Abby Manzella
1. THE DISPATCHContact
My grandfather is momentarily stuck in the middle of his living room, the carpet thick beneath his slippered feet. He has become an awkward statue, a little hunched and leaning forward in a walking pose, like he is waiting for a camera’s click to catch the pretense of an action shot. But there is no photographer, just the two of us: me and him.
Me: I’m a young adult, still adjusting to the grounded expectations of maturity, especially in family spaces where I used to climb among the branches of trees, hidden behind leaves and magnolia flowers, separated from grown-up conversations and concerns.
Him: My grandfather is the gentle father of my mother, who for a lifetime worked molten iron and carbon into steel. As a cold roller, he shaped what was once hot and liquid into its final form, refining what was already solid and still. At his home he planted the magnolia tree I used to climb, and he laid the driveway on which the adults always gathered.
In this moment in his living room, though, he is years into retirement, he has moved to a more accessible home miles from that driveway, and the magnolia tree I climbed has long ago been cut to a stump. He is immobile, but he can speak.
“Come here, come here,” he says to me calmly, his voice a secret imparted. “Just touch my shoulder.” And with my compliance—my hand placed upon his once strong arm—he returns to a slow amble, an unsteady wind-up toy I’ve released.
* * *
This isn’t science fiction. This is not a solely metaphoric tale I’m telling. It is something my grandfather has learned about his Parkinson’s disease. A touch unlocks his frozen body. Imagine it as a picture-taking in reverse, a freeing of himself from the fixed frame. Or perhaps it is more like when you grab a new car door’s handle with the keys in your pocket. The contact between himself and another is enough to remind his mind of its purpose.
* * *
Back in the days before cars could perform such magic, I could lay my hand upon my grandfather, the man who taught me how to change the oil in my first car and, before that, to ride my red Schwinn: You can do it, he’d pronounce with his hand steadying my bike’s seat, as he guided me down his driveway before releasing me. Not too many years after those early lessons—in the moment when childhood met adulthood—my simple touch would set him into motion, like these words, connecting with you, convey the past into the present and bring him back to life.
2. BUREAU INVENTORYSo many pens and pencils
Thread of various colors and buttons galore
Old holiday cards received with notes
Half-used legal pads
Rabbit stamp (the cottontail view) with a violet ink pad
Big books to prop up my laptop for Zoom calls (Heath American literature anthologies, The Bedford Introduction to Drama, and The Best American Short Stories of the Century)
A pitch pipe and electronic metronome
"Abby" stationary from childhood
3. BIOGRAPHYAbby Manzella is the author of Migrating Fictions: Gender, Race, and Citizenship in U.S. Internal Displacements, winner of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers Book Award. Her work has been selected for Micro the podcast and has been published by places such as Literary Hub, Catapult, Colorado Review, and trampset. Find her on Twitter @abbymanzella.