The Maybe Memory

**When I attended the writing retreat with Tom Spanbauer in March our assignment was to write about a moment, after which, you were changed. I asked him at the end of the workshop if that was always the assignment he gave. He said that it was either that one or this: write about a memory that you think you have. In other words, fill in the details of a fuzzy memory. I decided to use that as a prompt today. Forgive the divergence. Perhaps you'll find the setting familiar though....**

Maybe just me, but maybe Chris too, in the backseat. Back of dad and grandma’s heads, faces forward with their history in between. I’m four. I know that much. Pretty sure the smell of mud and new green was coming in from cracked windows. Pretty sure it was the kind of early spring day that still scrapes my insides clean but for some deep longing. To go. To stay, to be something better. Something.

Dad I bet had a jacket on, kaki with a zipper, short sleeve button up underneath in case we got lucky. Grandma, I don’t know. Maybe a skirt for town, tan hose with those shoes that nurses wear, except dark so dirt doesn’t show. Their faces the same, fleshy. Cornflower blue eyes that water easy, lips that aren’t quite symmetrical. Thick, though, in a way that’s pleasing. Grandma had a mole on her chin. Everyone laughed when I put a little finger on it. She didn’t have a soft way, but I could tell she liked me. Could tell she liked to have me up there on her hip as she moved around the kitchen.

Don’t remember the drive that day, whether we took the Missile Road to the highway, past the cemetery or drove down by the Lanes’ place, past the big house with the longhorns out front. Don’t remember if I was kicking the back of the seat, chattering to no one in particular or if I was quiet and still, looking out as barns and trees and fields passed by. Don’t even remember the color of the sky. Not really.

What I do remember is pulling in to town. Dean’s restaurant there on the corner with the smell of fried chicken and gravy. Wide flat streets with little houses leaned into scrub trees. The rail station with its Spanish arches and yellow walls. Bumping up over the tracks and then the five blocks of downtown. The grocery, the five and dime, the what not store with those shelves and shelves of ceramic dogs.

Dad took a wide turn into a parking spot out in front of the drug store. I think maybe grandma had a hat on and when she turned to my dad that last time and said whatever she did, I saw the bobby pins that held it up there on her head. And when she turned back toward her door and opened it I heard the leather of her purse make that same noise Dad’s briefcase always made up against his crutch. That squeak.

And then she was out, only one foot up on the sidewalk when things seemed to slow down. Dad asked the question loud.

Mom?

She was still trying to walk, get that other foot up on the sidewalk, but her body wasn’t minding. Wasn’t minding at all.

Dad leaned over toward her window, his right arm up and over the crutches in between, his hand punched deep into the seat, and asked it again, maybe louder.

Mom?

Her body began to shake and the willfulness in her jaw went slack. Dad pulled himself back to straight and maybe looked back at me, at Chris if he was there too. Maybe not though, maybe the panic on his face was something I remember from another time, later on.

His thick fingers reach out for the door handle and the door pops open. Grandma's on the ground by now and out of my sight. All I’ve got to see with my wide eyes now is Dad, swiveling his butt around on the slick seat, lifting one leg and then the next, lowering them to the ground, pushing and sliding his butt to the edge so he can lever up against his legs, right hand on the dash, left on the arm rest of the door. The final push and the locking of the braces, then the long reach inside for his crutches. When he’s finally up, he looks toward the place on the sidewalk where Grandma is and then looks around until he found the man rushing out of the store.

Call an ambulance.

The man turns back toward the door.

Dad’s voice breaks and he asks the question one more time. This time quiet and to no one.

Mom?

I only remember seeing my father fall once but I wonder if he let himself fall down to my Grandma then. It would have been a lot quicker, that fall, than anything else he could have managed. Maybe he didn’t even try. Maybe he stood over her, just watching and waiting for the people that would come and kneel easily over her small body and lift it into the ambulance.

I’d like to think he fell though, scraped himself up, touched her hand and whispered something through his tears.