By Krista Halverson
My parents covered the stairs with carpet, plush green for Grandpa, who takes them in the morning before his cocoa. Grandpa takes each stair with respect, shifting languidly as it to stroke the backbone of our home. He invited a woman over yesterday, who he thought might be his wife. She was selling cosmetics and doing quite well with my grandfather until he forgot and hung up She came anyway and embarrassed us all, though only my father showed it, bending her business card until he was holding two halves: Donna Makeup and Lind Specialist. I shook her hand like I was palming a pancake, and she gathered her things to leave. Her lips looked hards. The rest of her face pulled in tight wrinkles like the skin around a scab. She could have been his wife. I believed, standing in her receding air, what I say sometimes, that the old take care of themselves. Back in the house I watch Grandpa starting down the stairs.
