Once you forget how to tell time, you realize that telling time is only the beginning, for time is the one thing that binds us to everyone else in the world. Anna started by forgetting how to tell time, and then moved on to forgetting appointments. At first it was simple appointments, with people like the doctor or the hairdresser who were accustomed to being forgotten by patients or clients. It was more difficult with her two best friends, whom she had been meeting for lunch on Tuesdays every week for the past thirty years. The first time she didn’t show up, they feared for her life. The second time, they feared for her friendship, assuming that they had insulted her terribly in some way. It was only after the third time that they feared for her mind.

And the loss of time in Anna’s mind was only the beginning, for then she moved on to places. One day the following year, it took her an hour to come back from the supermarket, a trip that should have taken ten minutes. She had spent the remaining fifty minutes driving back and forth on Algonquin Drive, suddenly unable to identify which house was hers. It was only when Bill, noticing the car pacing the street, poked his head out the living room window that she remembered where she was—and that wasn’t even remembering, really, merely recognition. A few months later, recognition began to fade as well, as she moved on from forgetting places to forgetting faces. It was the peripheral ones that slid from her mind first—first the doctor and the hairdresser, then casual acquaintances, then the children of friends, and finally the friends themselves. She still knew who Bill was, it seemed. But not long after she stopped recognizing faces, she also stopped recognizing people’s presence. Bill stopped traveling to be with her, but many times she no longer understood when Bill was in the room. The border of Anna’s world continued shrinking until it no longer included the house, or the room she stood in, or even the air she breathed.

“Do you remember this, Anna?”

Bill Landsmann was screening slides for his wife. He was hoping that one of them might trigger some reaction from her—a sign of recognition, a feeling, something. It was like rummaging in a deep and crowded drawer for a lost key.

He had decided he would save the easiest slides for last, staving off disappointment as long as possible. Instead he had started with the obscure ones, ones from the few trips she had taken with him years ago, clicking through the images and feeling refreshed himself by every familiar scene as he tried to remind her of the foreign streets.

“Do you remember this, Anna?”