[]Sythlight: lol. You have other hobbies then?
KittyKat: yes. gaming. duh.
[]Sythlight: Ha ha. Guess we should do some of that, then, eh?
KittyKat: yes. stop distracting me with your airy aristocratic painterly ways. to the rift!
KittyKat has entered the barrenlands.
[]Sythlight: To the rift!
[]Sythlight has entered the barrenlands.
KAT
GRANDDAD’S FAVORITE GAME IS CHESS. WHICH IS A PROBLEM. NOT BECAUSE I don’t know how to play—I do—or because Granddad is beating me—he is, but only barely—but because we shouldn’t really be playing at all. I can hear my mother’s interrogation already.
“So, what did you do to help Granddad clean out his old house this week, darling daughter?”
“Um, well, I let him beat me at chess. To get his morale up, you know?”
“Katherine Putnam Daley,” she’ll say with a sigh, “you’re supposed to be packing and cleaning, not playing chess.” My parents want to get Granddad’s house ready to put on the market, since he lives with us now, but Granddad won’t let anyone work on it unless he’s there to supervise. Somehow I got put on the rotation, so I’m stuck here for the evening in this house whose insides are being stripped away until not even memories can live here. Alone with Granddad in this half-empty shell of a place.
When he asked me to play, I thought of saying, “No, sorry. You sit there and tell me which of your treasured belongings we should throw in the trash so we can sell this house full of a lifetime of memories and you can prepare for your impending death.” Really, what else could I say except, “Okay”?
I glance around Granddad’s tiny living room while he thinks about his next move. The kitchen’s been packed up entirely, leaving only a skeleton, but the living room still looks the same as it did when we visited a couple of years ago. The same as it did every time we drove out to visit before that. A worn, flowered couch. An entire wall of jam-packed bookshelves. A piano that I’ve never seen anyone play. And atop the piano, a framed photo of child-sized Luke and me, dressed in matching red shirts and black pants, sitting in front of a Christmas tree.
That was the year Granddad gave me a doll for Christmas. She had long, dirty-blond hair, just like my own, and she came with not one but three different dresses, and two pairs of shoes. I’ve always loved dolls—tiny, perfect humans who don’t try to talk to me or yell or expect me to be anything I’m not—but she was my favorite. She still sits on a shelf beside my bed.
The best part wasn’t that first Christmas, but every birthday and Christmas for almost a decade, when Granddad gave me outfit after outfit for her. I think the first was a frilly bubble-gum-pink tutu and a sequined top. After opening the gift, I escaped up to my room, where I dressed my doll, then dragged a fluffy pink skirt out of my own closet. In my birthday photo, the two of us—my doll and me—matched.
I sometimes wonder if my mom had a chat with Granddad about gender stereotyping, because after that there was a real mishmash—navy overalls and a jean jacket, a silky black evening dress, doctor’s scrubs with a mini stethoscope, shorts and a soccer jersey.
Luke got something different from Granddad every time—a video game, roller skates, some levitating magnets, a Hardy Boys book—like Granddad’s feelings for him were always changing. My gift from Granddad was always predictable, and always perfect. As I opened each package and carefully smoothed out the outfit inside, I was conscious—in the way that one is conscious that the sun will rise tomorrow—that Granddad loved me best.
I study him now as he considers the chessboard—head poking out of his sweater-vest like a turtle’s out of its shell, eyebrows bushy with almost as much hair as he has left on his head. His jaw rises and falls as if he is chewing a wad of tobacco, though I’m pretty sure his mouth is empty.
When I was younger, I thought the reason I was too scared to talk to Granddad was because I only saw him a couple of times a year. But now I see him every day, and I still never know what to say.
That’s not quite right. I know what I want to say, I just don’t say it. My heart thumps loud enough to drown out the words in my head. I want to ask him about the doll clothes, where he got them, how he came up with the idea, but I don’t. I can’t.
One pink tutu . . . two corduroy jacket . . .
No, that’s enough. I’m being ridiculous.
“Granddad, where did you get all those doll outfits you gave me?” I replay the words in my head. Yes, the sentence was coherent. Yes, the words made sense.
“My friend Margaret,” he replies, looking up at me. “She lived next door. I told her the plan when I bought the doll, and she was excited to help. Measured the doll before I wrapped it up so she could make sure the outfits would fit her. She loved to sew. I’d tell her my idea and we’d go fabric shopping together. Though really, beyond the initial idea for each outfit, I had very little say.” He chuckles hoarsely.
“Why did you stop?” I ask, though I don’t really mean to. I already know the answer. It’s obvious—I got older. Of course he would stop.
That’s not what he says, though. “She died,” he says simply. “A few years ago. Heart attack.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” I shouldn’t have asked. I should have picked up on the past tense. Lived next door. Loved to sew.
He nods and leans over the board, going back to planning his next move.
“What’s it like being so old that friends dying is normal?” I ask, not out loud—only in my head.
“Tiring,” he answers, not out loud or in my head, but in the way his shoulders fold in on themselves like a pleated paper fan. I want to hug him, but I don’t. I can’t.
Maybe I should get Mom to find me a new counselor.
Granddad reaches out and nudges a pawn forward one square. “Your turn.”
I hate doorbells. I mean, I guess they’re useful. But I hate standing on a porch, having just pressed that little white button, unsure whether the bell even rang. Hate having to decide whether it’s better to stand stupidly in the Saturday-afternoon cold and wait or to press it again and risk being that obnoxious jerk who rings the bell over and over because they don’t hear the people inside shouting, “I’m coming, I’m coming!”
I’m about to become that obnoxious jerk when the door is flung open, revealing a tiny bespectacled boy wearing a miniature black suit jacket. Freckles dot his dark-brown skin, and I feel stupid for not realizing until this moment that black people can have freckles.
“Um—oh—I’m here to see Meg,” I tell him. “We have plans. To work on our science project.” You’d think I’d be less awkward with kids than adults, but I’m not. If Meg had been willing to work on our project during lunch hours, we could have avoided this uncomfortableness altogether.