It was cold in the basement, despite the spring weather outside. Despite the carpeting and the wood panelling her parents had added to the room in recent years, the house couldn’t quite manage to get much heat down here. Michelle took the fleece jacket off of her chair back and struggled into it without standing up, trying not to blindly hit the laptop screen with one of her flailing arms. “You’re not cold, are you Mom?”

Her mother smiled gently. “No, dear, I’m fine.” Mom never got cold. Michelle fretted over how little material she had on Mom’s childhood. At some point they would need to circle back and fill in more details on North Dakota. But not right now. Now they were dealing with her early adulthood, after college but before meeting Dad.

“Okay, so how long was your vacation in Europe?”

“Four weeks, dear. You know that.”

“I’m just checking.” Michelle put her hands on the laptop keyboard and started typing again. Michelle could still remember how much she had enjoyed Mom’s stories about Europe when she was a girl. “You mainly visited Paris, London, and Berlin, right?”

“That’s right. I just didn’t have enough time to go anywhere else. Europe is such a big place, you know.”

“Okay, let’s start with Berlin. Can you tell me some of what you did there?”

“What I did?” Her mother looked uncertain at the question.

“Where you went?”

“Oh, let’s see.” She lapsed into silent contemplation. Michelle kept quiet, forcing herself not to interrupt her thinking. It was hard to be patient, though. Almost involuntarily, her fingers drummed lightly on the key caps, making distant ticking clicks. Her mother didn’t seem to notice.

Michelle was no longer able to restrain herself. “Anything at all. Like, when your friends asked you, hey what was the best thing about Berlin, what did you tell them?”

Her mother shook her head sadly. “I just don’t quite remember, dear. What about you? What do you remember about Berlin from my stories?”

Michelle sighed but said nothing. She could still remember how much she had enjoyed Mom’s stories about Europe when she was a girl, but almost nothing from the stories themselves. Mostly she now remembered the guilty chilliness that blew between them throughout most of her teenage years.

“Maybe we should ask your father.”

“Maybe. Well, let’s just put Berlin aside for now.” Michelle inserted a handful of blank lines in her file. “What about Paris? I know you remember Paris.”

“Oh yes. We visited the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre. Linda and I spent most of one evening just walking along the banks of the Seine.”

Michelle nodded, writing everything down. “What else?”

“Well, let’s see.” Another interminable silence. Michelle forced herself to remain still. Finally her mother said, “I can’t think of anything else. Maybe that was everything?”

Michelle frowned. “Really? But you were in Paris for a whole week. You must have done more than just that.”

“Well, I don’t know. I suppose I’ll have to think about it.”

Michelle felt that she had run out of the ability to sit still and pretend to be patient. The words “I don’t know” had been coming more and more frequently, and Michelle was feeling the urge to grab her mother by her shoulders and shake her memories loose. Instead she stood up from the desk. “I’m going to get some more coffee while you think. You want some?” Michelle looked down at Mom, seated in the chair next to the desk, and forced a smile.

“Oh, no, I’m not tired at all, dear. Besides, you know how the doctors feel about coffee.”

“Water, then? Juice?”

“No, I think I’m fine.”

Michelle walked up the basement stairs to the kitchen. There was still a cup or two left from the coffee she had brewed in the morning, but it was cold by now. She filled her mug and stuck it in the microwave. Beep beep, beep. Michelle watched her cup slowly rotate, and thought about what other sorts of things her mother might have done while in Paris. The usual places that people go. Anything she might use as a prod to jog loose another memory.

“Michelle?” Her father called down from the upstairs bedroom.

“I’m in the kitchen, Dad.” Michelle called back.

Mom was in the hospital when Michelle had first gotten inspired to have her mother write her memoirs. Her mother’s stroke had jolted both of them out of the calcified habits that had formed during Michelle’s adolescence. Lying in the raised bed in an open room with nurses coming and going constantly, her mother had had no problem narrating the details of her past. But she could barely talk for an hour before she was too tired to continue. The nurses would shoo her out of the room. Your mother needs her rest, is all they ever cared about.

Now, things were reversed: her mother’s energy was fine, but her memories were all too vague and all the detail had gone missing. Michelle fretted whenever she considered the implications of this observation.

“We’re going to be leaving in five minutes. Okay?”

Michelle frowned. We? Her father had mentioned something he was going to today, but Michelle hadn’t been paying attention. She hadn’t realized that he was expecting her to accompany him.

“Okay, Michelle?” Dad repeated.

“Fine, whatever.” Michelle called back. She wasn’t intending to be rude, but honestly. She halted the microwave and retrieved her mug. Sometimes Dad acted like she was still a child, like she couldn’t even be left alone in the house by herself. Like anything she did wasn’t really important. But this was important; of course it was. Even he had to see that.

Especially if her mother’s condition meant that their time was limited.

The basement door slammed shut behind her. (The door was mis-hung and wouldn’t close easily.) She descended the stairs and returned to her seat before the desk. Placing the coffee carefully to one side of the laptop, she looked over at her mother. “Okay. Where were we?”

Her mother beamed at her. “I’ve remembered something. The best part of my week in Paris.”

“That’s great!” Michelle quickly put her fingers on the keyboard. “Go ahead.”

“It was the morning I spent visiting the Arc de Triomphe. I woke up early, and Linda was still asleep. I was feeling mischievous, or maybe I just needed to spend some time by myself? Whatever the reason, I sneaked out of the hotel room and went off by myself. I walked all the way there. It was early enough that the streets were busy but not at all crowded. The sky was cloudless, the air was clear. It was just a beautiful day to be outside. And when I arrived at Place Charles de Gaulle, oh Michelle. All those streets coming together, it felt like I was standing in the very heart of Paris. Maybe even the heart of Europe itself.”

Michelle had been typing as fast as she could, trying to get down everything as close to word-for-word as she could manage, and not willing to interrupt and ask her to slow down or repeat anything. Her mother stopped speaking, and once Michelle had caught up she said “That’s a great image, Mom. Just perfect.”

“Oh, but that’s not the end of my story, Michelle.”

“No?” Michelle quickly returned her fingers to home row.

“No, this story has a twist ending.”

“Really?”

“It was here, at the Arc de Triomphe, where I met — René.”

Michelle’s eyes widened at her mother’s mischevious smile. “René?”

Her mother simply nodded.

“Well don’t just sit there. Tell me about René!”

There was a loud click as the mis-hung door at the top of the basement stairs was opened. “Michelle?” her father’s voice unceremoniously intruded on the conversation. “Are you ready?”

Michelle closed her eyes in frustration. “Kinda busy here, Dad,” she called back.

“Michelle, put away the computer and get up here.”

Michelle’s mother sighed quietly to herself and leaned back in her chair, but she said nothing aloud. Michelle stared at her resigned expression. Finally she decided that she needed to take a stand. “Dad, I’m not going with you, okay? This — this is more important.”

At once her father came clomping down the stairs. He had to bend at the waist to avoid hitting his head on the way down, but once he had reached the floor he straightened up to his full height. Michelle stood up but still he towered over her. He had on a dark brown tie and his face was starting to turn red. “Look at you, Michelle! You’re not even dressed!”

Michelle glowered back at him. “There’s nothing wrong with the way I’m dressed. The word processor doesn’t care what I’m wearing.”

“Enough with this foolishness,” he shouted. “March upstairs and get dressed right now, young lady, or we’re going to be late!”

There was a moment that was brief at first, but then it stretched out as her blood pounded through her body, in which Michelle was filled with a blazing impulse to respond to him in kind, shouting her fury at his casual dismissal of her project, her efforts. Her mother remained seated, not looking up at either of them. As if it had nothing to do with her.

But then, she took a deep breath, and forced herself to speak quietly. “I’m sorry if I upset you, Dad. But this project is important. You may not get that, but it’s true all the same. This is important to me, and it’s important to Mom. And someday, I know that it’ll be important to you, too.” She exhaled. “And that means that you can’t just come down here and yank me away whenever it suits you to do so.”

Michelle watched her father’s face. The anger had drained away, leaving behind an expression of complete sadness. He said nothing. The silence stretched out. Michelle forced herself to continue meeting his gaze. For a moment she became convinced that he was about to cry.

Finally he walked over and enveloped her in a hug. Michelle unfolded slowly, still tensed from her confrontational stance.

“Michelle, my Chelle,” Her father said at last in a quiet voice. “I know — I know this isn’t easy for you either.” He said this with some difficulty, as if the words scraped his throat as they left it. “I promise you, I don’t think what you’re doing here is unimportant.”

“Okay,” Michelle said carefully, her voice muffled slightly against her father’s torso.

“But this is still more important.”

Michelle didn’t say anything in repsonse, but her shoulders tensed up at this.

Her father noticed and continued. “It’s hard for you to understand that right now. And that’s not your fault. I’m not mad at you, okay? If this truly isn’t important to you, you know what? That’s fine. It isn’t even really all that important to me. But it’s important to everyone else, Michelle. They’ve all travelled a long way to pay their respects. And part of that is seeing you there to pay your respects, too.”

Michelle closed her eyes tightly as a pair of tears squeezed out.

“I really don’t blame you for wanting to stay down here instead. Part of me would like nothing better than to stay here with you today. Just the two of us. But it wouldn’t be right. And deep down you know that. I know you do.”

Michelle didn’t trust her voice, so instead she merely nodded into her father’s shirt.

“So come on.” He pulled back and looked her in the eye. “It’s time. Go upstairs and get dressed.”

Still silent, Michelle nodded again and retreated up the basement stairs.

Her father looked around the empty room, then stepped over to the desk and gently closed the lid of the laptop.