When I Was Young and In My Prime (16 page)

and she was not startled.

3
 

When pregnant with her first child, she had
 

a womb-name for it which she never told anyone
 

(though once quite near her
 

time she wrote it down in pencil
 

on the back of a recipe card
 

as she waited
 

for her pie to set).

4
 

He bought an old violin once because he had
 

a certain idea of himself. It buckles

slowly, stringless

in its black-lacquered case in my closet.

5
 

Long ago a secret formed
 

a lump in his throat that gradually
 

became part of his profile. She also
 

had a secret—who knows
 

if it was the same as his or
 

different or somehow
 

both. Whatever the case, over the years
 

it was incorporated into how she held her face
 

so when you see her in her coffin you will barely
 

recognize her—forehead, cheeks and jaw
 

unclenched; face slack, loose, almost
 

universal; the secret
 

gone before her into the earth.
 

6
 

There was a certain teacup, a tallish lily of the valley cup, its silhouette like a fleshy neck smoothed out by the chin held high.
 

It was the one she was drinking from when the hospital phoned with the news of her father's death.
 

She placed the cup at the back of the buffet, behind the gravy boat, Christmas platter and crystal pickle tray.
 

Years later, when the house was sold, the contents auctioned off, the buffet and china cabinet cleared out, the auctioneer's assistant picked up the cup,

wondered ever-so-briefly why
 

it was separate,
 

then put it together

with the rest.
 

7
 

Almost everything

is buried with us:

once she ate a shallow bowl full of wild
 

strawberries that took her the better part
 

of the morning to pick.
 

She was eating them all
 

by herself
 

with a spoon on the side stoop and,
 

looking up at the oak in the yard,
 

said aloud,
Fancy
 

meeting you
 

here.

High Park, a walk on my way to work.
 

Leaves at their absolute peak, sunlight pouring profligate from bluest sky. Luminous oranges, rusts and yellows on all sides as I walk, scuba diver among vibrant reefs.
 

In the off-leash area of the park somebody's whippet has a squirrel in its jaws. The squirrel, still alive, clawing at the dog's cheeks. The dog's tail wagging.

What kind of world is this?
 

Lately the smallest thing—one firm section of an orange, say, with its thin translucent skin and, when you break it open, its grain of crowded nodules, each slim nodule a pocket of juice contained within an even thinner skin, all of it bright orange but somehow pale at the same time, variable, as if an emissary of the sun itself, not to mention the white pith just bitter enough to make the sweetness sing—the smallest thing
 

can hold me firmly, perfectly in place for a whole afternoon, like a paperweight.
 

That we are here at all (even the words
we
and
here
—even

words) seems fantastical. On my way to work, to bathe old people like babies. Washcloth between their toes, luxury of warm water over their backs. They stare at me, amazed that these wrinkled folds—these bent, knobby, unreliable limbs—are their very own.
 

There is nothing that is not exotic.
 

We're all, all of us, just visiting.
 

The youngster who finally buys the house offers a figure way under the listing price—under even Grandpa's bottom line—and won't negotiate about buying the appliances. It's the first offer he's had for six weeks but Grandpa, stubborn and insulted, refuses to counter-offer. The real estate agent calls Mom and Uncle Nick, and they intervene.
 

There are four lists:
 

things to be moved to Grandpa's new apartment

things to be taken by family

things to be auctioned off

things to be sold privately

(And the items that don't make any of the lists. An anti-list: things to be loaded into the back of the auctioneer's pickup truck for the dump.)

When I get there the weekend before the auction, he's in the driveway with the red wagon behind him—full of houseplants to take to his new apartment in the seniors' building attached to the nursing home a block and a half away. It's one of those crisp, late fall mornings, and we can see our breath as we hug.

Mom said the auctioneer came during the week to box and categorize but I can't really tell the difference; his workshop is still a colossal clutter: boxes of soil-caked teacup saucers mixed with wrenches and screwdrivers, stacks of six-quart baskets stuffed with steel wool and seed packets. In a copper boiler, coils of garden hose. I point out the boiler to Grandpa. “You might as well take it,” he says. “It'll just go in the auction for two bits.”
 

Lifting out the hoses, Grandpa says he once met a Baptist who had a theory—said he'd figured out the reason why ropes and hoses and necklaces inevitably tangle even if they're left coiled neatly.
It's because of the Fall,
he said.
 

All fall Uncle Nick has been taking home carpentry tools, Grandpa has been salvaging what he'll need in his small apartment, I've been picking things out for my apartment. I'd pick something up, and Grandpa would look at it, snort. “What're you taking that old thing for?”
 

 
Even before this all started, before he announced he was selling the house, even then the workshop already looked plundered—not plundered by a son's hobby or a granddaughter's fancy or an auctioneer's weary categories, but by the disorder that rises as naturally as weeds or cream when you leave anything be: the hummingbird feeder stuck upside down in an old tobacco tin; a cracked outdoor thermometer, mercury gone; a yellowing page—hand-drawn pictures of tools—torn from Eaton's catalogues and tacked up. When you pulled at random from the set of little drawers meant for nuts and bolts and nails, sometimes you'd find those things—nuts and bolts and nails—sometimes a nest of old filigreed keys, a greasy tangle of string, shoe tacks in with a flat tin of lozenges.
 

Beside that, an empty drawer. Beside that, birdseed and hinges.
 

Below that, a ball bearing and a slip of paper with some words written in a different alphabet.

Just before I have to leave, as he and I are sitting in silence at the table with empty teacups, he starts to sing in Russian, maybe Ukrainian. When he's finished we sit there for a long time.
 

It seems incredibly important somehow, but I can't remember now whether I asked him to translate or whether he just did:

Oh Uncle tell me

is this life all for nothing

Moscow is burning

and the French are all around

Contents of the shed everbodyhadachancetotakea
lookattheshed?welltoughifyadidn'twe'restartinthe
biddin HEYwillyabid20doIhear20 25overhere30
Ihear30dollarabiddollarabiddoIhave35 35for
everythingintheshedIhear40 40 45overherefor45
hey'llyabidwho'llyabid 60! Ihave60 70 70 the shed
is hothotmustbesometreasureintheshedwho'llgimme
75 Ihave75 80 Ihave80dollarswhat'llyabiddollarabid
dollarabidwhat'llyabidnow Ihave80anyoneanyone
dollarabid85 Ihave85 88 88doIhear90 Ihave90 92
92overhere 94 94 sir?100? yessirhey'llyabid
dollarabidwouldyabidnow 100Ihaveonehundrednow
who'llgimme110 toorichforya?

100
 

100

100

SOLD to number 21 in the back
 

(got that Mary-Anne?)

1

I stand there weighing one of Grandpa's old hand planes in my hands, pass my finger over the polished wooden knob on the front, leave behind a line in the dust. That certain kind of dust. Fine and thick and democratic. The kind you only find in old workshops and basements with a particular sort of foundation. The dust of authenticity and neglect.

The dilemma: do I keep the plane because it is beautiful, because it is my grandfather's, or do I give it to my downstairs neighbour, the woodworker, who says he can always use old tools, although, to be truthful, it's probably sentimentality on his part too; the new planes with plugs and motors and switches and who-knows-what do a much better job, and so much quicker it's ridiculous. I put the plane in a box and decide to decide later. In the end, when I get home and my neighbour's there, on a whim with a wake of regret, I hand it to him and go to bed without washing my hands.