Just a touch

He had to lean through the branches of the bush to kiss her goodbye. She was tight against the house, in the corner formed where the rust red clapboards came together, watching the swirl of children and men and women on the dirt-patched lawn from the shadows.

They’d met in the town, and he almost hadn’t recognized her after so many years. The faded brusied red dress, the grey, thin hair rising in beauty parlor curls. But there was something about the way she stood tbat caught him, her arms crossed tightly, shoulders up a little, wrinkling the brown skin at the base of her neck. He realized who when it was too late. She came over, asked where he’d been, admired the son, touched the daughter’s hair until she shyed away, bought them candies and insisted they come see her.

“You grandmother,” he’d told them in the car, bumping along the gravel road following her as it grew dark. “She wants us to visit.”

The house was strange. He remembered it, the dark, faded wood, the leaning porch, windows like dark eyes, patchy yard, overgrown roses, swing set. But he could never remember being inside - just the outside.
She was waiting, on the step, paper bag in each hand, pushing at the unlocked door. Small dark rooms illuminated only by the fading light coming in from the windows, crowded with furniture and layers of things - clothes, pictures in small frames, china, the odd half-empty glass.

Everywhere things, and he thought he could hear his father breathing heavily - up the stairs, in the next room - but couldn't be sure, thought he could even smell something of him in the air, but it may have been the dust.

She showed him photos, clothes, school papers, china, a chest with clippings, offered tea, moved too quickly, banged her hand sharply on the table. But she hardly noticed, although he could see a small white spot where the blood was driven from her skin. She asked questions, did he want tea, a drink, were the children all right outside, did he remember this picture, and he answered, yeses and nos and maybes until he felt out of breath, like the air in the house had long since been used up. He looked at a last crowded table, a last picture of people he didn t recognize in dark coats beside a big black Ford, and said he had to go.

And she followed him out, into the twilight, then slid along the wall, so he had to lean through the branches, the skin on his hand lightly torn, scratched flesh and few dots of blood, and he brushed his cheek against hers, felt the dry skin.



He and the children met his wife again in a park not far from the house, two huge, overhanging trees soaking up the light, smaller tress and brush crowding around the chearing, battered slides and swings and teeter totters and a round-about all scattered around the dirt and grass, looking tossed like forgotten toys.

The children played, quieter than usual, dragging their feet in the dirt as they twirled on the equipment, running, stopping, visible then invisible in the early night. He watched them dance with danger, smelled the cool of the evening moving in, shivered just a little, saw them swing too high, jump from the top of the slide to land on the gravel and dirt, spin too fast, his daughter's hair flying out as she hung straight out from the little merry-go-round, head dancing just above the dirt and glass and rocks, pink fingers locked around the chipped railing, no sound from her as she went faster and faster.

He sat off to the side, watching the children, telling her of the house and the things he'd seen.

Seeing only the flashes of the children's skin in the near-dark now, seeing only her eyes through the night, and then only when she looked towards him, which wasn't often.

Then he saw movement. A figure, on the path, moving towards the children, then past, crossing toward them.

"Your father, he's dead."

"Oh."

"It just happened now. It seemed very strange, and we all thought it was just a little bruise, but he's dead."

A woman brought the news, not one he recognized, a friend of his mother's probably, a little younger, but with the same kind of clothes - plain, colors faded to grey, though dark this time, hands held in front of her wrapped in some kind of sweater.
"Just a small bruise, almost a smudge, a thin blue line, just here," and she pointed to the soft skin just above the cheekbone and under the eye, close to the eye and the brain. "We thought he was just lying down, then we saw he was too still."

"It was a swing, just came up and touched him ever so lightly, and laid down the bruise, and killed him. No one was on it - it was just a swing."

He thought about the house and the small yard, could see his father lying in it, jeans too large, on his back, black leather shoes still shiny, his face still except for the thin blue bruise, less than two inches long.

The children still player, now the boy pushing the girl higher and higher in the swing, his hands flashing, her hair stretched out in the sky, dancing with the swing as it swooped up and down in the night.