not divided by passion held, and as if bright harnessed lives did night sing.
But yes, worth everything, his shoulders rub her harder-to-reach, harder-to-understand solid ways of loving until they shine, polished wet and recede, giving out and arriving, filling some flood plain, some untouched me-part of both-them, some world so often dry, now saturated and ready for continual living. Under that patient fury; his waterway; his easy-to-abandon God.
DRIVE
At eleven o’clock that morning she asked me to take her for a drive.
I held her too tightly walking out of the restaurant and back to the car, I remember that. So I guess I sort of knew. But not really. Not like she did.
She knew.
I know she knew.
My Grandma Charlottie was sweet, skinny, sinewy, white, sleeves-rolled-up, slow-walking, tobacco-spit-sprayed pants—I don’t even know how that happened—and a kind of full-upper-body head-turn that’s hard to believe. God damn. She was tiny. But sometimes she’d look at you like she was about to haul off and whack you with a remote control before she’d smile and walk away like nothing ever happened.
I’d been thinking about whether or not to refurbish the utility room. I don’t know who did the sheet metal work in there but the seams are opening up. No matter how high we set the thermostat that furnace can’t warm up any room for all the heat that escapes.
When she asked to go for that drive she hadn’t been in a car in eight months. My dumb ass took it as a sign of improvement. I said, “Sure. Where you wanna go, Grandma?”
I used to pick up the prescriptions after her radiation treatments. I remember waiting for something called Magic Mouthwash. The girl in the pharmacy said it would take a little longer because they have to mix it up special. I said, “What’s in it?” The girl—she wasn’t really pretty or anything—said, “Something to coat the ulcerations. Something else to numb the whole area. She can use it every few hours. Whenever she feels her throat burn.” I said, “Fine. I’ll wait.”
And I did. I was patient. Read an issue of Car & Driver. I remember that’s when I called my friend back about the job in his garage—not that I want to put tires on cars my whole life. But. It’s good money for a while and he didn’t do a credit check. Anyway.
She hadn’t been in a car in eight months and then she said, “Take me up 421. Would you, please?”
Polite and poor. That’s what the minister should have said in her eulogy. Not that twenty-minute story about her going to Duluth for a typing job for two months. Who gives a shit about Duluth? That wasn’t her. That’s only two months. The rest of the time she was here, with us.
But I’m glad we went for that drive.
Her shirt was covered with her own blood spat out and dried up. But there was no other shirt. Mom put ‘em all away when we thought hospice was a place she had to go. So I didn’t say she should change. Grandma’s bare arm was thin and the skin gathered at her elbow and again at her wrist. Weird skin. Kind of yellow. Almost like you could see through it. I wasn’t thinking when I grabbed for her sweater. I forgot it only had one sleeve because my sister cut the other one off to start making an afghan. Well. It would have been a nice afghan if she didn’t give up trying to do a whole blanket to help keep Grandma warm, if there was more time, more yarn.
Grandma Charlottie pretended not to notice the cockroaches running in all directions when I picked up her sweater.
I pretended not to notice, too. Just shook it real good.
And I guess I was sort of pissed about there only being one sleeve when I helped her put it on. I was mainly pissed at myself for forgetting. But then I was pissed at my sister for even trying to make an afghan out of her favorite sweater. Grandma just went ahead and let me put that one-armed sweater on her, you know, went through the motions, seemed not to notice what was undone and missing.
We had the heat on because she was always cold. Even that morning. Even though it was summer. Damn ducts in the bedroom need to be repaired, too. I shifted my weight back and forth while I helped her with the sweater. I could feel a stream of hot air coming through a crack in the metal. I’d move my body into it so I could feel it on my head and then move it back to get away.
I could just kick myself for putting that sweater on her. I didn’t think about dignity. I just wanted her to stay a little bit warm and I didn’t know it was the last time I’d ever get to take her anywhere. I would have gone upstairs and gotten one of Mom’s blouses maybe or at least had her put on Dad’s old hunting jacket. It’s so stupid. I was trying to put the sweater on her to cover up the mess on her shirt and the sweater just made everything a hundred times worse.
Ten years ago she would’ve tore my head off for putting her in a sweater like that. She must’ve been pretty far gone already that morning.
I knew about my sister’s project the instant Grandma’s tiny, veiny arm came through where that sleeve was supposed to be. But I didn’t remember when I saw the sweater on the floor by her bed. When I grabbed it up and shook it and started to help her into it, it was still just Grandma’s favorite sweater in my mind. She wore that thing every day of the winter for years. It’s weird how that happens. Isn’t it? I mean you know something’s changed but because it was always the same forever you only remember it a certain way.
I don’t know if she cared or not. She let me help her with the sweater and the door and the steps and the seat belt.
When she said she wanted to head up 421 I thought maybe she wanted to go to the cemetery to see Grandpa. But she didn’t ask and we passed all those quiet plots under trees without mention. The sun flashed off gravestones as we went by. The shadows and sun bred some kind of almost-like-hope on the grass.
You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about driving fast on a sunny day with a bunch of birds—barn swallows probably—on the telephone wires. And when the rush of wind, that updraft from your car coming, hits them they rise and scatter and you can’t watch them all flying off in all directions like that. You can just look at the grass in the ditch and see their fluttering shadows dispersing. Then maybe your eye does follow the one that flies straight out in front of you, like it can maybe almost stay ahead of you, maybe fly right alongside the car for a second, or at least keep up if it flaps hard enough. But then you’re gone and the bird behind you that was out in front banks right over the fields and disappears.
I remember everything.
Early summer. The earth seemed so willing. But after so much negotiation what would not?
The horizon seemed to give in to the call for more flat corn and patches of distant trees. A farmhouse, wearing out its paint job, with bikes for sale near the road, all in a row, biggest to smallest, had its screen door standing wide open. Probably got stuck in the porch roof. I always wonder why there are so many bikes in front of one house. I wondered that then. Like usual.
It was all how it always is on that drive. We passed the fairgrounds. Quiet before a raucous week in July. We passed the county airport and the county jail. The place where the city keeps the snowplows, the towering cone of street salt. The cow corn was knee-high. Green against that wet black between rows.
And we passed the radio station broadcasting the price of pork bellies and soybean futures up and out into the unreceptive sky.
Nearing the interstate the businesses sprang up again. McDonald’s. Amoco. BP. A fireworks barn. Some kind of truck stop where they sell laser-engraved blocks of crystal that eagles fly through for whatever reason.
I remember I said, “You want something, Grandma?” ‘Cause I didn’t know if she wanted to just drive or maybe if she wanted to stop.
I probably shouldn’t have looked over at her right then, you know? I probably should have just let her have her moment. But I didn’t know. I’d been driving. I didn’t mean to look over at her. It just happened. When I saw that she was crying it almost made me cry.
You know how it is. With everyone else it’s no big deal. When I drive my girlfriend around I look at the
road and then I look over at her to ask her stuff. Same with Mom. Or Dad when I drop him off at work sometimes. You know. I just ask them stuff. What music they want to listen to. Whether they want the air conditioner on. If they need me to get them anything from the Dollar Store later, since it’s right by the garage where I work. And my girlfriend, my mom, my dad, they’re never crying real quiet like that in the passenger seat, you know? That never happens. That’s what makes me think she knew. And her knowing makes me feel like I should have known and not ever put that sweater on her. But how could I have known?
I’d give anything not to have looked over at her when I asked if she wanted anything. I hate what I saw. But once it was done what could I do? I just handed her an Arby’s napkin.
She gripped that thing, stopped crying real quick—like it never happened—straightened up, and said, “Bob Evans.”
I rolled the window down on my side for the rest of the drive. I wasn’t really choking back tears, you know. I just needed the air to keep more alert. Can’t hardly breathe all cooped up inside a car.
I said, “Grandma Charlottie?”
She said, “Yes.”
“I’m not sure I can do the repairs myself. It’s a big job.”
She didn’t respond. I don’t know if it was because she was disappointed in me or because she knew there was no money to