Write What You Know

A different kind of unreliable narrator

“I want a car, I want to be with a man I love, and I want to get married, in church, in white.”—Venus Xtravaganza (1965–1988)

Photo by Diego Rastelli on Unsplash

As I sit down to write my first post for the new Do Some Damage format, an iconic quote comes to mind. “Just when I thought I was out, Steve Weddle pulls me back in.” But I didn’t exactly kick and scream about it; it’s kind of nice to be part of Do Some Damage again.

Over the summer, I visited my 95-year-old grandmother in Oregon. She’s healthy as can be, to the point that she doesn’t need to take any medications. That’s crazy to me. While I won’t divulge the number of pills I currently take, it’s safe to say that I didn’t inherit those genes.

Unfortunately, she has dementia, and last summer, she had to move to an assisted living facility. She still knows who her loved ones are and can often recall minute details from the past, but her short-term memory is largely impaired. As it does for many people, living alone became unsafe for her.

She had a hard time when she learned she had to move into the “home,” as she calls it. In the 1980s, her mother and in-laws (my great-grandparents) lived in a “rest home” for a few years before they passed, and during that time, she visited them nearly every day. Whatever the ravages of her dementia are, she clearly remembers the place they lived in (as do I—it was clean and safe, but also, rather grim) and, understandably, didn’t want to end up the way they did. Thankfully, the facility she’s in is more like an apartment building than a hospital, and she has her own cozy and comfortable living quarters.

Once she moved in, acclimating was difficult because she couldn’t remember how long she’d been there. I was with her the week after the move, and I was horrified when she told me—every day during my visit—that she’d only been there one night. Imagine waking up each day in a new place, struggling to settle into a routine, and thinking it was your first day there? It was like her own personal “Groundhog Day,” and not in a good way.

A year in, she’s settled in and seems very happy. But I worry, sometimes, that she feels gaslit when we remind her repeatedly that she’s got the date wrong or that so-and-so is visiting next week. Her memory drains details like a sieve, with very little left behind. But how could it be any other way? She asks the same questions repeatedly, and while the answers don’t really matter because she forgets them almost instantly, gentle reminders are necessary.

I often wonder what it’s like to live in her head. So, when I began plotting my work-in-progress, I decided I wanted to explore that. Although the project is new, I’ve had the idea in my head for years, and revisiting it has made me think about my grandma and how her dementia presents itself—short-term memory gone; she remembers details from the distant past. Why not add an older character suffering from a similar affliction? Can what they say be trusted? An unintentionally unreliable narrator.

In my story, this character drops an important clue that could shed light on a disappearance that happened thirty years prior—if it’s true. But at its heart, the book is about family, and the pain of losing it, whether to death, dementia, betrayal, or any of the other factors that break us apart even when we don’t want them to.

And if you’re wondering whether this post was really just an excuse to talk about my amazing grandma, you’re kind of right. But I figure if you’ve lived to 95, you deserve to be the star of a newsletter.

Things I’m digging right now:

1. On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology, edited by Curtis Ippolito and published by Rock and a Hard Place Press (September 30).

—Okay, technically, this comes under the header “Things I’m looking forward to.” But I’m super excited about this anthology and can’t wait to get my hands on it.

2. “I’m Your Venus” (Netflix)

—This documentary is about Venus Xtravaganza, a trans icon and star of Paris is Burning who was tragically murdered in 1988, before the film was released. In I’m Your Venus, her three brothers, now in their 50s, unite to reopen her cold case. The journey forces them to acknowledge and come to terms with their behavior and bigotry that affected Venus. Despite hitting some roadblocks, they succeeded in giving Venus the dignity she deserved but rarely received during her lifetime. I was tremendously moved by it.

See you next month,

Holly xx