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Elvis Presley’s warbling on the overhead speakers as Mom and I browse a warm, wood-splashed Barnes & Noble. She wants to buy a puzzle for my nephew in Florida. She turns to me.

“Oh god, the day Elvis died? This woman I was working with started bawling. Crying and crying, right at her desk. She got so hysterical I made her go home.”

I pick up a book from a pile on a table. I don’t know the author or what the book’s about, but I’m drawn to the cover—a blue cartoon skull with an X and a heart in the eye sockets. I hold the book as we browse.

“Where were you working when Elvis died?”

Mom answers boldly: “Kaiser Hospital. Managing medical records.”

I stop. I set the book down, on a shelf it doesn’t belong on. “Mom, you started working at Kaiser in 1991.”

“I know.” 

“Elvis died in 1977.”

“He did not…. He did not….” She spits the words out as if they taste sour in her mouth. She doesn’t sound seventy-two in this moment. She doesn’t sound any age. She simply sounds…less….

“Yes, he did. Mom. I was two when Elvis died. He died in the ’70s, not the ’90s. Think about it for a minute.”

She’s thinking about it. She’s blinking, as if flipping back through her memory’s ledger, searching for the page that says, “Elvis” or “Day Elvis Died.” She can’t find it.

“No…he didn’t die in the ’70s. No, I remember, he died in the…in the….”

“But he did. Remember all the tabloids in the ’80s saying he was still alive? That an alien was pregnant with his baby? Standing in the checkout line at the grocery store? You used to laugh at those magazines. You used to make jokes.” I raise my eyebrows and laugh, doing my best impersonation of Mom reading Elvis tabloids in the ’80s. “Remember that?”

Her eyes flicker at the mention of the tabloids. She remembers them, but doesn’t seem to know when she remembers them. She says nothing, hunting for her phone in her purse, ignoring me and the sudden unease that’s uncoiled between us. And that makes me remember. How yesterday she showed me a picture on Facebook, of a woman with two snarling rottweilers on either side of her. The dogs were comically oversized, easily two dozen feet tall in proportion to the woman, clearly photoshopped from some other picture. The woman was smiling and blissful, flanked by two giant drooling monsters.

“I want dogs just like that,” she’d said, showing me the picture on her phone. “I don’t know what breed they are but I want them.”

I’d looked at the picture. I’d laughed.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Mom, are you serious?”

She’d stared at her phone, then me. “Yes, I’m serious.” 

I’d taken the phone from her hand. I’d held it up to her. “Mom, dogs that big would eat that woman alive. They’d eat you alive. Dogs don’t get that big. This picture’s fake. I mean, look at it.” 

She’d looked again at the picture, studied it, but she couldn’t quite do it. She couldn’t flip that switch in her mind that would make her believe it was fake. I could see her frustration—it crawled like a wasp on her face, something she felt but was unsure how to swat away. She didn’t like that I’d laughed, didn’t like she couldn’t tell real dogs from fake dogs.

I don’t like that, twice in two days, I’ve seen Mom become less.

Mom grabs a puzzle from a shelf. “Do you think Ben would like this one?” I look. Mickey Mouse through the Years. One thousand pieces.

“Maybe. Do you know if he likes puzzles?” 

“I don’t know. I just want to get him something. He’s only thirteen and Florida is so far away. I want him to remember he has a grandmother. I don’t want him to forget who I am.” 

She pays for the puzzle in cash, as always. The bills crisp, ranked from largest to smallest denomination. Behind us, a couple with a sleeping newborn baby in a front-facing carrier, strapped to the mother. Mom sees them and gasps.

“Oh my goodness! Look at that baby! Just so small and cute!”

“Thank you,” says the mother. She smiles.

Mom takes a step toward the mother. She jabs at the carrier. “Is there room in there for me? I’m light! I promise! I’ll just crawl right in next to your baby and sleep!”

The mother’s smile falters. So does the father’s.

“You can carry us both around! I’ll even share the bottle! I’m not stingy!” Mom takes another step forward. “I’ll be a baby too!” The father steps in front of the mother. 

Sweat explodes on my hairline. All at once it’s too stuffy, too hot. I tap Mom on the arm. “Mom…c’mon. Let’s go….”

Outside, on the sidewalk, she turns to me. “Do you think I made those people uncomfortable?” It’s a confession disguised as a question, forced out by the part of her, I think, that suspects Elvis wasn’t actually alive in the ’90s.

I nod. “I think…maybe. I mean, they don’t know you.”

Again, she hunts for her phone in her purse. Wide open, I’ve never seen it so stuffed and disorganized. Receipts, wrappers, and stray wads of paper. How long has it been this way? Mom shakes the puzzle at me. “I really hope Ben likes this,” she says. 

“I’m sure he will.”

“Florida is just so far away. And I don’t want him to forget me.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want him to forget who I am.”

 I nod. “I know. I know, Mom.”

 

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WILL MCMILLAN is a gay writer born and raised in the untamed wild of the Pacific Northwest, where he lives to this day. To date, his essays have been featured in over fifty literary journals, including CRAFT, Autofocus, Bending Genres, and the Atticus Review, among others. He has been nominated for The Best American Essays (listed as a “notable essayist” in 2022 and 2024) and the Pushcart Prize, and is a Best Small Fictions 2023 winner. Find Will on Bluesky @willmcmillan.bsky.social and on Instagram @willmcmn.

 

Featured image by Sigmund, courtesy of Unsplash.