Post Script to Fucking and Dead Rabbits

"Eleven Israeli athletes at Olympic Games in Munich are killed after eight members of an Arab terrorist group invade Olympic Village; five guerrillas and one policeman are also killed (Sept. 5)."

“Lisa,” I say, “I wrote today.”
“Oh yeah, what did you write?” she asks.
“Well, not that much. I had trouble writing, but then I listened to music and it’s amazing, music is.” I don’t want to tell her Garth has upset me, angry as he is that I didn’t answer my phone when he called and what does he expect anyhow ─ I’m not on call and he’s so heavy and wide, he blocks out even the winter sun.
“So what did you write?” she asks again. I tell her it has to do with her father and what I’m about to say has no sex in it, because she can’t hear her mother has a breathing cunt.
“About your father and I in Guelph 1972, first in the motel before the townhouse, and then about the farm on highway - what was it?”
“I wasn’t there, remember?” she says, and I look at her because she's right of course. But still I figure she can just reach inside and pull out the right answer like swooping a hand into one of those trainer bras and extracting Kleenex.
“Anyhow they were just vignettes, because I have to flesh out my life. So I wrote about the first step for mankind─ how we were in this motel in Guelph because we didn’t have our place set up and we were watching . . .”

Lisa gets up to bring her dishes to the sink. She comes home tired from teaching ESL and she calls up hello from the front door and eats left-overs while I worry about lean times, this damn recession and the cost of food.
“You’re talking about something that took place in 1969, Mom,” she says.
“I remember it. I was watching with your father in our motel room.”
“Not in ‘72” she says. “You have to be factual when you mention events that actually took place, even in fiction.”

And it is odd, how memories of events merge with years. These days I'm looking at my life scenes on old microfilm when a prop pops out and lures me in. "I can’t stay for long," I say, but I take of my coat anyhow. How does this guilt feel? It casts a chill on my heart, like muscles damp and aching from inclement weather.

It’s odd about memories,” I say to Lisa. I want her to know I’m weaving my way through these sets with their misplaced props, and I land up in a rumpled motel bed watching the moon landing in 1972, while on the 1969 Bourret Street set a TV announcer reports about eight Jewish athletes killed in Munich.
“You have to be accurate,” she says.
“Maybe I should add a footnote," I say.
“Or rewrite,” she says.
“My life?” I say and then I add I don’t really mean that at all and tell her I’m reading Bukwoski and that I laughed out loud in my bed last night.

Copyright Janice Colman 2008