“Oh yeah.” Seven years and an untold number of rewrites. I never spent more than a week away from the manuscript. Some days I wrote one sentence and crossed out one hundred. Other days the ratio flipped. I started writing it because it felt like the only way to pick through the rubble of everything, and I didn’t know what else to do. I discovered writing allowed me to turn off my yammering brain. Well, I didn’t turn it off, more like I could trick my brain out of living and perseverating in the anxious now and the doomy what’s-next. Even though the past was full of regret, ridiculousness, and fear, at least it had already happened. I knew what I would find, so I could control it, etch it out onto paper, and then I could do whatever the hell I wanted with it. I could examine the worst with a magnifying glass or bury it between the lines. And ultimately, I could destroy it if I wanted to. There were times when I fantasized about printing everything I’d written and burning it, turning all the ghosts to smoke.

“Where are you?” Mom asks.

“Huh? I’m here, in the kitchen?”

“No, in the book. What part of your life are you writing about now?”

“I’m up to … right now, actually.” I tapped a finger on the kitchen table.

“Oh wow, that’s great. Does that mean you’re done?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You can’t write a memoir novel about things that haven’t happened to you yet. It sounds like you’re done to me.”

“Doesn’t feel like I’m done.” I couldn’t tell her that I was afraid to be done because for the seven years I’d been writing the book I hadn’t seen Mercy. She hadn’t come back. It was silly, but I wanted to believe my writing was a talisman, the talisman keeping Mercy away, keeping her from returning. Seven years was a long time. Not equal to my time in the Providence scene, but music has never been a talisman. Mercy had been there with me in Providence the whole time, hadn’t she? Even if she wasn’t at every show, she was at enough of them, and I’d bet my soul she went to every final show I’d had with each of my ill-fated bands. I knew the talisman thing was absurd, and correlation was not causation, but I also knew I wouldn’t survive her next visit. Or worse, I wouldn’t want to survive because of what I might then become. So, I would continue writing and rewriting the past. Forever if necessary.

Mom asked, “You don’t have an ending planned?”

“I guess that’s it. I’m not sure how to end it.” I tried a joke. “Is that a funny thing to say about a memoir?” novel