WALKING THROUGH MY GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE feels wrong in my adult body. I’m a child, here. I’m a teenager. In none of these tales am I a man grown.
The stairwell creaks as I wander upstairs towards the bedrooms: the master and the one that I still think of as mine. One of my paintings hangs in the stairwell—but it’s wrong. I fish my hand behind her couch and find a replacement—the snowy day she painted.
Ah, that’s better.
In my bedroom there are no posters on the wall. My clothes were cleaned from the dresser long ago. The people have disappeared from the stucco ceiling. And, were I to go into the bathroom, I know that my toothbrush and toothpaste would not sit beside the sink.
Still, there is a blanket speckled with birds here, on the bed. The room is not wholly alien.
My Grandmother’s room is. The master bedroom sits empty. The blinds are drawn. The bed, neatly made. On her headboard, a radio clock still flashes the time and date.
I walk to my Grandmother’s bedside table, and open the top drawer. Inside, there is a photo album. I lift the book from the drawer and flip to the first page.
My Grandmother as a child. The photograph black and white. She stands with her hands behind her back, dwarfed by three brothers on either side. She wears a dress. They wear suspenders.
My Grandmother as a teenager. Her hair tied back, her long braid swinging. She hangs upside down from a tree. I think she looks beautiful, like someone who will love traveling, who will never want to sit still.
My Grandmother at a European wildlife reserve. Her first vacation. Her eyes are upturned, staring at an owl perched on her head. Her expression suggests ecstasy, with maybe a hint of panic.
My Grandmother, holding a carrot out for Aria. Aria is a foal here—both in their prime. The horse is frozen mid-chomp, my Grandmother mid-smile.
My Grandmother—now middle-aged. A baby in her arms. The caption underneath says A GRANDMOTHER AT LAST! Beside that is my name.
My Grandmother, wearing a face I recognize. Rouged cheeks, bleached hair, and cucumber green nail polish. She is walking into the distance, leaving a long trail of footprints in the snow.
I close the photo album and look at the other contents in the drawer. A copy of the New Testament. Her wedding ring. And my first painting, from when I was a child.
I put the photo album back.
The trip back down the stairs takes ages. I linger on the painting again. I linger on every step. The bottom of the stairs takes me to the front door. The front door, outside.
It is canning season, so of course the cellar is open. Those steep wooden steps yawn before me. It is canning season, which for her means preserved jams and pickles. A fresh batch of corn whisky.
But I don’t go down there, because there’s nothing to find. No shotgun. No stuffed moose head. No nesting owls.
Instead, I wander beside the house. It is summer and there are no footprints in the grass. Otherwise, the lawn would be a mess—where the ambulance pulled up, the paramedics rushed out, and my family flooded in the aftermath.
Now there is no one. Nothing, really, to lead me down the path she wandered in the long ago, in the photo beside her bed.
So why do I follow her?
It doesn’t really matter, I suppose. I barely paid attention to the clothes I slapped on this morning—why worry about destination? So follow, I do. I wander over the hill and walk after those ghostly footsteps away. Far away. Anywhere but here.
I walk until the horizon swallows me as it did her.