Sherry and Squash

Outside the kitchen window, a yellow rose blows in the wind. 

       I watch my grandmother wash the dishes, her frail, wrinkled hands dipping in and out of the soapy water. She submerges the glasses we drank squash from before rinsing them under the hot tap she has running. 

      The radio I bought her for Christmas is playing Smooth Radio. Patrick Swayze’s sultry voice rings out as he sings ‘She’s Like the Wind’. Granny sways her hips a little and taps her left foot. When I was ten I stayed over for the weekend and we watched Dirty Dancing. She smiled the whole way through, her eyes glazing over with the memory of how she used to dance like that. Not with my grandfather, though. He had two left feet, nearly breaking her toe on their wedding day. I stayed up late that night and she let me have a glass of sherry. 

      She loves the colour yellow. After Grandad had died, she kept the house like a shrine to him. It was dark and depressing. The white kitchen tiles had faded to a dull grey. The summer after I finished university, I moved in and together we redecorated the house. She was uneasy about the idea at first, saying how she was fine as she was, that this was how Grandad had liked it. But I bought a tub of canary yellow paint and she couldn’t resist. Now the kitchen lights up, like her face when she smiles. 

     She saw the rose growing in the garden and didn’t want to cut it. It grew and grew until it was a head above the bush it stemmed from. She said it was peeking through the window at her, keeping her company while she washed the dishes. She spoke to it in the morning, asking how it was doing, telling it about her night. How she hadn’t slept well, how she hadn’t slept well since Grandad died. 

    I stand in the doorway of the kitchen but the illusion is fading now. My mind sees clearly since the tears have stopped. My grandmother isn’t washing the dishes. The sink is empty. The radio isn’t playing. The yellow rose is looking into an empty room.