After the kitchen scene…

I am standing on the fuzzy peach bath mat in an oversize matching towel, dripping. She is vigorously rubbing me dry after a bath while I stand there, still, quiet, watching her serious face as she concentrates, letting my eyes drift to the orange counter top, the peach-colored embroidery on the shower curtain, the plastic swan on the toilet tank. When she has finished, she leaves the room for a minute, and I wrap the towel close to my body, the clean and soapy scent of Zest awakening my nostrils.

My grandma returns, bringing with her a pale pink nightgown (what used to be one of her blouses) which she kept in the linen closet, next to the other peach towels, in a special bag to protect it from dust. This was my nightgown: mid-thigh, soft cotton, butterfly-embroidered neckline. She has me hold up my arms while she slips it over my head, drapes it over my body like air. She opens the top drawer beneath the sink and pulls out a boar bristle brush, runs it through my hair. I’ve never liked the brush because it only catches small sections and strands at a time, never strong enough to sweep through the full thickness of my hair–although later in life I will come to appreciate the value in this type of hair brush, the boar bristles distributing the hair’s natural oils. My grandma must have known this, working patiently with the brush to pull my strands straight and shiny. She had forgiven me, and I know this now as I knew it then, watching our faces in the mirror as she ran the brush through my hair, the nightgown breathing comfortably against my body.

When I was very young, my grandma gave me a doll. Her name was Linda, and she used to be my mother’s. She even had her own tiny boar-bristle brush, but her hair was awful, cut so short in brittle blond curls on her head that the brush only snagged it, or made it look worse. But I liked her anyway–the vacant blue eyes rolling back in her head, the movable plastic limbs with dented toes–and occasionally, I brushed her hair, the way my grandma carefully brushed my own. Linda had numerous knitted dresses and booties that my grandma had made, and I carried all of them, along with her brush, bottle, and hand mirror, in a portable beige trunk. Linda also had a cradle, which my grandpa had hand-cut, sanded, assembled, and painted white. It rocked smoothly and quietly; it had sheets and hand-painted flowers and oddly-placed stickers I’d pressed to the front and back. The cradle, Linda, and her trunk used to reside in the guest room at the end of the hall, which was often termed “my” room, given that guests were so few and far between, and that I often spent time in there with Linda, on the floor next to the bed and a simple bookshelf.

After a few years, however, Linda moved out of the guest room, which became populated with slippers, a closet full of shirts and slacks, and a bottle of Tums on the nightstand, the dark blue lid and chalky whiteness stark against the dim light. After that, the door at the end of the hallway was usually closed, a mirror reflecting what was outside, as if the room no longer existed. Now, it was my grandpa’s room.

I never asked them about it–why they stopped sleeping in the same bed, the same room. During the day, they were just as pleasant toward one another, no different than I had ever known them to be. Whatever love they had, subtle as it was, didn’t seem to change. They just simply drifted apart, as if it was a natural move, like two planets orbiting in different rotations, two creatures that had evolved from one lifestyle to the next. It never seemed easy to explain; not something I could find in the living room encyclopedias, like I could the evolution of man or the properties of Saturn. I knew only that love was a complicated thing, that it linked people together even when it pulled them apart; that it meant more than what we express in words.

I sleep next to my grandma in what is now her bed, pressing my hand into the memory foam pillow, watching the imprint fade in the moonlight. Linda lies in her cradle in the closet, the sliding door open so I can see her resting beneath the hanging shirts and dresses. On the dresser is a plastic container with a powder puff, and pink, baby powder-scented dust. In the morning I will ask to test it on my skin, and like always my grandma will let me, smiling–the way she always lets me look through the jewelry box on her nightstand, no matter how often I’ve seen the unused pearls and cocktail rings and gaudy clip-on earrings that look made for lonely women.

Her jewelry never leaves the box, and so I keep looking through it and trying it on, wanting to know more. But I never ask to borrow or keep it, knowing somehow that these things should be left alone. And anyway, she has given me enough.

Games

Ace of Diamonds. My grandpa’s parched hands flip over the card. Then another: Eight of Spades. Jack of Diamonds. Two of Clubs. Queen of Hearts.

My grandma comes into the room with a fresh cup of coffee–black–in a plain white mug. She sets it down in front of my grandpa as he thanks her politely, still focused on his game of Solitaire. I am sitting across from him at the dining room table, swiveling my chair, digging my small fingernails into the white leather armrest seams, fidgeting as I watch him play. The cards are laid out in five columns of five cards each, red and black, red and black. He works carefully, his thick reading glasses titillating on his nose, his eyes shifting left, then right, then left again. He makes the occasional grunt or thoughtful sigh, then turns over another card, adds it to his pile, then another, then another. Occasionally, I quietly point to one, assisting in my own small way. After a few minutes, he is out of moves.

He sets down his stack, stares at the spread in front of him.

“Nope!” he says. He lifts his eyes to mine. “Not this time.”

I crack a grin, then watch as he sweeps his hand across the cards, gathers them quickly, shuffles, and deals them again.

Grandpa plays Solitaire over and over until he grows bored, needs a smoke, or it’s time for dinner. Granny has her own distractions–puzzles, ten thousand pieces each, spread out over the length of a large plastic table under the living room window. When I visit, I sit on the couch and play with the Rubik’s Cube that always sits on the lamp table, trying to place my fingers on all the scattered matching colors, as if I can will them to assemble. Of course I can’t, but it’s all I know to do with it.

I am bored. I empty a plastic container of dice on the carpet, examining the clear red die and the small wooden die and the other distinct little cubes before remembering I have no traditional, practical, or entertaining use for any of them. So I invent my own games: stack them like bricks in a tiny house, arrange them into shapes or number patterns, pick up a handful and shower them down on the rest like the skies are plummeting and listen to the tiny knocking, clacking collisions.

There are times, however, when the three of us play together. Times when the shuffling of cards means Crazy Eights and the clacks are those of Aggravation marbles or wooden Crokinole discs. The games are always traditional or ancient, boxes yellowing on closet shelves. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is the thud of the card deck on the table; the metallic shuffle of pennies, cold and copper-scented in an old coffee tin when we scoop them out to play Ten Penny. My grandma’s soft and sweet laughter, my grandpa’s bellow at the end of a hand. The bittersweet wait for something to put an end to the quiet, the empty smile of silence.

Grandpa riffles the card deck, taps it straight on the table, slides it into the box. He turns on the television, forgets his losing streak, his one sweet joy–one win in dozens of losses–already days behind him.

Eventually I will learn to play Solitaire alongside him at the table, each of us with our own set of cards. We will sit in a mutual quiet, a shared independence, amid spades and hearts and the stately frowns of monarchs–our flips and shuffles and occasional mumbles the only breaks in the silence. The difference between us is that I play with only four columns, rather than five–my child’s mind still far too impatient, too eager for joy.

My Grandparents

Another addition, which I wrote very quickly. Will come back to this later.

My grandma answers the back door in her housecoat, pink foam curlers in her grey-brown curls, somewhat undone from sleep. She is awake, but is missing her usual dark pink lipstick and mascara, though still smiling–her dentures white and almost gleaming.

“Good morning,” she beams, ushering me and my mom inside. I am eight and we are here for a quick visit before school to drop off the mail, which my mom let me pull from my grandparents’ shiny metal post office box, for which we have a spare key. I set the stack of envelopes and fliers on the kitchen table’s crocheted tablecloth, next to a basket of peaches and a vase of plastic roses. I stand shy in my sneakers on the scratchy green mat by the door as my grandpa steps slowly into the room.

“Hello!” he yells in his low, enthusiastic voice, feet shuffling in the slippers my mom gave him for Christmas. My grandpa still retains a number of handsome features from photos of earlier years: short dark hair–despite graying–with a slight high curl in front, eyes like stones, strong jawline, broad shoulders, surprising warm smile. As usual, he wears a cardigan and trousers.

My grandparents have always been quiet, but pleasant. Always smiling, always friendly, but reserved. Raised Mennonite and Catholic, they came from big families (ten to thirteen kids) but you’d never know it–visitors were scarce, with brothers and sisters (my mother’s aunts and uncles) arriving occasionally, just as foreign to me each time I met them, regardless of how many occasions there had been. They led simple lives; despite their upbringing they didn’t go to church, nor farm (though my grandma kept a garden)–they had never even learned to drive.
Their lack of a vehicle wasn’t really a problem, as they usually only left the house when they needed to, and if they needed a ride, my mom was always there. Before they retired, they walked to their nearby jobs (Fort St. James is fairly small)–my grandma a night janitor at my elementary school, and my grandpa working at the historic park and later at the Fort St. James Hotel. On rare occasions they visited my family (a block away)–although usually, we visited them. They would sometimes walk to the doctor’s office and the grocery store, and every once in a while they’d take me and my brother out for Chinese food and burgers. They usually only left town for medical reasons.

Today, they are staying in. My mom and I are in a hurry, so we stand by the door and keep our shoes on while they hug me and ask me about school. When it is time to go, I tug the doorknob–the back door sticking like a refrigerator door–and step out onto the back porch, triumphant for having conquered the exit. When we back down the hill and out of the driveway, my grandma holds open the living room curtain and waves until we disappear down the street, and I wave back and watch until I see the curtain swishing in her wake.