My Grandfather: An Encyclopedia
zoe reay-ellers
A
ABRIDGED, I no longer remember how your story begins,
how you held your fork, took your tea.
AD INFINITUM,
Love, as in WALL-E and Eva, constructed to remain in motion.
In letting yourself be known, in remembrance.
Death, as in we are so small in the grand scheme of things.
ANCIENT, wrinkles criss-crossing every inch
of a body. A cracked statue turned to dust.
ANECDOTE, a man I’d never met before told me that you’d been
brought in as a consultant for his case. When he’d explained
the crime scene wasn’t safe yet, you rolled your eyes and started
towards the house, grumbling about precautions. Five minutes later
the two of you were lying back to back in a bathtub
on the second floor because bullets can’t get through porcelain.
ASYMPTOTE, ever-converging upon a point: tomorrow, the final page of Google.
AUSTEN,
“I have not the pleasure of understanding you.”
B
BELIEF, in nothing beyond myself. I’d be a horribly boring contestant
on Deal or No Deal because I’m not one to gamble
on the million when I could enjoy $100 safely. I wonder
why you, a man of science, of cold hard facts, needed something more.
BLUR, a nose, eyes, lips, a dark brown sweater with stitching
down the front, salt and pepper hair. Actually, maybe the sweater was blue
like your eyes. Or were your eyes green?
BOOKS,
Don Quixote, it must’ve been one of your favorites
because you kept five copies in your study. I read
the only one without a picture on the cover last time
we visited. There was an expired coupon for a pizza place
I’d never heard of tucked into page 320. I’ve never seen you eat pizza before.
Pride and Prejudice, which I despised as much as Twain. You remind me
of Mr. Bennett, albeit fathering four rambunctious children instead
of five. I’d prefer to say I’m like that as well, finished with the drama
of romance, preferring crosswords over courting.
But, if we’re being honest, I’m more of a Mr. Bingley.
The Great Gatsby, my first and favorite classic that I borrowed
from you and never got the chance to return. Did you like Nick as much as I do?
C
CHICKEN POX, you and my mother got into a fight and she left to join Doctors Without
Borders and didn’t tell you. She got stuck in Chicago six months later, too sick to move
and called everyone on her contact list, trying to convince someone to drive her
back to college in Washington. My grandmother told you that she needed
a ride and you drove straight to Chicago without hesitating,
brought her home, took care of her for three weeks.
CONSPIRACY, theorist, knitting a sweater from spun yarns and newspaper clippings.
CHILDREN,
Brendon, your oldest son. He sent me Hamlet to read when I asked
after you. Apparently, it’d been one of your favorites. It took me
a lot of time scrolling through SparkNotes, but I finally finished it.
Not too bad. I prefer Macbeth though.
Elise, your only daughter, my mother. A tornado of a woman, constantly
moving from place to place. She grew up to be a nurse, working
to keep less cases out of your office. I hope you were as proud
of her as she is of me.
Laurence, your youngest son. He’s loud and funny,
an airline pilot. Every time I visit he tells me stories about growing up
in Blue Ridge, where you lived before he went to college. I see you in him
the most, I think, even though you’re complete opposites. Neither of you
have any doubts about tomorrow or the next day, or who you are.
Sean, the second-youngest or third-oldest. I still don’t know him
as well as I should, but when he and his wife came over to watch
the Super Bowl with us he learned that I still didn’t know how football
worked and spent the entire game explaining plays to me, answering
my endless, senseless questions with complex tortilla chip based diagrams.
The next game I started watching more than just the commercials.
I even joined the family fantasy league this year.
CHRISTMAS, my aunt’s seasoned pork and potatoes with minced green onions.
You would lumber over and take a seat at the head of the table. As per tradition,
you’d address us, stringing together more words in five minutes
than the rest of the year put together.
CIGARETTE,
addiction, something you unsuccessfully tried to hide, disappearing out
onto the back deck or into the garage, quickly dropping the butt and
crushing it beneath your left foot the second anyone walked out.
pack, sitting on your dresser. My mother and her brothers took a few from
it when they were teenagers. Snuck out into the woods and sat on damp
logs, passed around a match. They coughed and promised one another
to never smoke again. My mother still disappears
out onto our front porch sometimes and comes back smelling of mint.
CIRCUMLOCUTION, not stating something outright.
D
DNA, my dad’s side of the family are feather-boned and dainty. Rails, the lot of them.
You and I, on the other hand, have shoulders that scrape the edges of doorways
and occasionally offset earth’s orbit. We are meant to replace Atlas.
DRAWER, there was a junk drawer in your kitchen that I liked to spend hours organizing,
stacking coupons and scraps of paper with hastily scribbled notes, lining up erasers,
scissors, and paper clips into neater rows than a military cemetary.
DUALISM,
Grandpa Don, smelling of cumin and peanut M&Ms. Napping
in the leftmost living room chair most of the time.
Dr. Donald Reay: medical examiner, god among men.
E
EARLY, I used to help refill the absurd number of bird feeders
attached to the rickety metal railing of your back deck. The suet
was always sticky and I hated the smell but you’d get all kinds of birds
that I’d never see back home. Sometimes after washing our hands
you’d get your newspaper and I’d make a cup of hot cocoa and we’d sit
outside in the dewy air, watching quietly as the morning came to life.
ELLIPSIS, a pause, a breath, the space left because you don’t feel like going on.
F
FABRICATE, memories, perhaps?
FAMOUS, I’ve gone down a rabbit hole trying to find every case
that you’ve been involved in. Ted Bundy, The Green River Killer,
Kurt Cobain, Vincent Foster. A homeless man
who got stabbed with a Bic pen.
FOOTBALL, lazy Sundays nestled in the cushions of your living room couch.
I’d curl up and pull one of grandma’s homemade afghans up to my chin,
whistle blows acting as white noise as I drifted off to sleep.
FOOTBALL, a few years later.
It’s Thanksgiving weekend and everyone who’s not helping
cook is gathered around the TV watching the Saints
and the Falcons run up and down the field. The Falcons make a touchdown
but we remain silent, staring listlessly at the screen, the reddish-purple shag carpeting,
the bookshelf in the corner sporting haphazardly stacked magazines, classics, trashy
romance novels. Everywhere but the empty chair in the corner.
G
GENERATION, you never owned a smartphone, instead religiously relying
on the tinny landline that resided behind stacks of files on your desk
downstairs. I wonder if you’d believe me if I told you about my friends
from Slovenia and France.
GOOGLE AUTOFILL, dow jones. I hit enter after only typing the “D” of Don
by accident last week and wasted an hour trying to figure out how the stock
market worked. You must’ve known. You invested in Microsoft
when it was barely three people in a basement. Everyone called you crazy
but you were the one laughing when you retired 5 years early.
GRAND
mother. She raised four children, five grandchildren with you. An artist--
she taught me how to paint, let me waste her good acrylics
on lopsided trees, cats with only three legs. She misses you.
daughter, me. Searching for the story of
father, you.
GUEST, an outsider, an other. Stepping into a house that you’ve spent
hundreds of hours exploring and still feeling lost.
H
HOLIDAY, one of your old friends told me about the time you left Christmas dinner
with your family because you’d gotten a call about a homicide.
It was 10 pm and the rain was coming down in droves but you still peeled
out of the driveway and drove the hour to Woodland Park. You hopped out of the car,
still in your nice slacks and dress shirt, grabbed a pair of gloves,
and knelt in the mud next to the body without hesitation.
HOLIDAY, I sat, picking at my mashed potatoes and listening to the adults
talk. We were supposed to wait for you to come back before starting
dessert, but I was about two minutes away from dashing across the room
and planting my face into the cheesecake sitting on the counter. The uncle
sitting next to me noticed the look in my eyes and whispered to me
“I think we should go get some cake. You game? We’ll have to be super sneaky.”
We stood up, under the guise of collecting plates to take to the sink. He shielded me
from view as I cut two slices, slipping them onto dessert plates and grabbing some
forks. We sat on the porch together and he told me about the time he was my age
and blew up the sewer grate outside your house. (See also: Children; Laurence)
HOUSE, grandma is trying to sell the house the two of you lived in for 30 years.
A few weeks ago my mother made me help clean it out
so that the real estate agent could show potential buyers a space
that was lived in, but not overrun with ghosts. We ended up bringing home
boxes of old photographs and books. I found one that was labeled
03-26-53 and had a picture of you at my age. We had the same hair
and freckles, and you smiled like I do: eyes crinkled, left lip quirked up.
I
INADVERTENT, I made chamomile yesterday— your favorite. I hadn’t made tea
in months because we’d run out and then I kept forgetting
to get more. I stuck the bag in and added a little bit of honey and sugar
reflexively and I remembered that you were the one who’d shown
me the perfect honey to sugar to tea ratio. I wondered
if it was possible that Proust knew what he was talking about after all.
IRONY, “I am a witness for the dead. I’m the one person who can say anything
about that person’s last minutes on Earth” (Donald Reay)
J
JEOPARDY, when it hit 7:30 on Friday you always changed the channel
to NBC. When I was over I’d always go sit by your feet
and watch as you’d get more answers right than most of the contestants.
After every episode I would demand that you apply and win me
the “big bucks” so I could buy a horse or a train. You’d smile and
shake your head at me, promising to call the guy you knew
that could get it all set up on Saturday, but you never did.
K
KETTLE, grandma got you a new kettle a few years ago to replace the beat-up one
that took up permanent residence on the top right burner of the stove
in your kitchen. You and me, we’re a sentimental bunch, so you regifted
the new one to me the year after. I still have it. (See also: Inadvertent)
KNIT, I learned to knit two years ago and made everyone hats for Christmas.
Yours was made of soft variegated blue wool that I’d found
on sale at our local yarn store. It’s somewhere in a bin
downstairs now because I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out.
L
LEGACY, you oversaw more than five thousand autopsies, trained a generation
of medical examiners, turned a small, unknown office
into one that’s nationally respected, raised a family. How did you do it all?
LIFE, something that is both too short and too long
at once. I didn’t understand that death was unfair
until one of my best friends lost her father
to a sickness that the doctors weren’t able to diagnose
or treat. I remember that she’d had her birthday party a week
after he first got sick. Her mother had to come down
and tell us to be quieter because her father needed to sleep.
I didn’t think anything of it until my dad took me
to buy flowers for them a few weeks later.
LAST,
name. I hate our last name because everyone spells it wrong
and because it’s boring. I like to joke that the second I meet
someone with an epic, pronounceable last name
I’m getting down on one knee and proposing.
words, something I think are overrated. Something I have to think are
overrated because I can’t remember ours. Or maybe I do
but I don’t want to admit that they weren’t “I love you”
like they should’ve been because I left without saying goodbye.
I was tired and you’d disappeared out onto the back deck
for a cigarette. I didn’t even consider that I might not see you again.
M
MAGIC, I keep expecting you to slowly step through the door
and to tell us it was just a trick of the light, a ruse
that’d gone on too long. But it’s been two years
and you didn’t even know how to shuffle cards.
MCELROY,
“When someone leaves your life, those exits are not made equal.
Some are beautiful, and poetic, and satisfying. Others are abrupt
and unfair. But most are just unremarkable, unintentional, clumsy.”
N
NOVEMBER,
9:00: I pulled on my fanciest dress, black and covered in small music
notes. My dad braided my hair with shaky hands.
10:50: I rode in the car with your oldest son and his family.
We don’t get to see them much.
12:00: We stopped to get Starbucks because funeral food
is always tasteless and we didn’t want to be both hungry and sad.
1:03: I meandered around the lobby, watching the rain hit the church
windows high above my head. My mother grabbed my arm
and guided me into the front left pew, eyes already red.
1:10: I began to regret not going to church more often. When the Priest said: Peace
be with you I responded: And with you also instead of And also with
your spirit. A few heads turned in my direction and my ears flushed red.
1:40: They carried your ashes down the aisle. I was
the only one not crying. I’m sorry.
2:30: It stopped raining.
3:00: We moved into a room bursting with tables
and chairs. I realized how many people there were.
3:20: A plate of food was shoved into my hands: macaroni
and cheese, scalloped potatoes, rolls.
4:00: People that I didn’t know started standing up and talking about your infallible
honesty, your years in the Air Force, the time you turned down an offer
to be the lead Medical Examiner of New York City. I wondered
who this other man was, if I was at the right funeral.
7:00: Everyone left and my family, your family, started cleaning up. The church
staff told us it wasn’t necessary but I think we all needed a distraction. I found
half of a cheesecake that was cut clean across and carried it into a back hallway. I sat
cross-legged on the carpet and realized I’d forgotten a fork, so I dragged my finger across
the side and raised it to my mouth. It was too sweet, but I didn’t care.
You were dead and life didn’t feel any different than it did before.
Zoe Reay-Ellers is a senior currently attending Interlochen Arts Academy. She edits for a host of literary magazines, and her work has appeared in a number of different places, including The Blue Marble Review and The Eunoia Review.