Stuck In Park

It's been eight years now. She remembers a trip to the drugstore, not her usual one, the one that was kind of convenient on her way home from where she used to work, the one that always ran out of her cigarettes. It was February 24, 2003, a Monday. She parked in the third space from the driveway, on the other side of the lot from the building. She bought Diet Coke, the paper, and an Almond Joy. Most of her memories aren't so specific, immediately, but if she thinks for a second or two, which she tries not to, the specifics come back: items purchased, weather conditions, time of day, somebody she might have run into, a long line. But always she remembers the parking space. Everything concerning parking is a blank from before 2.24.03, but everything after--malls, concerts, friends' apartments, grocery stores, the bank--hangs in her consciousness, immovable. When she goes to places she infrequently visits, an outlet store thirty miles away, a downtown bar, she will sometimes drive around the lots or blocks for half an hour, waiting for the spot she remembers from a good past trip. On her frequent excursions to the grocery store or bank, she tries her best not to remember and just park like anyone else, in an available, nearby spot. Inevitably, though, as she pulls into a given space, she is hit with a wall of memories of that space--the time she dropped her keys in the snow, the time they wouldn't cash her check, the time an acquaintance cornered her near the celery and talked non-stop for fifteen minutes--memories specifically tied to a particular parking space. For five years she has gotten up half an hour early to get to work in order to park in the same spot, having realized that 250 days a year of parking in a different spot in a 400 car lot would drive her insane. She's thankful she now lives in a house, with a one-car garage. She can't always remember which books of her favorite prolific mystery author she's read or what she wore to last year's office party or where she put her purse, but about any trip she's made in her car for the past eight years she remembers the parking space. As much as she can, she prefers drive-thru service these days, and walks more frequently, and stays in. Yesterday evening, the anniversary, she drove to the used bookstore, purposefully parked in a new space aisles from the store, as if to try to start something anew, went in and bought a biography of Henry Ford, drove around back behind the empty big box store, set the book afire on the ground, and drove away.