June in the Apartment

What she is doing is laying on the bed. But not in the bed.


She is face down, horizontally at the foot of her bed at 2:00 in the afternoon. Her eyes are closed and, although she is wide awake, she has decided she will not move from this spot.

“Get up!”

It is her grandfather, his bald head floating upside down from the corner of the ceiling.

She ignores him. Pear-scented lotion has transferred from her skin to the sheets and she inhales it along with her morning breath.

“Come on, get up!” right into her ear.

“I’m sitting this one out,” she says to him, though the mattress.

“Sitting out?” He cackles. “You can’t sit out the month of June! Get up.”

“You don’t know what you are talking about” she snarls and shifts her face so it’s hidden beneath the pillow.

“Oh, so now I don’t know what I am talking about?” he taunts. He has grabbed a blade of the ceiling fan and spins with it, hooting down at her.

“Grandpa – cut it out. Just leave me alone.”

“OK. I’ll leave you alone, but do me one favor.”

She looks up and sees that he has pulled out a tobacco pouch. RED MAN is printed in scarlet block letters next to an Indian chief in full feathered head dress.

“No! Do not chew that in here, I mean it!” she sits up in bed.

Too late – he stuffs a pinch in his translucent cheek. She can see it in there, soaking as he hovers above in the lotus position like a demented Buddha.

“Go get me a can to spit in” he orders thickly through the accumulating saliva.

“No. I said I’m not getting up.”

“OK, then…” she can see him eyeing the white sheets, tobacco juice pulsing against his gums.

“No, wait! I’m going! Just wait!” she leaps out of bed and runs to the bathroom for a pink plastic cup. Running back with it, she remembers.

“Damn it, grandpa.”

He’s laughing at her. The pouch, the tobacco spit and the threat of stained sheets have disappeared.

“But you’re up! I got you up!”

Sighing, she heads for the kitchen. “Yeah, you got me.”

Sun is spilling through the window and she fills the coffee pot from the faucet, pulls a clean filter from the cupboard and dumps coffee from the jar in the fridge. Her stomach is rumbling from the long stint in bed as she sits at the table to make a grocery list. Strawberries, asparagus, half and half…

“Remember last summer, when you made s’mores on the stove?” Her grandfather’s head is poking up from one of the gas burners.

“Yeah?”

“You still have marshmallows in here!” his voice calls out from the cupboard.

She shakes her head and adds graham crackers, chocolate to the list.