The Things We Correct

The first thing wrong with Tuesday was the rain, although Mara Vale would later understand that the rain was one of the few things that had happened exactly as it should. She noticed it at 7:16am that morning when she stepped out of Number 18 wearing a blue dress and found Bellweather moving beneath umbrellas. Rain struck the pavement hard enough to mist around people's ankles, and Mara retreated beneath the awning before it ruined her suede heels. She checked her phone. Rain until noon, high of sixty-one. She refreshed the forecast twice, irritated by the certainty that she'd checked before bed. Seventy-two and sunny. She remembered standing in her bathroom brushing her teeth while deciding the blue dress could have one final appearance before autumn made bare legs unreasonable.

"You're going to drown dressed like that." Mr. Voss from 3B stopped beside her and collapsed his red umbrella. Mara smiled automatically, then realized what bothered her. He was standing straight. No black aluminum cane, no careful distribution of weight onto his left side. When she asked where the cane was, he looked at his empty hands and laughed. "What cane?" Mara reminded him about the hip replacement he'd spent September complaining about, even describing the physical therapist who came Tuesdays and Thursdays, but his amusement faded into something gentler. "Original parts, far as I know." He touched her arm before returning to the rain, and the concern in the gesture embarrassed her enough that she didn't mention the silver tape she remembered wrapping around the bottom of his cane after its rubber tip split. She watched him cross the street without limping and decided she'd confused him with someone else.

By the time she reached Bracken & Rowe, Mara had also decided she'd checked Wednesday's forecast by mistake. Memories borrowed details from one day and attached them to another. There were ordinary explanations for ordinary mistakes, and Mara distrusted people who reached for interesting explanations before exhausting boring ones. That reasoning lasted until she reached her desk and found a framed photograph beside her monitor. In it, Mara stood outside Bellweather House with one arm around her mother, both of them laughing at something beyond the camera. Evelyn Vale had died at forty-six, when Mara was seventeen. The woman in the photograph was at least sixty.

Mara sat down without removing her coat. Her mother's hair had gone silver and was braided over one shoulder. Reading glasses hung from a chain against her chest, and there were lines around her mouth Mara had never seen because Evelyn had never lived long enough to acquire them. Mara turned the frame over, looking for a note or some indication of a joke, but the backing was blank. What unsettled her most was not seeing her dead mother. It was seeing that she'd aged. Grief had allowed Mara to imagine Evelyn alive a thousand times, but always at forty-six. She had never wondered what her mother's throat would look like at sixty-two.

"Mara?" Dennis, her manager, stood at the entrance to her cubicle with a folder tucked beneath his arm. She placed the photograph facedown before answering, and he frowned at the movement. "You okay? You look sick." Mara assured him she was fine, then noticed the date on her monitor and frowned. Dennis didn't work Tuesdays. His wife had dialysis, something he'd complained about rearranging his schedule around for nearly a year. When Mara asked why he wasn't with her, his expression changed so completely that she knew she'd made a mistake before he answered. "My wife died six years ago." He shifted the folder against his stomach and studied Mara carefully. "You came to the funeral."

The memory arrived the instant he said it. Dennis in a navy suit. His daughter shredding a tissue across her lap. A church Mara had never consciously remembered entering. Beneath it existed another memory of Dennis standing beside the copier yesterday, complaining that his wife had changed nephrologists again. Mara could remember rolling her eyes when he said the new doctor's name. She could remember teasing him that at least somebody in his marriage willingly went to the doctor. Both memories felt lived. She should have stopped there, but confusion made her impatient. "How did she die?"

"Kidney failure."

Something loosened behind Mara's eyes.

The nephrologist's name vanished.

Mara gripped the edge of her desk. She remembered that Dennis had complained about someone, but the conversation itself had become inaccessible, as though a sentence had been cut from a page without disturbing the words around it. "What was her doctor's name?"

Dennis took a step backward. "I think you should go home."

"Yesterday you told me."

"Mara, she's been dead for six years."

The harder Mara tried to recover the conversation, the less remained. By the time the elevator doors closed behind her, she could no longer remember Dennis ever speaking about his wife alive. She could only remember that, minutes earlier, she had remembered it.

She called Celeste from the cab.

"You have four minutes before I have to pretend quarterly forecasting means something to me," Celeste said around a mouthful of food.

Mara closed her eyes at the sound of her best friend's voice. "What did I wear to your birthday dinner?"

"Are you fishing for compliments again?"

"Just answer me."

"The blue dress." Celeste swallowed, then laughed softly. "The one that made me question whether I actually love you."

Relief weakened Mara's shoulders. She asked what Celeste had been drinking, and Celeste answered pinot without hesitation. Mara nearly asked whether Mr. Voss had undergone surgery. Instead she pictured Dennis's face after she'd forced him to answer. "Never mind."

Celeste stopped chewing. "What's going on?"

"Bad morning."

"Do you want me to come over?"

Mara looked through the rain-streaked window and imagined asking Celeste enough questions to make something disappear. "No. I'll be okay."

"Text me when you're home. Actual words, please. A thumbs-up does not constitute proof of life." Celeste's tone remained light, but Mara could hear the concern underneath it. Before hanging up, Celeste told her to eat something, and Mara called her Mom. Celeste made an exaggerated sound of disgust. "Don't put that evil on me."

At home, Mara went directly to the cabinet above the refrigerator. Behind the serving bowls sat the ugly ceramic cat her mother had made before Mara was born, one ear larger than the other. Mara remembered packing it after the funeral. Her father had asked why she wanted the hideous thing, and she'd screamed at him so viciously they hadn't spoken for three weeks. The memory comforted her because nobody else was there to correct it.

Then her phone rang.

MOM.

Mara stared until the fourth ring before answering. Evelyn's voice came through older than Mara remembered but unmistakable. "Mara? Dennis called me. What's going on?" Mara sank onto a kitchen chair. She remembered that voice shouting her name across a swimming pool when she was eight, singing badly while making pancakes, whispering I'm right here when Mara woke after having her tonsils removed. She also remembered the final voicemail Evelyn had left before the accident, a message Mara kept for seven years because deleting it felt too much like agreeing she was dead.

"Where are you?" Mara asked.

There was a hesitation. "Home."

"Stay there."

"Mara—"

"Please."

The ceramic cat slipped from Mara's hand and broke against the tile.

Evelyn exhaled sharply. "Did you break it?"

Mara stared at the pieces. "How did you know?"

Her mother didn't answer.

"Mom?"

"You always drop it."

Mara felt the skin tighten across her arms. "Always?"

Evelyn sighed, and Mara heard exhaustion rather than confusion. "Don't ask me anything else."

The warning brought Dennis immediately to mind. Mara looked at the shattered cat and chose her words carefully. "You know what's happening."

"I know what's happened before."

Mara pressed the phone against her ear but resisted the obvious question. She waited instead, and eventually her mother filled the silence. This was the third time. The first had lasted three days, the second almost a week. Each time Mara remembered a life slightly different from everyone else's, and each time she tried to determine which memories were real. She searched photographs, called hospitals, found obituaries, questioned people. According to Evelyn, every answer calmed her briefly and cost her something afterward.

"What did it cost?"

Her mother began to cry. "Don't make me tell you."

Mara almost pushed. She felt the question form with the same irresistible urgency as pressing a sore tooth to see whether it still hurt. Instead, she remembered Dennis's wife and stopped. Her mother cried more quietly on the other end.

"Last time you called it correction," Evelyn finally said. "You told me there could be two versions of something until you decided one had to be wrong."

"That doesn't make sense."

"I know."

"What happens to the wrong one?"

Evelyn went silent.

Mara closed her eyes. "Don't answer that."

For the first time that morning, she felt as though she'd done something correctly.

After ending the call, Mara sat on the kitchen floor gathering pieces of the ceramic cat. Something white protruded from its hollow center. She pulled out a tightly folded sheet of paper covered in her own handwriting. Across the top she'd written FOR THE NEXT TIME, followed by a warning: There is nothing wrong with your memory. Do not prove anything. Every contradiction can exist until you demand an answer. Once you know, the other version disappears.

Mara read it twice. The rest was shorter. Mom thinks this started with the accident on Route Nine. She's wrong. I remember that night three ways. In one, Mom died. In one, I died for six minutes. In one, neither of us was in the car. Beneath that, Mara had written a final sentence heavily enough to dent the paper: If it's Tuesday, don't ask who knocks.

Three knocks sounded from the apartment door.

Mara remained on the floor.

"Mara?" Her mother's voice came through the door. Not the older voice she'd heard on the phone. This was Evelyn at forty-six, exactly as Mara remembered her. "I left my keys in your car."

Mara rose and approached the door without touching it. Her phone began ringing behind her. MOM illuminated the screen on the kitchen counter while the woman outside knocked again and complained about being wet.

Two mothers.

Mara wanted to look through the peephole. She wanted to ask the woman outside what she'd made for Mara's twelfth birthday or what song she'd sung while making pancakes. One correct answer could settle everything.

One correct answer could also make the other woman disappear.

Mara backed away from the door.

The woman outside continued knocking for another minute before stopping. Mara's phone stopped ringing soon afterward. Neither silence felt like victory.

At 4:38, Celeste texted.

You okay?

Mara stared at her name with a relief so intense it hurt.

Yes. Have we done this before?

She deleted the question before sending it.

Instead she typed, I'm home. I'm not checking anything.

The typing bubble appeared immediately.

Good.

Mara's fingers hovered over the screen.

Another message arrived.

You almost figured it out last time. Then you asked if I was alive.

Mara's stomach tightened. A memory appeared before she could prevent it: Celeste in a yellow dress inside a coffin. Her mother crying over the body. Mara standing beside her with a hand pressed against the wood because the funeral director had told her not to touch Celeste's face.

She dropped the phone.

The memory existed alongside the conversation in the cab. Neither weakened the other.

Mara picked up the phone carefully.

I'm not asking.

Celeste replied with a heart.

Mara began to cry.

She cried because Celeste might be alive. She cried because Celeste might be dead. Mostly she cried because, for the first time in her life, loving someone required her to accept that she might never know which was true.

Night came slowly. Mara ignored the urge to search her father's name, Dennis's wife, Mr. Voss's surgery, her mother's accident. Questions kept occurring to her, but she began recognizing them for what they were: little executions disguised as curiosity. Certainty had always felt harmless because people treated knowing as better than not knowing. Now Mara understood there were answers sharp enough to cut away everything surrounding them.

At 11:59, her phone illuminated with another message from Celeste.

Still there?

Yes.

One more minute.

Mara watched the kitchen clock. Midnight arrived without thunder, flickering lights or any other courtesy announcing that she'd survived Tuesday. The minute simply changed.

Then Mara noticed a photograph beside the fruit bowl.

She hadn't put it there.

It showed a long table at Bellweather House. Her mother sat at one end, sixty-two and silver-haired. Her father stood behind her with one hand on her shoulder. Celeste leaned across the table laughing. Dennis sat beside his wife. Through the restaurant window, Mr. Voss passed on the sidewalk with his cane.

Every contradiction Mara had resisted correcting occupied the same photograph.

She picked it up carefully. Her first impulse was to determine when it had been taken, but she caught herself and smiled.

Then she noticed the empty chair.

It was centered between her mother and Celeste, slightly pulled away from the table. Everyone else seemed to be looking toward whoever should have been sitting there.

Mara searched the photograph once.

Then again.

She wasn't in it.

A question rose immediately. Where was she?

Her fingers tightened around the frame.

She could ask Celeste. Her mother. She could turn the photograph over and search for a date. She could spend the morning determining exactly why a picture containing everyone she'd nearly erased had somehow erased her instead.

Mara set the photograph facedown.

Her phone vibrated.

You made it past Tuesday.

She looked at Celeste's message, then at the overturned photograph. Something inside her demanded an explanation with such force that she nearly laughed. She had spent her entire life believing questions deserved answers simply because they could be asked.

Not anymore.

Mara switched off the kitchen light and left the photograph where it was.

For once, she let herself remain missing.