The Keepers of the House

by Shirley Ann Grau

And the worst part was that you didn’t know exactly at what point it disappeared. There was nothing you could point to and say: now, there. One day you saw that it was missing and had been missing for a long time. It wasn’t even anything to grieve over, it had been such a long time passing.

That glitter and hush-breath quality just slipped away. The way most things do, I’ve found out. The way my mother’s life did, gently, bit by bit, until it was gone and I didn’t even have the satisfaction of mourning. And my love too. There isn’t even a scene—not for me, nothing so definite—just the seepage, the worms of time. Like those wedding dresses my cousins and I found so long ago in the old storage trunks. They looked all right. But when you picked them up, they fell of their own weight, without even a breath touching them, and even the bits of pieces you held in your fingers crumpled.

That’s the way it happened with me, during the years. Things that I thought surrounded me have pulled back. Sometimes I wonder if I am not like an island the tide has left, leaving only some sea wrack on the beaches, useless things. I look at my children now and I think: how long before they slip away, before I am disappointed in them. … But it doesn’t matter. Not really. N...