"Queenie"

This is a short story I wrote about two years ago, and I figured it was time that I type it up and share. I hope you enjoy it.

She wears red nail polish and always has her nose in a book. She doesn't try to remember which novels she has and hasn't read; instead she checks for red streaks where a corner of her nail dragged across the page. She turns up her nose when women replace pants with leggings. She doesn't like pizza or chocolate chip cookies, and even though she gave in to the cell phone craze, hers never rings.

"Grandma?" I ask softly.

"Mmm?" She doesn't look to me, but tilts her head up a little, eyes fluttering back and forth across the pages. I wait ten seconds to see if she'll encourage me to continue. Having already forgotten that I addressed her, she won't. I turn on my heel and walk quietly out of the room.

I never understood why grandpa married her. He talked quickly and laughed loudly. Pizza was his favorite food and if he'd had a cell phone, all of his grandchildren—biological and self-appointed—would have called constantly.

"Maybe he would have found a reason to call grandma," I muttered, and continued the thought in my head: if he hadn't spent all of his spare time following her around the house. He might have called her just to find her. He would ask everyone in the house, "Have you seen Queenie?" Mother would reply, "I didn't know it was my turn to watch her, Martin," and she would continue to prepare dinner, sparing us from grandma's cooking.

He would smile as though he'd suddenly discovered a lead, and saunter off on a fresh trail. If he ran into a granddaughter along the way, he would kneel, put her on his knee and tell her very seriously, "You're going to be a knockout someday," with a stern finger waving dangerously close to her nose. After a genuine "I love you very much" smile, he'd lift her from his knee and pat her back gently to send her on her way. He was on a mission and couldn't suffer detainment.

I used to wonder if she ever hid from him on purpose. When he found her, he'd look at her with renewed awe, as though this was the first time he'd ever laid eyes on her. Every time, it was love at first sight.

Sometimes I would locate her whereabouts only moments before him, and when I'd turn to leave the room to announce my discovery, my forehead would run straight into his stomach. I'd stagger backward and proudly proclaim, "I found her, grandpa!" He'd smile and pat me on the head, at the same time unconsciously easing me aside to get to her.

"Queenie," he would breathe.

"For heaven's sake, Martin," she'd sigh, without looking up from her book. As if she didn't revel in the thought of being regarded as a queen.

Grandma was less interested in grandpa than he was in her. The most words I ever heard my grandmother say to him were, "Martin, you have dressing in the corner of your mouth."

Oddly enough, she didn't fully withdraw into that saggy red chair and the mysterious worlds of various books until after his death. She was always headed down that path, but without the soft pad of his feet trailing behind her, she seemed to need a distraction.

Deciding to try again, I poke my head around the door frame. "Grandma?" I actually have a question—I don't just mean to torment her. "Grandma?" I asked again, but this time my voice is laden with confusion. She isn't sitting in her big red chair, her back to the spotless windows that stretch from floor to ceiling.

As I approach, I expect to see a dent in it, permanently fixed to her shape. I put my hand on the plush red fabric. No indentation. I push down and it resits, springing back up against my strength.

"Too firm," I mutter.

I turn around and scoot up into the chair anyway. I sit there for a moment, swinging my legs out in front of me, finding delight in the hollow thump thump thump of my heels meeting the wooden legs.

She left her book—High Noon by Nora Roberts—and her thin silver reading glasses on the table nearest the chair. I put on the glasses and pick up the book, intending to mimic her.

Except, as I open the book, something falls out, something I would never expect to see in my grandmother's possession. She was using a laminated, wallet-sized photo of her and grandpa as a bookmark.

They look thirty years younger, thirty times happier. Well, grandma anyway. Grandpa, who was facing the camera with bright blue eyes and a smile at the ready, looked just as thrilled as he always had. Grandma looked nothing like the stern occupant of the red chair.

In the moment this picture was taken, they were dancing, their right hands suspended in the air toward the camera, his left hand resting on her waist, her arm disappearing under his and reappearing on his upper back as though she was trying to pull him closer. Her body language is putting no distance between them. She is not facing the camera, but grandpa, and she is caught in mid-laughter, an open-mouth smile. She is beautiful.

She is in love.

I become aware of a presence in the doorway. I didn't hear her breathing. Her footsteps were silent. I just know.

"I miss him," I say, as I lift my head to look at her.

She walks over to me, a sad smile on her face, and I hand her the book and photo.

"That's because he's worth missing." It's the first nice thing I've heard her say, and I believe her.

As I wander out of the room, she calls my name softly. I turn to look at her, daring to hope that she will talk to me more about grandpa, about the young woman in the photo who never would have dreamed she may one day abandon laughter for sighs, dancing for reading, intense love for cold indifference.

"May I have my bifocals, please?"