MORTUARY

That spring my grandmother Edith died.

One dark overcast afternoon, branches blatting against the window, Seely spread out her palms on the cold glass, extending her fingers across the landscape, and thought of the shabby little mortuary where her grandmother was laid out. She saw herself poised precariously on a soiled rosette on the patterned carpet, beside the open coffin, as though she feared if she moved, she might lose her balance and topple in—into death. She knew she didn’t believe what she saw (her grandmother looked handsome, but not like anyone she knew), though she was trying hard to believe it—to know her grandmother was dead. As she gazed at the corpse, she was suddenly seized with the apprehension that it was about to set ghoulishly up in the coffin. It was then that she reached out, trembling, and touched her grandmother’s folded hands—they were soft and supple, comfortingly real, even with their chill, as though her granny had just come in from the cold.