The Bench by the Sea

         Despite the cold of the bleak midwinter, Annabelle and Gabriel, sat on the bench. It was short, barely wide enough for the two of them to sit abreast, but they enjoyed the warmth of each other, huddled close, hand in hand. It was a special place, a place where memories stayed and did not wander, even if they had over the course of the last sixty years.

         “Do you remember,” Annabelle began, “when we came here?” Her voice was fragile, like the blowing grass around them.

         Gabriel nodded.

         “Do you remember the sun?”

         “It was sailing, you said,” he replied, his own voice choked, rusty.

         Annabelle smiled. Her papery skin creased in some places. “You remember.”

         Gabriel squeezed her gloved hand.

         He was wandering, she knew. Ever since Cathy and the boy that she could not remember sailed away and never returned, he had been different, wandering like Cathy wandered. Somewhere underneath his wispy white hair his brain was starting over. And that was what the wandering was. Starting over.

         “Gabriel,” she whispered, squeezing his hand back. “Do you remember where the sun was going?”

         His face, splotched with freckles and other brown things, scrunched. “Cathy's in the hospital still?”

         Annabelle retained her smile, but it felt very empty. “No, she's gone. Cathy's gone. Do you remember what was with the sun that was sailing, Gabriel?”

         “She shouldn't have gone with that boy,” he scolded no one in particular. “He was bad news.”

         She laid her gloved hand on his thigh. “Do you remember when we came here, honey?”

         He was grinning suddenly, the pink plastic of his dentures seated on his gums. “I remember the sun, about how it was sailing.” He stopped. “And I remember the boat we saw.” He frowned. “Cathy shouldn't have gone with that boy on his yacht. Fancy rich kid, bad news.”

         She could feel his pulse rising, his blood rushing, as her hand lay on his thigh. She could feel him shaking. “Gabriel, Gabriel, do you remember the name of the boat sailing away with the sun?”

         His mouth was fidgeting, his eyebrows wrinkled tight. His eyes were glossy, deep. “The name,” he gasped at last. “The name of the boat was...Voyager.”

         “And do you remember what you said to me that time when we saw the boat named Voyager?” She leaned on his shoulder. Back then, he had been more solid, larger than she. Now they were both small.

         “I said-” The words hung on his tongue, begging for release but finding no way to free themselves. They were held captive by the forgetting.

         But the memory was there, Annabelle knew. She knew he could not, would not ever forget.

         “We were sitting together, looking at the Voyager as it sailed away with the sun,” she said, the words almost lyrical. “And you asked me-”

         “-I asked you to go sailing with me for a long, long time.”

         Annabelle was warm all over. The memory was with her, too, but she could never remember the warmth that came with the words. But it was here, with this tiny bench overlooking the sea at sunset in the bleak midwinter.

         “Yes,” she said breathlessly, sixty years younger, as she tilted her head against Gabriel's broad, even shoulder.