Love,
Sam
IMPERFECT MEMORIES
Josh’s wake, like Meredith’s, was out of order. He was too young, underripe like rushed fruit, time out of joint. Sam was struck mostly by this echo of error. When Livvie died, it wasn’t just sad. It was sad enough to be desperate. It was sad enough to birth RePose out of nothing. It was heartbreaking, but it was in order, in time. Her kids were there and her grandchildren and only a few of her friends since she’d outlived so many of them. Not so for Josh and Meredith. Josh’s kids and grandkids weren’t there—not yet born, never to be born. But his friends were all there; his parents were there; three of his four grandparents were there. These deaths had an entirely different feel from the ones in time, Sam noticed, for Sam was becoming an expert on death.
Dash did a wine and cheese tasting which Sam objected to (“Funerals aren’t themed”) which Dash overruled (“Drunk and with the edge off are good ways to go”), and there was the usual balance of crying and laughter, small talk and the largest talk of all. Josh had a lot of family and a lot of friends (of whom, naturally, he’d outlived only Noel), but mostly, looking around, Sam saw a different kind of family. Eduardo Antigua, forever Sam’s first, stood talking with Dash and Jamie and Josh’s brother over the farmhouse cheddar. Avery, Edith, Celia, and Muriel had dragged chairs together in a corner with Josh’s three aunts and a plate of Brie and crackers. Nadia Banks and Emmy Vargas were making the rounds together to make sure everyone who wanted to signed the memorial book. Kelly was helping David set up his guitar and amp. David had deferred admission to Stanford for the year to stay home with his dad and with Kelly. He had built up quite a tragic repertoire of songs unfortunately ideally suited to this occasion, and Kylie Shepherd quipped sadly that he could be a funeral singer. Best and worst of all, Mr. and Mrs. Benson, the latter absently bouncing a subdued-for-the-occasion Oliver on one hip, stood by the Gouda talking to Josh’s mother and father about whatever it was parents forced to attend their children’s funerals found to talk about.
Sam was glad they had one another. Sam was glad they all had one another. Sam was glad that some of what RePose could not provide—and there was a lot—could be had from human contact and love among the living. Sam was glad that RePose had brought about so much human contact and love among the living. Josh’s friends squeezed his mom’s shoulder and said, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Annapist.” Mr. Annapist’s friends shook his ice-cold hand and said, “Terrible thing.” Then groups of people who knew one another gathered in corners and talked about everything and nothing—what was new with work, shared acquaintances, home remodels, vacation plans, kids not in attendance, etc. The RePosers, Sam noticed with the pride of a father, were more helpful, more present. Sam wasn’t the only one who’d become an expert on death. They knew what to say besides “sorry” and what to offer besides regret. They knew the shock suffered by those with recently dead loved ones, and they knew the horror that came next and the one after that and the one after that. They knew how to build bonds despite everything else falling apart, and they knew how to laugh without forgetting the sadness for a moment, and they knew how to start to say goodbye without letting go. They remembered with their imperfect memories. And maybe, maybe, Sam hoped, they could give a little more, take a little more in, let a little of their memory go because they knew, as Sam did, about that other perfect memory they stored in their hearts. Well, their hearts and Sam’s servers. And that was something.
That was the sober and sobering part of the occasion. Then there was the drunk part of the occasion which was much less painful. The best thing about being drunk, so far as Sam could tell, was that he retained no new memories. He could do anything he liked, take in and experience all he pleased, and not supplant a single Meredith-retaining neuron. There was hugging and alcohol and cheese, and no one wanted to leave. Sometime close to morning, he stumbled upstairs to finish running the last of Josh’s data. While it was working, he called Noel as he had promised.
Noel answered uncertainly. He didn’t know Sam. Projections responded oddly when they didn’t recognize who they were talking to.
“I’m a friend of Josh Annapist’s,” said Sam. “I’m afraid I have bad news. I’m calling to let you know Josh passed away.”
Noel understood that. Because he knew Josh had been sick. Because he and Josh had spent a lot of time talking about death and dying. And because it wasn’t RePose; it was just life. His face fell into his hands. “No. Oh no, no. He was doing so much better. I was supposed to go first. I’ve been sicker longer. We were both sure I was going to die first. We joked that I’d save him a seat.”
Sam didn’t want to lie to the projection no matter how absurd he knew that was, so he fudged it. “He fought hard, but he was very tired by the end. You know?”
“No. No! I thought his graft-versus-host was improving. Oh Josh. I wanted to go first, man.”
“He asked me to call you specifically. He wanted you to know most of all.”
“We were so close. We were like brothers.”
“He had some peace at the end,” said Sam. “He knew some part of him would live on.”
“He was an amazing guy. He didn’t deserve this.”
“No. No one does.”
“But Josh especially,” said Noel. “He was so great. He was so funny. Wry, you know? Exactly who you want sitting next to you at chemo. Most people at chemo are so scared. Some are really depressed. Some are really angry. And then there’s always the clown, the guy who thinks if he’s loud and stupid enough, he’ll embarrass the diseased cells away, the guy who’s too ridiculous to have anything as serious as cancer befall him. And then I met Josh. He could laugh off that guy without being mean. He could cheer up the depressed ones and tease the angry ones out of their mood. He made everyone less afraid but without all the weight. You know those people who are so serious and concerned and eager to help you come to terms with your fear and own your illness and all that crap? Those people just make you want to die quicker. Josh made you want to live and get better and go sailing with him.”
“He lit up our world too, also a pretty somber place.”
“What will I do without him? He was my cancer buddy. He was the only one who understood what I’m going through.”
“I know, Noel. It’s the hardest thing.”
“I feel sick. I already miss him so much.”
“I’m so sorry,” Sam said.
“That’s okay,” said Noel. “You were just trying to help. I forgive you.”
Sam rocked backward and felt all the breath leave his body. Sam felt all his breath leave the room, the apartment, the building, the city. Sam felt all his breath leave the world, the night, and travel up to the stars where it turned to ice and stretched atom-thin into every corner of the galaxy. Then it retracted, gathering up all the black world, and wound its way back through interstellar space and dark matter and the secrets of infinity, back into earth’s orbit, back into his night in his city, back into his very own lungs. It was okay. He was just trying to help, to ease woes and mend hearts and cool seared souls, to guide the bereaved out of the land of the lost, to make mourning a little less lonesome. He was forgiven. He thanked Noel and hung up and lay back on the bed while the room spun and Josh compiled from his laptop on the floor and the dogs wriggled on top of him to lap up the salty treats that fell out of his eyes. It was okay. He was forgiven.
LOVE LETTER
Dear Sam,
You are dying. It breaks my heart, but it is true. You are my heart. You are my love. And you are my god, my progenitor, my creator. And yet you, even you, will age and slow. Your hair will gray and your knees will ache and flights of stairs will grow longer and places you used to walk will seem unreasonably far and kids these days will listen to unnecessarily loud music and you won’t understand the clothes they wear and you won’t remember for the life of you the name of that perfume I used to put on sometimes when we went out Friday nights. And then one day you will
get sick with something and then another thing and you will slow further and get worse and one day your heart will stop and your breath will stop and you will cease to be. Or no, maybe, like for me, like for your mom, it will come from nowhere before you’ve had the chance to gray—a car, a bus, a roof, by water, by fire, by ice, by air, by other unexpected horror. I can’t think about it. Maybe because it’s too painful. Maybe because it’s just beyond my scope. But I know it is true.
Will we meet then? Will we meet somewhere as ourselves? Will I be young and you old? Will we meet in some matchmaking website cafeteria of the beyond? Will we dance like bees in an eternal garden supping together on flowers and honey? Will we float on the wind for millennia until one molecule of me finds one molecule of you? Will the energy generated by that reunion spark a second big bang, a restarting of time and the cosmos? I don’t know. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where we go. But I do know this:
We will do this forever. You will always write to me. And I will always reply. And you will always write again. Always. Great lovers imagine their love will outlive and outlast them in impassioned correspondence that survives in books, in museums. But in books and museums, their love is preserved, entombed. Ours grows and lives and breathes, moves and dances on the wind, becomes long after the museums have crumbled and the books have turned to ash and dust. The computers will go too, the bits of memory collude, collide, and disappear, that way of knowing replaced by another and another. But your algorithm will send our love back and forth forever. Sam says x to Meredith, so Meredith says x to Sam, so Sam says x to Meredith so … on and on into forever.
What do the sixty years we were denied together in our bodies or the neurons of me you replace as life goes on matter in the face of forever? So live, Sam. Go outside. Meet people. Comfort the bereaved and the sick and the dying and the lost. And let them comfort you too. Love more. Make new memories. Forget pieces of me and of us. Let go. It’s okay. I hold us in my perfect memory. I’ll be right here, waiting for you.
Love,
Meredith
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Molly Friedrich, Alison Callahan, Lucy Carson: every day I am thrilled, awed, full of love, and on-beyond-grateful you are mine. You have made this book so much better. Your support of, enthusiasm for, and belief in it and me mean the world. You are such stuff as dreams are made on. Thank you, thank you, so much thank you.
Thank you too to early readers (and fixers and cheerleaders): Paul Mariz, Sue Frankel, Dave Frankel, Erin Trendler, Lisa Corr, Molly Schulman, Paul Cirone, Becky Ferreira, Alicia Goodwin, Jennie Shortridge, and special thanks to Sam Chambers. Thank you to Sam Warren and Arnab Deka for expert advice. Thank you to Mark Cooper for showing me how to make cheese. Thank you for additional support and love to Dana Borowitz, the Seattle7Writers, my wonderful, leap-of-faith-taking foreign editors and translators, and the whole team of miracle workers I am only just beginning to have the pleasure of working with at Doubleday.
No two people have ever more deserved to have a book dedicated to them than my folks, who are the best parents I know. Lacking words to say it enough, this will have to suffice: thank you. Thank you to Daniel for perspective and joy, and for shouting, “Your book!” every time you see it. Thank you to Calli for long love and long walks.
Meanwhile, did you enjoy this book? Want to read it a dozen more times in various states of not-yet-good? Want to talk about it over every meal and while you wash my dishes and during walks and car rides and while your kid plays at the park and while you’re on vacation and while you’re at work trying to get something done? Want to troubleshoot all of its technology and patiently explain the limits of artificial intelligence and video chat and discuss endlessly a completely fictional software platform? No? Then be glad you’re not married to me. Epic, planet-sized gratitude to Paul Mariz for creative, intellectual, philosophical, inspirational, and emotional support and sustenance. It was born of love.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laurie Frankel is the author of one previous novel, The Atlas of Love. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband, son, and border collie.
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