This is a piece of creative nonfiction about my late grandfather. He never did learn how to whisper.
***
We know the end. We know it like we inherently know the physics of stepping off a cliff.
I’m running late for a date but you want to show me the skyline by your new condo.
It looks like something off a vision board. The lights spread on the horizon like a tumor.
We talk about how strange it is that something so far away can appear so close. Just behind us, in the dimly-lit clubhouse, there’s faint choral singing.
“The geezers have their choir practice on Monday nights,” you tell me. In 82 years, you’ve never learned how to whisper. You do it with a cupped hand covering your whole mouth and shout so as to be heard over the blockage of your own hand. “We’ll have to scoot out of here before the singing geezer parade traps us.”
You’ve always worn your age like an oversized sweater, while I can’t get my youth over my hips anymore. We meet somewhere in the middle, on this communal bench in Clifton, New Jersey. With your silver hair and creased smile, you are beside me. But so is your rotting brain, eating away at the labyrinth. I want to go in there and hide the precious things.
“When I move to the city,” I tell you, “we’ll wave to each other.”
My future tense is precarious. You hold it anyway, in hands cupped and steady.
You tip back your head, lift up your hands, and whistle, your voice blending with the choir. They can probably hear you over the piano, over the sounds of a distant city, over your own two hands.
I’m late for my date and I can feel the weight of this right decision like a deep breath.
A malignant, grief-soaked love spreads through me.
We know the end. But you’re here now. And there is a skyline.