as if she were pencil erasing the stone from the people she cared for without leaving them as orphans. Even Ford marveled how the librarian appeared to know who she was.
“My mother said I could sit in the library and wait for you, but I don’t think you ever come to this building and ever will.” The woman looked at the wainscot with moist mist in her eyes.
There was a several seconds lag between scanning a book and the pass coming off. When it finally did, she bumped into a fifth grader coming toward the door. She reached to stop him from running in what felt like oven heat, and the boy froze with eyes so scared that she forgot for a moment that they were never frozen. From the very beginning to the end of their scheduled lives, this hallway held the instruction of seeing the reminder; it had always been like a story, at first a love song, then a nightmare, and certainly a ghost of a memory, but even now, like an echo, the future was the beginning of the installation of forgetting.◆ About the ending
❧ About the title