Consent: A Memoir

by Jill Ciment

(note that I use the term scene, not memory—scenes in a memoir are no more accurate than reenactments on Forensic Files),

The story of how a couple meets, who kisses whom first, who declares their love first, is as instrumental to a couple’s mythology as a creation myth is to a society’s ideology. The ownership of those memories is wrested back and forth between the parties (the bickering and talking over and cutting in that couples resort to when recounting their beginnings) until one of the parties dies.

These were the days before pharmacological fixes, so no one had any choice but to talk and talk and talk until the demons got bored and left on their own.

“After so many years, it’s not losing the man that matters,” they had all agreed, “it’s losing the life.” I had taken another woman’s life and I knew it.

“Do you think we’re stupid?” she asked. “First we are told that there is an invisible piece of artwork under our daughter’s paintings and now you are telling us there is another painting under the cows. My daughter loved cows. Why can’t cows just be cows?”

“He is getting a second chance at sixty-two, have some compassion,” my mother said. “He may be old enough to be your father, but remember, he isn’t your parent. He does not love you unconditionally.”