Time By Iris Rosewater

If I were at home, I would still be asleep right now, Lori thought to herself as she watched the dust motes dance in a beam of sunlight. The curtains were yellowing lace, probably hand-tatted decades ago. She lay in the creaky day bed, letting her eyes wander over the fake wood-paneled walls in the tiny “guest” bedroom. The room was a combination of ancient artifacts and someone’s attempt to redecorate in the late sixties. The green shag carpeting complemented her scratchy polyester bedspread perfectly, as if a swatch had been cut to be sure the swirling paisley would be an exact match. A black sewing machine sat on a drop leaf table in the far corner on top of a doily. The night stand was stained a dark brown and had a lovely skeleton-key hole in the rounded drawer. There were pictures in tarnished frames... black and white, mostly. Some of them smiled in formal poses, with striking and outdated hair styles. The men had pants that reached halfway up their torsos. Several women wore dresses with shiny belts at their waists and high heels. And in the really, truly antique photos, the faces did not smile. A baby sat, in a white gown and bonnet, blurred in his mother’s lap... her brunette hair piled neatly on her head, her dress buttoned all the way up to her chin. Relatives, most likely. Distant, deceased strangers, hauntingly familiar by genetic traits. On one woman she saw the distinctive “May” nose - thin and pointed. And the man on her left had the big forehead every female descendent unlucky enough to have inherited hides with bangs. Lori tried to imagine herself in a dress with long sleeves that puffed at the shoulders and covered every inch of skin possible, her own mousey brown hair fixed with dozens of pins in an intricate bun. Her parents’ muffled voices moved from the adjacent bedroom to the hallway and lingered in front of her closed door.

“...a garage sale would be so much work, Tom. I don’t know if I have it in me. Why don’t you just sell some of the decent stuff on ebay and donate the rest to Goodwill?” her mother sounded exhausted already and it couldn’t be much past seven.

“You think that would be less work? I don’t have time, Sharon. Let’s just have an estate sale for a day or two and it’ll be done with. We only have a week to wrap all of this up...”

Their words faded into rumbles as they walked to the kitchen. Certain now that there would be no more dozing, Lori got up and picked some clothes to wear from her suitcase in the closet. She took a weak shower in the mint-green bathtub (someone really liked green) and came out to join breakfast already in progress at the formica table in the kitchen. Great-Grandma looked to be in a good mood this morning, humming and smiling in her mumu (which looked to have been purchased at the same time as the bed spread). Debbie, her over-fed poodle, waddled along beside her.

“Lori, dear? Is that you?” she said, her voice shaking along with her head and her arms as she reached out for a hug. This was the reason for the good mood. She had forgotten again.

“Yes, Grandma, it’s me,” she smiled, embracing the old woman’s bony frame gently.

Lori’s parents shot each other a look. They were clearly having an unspoken conversation. Her father cocked his head to the side and raised his eyebrows,“Do we tell her again today, or leave it be? She’ll only forget again tomorrow.” Sharon rolled her eyes,
“She will want to know what we’re doing with her belongings, don’t you think? We’ll have to explain somehow.” Lori helped herself to some oatmeal on the stove, but skipped the prunes. Grandma pulled a jar of honey from the cupboard and offered her some, but Lori politely declined when she saw the amount of gnat carcasses entombed in the sweet goo. Apparently Sharon had noticed, too, because Lori watched her throw it away when Grandma’s back was turned.

Sitting at the table, Lori watched as her grandmother ate. Debbie sat at her feet, wiggling her puffy little tail. Even with her large glasses, rimmed with purple plastic and gold, strong enough to fry a colony of ants in the sun, Grandma Lorraine could hardly see. Tom had found a phone for her with unbelievably large buttons, but she still couldn’t use it. It was painful to witness her grandmother eat. Often, her violently shaking hands missed the food she was trying to skewer with a fork. And, when she finally speared or scooped a morsel, half the time it fell off on its turbulent journey to her wrinkled mouth. Lori winced every time she watched the poor woman, unseeing, close her lips around an empty utensil. It was heartbreaking. She felt some relief watching grandma eat her oatmeal, which stuck reliably to the spoon.

Great-grandma Lorraine had turned 93 that fall. Her face was so old that it was hard to imagine what she must have looked like as a young woman. It was now framed with white hair, cut short and round around her head in a tightly curled permanent. Her eyes were cloudy blue, usually kind, but lately filled with confusion and frustration. Some days, she looked far away, perhaps living a memory. Today they were clear and kind. Her nose had grown comically bulbous over her long life span, and above her shriveled lips grew wiry, white hairs. Her teeth were still her own. Yellow, but sturdy. All in all, she was a sturdy woman. She lived through influenza epidemic and the great depression, both world wars... she mothered two sons and lost one to polio. She outlived three husbands and both her children. She had lived independently until age 93... when her mind began to give out on her. Tom used to visit monthly, until the neighbors reported that she’d been behaving strangely, asking which way to the train station, answering the door naked... growing violently fretful as she wandered the trailer park in search of her “little boy”. Lori considered how sad it was, her body having held on and stayed true and capable - only to be forsaken by her mind.


After breakfast, Lori’s parents made phone calls before going out. Most likely, they would be picking up cardboard boxes to pack up the contents of the single-wide trailer. It seemed odd to her that, after living nearly a century, all of a person’s belongings could dwindle to some out-dated furniture and nick-knacks. Lori felt uncomfortable with the idea of pulling the rug out from under the old woman. Every day Grandma woke without the memory of Tom and Sharon’s purpose for visiting. For the first two days, they re-explained. Grandma would be moving to a “nice, cozy home” filled with other elderly people, where “everything would be taken care of for her,” and she “wouldn’t have to lift a finger.” Lori felt sick as she listened to the sugar-coated version of the facility they were taking her to. She’d seen it for herself. It was clean, but in a sterile, hospital-ish way. Decorated with generic motel paintings on the walls, which were all a drab faded peach color. The employees seemed nice enough. But nothing - no soothing color scheme, no amount of fake flowers in vases, no assortment of desserts in custard dishes - could take the feeling out of that place. Although she tried not to be rude and stare, Lori couldn’t help but look at all the people that lived there. They were like her great-grandma Lorraine when she had one of her episodes (which were becoming more and more frequent). Some of them looked confused, like they had forgotten what they’d meant to buy at a store, and they wandered slowly and aimlessly around the halls, puzzling to themselves. One woman sat on a rocking chair, holding a teddy bear and smiling like a child. An old man’s voice permeated his room’s closed door as he argued with the nurse that he had not just taken his pill five minutes ago, and demanded the nurse give it to him now. It was filled with people who had lost themselves, and that strange, other-worldly feeling invaded Lori’s soul and left her sad and disquieted.

She tried not to think about it as she followed her great grandmother out to sit on the old wicker chairs just outside the front door. The concrete patio was cracked, and tufts of grass poked up and waved in the breeze. The tiny yard was overgrown and covered with dandelions. Their yellow heads bent and bobbed carelessly, unaware that they were unwanted. Lori glanced toward the toolshed and could see that her father had the lawn on his to-do list. His own graying-yellow head ducked through the doorway. His tall shadow stretched over the concrete and the weeds... Grandmother squinted up at him through her thick lenses.

The television seemed to drone constantly at a deafening volume level. Lori imagined it was a good way to keep from feeling lonely, but it was awfully hard to tune out or get away from in the small space. When she saw that Grandma was asleep halfway through Days of Our Lives, with Debbie snuggled contentedly beside her, Lori turned it off and looked around for something to do. There was no computer. The books she had were mostly about cooking, or religious. Out of sheer boredom, she began poking in the closet her parents had begun sorting through. Lots of old clothes. How did all old people seem to smell the same? She wondered, marking the familiar musty odor as she stirred the fabric. A few items were truly vintage: a fancy dress that must have been from the thirties at least, a pair of cream-colored peek-toe high heels, several clutch purses. And then, deep in the closet, she found a filing box. Lorraine’s favorite color, green. It had a lock, but opened easily when she slid the latch. Inside was a veritable time capsule. A stack of photos. Lorraine as an infant, wearing a long white gown in her mother’s arms. Laughing in a woolen bathing suit and thick-rimmed sunglasses. A graduation photo shot with a soft lens that made the contours of her face fuzzy around the edges. The famous nose, elegant and distinctive, was there. Lori realized with a start how clearly this face resembled her own. The same doe eyes, high cheekbones, pointed chin. Intrigued, Lori looked on. Pictures of her first marriage, to Lori’s blood-related great-grandfather, Joe. And then, as their little family grew in number, baby pictures of their sons. Clearly, they were Lorraine’s pride and joy. Her smile looked exultant, holding her second born on her hip, and the hand of her oldest standing beside her. More pictures of the sons... and then the family with a noticeable absence. And obvious pain behind smiles. Lori noted the distinct change in her eyes. In two pictures, most likely taken only a year or two apart, Lorraine’s face had aged dramatically. The exuberance was lost somehow. Color photographs near the bottom of the box showed another wedding. And another, dated twenty years or so ago. Loving and losing cast a shadow over the youthful smile, made the dimples more shallow somehow, the eyes a bit deeper. Wordlessly, Lorraine’s story was played out through yellowing photographs, filled in with the scraps of history Lori could remember. The lady snoring gently in her mumu on the couch seemed a far cry from the woman she was looking at. All of a sudden, time seemed fickle and unfair. It gave at first... ripening childhood into youth and capability... tending and growing love after love like a tree bears fruit. And then, it harvested in a cruel way, plucking away loved ones. Wearing on and on, knitting wrinkles into skin, pulling out hair, bending joints and making bones brittle. Time seemed like the creditor every human comes into the world first anticipating, then ignoring, and finally begging after for more.

Lori took her favorite picture, the mirror-image Lorraine at eighteen years, and carried it reverently to her bedroom, tucking it securely into her journal. Then she went to the livingroom and sat next to her great-grandmother, still in dreams. She took her hand, with its papery, spotted skin and laced her fingers between the swollen knuckles, leaning her head gently on Lorraine’s frail shoulder. She closed her eyes, but did not sleep, and tried not to waken the old woman with her tears.