April & Oliver by Tess Callahan Page B

Nana is in her early fifties, sitting on the edge of a fountain, her face radiant. Airborne
     droplets of water catch the glint of the sun. Her legs are crossed, accentuating the curve of her calf. Her hair, still black,
     is aloft in the breeze. Chin up, she grins at the photographer, daring him.
    “Who took that picture?” April asks.
    “Haven’t you been listening?” Nana’s eyes flash.
    “I’m sorry. What did you lose?”
    Nana looks into space, frightened. April follows her gaze but sees nothing. “Nana?”
    “I can’t remember,” she says, bringing her hand to her chest. “As soon as you asked, it went out of my head.”
    “Don’t get upset,” April says. “It happens to me all the time. I walk into a room and forget what I came for.”
    “Don’t let me go senile.”
    “You’re not.”
    Nana blesses herself and touches the pendant hanging around her neck, a Christ the King crucifix. She kisses it and slips
     it inside her nightgown.
    April picks up sofa cushions, frayed and pilly, and stuffs them back in place. She hears the basketball bouncing in the driveway,
     percussive as a heartbeat. She glances out the window. The hood of the car is strewn with bark.
    Nana lifts the curtain. “Oh, my,” she says. “Buddy’s here.”
    “No.” April’s throat thickens. “We switched cars.”
    “Still? Isn’t he home from that trip?”
    “He promised to get the blood off my roof,” April says, her voice higher than she wants. “I’m still waiting.”
    “So he got his deer,” Nana says. “Tell him to bring some venison for Mr. Bergfalk. He used to be a chef, you know.”
    April presses her fingers to her temples. “If he’s such a good cook, why don’t you marry him? I bet he’s asked.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. He comes to fix the pipes.”
    “Hm,” April says. “Leaks spring like clockwork around here.” April takes Nana’s hand, small and bony, knuckles hard as acorns.
     “Come; let’s do your hair while the faucet’s still working.”
    “Smart aleck,” she says. “Where did you get such a mouth?”
    “Must be the genes,” April says.
    Nana touches her thin, silken hair, trying to see her image in the glass of a picture frame. Her eyes, once black and piercing,
     are filmy and translucent with age. April notices that, although forgetting to dress, Nana remembered to put on earrings.
     Silver and onyx, they hang almost to her shoulders, stretching the lobes.
    “Where’s your leg brace?” April asks as they move toward the kitchen.
    “That ugly thing.”
    “How about your walker?”
    “I use it when I need it.”
    “Suit yourself,” April says. “Your hip is yours to break.”
    “Are you here to preach or set my hair?”
    April stands beside Nana at the kitchen sink and pours warm cups of water over her scalp. Wet, her grandmother’s hair is even
     more fine, the texture of corn silk. At the base of her neck, hidden beneath tufts of white, is the only remnant of her original
     color, the flagrant black she held on to well into her fifties. At twenty-seven, April already has strands of white just above
     her temple.
    The window over the sink is spotted with water marks. Outside, barren tree limbs spring up and down like impatient horses
     shaking their manes. A swirling blanket of leaves obscures the garden, oddly centered in the tiny yard and framed with blue
     ceramic tiles Nana hand-carried from Spain. When April was a child, her father told her that the garden had once been a fishpond,
     narrow and deep as a well. Come autumn, he said, the carp sank to the bottom and settled into a trance-like, winter-long sleep.
     April would stare at the garden, mesmerized by the thought of the sleeping fish, their shiny orange heads nudging the surface
     in spring. Later, she found out he had made the whole thing up. There had been no well, no fish.
    “How’s that boyfriend of yours?” her grandmother asks.
    “There’s no boyfriend, Nana.”
    “Still taking the belt to