Filigree

How did her gramma know what she was thinking?

 

Andrea’s great-grandmother had a wristwatch with a leather strap and a big face, so she could read it easily. Andrea preferred a watch with a filigreed band. She was saving her allowance for one; it would show off her delicate wrists. She had seen such watches in magazines.

Things didn’t work at Gramma’s house. The faucet in the bathroom dripped; the kitchen linoleum buckled in the center; the table rocked.

Gramma took the big watch off. “It chafes my wrist in this heat.” She rubbed her hand and then her eyes, which were red and watery. “Life is about learning how to let go, right?” She rubbed her eyes again.

Andrea had been sent by her mother to her great-grandmother’s house, a few streets away. Andrea dabbed on her mother’s perfume. Gramma’s house always smelled stale to Andrea, dusty and with a whiff of camphor because Gramma used liniment on the joints of her fingers. “Offer to wash the dishes for your gramma. You can do your piano lessons later.”

Andrea was already on the purple book of piano practice and she hoped to surpass her friends soon. She liked to reach for the stars, her father said. She would put off her games and books and piano practice, and visit her very old great-gramma. Last week, her friend Caroline went with Andrea and said that Gramma’s face was wrinkled like fine linen or silk. Easy for Caroline to say because it wasn’t her own relative. Andrea knew that Caroline was reluctant to visit her own gramma.

Andrea doodled stars on the tablet in front of her. She put them in a diagonal line reaching to the moon at the edge of the paper. What was beyond the stars? Gramma’s three-legged cat romped in. Andrea petted Midnight but wondered how he was able to recover from the amputation. Did he wish he were dead? Midnight was brave and amazing.

Gramma looked at the sink and her oatmeal bowl on the counter. “The dishes can wait.” She lifted the lid of the yellow ceramic jar shaped like a peach. “Sit, and take a cookie. There’s some chocolate chips in there.”

Andrea selected a perfectly round pecan sandy.

Gramma sat down slowly, using her hands to support her. “I like the broken ones.”

“Why?”

“When I was your age, I wanted a perfect world. Is that what you want?”

“I don’t know.”

“And then I got a world better than perfect.” She picked up Midnight and put him in her lap.

“Huh? How’s that possible?”

“I was so dumb at times.” Gramma wiped at her wet eyes.

“What?”

“I never imagined I’d get to be 89 when I was 11.”

“I’m 12.” Andrea tried to keep the impatience out of her voice.

“When I was 12, too.”

Through the open window and fluttering curtains, Andrea could hear the kids calling and laughing. She longed to be with them. A boy shouted—she thought it was Joey—“Throw it here, Dave.” She looked at the clock on the wall. “Your clock is stopped.”

“Would you climb on the kitchen chair and lift it down? Maybe the plug is loose.”

Andrea liked to show her nimbleness. She hopped on the chair and reached up for the clock above the doorway. She had not positioned the chair correctly and had to stretch for the clock.

“Be careful,” her gramma said.

Andrea stretched higher for the clock. Her fingertips brushed the cloudy face and she lost her balance. The chair teetered, creaked, and tipped. She fell to the floor.

“Oh, honey!”

“I’m all right!” Andrea stood up, rubbing her knee. Midnight jumped off Gramma’s lap and brushed Andrea’s ankles comfortingly.

“Let me get ice.” Gramma shook ice cubes into a plastic bag and wrapped a towel around the bag. Tears ran down her cheeks.

“I’m all right!” Andrea held the clinking ice bundle over the knee.

“I did this for Charlie. You never knew your great-grandfather. We drove out on a rainy road once, pine trees on either side, and the Chevy broke down. We had to hike five miles into town, and just as we were in sight, he slipped and fell and had to lean on my shoulder the few hundred feet into town. I put ice on his ankle. He proposed marriage the next day. And that’s how we married. And then we had children and grandchildren and you.” She cleared her throat as if she’d swallowed something big.

Andrea tried to understand. She knew there was a time when she herself didn’t exist, but she couldn’t figure that out. She smelled the green grass and heard the kids playing. She wasn’t playing with them. This was a mystery. Inside, she felt she was vibrating, jittering like a metronome or clock, and she stood next to a chasm. She could not jump across, and she could not go back, and she could not stand there. What if she fell? It would be the end.

“I’m tired,” her gramma said. “You’ll be fine.”

How did her gramma know what she was thinking? Midnight hobbled around. The world was not fine, her gramma was wrong. Andrea’s knee throbbed. The fire pulsed up to her head.

Her gramma wiped at her eyes. “Everything hurts.”

“I’ll be fine,” Andrea said.

“Verna died last night.”

“Who?”

“I got a call.” Gramma’s eyes were wet. “Charlie’s youngest sister. She lives… lived in Fairbanks. I never saw her much.” Midnight wrapped around her ankles.

Andrea hugged her gramma, who felt frail as a toy made out of toothpicks. Andrea’s knee throbbed. “I’ll be fine,” she said. It was flat daylight, but she thought she could see stars far above her and beyond the ceiling; she felt comforted, though they did not know her and she knew that, but the stars were beautiful and shone their light, which seemed to come down in shards and melt on the waiting earth.