Grand Tour

Grand Tour

The kitchen was the room where they were most

themselves, and they were there now, standing

at the counter. She spooned sugar into

her coffee and stirred it, watching his face as she

did so. She smiled at the creased expression

of concentration as he pressed the toaster

handle down, the two pieces of bread

disappearing into the machine.

The toast popped up and she clapped and

he carefully extracted the slices and buttered

them with oleo from the tub,

 

and he cut them diagonally the way

she liked her toast. She held onto his arm

as they walked to the kitchen, and they

sat together in a wide beam of

sunlight and chewed their breakfast and watched a bright

cardinal on the windowsill as he

pecked and chirped. Neither of them wore their

dentures and they took their time enjoying their

toast. The coffee was gone and they looked

to each other in anticipation

 

of the next adventure, and they stood

together and he pushed their chairs under

the table and took her hand again. They walked

through the hall and he stopped when she

did, smiling as she bent and plucked

a tuft of dust from the hardwood floor,

a floor across which babies had once crawled

to their grown selfhood. Old man

and old woman moved together to the

back bedroom and stood before a window

 

of glare and soft heat, watching the shrubs

and the grass, looking at each other

every few seconds to see if the other was seeing

something wondrous. And then back to the kitchen

where they moved in a circle around the room,

pointing without words, speaking without

sound, cataloging all the mysteries

of the shining objects and the deep

recesses and the platoons of cans and jars

and bottles wearing their colorful uniforms.

 

They stood for a while before the stove, their eyes

moving over its surfaces and its

imperfections, and it seemed to speak

comfortable words to them. The old man

touched the knobs but did not twist them,

and the old woman touched some of the other

knobs but did not turn them, and they backed

away, arms linked like angels in a

choir, and walked together, in step and in

shuffling perfection, and went

 

to the front door. He lost himself

in the beauty of the angles of her soft

face as she opened the door, and they

both laughed just a bit at the sunlight when it

tapped them, and two little birds sat in the dry

birdbath. She cocked her head and frowned, and he

looked to see what had vexed her, and it

seemed that there was something that needed doing,

but they watched the birds long enough

to forget what it was, and so the

 

door found itself swinging shut again,

and the couple backed into the foyer

and turned to the dining room, where the

rows of photographs gazed down at them,

memories and echoes and glittering smiles

coming up like the swell of an orchestra,

and they turned and turned and looked and

exclaimed in soft voices without forming

sensible words, and they moved to the

chairs and sat, still holding hands,

 

and watched the sunlight crawl across a half-

inch of warm, dusty wood. They would

sit for a spell and then they would

soon move on, slippered feet in united

steps, visiting their friends and listening

to the songs of long-ago breaths

and inhaling the scents of the banquet

of their years, waiting for a knock

or a loved and familiar face.

They would walk together; this is how

it had ever and always been.

~ by S.K. Orr