He Never Did – by Melanie Mendenhall

My grandmother never told me about my grandfather.  Just to say, “the only good thing from that marriage was your mother.”

“And me?”  By extension me, right?

My grandmother had twinkly, defiant eyes.  Like she didn’t give a “flip” what people thought of her.  She told me how she’d hated high school.  All the kids who “thought they were something.”  Getting sent to the principle’s office for back talking to an insufferable teacher.

The principle though, he forgave her.  He sat her on his lap and told her she had to be a good girl.

“He sat you on his lap?”  That sounded weird.

“Yep,” her lips smacked together; her twinkly eyes dared me to defy her.

Sometimes my grandmother told me about her first husband.  Her true love.  Going on dates.  Driving in his car.  After they were married, her parents bought him a small plane that he loved to fly over their house in the country.

He died in that plane.  And when they found him, my grandmother said, they only found the bottom half of his body.  From the waist down.

“Where was the rest?”  I asked.  Horrified but curious.  Trying to picture a body without a chest, arms, neck, head.  I couldn’t see the blood.  Only a clean, trim lower half.  Khaki pants, neat and a little dusty.  Heavy brown shoes.  In the cockpit of half-wrecked plane.

“Gone,” she answered, clipping the word short.

“Gone?”  I didn’t understand how a man could be all one piece.  Ordinary.  And then suddenly only half a man.

“Just gone.”

“Like all blown away?”  I asked, unhelpfully.  Thinking all blown up.  Blown to smithereens.  No trace left of the upper half.

My grandmother’s quick short nod.  We wouldn’t talk about that anymore.

Then a minute or so later, “He came back to me one time.” 

I stared at her.

She repeated, “He came back one time.  After he died.”

“Came back?”

“I saw him.  Sitting at the end of my bed.”

She wasn’t too giving on details, but I waited.  My arms prickled.  My pulse felt loud at my neck.

“I was in my bedroom crying after he died, and I saw him.  Sitting at the foot of the bed.”

She said the sentences matter-of-factly, like it was natural for a dead man, a half-blown up man to reappear.

“What did he look like?”  I asked.  Nervous.

“Like he always had.”  Her bold eye challenged mine.  “I told him, I can’t go on without you.  But, he said, ‘Effie, you can.  You have to.’ ”

“Then he was gone.”

“Did you see him again?”  I asked, cautious and hopeful.  Maybe he still haunted the country house.  The new owners might find him pacing quietly up the front stairs.  Standing at an open doorway.  Glaring into my grandmother’s bedroom.  Looking for her.

She shook her head.  “Nope.”

“He didn’t come back?”

“Nope,” her lips smacked together quietly that time.  Her eyes were dark.  “Nope, he never did.”