Originally published in “Bewildering Stories” May 2024.
“Yes, OK, see you tomorrow, buddy,” Bert said and hung up the phone.
“Who was that?” Libby called from the kitchen.
“Bennie Salazar!” he called back.
In his datebook, he wrote “Bennie Tee Wednesday” with an old golf scoring pencil from the club, the very course he could just make out between Bennie’s and the Honeywells’ houses across the street, the club part of The Palms CC & Residences.
Of course, he meant tee time—his shorthand for 8:00 a.m.—and, of course, he meant hit a bucket of balls because they had finally, reluctantly turned the sprinklers off after five years of drought, and he could see the blasted brown of the back nine from his La-Z-Boy.
It was time. One year to the day since Helen had died. It was his idea; he had called and left a message, and good old Bennie called him back.
Now Bert picked up his magnifier and went back to studying the two pictures.
Two photographs of the same scene in his own living room, with several obvious differences. In fact, he had been looking for the one, the last he had taken of Helen sitting in her chair, knitting the scarf now still trailing out of the basket on the table he had never moved.
In that picture, she smiled, holding up the scarf to show her half-finished progress, with the autumn sunset and still-green golf course behind her through the window, the Monday just before Thanksgiving. He liked to imagine she might walk into the room at any moment and pick up where she had left off, fat red and white stripes up the length of a Christmas scarf, a present for Libby their granddaughter, a year late.
The day after taking that picture, he had gone out in the morning to hit a bucket of balls at the driving range but instead Bennie had asked if he wanted to play a quick nine holes, which turned into eighteen. He was just heading into the house when the Tuesday noon test siren went off at the U.S. Air Force Base that shared their zip code. He called out an apology. Helen was still in bed.
Then just a month ago, he remembered that last picture of her must be on a roll of film still in his camera, because only Bert still took pictures with film anymore, and he had taken it up to Walgreens to get developed. The rest of the roll was just more pictures of sunsets. It had been a wild autumn, there were fires, whole mountains burning, sky ablaze with mineral hues. He flipped to the last two pictures in the envelope.
There was the picture of Helen, cheerful, a bit drawn maybe, happy he thought (he hoped) with the candy-striped scarf dangling out of the basket where she had plopped it that evening. He looked at it for a long time.
The sooner, the better, he thought.
Oh sure, Libby was a good kid and kept an eye on him. She liked to drop off a few things every few days: Ensure, pizza rolls, Wonder Bread, peanut butter. Spitting image of Helen at that age. When she arrived today and sat in Helen’s chair, it almost took his breath away.
But no, it was the other picture on the roll which had him stumped. A misprint, he thought at first, it had a scorched, overexposed look about it. It was the same photograph from the same position as the one before, but instead of Helen, it showed only her empty chair, and everything was both the same and different.
There were the curtains, the same swirling ivy pattern, still green but in this one faded, ragged. In fact, everything in the picture looked like it was covered with a fine layer of dust. It was hard to tell, because of that crispy, bleached quality. If he hadn’t known better, he might have said the picture had been left out in the sun.
“You want some coffee, Grampa?” Libby called from the kitchen.
“Yes, please.”
Everything was where it should be: Helen’s chair, her table, the ottoman in front. Books all up on the shelf, knickknacks where she left them. The really strange part was the scene outside the window.
“Here you go, Grandpa,” Libby said, setting down his coffee on the table at his elbow. “It’s instant, no real coffee anymore. I’ve got some pizza rolls in the oven, you hungry?”
“Ah, thanks sweetheart, yes I guess I am. You going to have some too?”
She threw a “Yep!” behind her as she disappeared back to the kitchen. More banging.
It was Bennie’s place and Jim Honeywell’s across the street. They didn’t look right. In the picture, they were faint, as though covered in snow, just peeks and snippets. But there was no snow last year, not out here in the High Desert, not for forty years.
And the windows. Bennie’s big front picture window, well, it didn’t look right, almost as though he were looking straight through the house to the backyard, no glass. They were lucky, he and Jim; they had houses right on the tenth fairway. They could practically walk out of their yards and play the back nine if they wanted.
And that was another thing: the course looked wrong. The grass wasn’t green, or even brown, as it had been now all summer. It was gray in the picture. All the colors looked bled out; the trees, too, like sticks.
There was the big mulberry right between their houses next to the sand trap on the far side; it was bare. He looked out the window at it now. He had a new prescription in his glasses; if anything, they were too strong. He could see that big tree plain as day. It was the only green thing on the course with its deep roots, still carrying almost half its leaves here at the end of November, Thanksgiving week, same as in the picture with Helen. One year ago.
Libby set the plate of pizza rolls down on the coffee table in front of him and knelt on the floor. “Here we go, here’s a napkin. Careful they’re hot!” She blew on her coffee and sipped, nibbled a tiny corner off one edge of a roll. “Oh, not too hot, I guess. How long do you put them in for? You’re the pizza roll expert, Grampa.”
“I am, I am. Good twelve minutes: we like ’em nice and done.” He had said we but Libby didn’t comment on that.
“Well, we thought we’d come over around one on Thursday to pick you up—” she startled; the drawling wail of the Tuesday horn wafted in through the open sliding doors. “Jesus! What’s that?”
“Noon on Tuesday,” Bert said. “Civil defense siren, over at the base. Just a test.”
“Every week?”
“Every week.”
“Good lord, and with all the seniors living over here?” They laughed. The siren stopped. “Anyway, we just thought it would be good for all of us to be together this year, considering last year, and the state of things.”
“What things?”
“Are you not watching the news lately?” He shook his head. “Just as well. You still reading your Ludlums, Grampa?”
“Finished my Ludlums, and my Cusslers, my Clancys and Pattersons,” Bert said. “Been working on Sherlock Holmes, I got the whole series in one right here.” He passed the heavy volume from his table to her.
“Oh, you’re so good, all that reading.”
“The game is afoot, Watson,” Bert said, holding his magnifier up to his eye.
“Oh, Grampa, you’re crazy!” Libby laughed even harder. “We watch more TV than we should. I thought I might take up something a little less nerve-wracking.”
“Like what?”
She sighed. “Oh nothing too dramatic, maybe knitting.”
Bert brightened. “Oh! Sweetheart, Gramma’d be happy to hear that. You’ve got all her knitting things right there. Don’t buy a thing! You can have it all.”
“Are you sure Grampa? I haven’t wanted to touch anything, you know...”
“Oh, please, I want you to have it. Finish that scarf even, it was supposed to be for you. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
They finished the last pizza rolls, and she kissed him on the cheek as she took the plate into the kitchen. “Thanks, I will, maybe even in time for Christmas.”
Lunch over, Bert picked up the pictures again. And then there was Helen’s knitting. In the one picture, there she sat, scarf half done, and the thin umbilical thread of red yarn dangling to the roll in the basket. It was a good camera, Olympus, sharp—he’d had it since the eighties—these old things didn’t fall apart like people. The single loop of thread was as clear and vivid as the scarf itself.
But in the next photo, colors faded almost to nothing, well there was no basket at all, no knitting. Instead, there was a lump of something on the table, again covered in some kind of dust, hard to say, and a thin string running behind it and off the table.
In the Wrong Picture—versus the Right Picture, as he had come to think of them—the sky looked dim, shrouded, a thin gray brightness around the pale eye of a setting sun.
“Well, it’s just all wrong,” he said again for the thousandth time.
“Sorry, Grampa, what’d you say?” Libby sat down in Helen’s chair, garbage bag beside her, jacket on. “I’m taking out the trash.”
“Nothing. Silliness,” Bert answered, slipping the pictures back between the pages of Sherlock Holmes.
“So...” Libby hesitated. “You OK, Grampa? You know, that time of year, a year ago...?”
“Oh. I’m fine sweetheart, I have my moments. I miss her, of course, but... Well.”
“OK. It’s going to be kinda lowkey this year. No turkey, gas shortages I guess, but we’ve got a couple of nice roasting chickens. We like chicken better anyway.”
“Me too, sweetheart. It’s all going to be fine.”
Libby nodded. “I hope so, Grampa. Oh! I almost forgot, we got you a cell phone, just in case. It’s easy, just an old flip phone, push the button twice and it will dial me; it’s all programmed.” She flipped it open and demonstrated, and her own phone rang from inside her purse. “See? I’m just going to leave it here on the table, plugged in.” She moved the knitting basket off the table, and plugged the phone into the power strip hidden behind Helen’s chair. “You sure about Gramma’s knitting?”
“Yes! Yes! Take it, sweetheart, give it a go.”
She latched the basket shut, it had a handle, she kissed him and stopped at the door. “Love you, Grampa! See you Thursday, one o’clock. I’ll call to remind you.”
“Love you, sweetheart.”
Bert watched as she backed out the driveway, stopped, waved, pulled out of view. He sat looking out the window, and then his gaze fell upon Helen’s knitting table. The little phone, smaller than a pack of cards, and its cord trailing off behind the table.
He pulled the picture out of his book and studied it for the thousand-and-first time in a month. Yes. That was the lump in the photo, the phone covered with dust, or snow, or ash. Now the picture was complete; it made a certain sense.
Through the sliding doors, the USAF siren began to wail again.
Great story, Troy. Thanks for sharing.
Reading it now, even as we speak.