You came downstairs at noon and microwaved a plate of roast pork
and potatoes for breakfast. This I remember more than anything. The smell and sizzle
whenever you would visit. You wore
a bathrobe, Aquanet, full face of makeup. Or maybe that was after
breakfast, at two, when you'd enter the kitchen on spindly legs, your hands
shaking to light a Newport – no, they were Merits – by the kitchen
fan.
Such thin legs, pins, and you hid your feet. Tan-colored hose and ankle
boots. You'd go down to the pool with a mirror (No,
that's not it, I'm all screwed up. It was
just the sun alone on your
strawberry-blonde skin) and Nana would cluck over
the scabs on your feet. Dr. Harmeling hadn't
got them all. "Sunblock!"
I try to think of your perfume, all I get is roast pork and
potatoes in the microwave.
I looked at the pictures of you, twenty years old,
sometimes skinny and sometimes your face a soft moon,
laughing in Chicago with the men, always tall,
or in Wellesley, frustrated hand gesturing "Stop it,
Mom," with a glass of wine.
Even strangers worried about you. Your bones were fragile.
"Do you want to talk to Ginny?"
"Yes, yes, put her on."
Smoking a raspy cough, a raspy laugh, Nana's eyebrows at eighty
years old, almost nonexistent,
rested on top of her wet eyes under thick glasses. More credit card bills to pay.
Telling you, I have a nice man
for you to meet. An english teacher,
very handsome. Now you have a wig
because your hair fell out, of course. Why else?
"At least I won't have to worry about Gino giving me horrible color,"
-- or was Gino an old cousin, and I'm forgetting? --
and I never saw you without it.
My mother visited you, and across three thousand miles told me
again about you making her pull your bike up Maugus Avenue, with you
on it, all that weight. Is there anything I can send Aunt Ginny?
"No, she's very tired, it's all very sad."
My mother gave you cashmere sweaters, size zero.
"She'll look pretty in them,"
"I thought of a nice man for her to meet," I said. "He's
tall, he's my history teacher."
"I think that's all right," Nana answered, from three thousand miles away.

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