“A Memory” is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who recalls memories from her childhood. The story opens on a beach near a lake one summer morning. The narrator has just taken a swim and is lying on the sand watching the world around her through a rectangular frame she has made with her fingers. She has recently begun taking painting lessons and ever since has been in the habit of making these frames in order to observe her surroundings. The narrator is obsessed with making observations. Fed by a desire to uncover some secret of life, she attempts to extract meaning from every little thing she sees. At the same time, she is terrified of what she might learn. Her fervor is heightened by the fact that she is in love for the first time. She recalls a moment that previous school year when she “accidentally” brushed the wrist of the boy she loves as they passed each other on the stairs. Though she refers to him as her “friend,” she admits to having never exchanged so much as a nod of recognition.
The experience of first love propels her to observe the world even more scrupulously, and she is perpetually on the lookout for something unexpected to happen. One day, the boy she loves get a nosebleed in Latin class. The narrator is taken so off guard by this that she faints. To this day, she wonders if this occurrence might explain her fear of blood. The fact that she knows nothing about him or his family makes her very uneasy. It causes her to watch him even more closely in an attempt to gain some kind of reassurance. As a result, she can still recall very specific details about him, such as the weave of his blue knit sweater and the way he swung his leg under his desk while he worked.
While lying on the beach that summer morning, the narrator is lost in the memory of their brush on the stairs. Her daydream is periodically interrupted whenever she checks in on her surroundings. Without knowing when or how they got there, she notices a family of bathers nearby. They are comprised of a man, two women (one older, one younger), and two young boys. She refers to them as “common” people and describes them as disdainful and vulgar. At one point, the man puts a fistful of wet sand into the bathing suit top of the older woman. This causes everyone in the family to erupt with laughter, but it disgusts the narrator. Satisfied with what he’s done, the man shoots a complicit smile at the narrator. Stunned and horrified, the narrator is filled with contempt.
Having had enough of their antics, the narrator closes her eyes and attempts to retreat back into her memory about the boy she loves. Lying there on the sand, she drifts in and out of consciousness. No longer able to summon the narrative that accompanies the memory, she is nonetheless left with an unexplained feeling of happiness. At one moment, the narrator opens her eyes and sees the older woman dump the sand from her bathing suit. For a split second, she believes that the woman has turned to sand. Later, when she fully emerges from her daydream, the beach is empty, and all that is left is the evidence of the bathers’ presence on the wet sand. The unsightliness of this change upsets the narrator. She looks away but catches sight of an old pavilion. Overwhelmed by self-pity, she bursts into tears. As she continues to lie there, she imagines a future encounter with the boy she loves at school. She realizes that their future encounters will be influenced by her memory of this day on the beach, just as her memory of their brush on the stairs has shaped her experience on the beach that day.
