Inside

My sister and I sit primly, quietly perched on the edge of my grandfather’s couch as if his familiar living room has been transformed into a library since we were last here. His house used to smell faintly of his wife’s thick, creamy makeup and the perfume that seems reserved for the very old, but today there is an unfamiliar smell in the air that reminds me of doing dissections in my science class.

My mother emerges from the long, dimly lit hallway. Her face is suddenly very old, and I am happy she has her back to us as she leads us down the hall. I watch the uncertain feet of my sister in front of me and try to focus only on the rhythm of her steps and the pale, antiquated carpet that leads us away.

We stand in the doorway of the bedroom where I once spent the weekend as a little girl, lost in the huge bed with my sister and scared by the snoring that came from the room across the hall. My grandpa -- the Santa Claus who once held me in his lap -- is now a weak and dying bear, trying to move his body with muscles that have already surrendered to the cancer.

"Help me," my mother says quietly. There is no room to disobey. I move to his side and wrap my arm around his log of a body, hoisting some of his dead weight onto myself as my mother clutches him from the other side.

She and I move down the hall, pulling my grandfather in a sad version of a three-legged race, his body the tie that binds. As we walk he turns vacant eyes to me and then my mother. "Sam," he says, calling her by a name he hasn’t used since she was a child, "Who is she?" He turns his long face back to me.

"Dad, that’s Jaimee -- your granddaughter. Remember?"

He studies me more with his wet and dripping eyes. "I am sorry," he says, sounding as if he does not completely believe my mother.

"You're like me," he says to me as my mother and I lower him into the hospital bed that lies in wait for us in the living room. "Same green eyes and big nose." He does his best at a chuckle, but it ends with a wheeze and raspy cough that shakes his body.

"Yes, Grandpa," I say. "We're just the same."