The Moment You Remember, You Forget

By Tiffany Jimenez

Robert has been an imaginary twin brother to Lillian for over eighteen years.

After the sudden and deliberate death of their older sister, Robert is forced to confront the inevitability of his own death as an imagined being.

Interspersed between Robert's grappling with the logistics of what he is, are the voic

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luna Press Publishing
• Release date: Feb 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781913387846

Book preview

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The Moment

You Remember, You Forget

Tiffany

Jimenez

LUNA NOVELLA #9

Text Copyright © 2022 Tiffany Jimenez

Cover © 2022 Jay Johnstone

First published by Luna Press Publishing, Edinburgh, 2022

The right of Tiffany Jimenez to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The Moment You Remember, You Forget ©2022. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or oth- erwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owners. Nor can it be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

www.lunapresspublishing.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-913387-84-6.

To my mother who gave me the freedom

to believe—in anything and everyone.

Part I - How

Robert

I remember the first time I thought that Lillian and I were finally through. It was on her twin sisters’, Lacey and Samantha’s, tenth birthday. Lillian is just a year younger than the twins. I should say now that their dad was out of the picture, moved to the Midwest and opened up a boutique grocery store with his new wife and family. Their mother wasn’t someone who talked about it and the girls never asked. They laughed a lot whenever we were watching a movie where a man leaves a woman, cheats on a woman. It made me uncomfortable, to say the least, but I grew to laugh, too, over time.

I became Lillian’s imaginary brother late in her life, and I haven’t quite had a chance to leave. She was eight when I met her. We are now twenty-seven. I’ve seen Lillian move through a lot of phases, but she’s performed them all in some sort of gown and doesn’t seem to be distracted enough to forget about me. Usually, imaginary friends or relatives or creatures, whatever you want to call them, are out of their person’s life by the time that person turns about seven. Since Lillian got such a late start, I thought I wouldn’t be around for long. Most conjure us up out of a basic need not met—from loneliness to dissatisfaction to plain boredom—and though an imaginary being can touch and move things, only our kid can see us and touch us back.

The cake they had for the twins was absolutely delicious. Lillian saved me a piece. It was flourless chocolate cake with powdered sugar. Lillian told me I ought to celebrate our sisters’ birthday, being the youngest and all—oh, and the boy! Lillian was so hyped up from the powdered sugar, I wondered if she’d ever be so happy again in her life. And it wasn’t even her birthday.

I thought Lillian and I were finally through because it was the first time she introduced me to the family. She kept me to herself for just over a year. Usually, this sort of big reveal results in the imaginary friend bearer to be reasoned with in a way that makes them truly wonder at the reality of their imaginary friend/relative/creature/whatever. So I packed my things. Even took Lillian’s gold whistle I helped her win at the fair because she never had a chance of winning it without me anyway.

The funny thing that happened, though, is that the family didn’t reason with her. Instead, they reached their arms out to where Lillian pointed I was sitting, and they reached so far, some of them even caught my ear.

As children, Lillian and I never got along. It was like she made me appear just to have someone to fight with. I came just before their mother, Jillian, got sick, and over the years of decline, I witnessed all the family members do their best to distinguish themselves as something note-worthy.

Lillian got rid of any pants she owned by age ten.

Lacey got pregnant with Jill at seventeen.

Samantha ran away shortly afterwards to Los Angeles when their mother, Jillian, was put in a home.

(Oh, and I dyed my hair blue.)

Neither Lacey nor Lillian have heard from Samantha since then. We know she’s alive, though. Lacey hired a P.I. as a gift to herself on turning twenty-two. When the P.I. told us Samantha was wealthy, Lillian wrote Sam to send her five dresses. One for every birthday she’d missed—Consider each carefully for the age I was when you should’ve bought them for me, she wrote. Each one better be more sophisticated than the last.

And just recently, Lacey mysteriously died, leaving behind her nine-year-old daughter Jill (who she named after her mother) and a husband she never got around to divorcing. Besides Lillian, Jill’s the only other person who can see me, which still startles me. I think it has something to do with the heterochromia iridis that she inherited from her mother. The colour difference makes it hard to tell if one or both of her eyes can see me. I wonder sometimes if Lillian does forget about me, whether Jill will call for me from the kitchen while Lillian is talking about some satin pink dress she’s seen in a store window downtown.

I wonder if I’ll be able to hear her.

Lillian - 27

She was standing up when it happened. I’d just sat down after telling Jill to mind her own business while the adults talked. Lacey had been putting off signing the divorce papers and I’d come over to ask if she was ready to stop acting so womanly and wronged and hooked to a man who still wasn’t even a man yet. We used to laugh at women who did these sorts of things. You are twenty-eight years old, I had planned on saying, "and have acted like fifty your entire life. You, my dear sister, need to not give a fuck."

I watched her set down a soaped-up mug that I’d given her a few weeks ago, one that said, Time For Bed. on it in dark heavy letters. It was customised, and I was quite proud of it. Rob didn’t get the joke. Coffee mugs are supposed to symbolise morning time and helping wake you up. Get it now? He shook his head: You encourage depression.

The suds from the mug and the other cups she’d scrubbed worked their way over the lip of the counter, trailing downwards to the floor.

Might want to get that, I’d said.

When she didn’t move, I said something like, Need help? and that’s when she fell. Like she was just waiting for someone to ask.

Her shoulder hit the ground first. Then her hip.

I caught her head, and it was so light, I remember saying, Filling your head with sweet nothings lately?

I regret saying that.

I really thought she’d just fainted. That she was pretending to faint. We did that as kids. Pretended to faint, to be dead, holding our mouths closed, but breathing through our noses. Only Rob had perfected the ability to play dead. Only he knew how to hold his breath just enough.

When I noticed that her chest wasn’t moving and realised that her shoulder and hip hit the ground so hard, I took a dishcloth from above me and nestled it under her head. Then I called the police. Then I told Jill to stay away.

Samantha - 28

She doesn’t know that Lacey died.

The day it happens, Samantha has decided to clean her apartment. Her boyfriend is still asleep. He’s been her boyfriend since she’s moved here.