Summary

In “You're Going to Forget Me Before I Forget You,” the unnamed narrator was on a promotional tour for a children's book she had published years before when she received a call from her sister who claimed, “she couldn't remember how to make small talk” (197). She had also recently forgotten what a fork was called. She believed her pregnancy was causing these lapses. The narrator's book was about two sisters that have an encounter with an alien. She never wrote another successful book after this one and she lived her life, according to her sister, like she was “immediately planning on leaving it” (201).

When her sister was 13 and the narrator was nine, their mother died after a long illness. They spent their summer swimming, and the narrator's sister began making up...