She stopped abruptly, remembering that Fern didn’t, never having had one. She got up—and was saved by Phyllis, who moved in. What a hostess, Pam thought, and moved toward Jerry and the bar. The idea of saying that to poor Fern, Pam thought. This is certainly one of my hopeless evenings. She went toward Jerry.

“I don’t,” she said when she reached him, “remember anything about anything. Except one teacher with green hair, and that was the wrong woman.”

Jerry said it seemed very likely.

“There’s something a little ghoulish about all this digging up of the past,” Pam said. “Suppose some of it’s still alive?” she added.

“Huh?” Jerry said.

He was told not to bother. And that Pam could do with a drink. Jerry poured, for them both, from a pitcher in which ice tinkled.

“Sometime,” Pam said, “she’s going to remember that one thing too many. That’s what I mean. You see?”

“No,” Jerry said, simply.

“Not everybody,” Pam said, a little darkly, “wants everything remembered about everything. Because—”

Stanley Pitt, who had turned away, turned quickly back. He informed Pam that she had something there.

“I heard her telling Hortense—” Stanley Pitt said, and stopped abruptly, since Hortense, slim and graceful (and so beautifully arrayed) was coming toward them.

“How Fern doesn’t change,” Hortense said. “Pam, do you remember the boy next door?”

“I don’t seem to remember anything,” Pam said. “Not anything at all.”

“You don’t remember,” Hortense said. “I don’t remember. Phyllis doesn’t. And with it all, she’s so—sweet.” She paused. “Or is she?” she said. “Some of the things she brings up—always doing ohs, the boy next door was. How does one do an oh?”

“Oh,” Jerry said, politely demonstrating, and then, “Was he the one with green hair?” The others looked blank at that, and Pam said it was just one of the things she’d got mixed up, and now Jerry was mixing it worse. And, Pam said, did Hortense ever feel she hadn’t really gone to Southwest High School at all and was merely pretending she had? Was an impostor?

“Far as I can tell,” Hortense said, “I never lived in Centertown. Just in a small, one-room vacuum. Woman without a past.” She paused. “Except,” she said, in another tone, “Fern remembers me in great detail.”

Stanley Pitt had been looking over their heads—looking at his wife, now the one listening to Fern. In a moment of silence, Fern’s voice fluted. “Really, a dreadful thing to happen,” Fern said. There was no context.

“Perhaps,” Stanley said, turning back to them, “it’s better to have no past than to live in one. Better all around. And safer.”