A Late Night at My Grandfather's House

        My movements were mechanical as I stepped into the too-quiet house. Keys in the dish on the counter. Shoes wiped on the door mat and kicked off onto the place on the boot tray that has always been mine. Jacket shrugged off, hung from the hook that once read my full name in bubble stickers. Only three letters are left, now: S_m__t__. Simple, automatic, routine. Nothing has changed at Grandpa’s house in twenty-five years. Nothing until tonight.

              Had I failed to kick off my shoes, had I kept my jacket on as I walked in, would I have paused to listen for him scolding me? “You track mud in my kitchen, kid, it’s you who’s scrubbing it off,” or “Hang your coat up, Sammy, stay a while.” Would I have flinched at the silence?

              I didn’t let myself stop long enough to soak in the stillness. The pot in the coffee maker was half full; Grandpa always saved at least a mug’s worth for me if he knew I’d be stopping by. We were fellow caffeine-hounds. My traditional mug—the one with my 2^nd grade yearbook picture grinning toothlessly on it—was on the second shelf of the cabinet left of the fridge, between his #1 Dad mug from the 70s and my cousin Joe’s abomination from sophomore ceramics class, exactly where it always was. I could have walked from the door to this spot blindfolded, found my mug, and poured myself a cup of coffee. I was looking, though. My eyes bore in to that picture, like that gap-toothed girl had the answers I needed and would start talking if I just mean-mugged her long enough.

              Tomorrow, everything would be changed. Not ruined, not right away. Tomorrow, the whole family would be here, breaking out photo albums and telling old stories and probably tracking mud into Grandpa’s kitchen without any plans to scrub it off themselves. That would be okay, I supposed. But then they would begin to divvy up his things and peel him away and scrub him out of every nook and cranny of the place. How long until no piece of him was left? How long until this space that had never changed once in my whole life became unrecognizable to me?

              I sipped my coffee. It was cold. I walked to the microwave and put my mug in, slamming the microwave door harder than I needed to to close it. Then I wrapped my arms tight around myself and watched that little face turning round and round.

              Grandpa would like to listen to his family tell stories about him. We all knew the best ones by heart. Grandpa sneaking away in the night in high school with plans to drive to the Grand Canyon, only to have to hitchhike home after his engine blew out 20 miles later. Grandpa driving himself broke by going to the diner where Gran worked every weekend, just to meekly smile at her and forget every smooth line he’d meant to say.

              “You tell this one all the time,” Joe whined once. “Don’t you get sick of it?”

              I was mad at Joe then for saying it, and I was mad at him now. They were good stories. Why should a good thing have to change? When the details never changed, it was like I could walk in to that story and see things just like they were. If the house never changed, it would be like any moment, Grandpa could walk in that door, put his keys in the dish, kick off his shoes, hang up his jacket, walk across the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee, and reach out to ruffle my hair and give me a kiss on the forehead.

              “Hey, kid. Up burning the midnight oil again?”

              The microwave dinged. I took out the mug and held it in both hands, letting it warm my fingers. I sucked in a long, deep breath between my teeth, forcing my lungs to fill despite how my ribs squeezed like they wanted to cave in. In, out, in, out. Good, Sam.

              I learned a lot about memory from watching how Grandpa kept his house and told his stories. If nothing changed, you never had to worry about forgetting. Gran’s clothes still filled more than half of his small closet. Dad’s and Aunt Jen’s bikes still collected dust in the garage, along with the sleds in the rafters that hadn’t been taken out since Grandpa’s hip replacement almost 15 years ago. My crayon drawings on the fridge, Joe’s ceramics projects in the cabinet. The keys always in the dish by the door, so he never had to ask anyone to help him find them. The stories always the same, down to Gran’s powder blue uniform and the way she smiled when she greeted him, so sweet and pretty that he didn’t notice for weeks that she was calling him the wrong name.

              Like nothing you’ve ever seen, he always said with the exact same fondness, like he could still see her there, pouring him coffee and calling him “Dave” instead of “Dan.”

              He treated those memories like his keys, something he’d never have to worry about losing as long as he left every word, every turn of phrase, exactly where it always had been. I clung to every word, to every smile or crinkle of his nose, arranging every detail into its exact right place in my mind.

              In the weeks after that night, I will tend to those memories with the care of a curator. Grandma’s powder blue uniform – the way he’d close his eyes after she died to picture her as he told it. The mug in the cabinet, the keys in the dish, the smell of coffee that settled onto everything in the kitchen. I’ll worry over everything from the words of the stories to the smell of the kitchen to the layout of the furniture until one day, far down the line, maybe I’ll realize I’ve forgotten to remember what his laugh was like, and grief will seize me anew.

              But that night, I sat down at the kitchen table, across from where his coffee sat half-finished, and his newspaper lay open at the sports section. I drank my coffee. I let myself pretend that maybe soon he’d come sit back down again to his coffee and newspaper, and maybe I’d ask him to tell one of his stories.

              “The one about how you finally asked Gran to go out with you.”

              “That old one? You’ve heard it a million times.”

              “I don’t care, Grandpa. Tell me again.”

              And again, and again. So I could remember all the details right. So that I would know all the words and all the expressions he’d make. So that even now that he was gone, I could imagine having one last perfect conversation with my grandfather.