Page 93 of Life Out of Order

I step back and close the door, enter my grandfather’s room, and turn on his bedside lamp. He could never bear to give away any of my grandmother’s clothing. Here is her whole lovely wardrobe, all the dresses and coats and blouses still hanging in her closet, a haze of delicate dust over all the shoulders, as though she is Sleeping Beauty and might yet need it, forty-some years after she died. When I was a kid, he used to let me try on her gloves and hats. I choose a pair of her wool slacks and a silk shirt, and then add one of her cashmere sweaters because the shirt is too thin for this cold apartment. Wind rattles the old windows and shrieks through the gap between buildings. I’m grateful to be indoors. I find clean socks in the pile of laundry on his bed. The sweater is slightly too big for me and smells pleasantly of stale beer, shaving lotion, rosin: my grandfather’s olfactory signature.

In the other room, the music stops. I pad down the hall and stand at the entrance to the living room. My grandfather stands turned not quite away from me, holding his violin and bow at his sides, his posture tense and still, as though his attention is elsewhere. He’s always been easily startled, and while I’m wondering how to alert him to my presence without freaking him out, he turns, sees me and gasps.

“Oh!” he says. “My dear—!”

“Sorry,” I tell him. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He sits, awkwardly, almost falling, on the sofa, still holding his violin and bow, and I rush to take them from him and lay them gently beside him. I sit next to him and he clasps my hand tightly. His left hand lies uselessly in his lap. “My head,” he says, but it comes out as a mumble.

“You’re having a stroke,” I tell him. “Let me call you an ambulance.”

“No!” He is hurting my hand. “Darling. Annette.” He’s mistaken me for my grandmother.

“I love you,” I say. It comes from my mouth, but his ears hear it as her voice, and that’s fine.

“I love you, too.” His words are soft and indistinct. I help him to lean back, prop him with cushions, and then sit beside him, holding his hand, waiting.

(Alba is 11)

Alba: I’m dreaming it’s snowing in the bedroom. I’m not sure what happened to the ceiling, but snow is piling up everywhere, on the floor, on the bed, there’s snow on my shoes and in my hair. There was music, but it stopped.

I wake up. There’s no snow in here but it’s cold outside the covers. The floor is cold under my bare feet. The lights are still on in the living room. I go to the bathroom and pee and wash my hands and then I go down the hall to the front room.

Grandpa is sitting on the sofa. His head is at a weird angle and his hands are in his lap, palms up. His violin is next to him, with the bow beside it. I call him but he doesn’t answer. I go to him and put my hands on his. His hands are cold—they are always cold—but they are colder than normal and I shake his shoulder and his head rolls sideways. His eyes are open but he doesn’t see me. His face looks lopsided and strange.

I don’t know what to do. I call Mama and her phone rings and voicemail picks up. I call her five times and then she answers.

“Alba?” She sounds like I woke her up.

“Mama, I think Grandpa died.” I tell her what happened and Mama says she will come as soon as she can and she says I should go downstairs and get Kimy.

Kimy lives downstairs; she is Grandpa’s landlady. She comes to her door in her nightgown with her long braids down, and when I tell her about Grandpa she hugs me and follows me upstairs. When she sees him she says, “Richard,” but not like she expects an answer. She puts her fingers on his neck. “He’s still a little warm,” she says, to herself, I think. “Bring me the phone, Alba.” I bring it to her and we sit together on the other sofa while she calls 911. Then people come and we answer a lot of questions. They call Kimy ma’am and I know she hates that.

After a while, Kimy says I should go back to bed. The paramedics are going to move Grandpa. I don’t want to see that. I go back to bed. Then I get up and unplug the snowman night-light, but I can still see the lopsided expression on Grandpa’s face, which was sort of a smile.

Clare: I race home over icy highways, worrying about Alba—there’s nothing I can do for Richard. When I pull into a parking space near the two-flat, the lights are all on upstairs. The sun is coming up, thin and pink. I let myself in and walk upstairs quietly.

Kimy is sitting in the living room. She stands up, stiff and a little shaky. I hug her.

“Alba’s sleeping,” she says. “You want some coffee? Muffins?”

“Sure,” I say. We walk down the long hall. Richard’s kitchen windows face west, so it’s still dark, and I turn on the lights. I sit at Richard’s table, and Kimy makes coffee and sets out two enormous blueberry muffins. It is strange to eat a dead man’s food. Something so perishable should not outlast the person meant to consume it.

We sit in silence, warming our hands with the too-hot-to-drink coffee mugs. We look at the river and at the rooftops and houses to the west. The light is stronger now, and though the backyard is in deep shadow, the sky is radiant.

“What happened?” I ask.

“They think he had a stroke,” says Kimy. “Alba found him around three. He was sitting on the sofa, peacefully, his violin was next to him like he had just put it down.”

“How is Alba?”

“She didn’t say much. She said he was fine when she went to bed.”

We lapse back into silence. I am thinking of the morning my mother died. The quiet in this room is not like the quiet in that room. In that room the machines stopped; in this room two people are breathing.

Kimy says, “What should we do about Henry’s room?”

“What do you mean?”