Gretta's Window

     Gretta Holland was sixty-three years old when the pandemic hit. The world crisis struck South Korea in February of that year, well before it hit the states. Gretta’s grandson was working as an English teacher there. He had begged Gretta to get an app he could call her on for cheap, but Gretta didn’t like computers for anything more than her card games, and even that she preferred to use real cards for.

         When Ed made the international call, his voice was tight with tension and pinched with stress.

“Gran, I want you to be careful when you go out. It hasn’t hit the states as far as we know, but I want you to be careful anyway. Wear a medical mask when you go out, and stock up on supplies just in case.”

“Don’t be silly. You worry too much. America has the best medical care in the world. I’ll be fine. Besides it’s only in Asia, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But you don’t understand, they’re saying a person can have it and be contagious for up to two weeks. I’ve been getting texts from the local government all day about places we need to avoid. Stores are shutting down to sanitize after being exposed. They’re doing contact tracing and everything. This is serious. One of my students is in isolation because he was in the same store as someone who had it.”

“It can’t reach me here, I’ll be fine.”

“Alright Gran, I gotta go. Be safe, I love you.”

“I love you too. Stay safe over there.”

         They hung up, and Gretta sat in her rocking chair on the front porch, looking at the kids playing basketball in the street of the cul-de-sac, while others played on their phones as they walked in huddled groups. The Smith’s drove into their driveway across the street, just getting home from a weekend trip out to the movies and dinner. She waved and they shouted their hello’s back.

         She and her husband Ralph had picked Marina to build their home and raise their children in, because of the tight knit community, and the family friendly feel. The school was a rare gem left in the world. One of the few which still maintained a woodshop, an agriculture class, and a pottery class, all which they opened to the public during the summer. She had even taught a few classes herself before the shaking in her hands had gotten less manageable. She was an artist, and though she could still paint, no matter how good her work might be, it would never compare to what it once was.

         Her art had once hung in the studios of the most prestigious galleries. Though age and a shaking hand had taken her talent from her. To keep her gloom at bay Ralph had hung her favorite pieces all around the house. Lighting them with the skill of an electrician. The years had taken Ralph from her, just as they had taken her talent. Though she survived, mostly due to the kindness of their neighbors. Whom had all been there for her when he’d passed.

         Now, sitting in her rocking chair, watching the kids play ball, she couldn’t help but wonder what else the world had in store for her. It had taken so much already, and the note in her Grandson’s voice nagged at her core.

         Her daughter, Denice had worked as a candy-striper for a few years while trying to get her medical degree. To show their support, and how forward thinking they were, they’d bought a box of one-hundred medical masks for a dollar at Walmart. She and Ralph wore them whenever they grew ill. Most of the community knew that if Gretta was in a mask, it meant she was under the weather. Sherie, would even bring her home-made chicken-soup if it got bad.

         She went to the closet, pulling out the plastic first-aid-kit, and extracting a mask from the cardboard box inside. Feeling silly she fit the strings over her ears and checked her reflection in the mirror. Ed had rattled her a little, and there was no harm in buying a few groceries, just in case.

         Soon after, the news that the sickness had spread to America hit, and Gretta would glumly move her rocking chair inside, on the other side of the large glass window. She wasn’t one to sit on the couch all day and watch television, and she didn’t like the internet. She would play cards with herself at the tea table. Gazing out the window and waving as people walked past.

         Sherie called her on the phone, waving from across the street to see how she was, and ask if she needed to drop off groceries. When she did, she would leave them on her doorstep, ring the bell, and go back across the street.

         Even with Sherie’s kindness, loneliness began to eat away at Gretta. She wanted a way to communicate with the outside world. To interact with them as she once had.

         In the third month of her isolation, she got out her paints, set them on the tea table, and began to paint a scene on the large front window. The large trunk of a great tree with roots reaching down into the earth, and branches spiraling up into the sky.

         Shades of emerald, azure, and mahogany decorated the glass. The people passing would stop to gaze up at it. Eyes wide over their masks as they stared.

         Each Saturday, Gretta would scrape the window clean, and start over from scratch. Letting each creation remain for the week, before doing it over again as something new.

         The second painting was a sunrise, in beautiful shades of goldenrod and periwinkle. Then an island, with palm trees.

         A lighthouse overlooking an ocean was the favorite of the family next door. During Halloween she used silver and glow-in-the-dark paint to depict an alien space craft crashing into the earth. Once winter came her painted fireplace on the window was cozier than any other.

         Each week more people would come, driving down their street, to admire her art from the safety of their vehicles. Some took pictures to post them on blogs, and others would honk their horns and cheer to let her know they were there.

         For an entire year it went on like this, and Gretta was finding she wasn’t quite as lonely anymore. Though, when the following year came, Gretta realized she was running out of paint. All the paint she had gotten over her life, had ended up being stock piled in her garage and was now nearly spent. With only a few containers left of glass paint which she wouldn’t be able to scrape off her window.

         Her mind toiled over the fact, as she scrapped away the picture from the previous week, a girl riding a bicycle through the park. How would she paint a new image? Who would come to see her and wave hello once it was all gone? As she pressed her scrapper against the glass, she pushed a fraction too hard, and the window cracked.

         For a few seconds Gretta stared at the crack, shocked. Then she got up and found her yellow pages book, to find the number of a repair shop. They told her it would be six-hundred dollars to fix, because the window was a unique shape and size, and it would have to be made special, but Gretta couldn’t afford something like that. Coming to a decision she apologized and told the person on the phone she wouldn’t need her window repaired after all.

         When she had been in her thirties, Gretta had taken a few classes in glass art. She still had some of the tools left over from it. Glass cutters, scrapers, grozing pliers, and copper foil. She went back to the window. Examining the fracture in the glass and planning out her approach.

         After cleaning her tools and getting them ready, she carefully began cutting out the glass. Piece by piece, scraping the edges down and wrapping the edges of the shards in the coper foil. Working late into the night, as the stars shined overhead, and the night breeze blew fresh air into the house.

         Ralph, having been an electrician, had left plenty of solder in his work room. Mumbling a thank you to him, she gathered a spool of it, as well as the soldering iron before going back to the window, which lay on the floor in pieces. Carefully she painted a thin layer of flux over the foil, before going over it with the solder, laying out smooth lines as she worked. When she was done with one side, she turned it carefully over, and worked on the other. Before gathering the paint that remained in the garage, transparent glass paint. She’d bought it for a project she’d done with her grandchildren when they were young. Carefully she painted each pane as she went before fitting it back into the frame just as the sun peaked over the tops of the houses across the street.

         Many who had passed the night before had seen her window was broken and had spread the word that there would not be a picture that week. Thus, that morning, there was only a single child out, wanting to play basketball before it got too hot out. Though as he neared the hoop, his eyes caught on Gretta’s work, and he stood in awe of her new creation. Stunned by its breathtaking magnificence he could not look away.

         As his father came out to leave for work, he caught sight of his son standing in the street, and began to ask him what he was doing, until he too caught sight of it, and the two stared.

         They were the first to see her work that morning, though Gretta didn’t notice them. She was sitting in her rocking chair, a spool of solder in her hand as she sat, resting after having completed her last great work.