stand up to him,
stare him down,
talk back, talk bad.
He drove her crazy,
and that’s no joke.
But for years
before and after
the drugs
and electroshock,
before she was dragged,
screaming,
from her home,
and after her demure return,
when upset she retired
to her room
above the living room
where no one lived,
until, eventually,
retiring became
her vocation.
And that is how,
grandfather ensconced
in the sunroom
before the tv
eating day-old,
half-price pastries,
their bedroom became hers,
where she sat smoking,
rolling her own
thin cigarettes,
reading Ellery Queen,
Rex Stout, until she
discovered numismatics.
After that, whenever
angered she’d roll
a cigarette and unroll
pennies, nickels, dimes
to squint at their dates,
their condition,
noting the S
that meant San Francisco,
the D for Denver.
Whatever else she did
up there
we never knew
and never asked.
But often when we visited,
above us we’d hear
the plink and roll
of dropped coins,
the creak of her chair
as she bent
over their magnified
minutia.
When she died,
and grandfather died
soon after, we sold
their home to two
do-it-yourselfers
and soon got a call,
to come over, take a look
at something.
We went
to find the living
room ceiling partially off,
the floor deep in debris
with here and there
a green penny, a Mercury dime.
No one spoke
until the new owner said,
“There’s a crack
in the floor upstairs,”
then reached up his hammer
to pull off another bit
of plaster and lath,
unleashing as he did
a small storm—tattered
slips of stationery,
matchbook covers,
torn quarter rolls,
all addressed to grandfather,
and each frantic with anger,
with cutting rebuttals,
fierce last words.