By Amy Anshaw-Nye

I spent all of last night on my side, my gaze crawling from carpet to ceiling and down again, as I listened to the patter of rain against my living room window. Cobwebs have coated the glass for the last two months. The window doesn’t close properly anymore; frost creeps into the room at night, and little crystals cling to the silk of the web by morning.

Just when I think I can’t stand another moment of it, the sun rises.

Now, I stand outside my apartment building, gazing up at that window. I press my thumb against my cheek. It’s rubbed raw from salt. I never want to go back inside; I don’t want to be outside. I don’t want to be anywhere. I stay where I am, under the shade of the frangipani tree, a bed of fallen blossoms beneath my feet.

~

My flat is a jungle of dead houseplants. Cigarette smoke chokes its atmosphere. Last year, when Pop was still here, my flat was full of life. I watered my plants and vines. I talked to them in a low, encouraging voice. Pop would smile at me from his plump, pea-green recliner as I pottered around.

When I was little, he would peel oranges for me, his rough and nimble fingers digging beneath the skin. I would take the offering from his palm like it was the most precious gift. My tiny fingers dug into the flesh; the juice dripped down my chin. The color reminded me of the sun that poured through our window at dusk; I would watch the dust dance, mesmerized, thinking they were like thousands of little stars.

It started going downhill when the arthritis got to Pop’s hands. He could no longer do his jigsaw puzzles. I bought him puzzles with jumbo pieces; I think that made him feel like a child, but he never complained.

Then his fingers twisted up like the tangled yarn still in the basket by his bed, though Nana was four years dead. He started watching TV. He liked M*A*S*H and Seinfeld. He knew a lot about the Cold War, vintage cars, and geography. When he watched game shows, he got most of the trivia questions right.

Then he stopped talking about the Cold War. One morning, he asked me to remind him of the name of a car on the street, and it was a Rolls Royce. Some evenings he would frown at the world globe by our bookshelf, searching in vain for Europe. He started getting the answers wrong when he watched his game shows. Then he stopped answering altogether.

~

Pop was there when death first brushed against my life. He was sitting on the step outside our building while I climbed the frangipani tree. My cat, Trouble, ran out onto the road and got hit by a maroon SUV. I saw it happen. I chased that car all the way up the road, crying out after them. They needed to come back and face what they had done. They needed to come back and see what they had taken from me.

Pop found me and took me home before I became roadkill myself. I’d run a whole block. He put Trouble into a box, then we went out into the garden behind our building to bury him. I asked Pop if cats go to Heaven, and he said they do.

“I wish I could be with Trouble,” I said, “but I’m not ready to be in Heaven yet.”

“Life is like a train platform,” said Pop. “Trouble has caught his train, that’s all. One day—after a very, very long time—we’ll catch that train too, and Trouble will be there waiting for us, and we can give him some milk. Do you think he’d like that? Yes, darling. Trouble has just taken an earlier train. That’s all.”

~

I’ve just gotten back from the nursing home. They said Pop went peacefully, but maybe they say that to everybody. I decided his funeral will be on Friday. I stand again beneath the frangipani tree. I want to climb it; I want to look down and see where Pop sat in the shared garden with Nana and their friends. I want them to smile up at me and tell me to be careful; I want to know that there’s a big bowl of oranges waiting for me inside.

I look up at the window. The cobwebs are gone. Amber light pours out so that it looks like the eye of a Jack-o’-lantern. Pop is gazing down at me, his eyes bright again. In one arm he is cradling a ginger cat, and his other arm is thrown around the shoulders of a beautiful older lady with old Hollywood curls. The two of them smile down at me. The dust dances around them like a swirling galaxy. In the far distance, I hear the whistle of a train.