Catherine

I hear her laugh inside me,
all these years later. I remember it
as one of the pure sounds of earthly joy.
Does anyone else remember her?
She didn’t have children
so she’s disappearing much faster,
a stone sinking into the ocean.
I only ever knew her old.
I think she stayed in that little house
on the corner of my block
fifty years or so. The strange apple orchard
her husband made of their hilly yard
was really something for the suburbs.
He’d bring buckets of apples to my parents
some years, sometimes vegetables too.
They were the good neighbors of lore
that don’t exist anymore, or rarely now.
We’d ride our bicycles past the lawn chair
where Catherine sat and read the newspaper
in the front yard on sunny days. We liked
her Yonkers accent, which was strong.
Over time, her memory began to slip.
She loved to feed our opportunistically social beagle Rocky
when he’d get loose and go on a walkabout.
She fed him liverwurst from the farmer’s market.
I knew to find him there. I liked watching
her joy at feeding him. She had no pets
or children ever. Just a husband, a small clean house.
It was often silent. Sometimes a radio played softly.
When her mind began to slip, she’d say
queer things to the smaller kids riding trikes
on her sidewalk. They frightened her.
They would call her “Witch!” and mock her,
then pedal away fast in a game of dares
to see who would risk getting closest
to the dangerous crone who reminded them
of a Disney villainess. Thus is old age.
Her husband tried to ride it out.
He told neighbors she’d wake in the middle
of the night and pummel him hard
with her fists, finding a “stranger” in her bed.
We didn’t have much affordable home health care
in those dark days. I remember her laugh.
Even after the change, she would still wait for my dog
to come and visit. Their exchange was important.
Leaning out the back screen door, dropping chunks
of liverwurst he could catch in his fast mouth
before it hit the ground. It satisfied her soul
that overflowed with cackles of joy. If she’s a ghost,
she’s still at that back door, waiting for him.
How she hated to see him leave, when I’d come
to fetch him home. She’d wave goodbye to him
as to a child. Then she’d turn in her faded apron
and go back to tend to her small pristine rooms,
to spruce up the clean silence.