Reaping

this story is currently in competition.

It�s the sort of dusk when the sun lights up the whole sky with whiteness�hurting your eyes to look toward it�as it sets. All day it has been cloudy with only a peeking out of blue, but now I can tell that most of the sky is cloudless, behind that whiteness that eats all colors. I squint into it, thinking for a while, then turn back to the computer, my papers scattered on the desk, my scribblings on post-it notes, small notepads, opened envelopes.

My husband, Danforth, calls to me, �Mara, you pick up the phone too.� I curse under my breath. I have all day been avoiding this call, which is why I had Danforth call his own mother when he got home. I could have nothing to say: just disappointed silence to hold back spoiled tears. I am always dumbfounded to say the right things�aye, me!�even if I think them.

I pick up the phone and Ma says �Mara?�

�Yes.�

�Well, you guys probably knew this was coming, but I am going to be staying in California at least until December fifth.� Then she tells us how she is needed there and how in her solitary, thus-far-too-brief stay she has single-handedly started Danforth�s grandmother on physical therapy. This all sounds very noble to me, and sort of triumphant and good.

After awhile, she says weakly, �I am very disappointed not to come and see your house again. And I know, Mara, with you planning the menu for two months�� Then she promises to come another time and tells us maybe Pa shouldn�t come either. He has bronchitis and won�t be able to manage the details without her, but I barely hear this because there had been a crash in the dining room: Danforth holds the puppy and says �Sure, yeah�� as I pick up all of the oil pastels and watercolor pencils and put them back into their tin cases and stack them on the table.

I say one �Uh-huh.�

When Ma turns the conversation more directly to Danforth, I click off the phone and drop my hands to my side. I wander back into the office and sit down. I stare at my work, pretending to myself that I am doing it. Danforth yells to me from the kitchen, �Mara, pick up the phone. Nanna�s coming on.�

I begin to protest: �But Dan, I�� but remember that I would be a very little person to argue at such a moment. And without having time to prepare for a chat with Danforth�s grandmother, I pick up the phone again and stand, fidget, wander through the rooms as I wait (my face always 180 degrees away from my husband).

�Hello, Mara?�

�Hi.� And thank goodness, Dan breaks in to say that he is on the line too. Nanna�s sentences come slowly and broken and every so often she drops a sentence mid-way and says, �I am confused.� I try to put her voice with the healthy, young-old person I met at our wedding, a year and a half ago. I am thinking of a conversation I had with my own Grandma a couple days before. I could hear tears in her voice when I told her Nanna was slipping away very rapidly with cancer. �Is that the nice woman who sat at our table at the wedding?� Grandma asked. �Yes,� I told her, and I could feel Grandma�s sorrow through the wires and the satellite deflections. I could tell she suddenly felt old. I did too.

I make my way to the sliding glass door in our family room, listening to Nanna struggle to finish her sentences. The sun is still the sort of white that you can�t put into a painting. The sky is now back to autumn-blue. The blazing golden light makes some things crisp and some things hidden. The tall aspen outside our front door stands in perfectly traced, intricate silhouette to the sky. The leaves still hanging on its branches shiver in the wind. Their colors are washed grey by the intense sunlight. The air between the sun and I is hazy with gold. The grass, the cars, all but disappear in the thickness of the gold light. I stare at the ant-sized circles of dust on the window pane, crowded together at the edges. I look at the razor-thin lines of diamond white reflecting off the horizontal strings of the screen. A long, single hair is caught in the screen and waves against the window in the wind.

Nanna says, �Mara, the wonderful thing ... is before ... you die ... being able to say ... to say ... I�m sorry.�

On the inside of the window the sun has caught a golden haze: A smudge from top to bottom that I have not been able to wipe away despite all my scrubbing.

copyright by devon, 2003.