suitcase

Whenever anybody says the word "suitcase," she always gets the same images in her head; of her grandfather's attic, with the circle window on one end that never let in enough light to make it worth mentioning, the little brass lamp with the velvet green shade, the countless old radios piled up in stacks against the slanting roof, and the battered cardboard boxes, many with strange indentations in the sides.

Then her mind shuffles in another round of images, juxtaposing velvet green with her grandfather's wrinkles, his eyeglasses, and the woolen vests she could always bury her head in, as he sat in his maroon armchair.  Behind his head are shelves and shelves, his library, and there is a door squeezed in there somewhere.  

With another shuffle, time leaps, days rolling past like a calendar flip-book; she sees him standing on the front porch, with his beret and cane and the suitcase he'd had since childhood sitting beside his leg, faithful as a dog; her parents with their shiny car come to take him away.  Focusing on her grandfather's face, the lens of her memory blends the background into shapes and colors, leaving nothing but wrinkles and wrinkles; disguising only the shape of his skull but leaving the loss of every radio, every box, and every book traced into his skin.  

And when real time pushes back across her vision, clouding his eyes, she has to wipe the dampness from her face.