“A woman!” cried Tom, “stands before me!”
And indeed the woman was beautiful in the spring, two hundred years ago. Grandpa recalled no name. She had only been someone passing as he hunted wild straw berries on a summer noon.
Tom reached out toward the beautiful memory.
“Get away!” shouted Grandpa.
And the girl’s face, in the light summer air, flew apart She drifted away, away, vanishing down the road, and at last gone.
“Damn and blast!” cried Tom.
The other cousins were in a rampage, opening doors, running paths, raising windows. “Look! Oh, my gosh! Look!” they all shouted. The memories lay side by side, neat as sardines a million deep, a million wide. Put by in seconds, minutes, hours. Here a dark girl brushing her hair. Here the same girl walking, running, or asleep. All her actions kept in honey-combs the color of her summer cheeks. The bright flash of her smile. You could pick her up, turn her round, send her away, call her back. All you had to say was Italy, 1797, and she danced through a warm pavilion, or swam in moonlit waters.
“Grandfatherl Does Grandma know about her?”
“There must be other women!”
“Thousands!” cried Grandpa.
Grandpa flung back a lid. “Here!”
A thousand women wandered through a department store.
“Well done, Grandpa!”
From ear to ear, Grandpa felt the rummaging and racing over mountains, scoured deserts, down alleys, through cities.
Until John seized one lone and lovely lady by the arm.
He caught a woman by the hand.
“Stop!” Grandpa rose up with a roar. The people on the train stared at him.
“Got you!” said John.
The beautiful woman turned.
“Fool!” snarled Grandpa.
The lovely woman’s flesh burned away. The upraised chin grew gaunt, the cheeks hollow, the eyes sank in wrinkles.
John drew back. “Grandmother, it’s you!”
“Cecy!” Grandpa was trembling violently. “Stash John in a bird, a stone, a well! Anywhere, but not in my damn fool head! Now!”
“Out you go, John!” said Cecy.
And John vanished.
Into a robin singing on a pole that flashed by the train window.
Grandmother stood withered in darkness. Grandpa’s gentle inward gaze touched her again, to reclothe her younger flesh. New color poured into her eyes, cheeks, and hair. He hid her safely away in a nameless and far-off orchard.
Grandpa opened his eyes.
Sunlight sprang in on the last three cousins.
The young woman still sat across the aisle.