short stories

My Grandfather’s Ears

I see an angel in my room. Okay, not an angel, since he resembles my grandfather, who didn’t exactly lead a virtuous life. A ghost then. He stands beside my bed with a perplexed look on his face, as if he doesn’t know why he’s here either. I wonder whether I’m delusional or seeing a shadow of something else in the bedroom. Maybe he’s only the artificial plant in the corner near my rocking chair, projected into human form by the streetlight outside my window. I reach out to touch his image, and he yells, “Boo!”

I leap from my bed and he laughs, then coughs violently, hacking up and swallowing a bolus of phlegm in his throat. He leans forward and plops onto my bed, still favoring his right knee injured years ago when he slipped on a patch of ice in a Stop & Shop parking lot. Once he recovers, he looks intently toward me as I fidget from my remote position on the opposite side of the room atop my pine desk.

“I need your help,” he whispers.

What could need from me? I wonder. What could be so important to communicate with me from beyond? How could I, a mere twenty-five-year-old, help him in his spiritual journey? He clears his throat again and points to his ears. I immediately think the first allusion that any reader of Shakespeare would connect with the situation: He was murdered with poison! I am called upon to seek revenge! Common sense returns, however, and I remember that Hamlet saw the ghost of his father, not grandfather, and Hamlet was certainly not a woman like myself, though some think he was effeminate. In any case, I am interrupted by my grandfather’s request:

“Sweety, will you please trim the hairs in my ears?”

His request is, of course, a disappointment. I almost think that my grandfather is being facetious, knowing my love for Shakespeare, but then I realize he knows nothing of literature. Jokes cannot be fabricated without prior knowledge. Plus, he keeps closing one eye while shoving his fingers deep in his ears to ease the itch of the white and gray hairs protruding far enough from his lobes I could braid them. I am left with an ignoble task.

“Sure, I’ll do it.”

I disembark from my desk and click on my lamp. I expect him to appear faint in the light, but instead his image gradually intensifies in color as if I am balancing the contrast on a television set. I search for scissors in the top drawer of my pine desk, recently salvaged from a consignment shop and refinished by myself with stenciled flowers and a glazing technique prescribed in an issue of Better Homes and Garden. I dig for the scissors in a clutter of papers—receipts, bills, notes to self, sweepstakes mailings, former academic assignments, blank scraps, and doodlings created while on the phone.

“Will you hurry up? I’m dying here,” my grandfather says, yanking his fluff to stop the itching, then chuckling to himself. He peers across the room to inspect the contents of the drawer, so I slide it closed.

“One second. I’ll be right back.”

I take seven steps to the bathroom and open the miniature closet with a door identical to an outdoor shutter. A beach towel embellished with a fuchsia umbrella and orange sunglasses somersaults from the closet and lands in the toilet. I fish it out and toss the heap into the bathtub to wash later. What can I use, what can I use? I find the dull yellow and white BIC razors that I’ve used for the past year. Moments like this I wish I had a man in my life because he’d own a handy electronic shaving device perfect for ear canals. I rummage through the sundry products collecting dust from buying in bulk: Colgate, Strawberry Suave, Pledge, Tide with Color Safe Bleach, Miracle Grow, All-Purpose Cleaner, Nair. I grab the bottle and return to the bedroom.

“Let’s try this,” I say, showing the bottle.

“It has a lady’s legs on it. You can’t use that on ears.”

“It’s all I have.” I pause as the fur in his ears elongates to his shoulders. “I’ve heard that hair grows after death, but I never heard of needing a shave.”

“Well, it itches. Will that stuff sting?”

“I thought once your dead you no longer feel things.” No comment. “Did you hear me? I said I thought once you’re dead you…”

“No, you feel things more.”

“Will you just squirt that crap in my ears and get it over with?”

“Okay.” I pick up the bottle and read the directions. “Wait. It says ‘For especially coarse or hard-to-remove hair, saturate hair with lukewarm water for several minutes first, pat dry, then apply Nair.’ I have to get some water.”

I fetch a bowl of water and a hand towel. As my grandfather lies down on my bed, the hair in his ears cascades onto the pastel wedding ring quilt I bought at Kmart from the Martha Stewart collection. I place his hair in the bowl and it immediately soaks up the liquid like a dehydrated plant. I retrieve more water and repeat the process on his left ear. My grandfather closes his eyes and deeply exhales. I needlessly pat both ears with the towel and then pick up the bottle. I flip the cap and squeeze yellow lotion into each ear. It smells like fermented roses, both sweet and nauseating. Similar to the smell of perming solution, although that improves hair while Nair removes hair. My grandfather attempts to relax but instead thrashes about on the bed.

“Is it burning?”

“No. This bed is lumpy. I can feel the springs sticking in my back. How the hell do you sleep like this?”

I shrug my shoulders and stare at my childhood twin-size mattress that resembles a bulky tea bag. “We have to wait ten minutes for the Nair to work,” I mumble.

We stare at each another in silence for a whole minute. Nine more to go. He starts fit of coughing that lasts another minute. He had the same symptoms the last time I saw him alive in the hospital: restlessness, coughing, and slowly drowning in his own mucus. That afternoon I offered to stay with him while the rest of my family went to lunch in the hospital cafeteria. As he faded in and out of sleep, I stroked his forehead and swept his snow-white hair off his brow. It was the only time I had touched my grandfather affectionately other than the typical hugs and kisses goodbye. When he woke and found me by his side, he brushed me off and asked where my grandmother went. Seeing him in my room now, I want to tell him I miss him. Instead, I watch as Nair oozes out of his ears like pale liquid wax.

“Where’s your angel necklace?” he asks suddenly.

“It’s in my jewelry box.”

“You should wear it.”

“No you don’t,” he says with a smile.

Damn omniscience. I change the subject: “I never knew you were a veteran.”

“Why didn’t you talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to tell. I didn’t even reach land. I was airlifted off the ship with an appendicitis.”

“Really? That’s weird timing. But I guess you were lucky.”

“Depends how you look at it. The occasion did seem against me going to war.” He sits up and simultaneously yanks on the hair in both his ears, tearing it out with a comic popping sound.

“You were supposed to wait another seven minutes.”

“My Sonia, always following the rules. Do you remember the flowers tipping over at the funeral?”

“We figured. Gramma said, ‘Dick probably did it.’ ”

“She knew me well.” He sighs, then says, “I have something for you.”

He reveals a velvet bag fastened by a drawstring with a small crystal sparrow dangling from the cord like a tassel and casting rainbows across my wall.

“This is for your love and kindness. It will help you understand life and spirituality. It will change your future.”

I smile and hug him for the elaborate gift, enthralled at what it could possibly hold. “Thank you so much,” I whisper into one of his clean ears.

“Thank you for your help. Had I but time I would stay, but I must go now.” He slowly rises and hobbles toward the wall, then turns and waits silently for me to open my gift.

I place the bag on my lap and slowly loosen the string. The pouch intrinsically unfolds like a blooming flower or layered onion. Inside, it is empty.

“By the way,” my grandfather adds with a smile as his images fades into the dark corner of the room, “Will says hi.”