At Ease

At Ease

Dianna Calareso

Copyright 2011 Dianna Calareso

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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For Julie, who was always with me.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Service

Chapter 2: In and Out

Chapter 3: The Game

Chapter 4: Incoming, Outgoing

Chapter 5: Battles

Chapter 6: Chapter 6: By Fire

Chapter 7: Guardians

Chapter 8: At the Table

Chapter 9: Conversations

Chapter 10: Waiting

Epilogue

Introduction

"The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order: the continuous thread of revelation." -Eudora Welty

Because he was so secretive, because he kept so much hidden from the light of the present, my grandfather’s actual ability to remember was as much a mystery to me as the things he left in the dark. I don’t know how much of it he no longer remembered because of age, how much had been eaten away by the Alzheimer’s, how much he remembered but could easily pretend he didn’t. Maybe his memory had evolved, had learned to adapt like the fish that live in caves at the deepest part of the ocean, the part that gently rises and falls in complete darkness, the part that scientists are constantly trying to understand.

I watched a video in high school about the creatures that dwell in this darkness, over forty species of cave fish that have lived in the dark for so long that their eyes no longer work. While some don’t even have eyes, some continue to grow eyes that don’t see; because the visual parts of their brains are no bigger than a pinpoint, they defend themselves and lure fish with luminescent light from their bodies. A life lived in blackness because there is no other way, because none of them have tried to swim upwards to the parts where the sun dips its glittery arm into the water and threads its fingers through the waves, beckoning to the creatures below like a child trying to scoop up a jittery school of minnows.

I wonder, then, if Alzheimer’s had taken away certain abilities, certain functions, and certain recognitions, but left certain memories untouched. I wonder if they were there, sealed and protected in black boxes with locks, locks with no combinations. Maybe he had gotten so used to not remembering that he no longer knew how. The memories remained a part of his mind like the eyes on the fish, and, like them, rendered useless over time.

These are my memories of him. This is the best I can do.

The Motorcycle

My head was hot under the red helmet and I held my breath as Grandpa leaned in to secure the chin strap, the plastic clasp burning with summer heat. He bought the helmet for the grandkids to share, but while I was riding I pretended it was all mine.

It was my turn to ride. My older sisters, Christine and Angie, had already ridden, and Julie had to wait in the driveway until I got back, since she was only eight and I was ten. I hoped Grandpa wouldn’t shorten my ride because she was waiting.

As he lifted me onto the motorcycle, I stretched my legs to keep from touching the hot chrome of the exhaust pipe and spokes. I held the seat until he fastened his helmet and climbed on the front. The black leather burned my hands.

"Hold on and don’t let go, okay? You understand?"

I nodded.

I hesitated to wrap my arms around him because I didn’t like the doughy feel of his belly, but after the first turn I squeezed hard, gripping my hands together. I couldn’t see anything but red—Grandpa’s shirt stretched like a layer of skin across his back as he leaned forward. The wind whipped the ends of my hair against my face; I pressed my cheek against his back and closed my eyes.

"Hold on tight! Are you holding on?" Grandpa yelled, turning his head so I could hear him over the engine.

"Yes!" I shouted, squeezing even tighter than before.

We raced along, up and down the hills of Flowery Branch, a rural town an hour north of Atlanta, Georgia, slowing into turns and jetting out as if the motorcycle had rockets. There was so much space here, so much more than my neighborhood in Florida. Wide green lawns separated colonial houses with wraparound porches, and with no buildings in sight, the sky stretched clean across the horizon. I watched the asphalt fly by on either side of my legs. My toes curled inside my sneakers as I gripped the rubber footrests.

The leather seat burned my bare legs, but the wind rushed under my bent knees and cooled me as we leaned into a sharp turn.

"Are you holding on?"

I squeezed tighter instead of shouting back.

We sped around a pasture with one white house perched at the top of a hill, and when I saw the Chevron and Golden Pantry convenience store I knew we were almost home. The wind slowed around me and I felt my head spiral up to the sky.

Grandpa insisted that I continue to squeeze him – even harder now because the bike was unsteady – until he secured the kick-stand on the ground and turned the engine off. He lifted me off the seat, and I curled my legs up away from the burning chrome. I unfastened the chin strap and handed the helmet to Grandpa, wiping sticky strands of hair from my forehead.

He smiled at me. Was that fun? Were you holding on?

I nodded and watched him tighten the helmet around Julie’s face. They sped away, the red of the helmet and the red of his shirt like flames blazing down the road. When they disappeared over the first hill I went inside, my legs and arms trembling from the heat and the speed and the rush of the wind in my ears.

****

Chapter 1

Service

The trumpets were shiny, and so were the buttons, like new pennies sewn onto the stiff blue uniforms of the two Marines in the foyer of the funeral home. They looked nothing like the men in the pictures I had of Grandpa, save for the short haircut. Grandpa’s face was dark, tanned under the scorching Pacific sun, his uniform simple and the buttons a dull brass, as if the Marines quartermaster suspected there was no use shining buttons on a uniform headed for Okinawa.

My sisters and I shook their hands, fitted in clean white gloves. We entered the chapel and sat as Pastor Deans stood behind the podium and motioned for us to bow our heads.

Let us pray.

I kept my eyes open while the pastor prayed. My mother slowly rocked back and forth next to my father; I hoped they were holding hands. I had never seen Grandma so still, her back straight and her ankles crossed. My mother’s parents, Grandma and Grandpa Tavilla, sat in the third row. They had been friends with Grandma and Grandpa Calareso before they were family, double-dating in Boston in the 1940’s. Conversations and stories revealed that both families originated from the same tiny farming town in Sicily, on top of a mountain called Guidomandria Supiriore. In 1970 they watched as their children, my parents Joe and Stephanie, married, uniting the Tavillas and the Calaresos once again.

Grandpa’s brother Joe was the only relative well enough to fly down from Boston. My father’s youngest brother had arrived from Colorado the day before. The middle son had something else to do up in New York. The rest of the people at the service were friends of my parents who knew Grandma and Grandpa well, since my parents always tried to include them when they moved down to Florida for the second and last time.

My sisters and I sat shoulder to shoulder on the other side of the chapel. Usually I liked when my parents gave us our space; today it made me feel like an orphan. Christine and her fiancée sat in the first row. Behind them, Angie, Julie, and I huddled together like we had on the day Angie’s Jeep flipped over and a medic pushed us together under a thick blanket. We filled the empty space around us with crumpled tissues. I didn’t know there would be boxes of tissues in each pew – this was my first funeral.

After the prayer, Pastor Deans announced the time for speeches. I had practiced mine on the patio at home, sitting on a lounge chair by the pool while the sun fell in through the screen. It was a beautiful day in March; most of my friends were spending this last college spring break on cruises or at the beach. They always said I was lucky to be from Florida because every time I went home I was on vacation.

Christine spoke first. She remembered boxes of pudding pops in the freezer in the house in Georgia, and the time Grandpa called her an obnoxious banshee. Julie talked about Grandpa’s passion for life. She was proud she walked like him, a little hunched over. Angie read lyrics from a song about heaven called Homesick. I tried to convince everyone I was glad Grandpa would see my upcoming college graduation with a new, unblemished mind. My father spoke about Grandpa’s humility, laughing at how he called everyone a stiff. His voice only wavered when he considered the legacy his father had left, my sisters and I following in his footsteps in some way: Christine had moved to California, and now walked the beaches of the Pacific. Angie was leaving in June to be a teacher in Okinawa. Julie was a star athlete, on a volleyball scholarship at Bowdoin College. None of us knew at the time that after graduation I would be moving to Somerville, Massachusetts, only blocks away from the house and the baseball field where Grandpa had grown up.

And then the Marines came in.

They marched down the center aisle as slowly as bridesmaids, as solemnly as if it were their own grandfather they honored with the playing of Taps and the presentation of an American flag folded into a thick triangle.

Grandma received the flag. The Marines raised the trumpets. Their bodies blocked the framed picture of Grandpa on the day of his enlistment, set up on a table surrounded by flowers at the front of the chapel. Sunlight flashed along the spines of the instruments as the melody began.

Day is done, gone the sun.

The notes rang deep and haunting, but instead of shivering in the air the way they had around Girl Scout campfires, these hung in the room warm and whole.

Go to sleep, peaceful sleep,