___ “That’s where the bullet stopped,” Mr. Black says.
___ “So it’s still in there?” I ask.
___ “No, no, of course not. The bullet was removed during
the autopsy. The swelling is called a temporary cavity,” Mr.
Black replies.
___ “Why is it there?”
___ “Because when someone is hit with a bullet, the bullet
brings all sorts of debris with it, like germs and dirt, and this
causes the wound to get infected.”
___ I am thirteen years old and I am having a conversation
with the undertaker about the bullet wound in my grandfather’s head. My grandfather, Art, looks the same as he did when I saw him for the final time last Thursday—save that his lips are sewn together, his eyelids are glued shut, and that he is lying in a casket. Mr. Black, the undertaker, is telling me all these things when I ask him about the lump in my grandfather’s right temple.

___ “So that’s why it’s all puffy?”

___ “Yes, if you look close,” begins Mr. Black as he points to
the wound, “can you see that it is sort of purple?”
___ I put my hands on the edge of my grandfather’s casket
and lean in to see the wound. I crinkle my nose as I try to get
an extreme close-up of what Mr. Black calls the “temporary
cavity.” I don’t see anything purple underneath the gallons of
make-up, but I don’t tell Mr. Black that.
___ “Well, see, your grandfather pulled the trigger at pointblank range and the bullet came in very hard and very fast, ripping all the veins and arteries and nerves, causing the
wound to bruise and swell,” Mr. Black explains. He looks me
in the eye through his large, thick glasses like my teachers do
when they think I understand.
___ “Oh,” I reply.
___ “Now your grandmother is a different story,” Mr. Black
says.
___ “What?” I ask, distracted as I examine—almost touch—
the side effect of the last thing that went through my grandfather’s brain.
___ I wonder, what would happen if I touch it?
___ “Come over here, Tony, I’ll show you,” Mr. Black says as
he carefully crosses the room, making his way past the horde
of flowers to my grandmother’s casket. I am too frozen by
my sudden impulse to touch my grandfather’s wound to hear
him. Still leaning over my grandfather’s body, hanging on to
the casket with my feet dangling above the floor, the pointer
finger on my left hand draws out like a lightning bolt getting
ready to strike a weather vane.
___ Quicker than lightning, I touch it.
___ The thunder booms in my head.
___ I look around the room. Mr. Black and I are the only ones
in the parlor and he is gently obsessing with my grandmother’s
hair. The rest of my family is waiting for my father to arrive out in the foyer. No one saw me. I want to touch
it again. . . .

___ The first couple pages of the book are stale and damaged
and contain only a few images, all of which have succumbed
to the inevitable decay of time. I delve a little further into the
historic find and discover that some pages in the middle have
been protected from the onslaught. “1932: Art and Jr.” reads
the caption of the first recognizable photo.
___ Arthur Edgar King Jr. was born in 1928. He is four years
old in this photo, and he is grabbing onto the back of his dad’s
pant leg as the both of them stand outside in the snow, posing
for a picture. This picture is the first image that I have seen
of my grandfather since I was thirteen. My cat rubs its cheek
against my knee and purrs as I recall my grandfather’s face in
the casket and mentally compare it to the photo.
___ I am twenty-two years old, and I am flipping through a
faded photo album that contains pictures of no living persons.
I discovered it this afternoon after my cat got stuck in the top
of our storage closet and knocked a bunch of old boxes over
as she tried to escape. Tiny brown spiders crawl out of the
binding as I open its cover and turn its pages; this is probably
the first time these little creatures have ever seen light. Who
knows how long the album has been hiding in the deep sleep
of closet storage?
___ As I get closer and closer to the middle of the album,
the pictures become clearer, the dates more recent. One
picture stuns me—there is no caption except for the date
“1946,” but it looks like me and an old friend in our navy uniforms lying in a bunk in the belly of a ship. I look happy, even invincible. I have no idea that in 60 years, my grandchild will stumble upon this photo and wonder how the story of such a young and hopeful-looking young man would end with a .22
caliber pistol.
___ “1955: Art, Louise, and Becky.” I am getting nearer to the
end of the book now and I stop. My grandfather is in good
shape and is standing proudly in his bathing suit; it is easy
to tell that he worked in a steel mill for thirty years after a
stint in the navy. He and my grandmother, also stunning as
she stands proudly in her one-piece bathing suit, are smiling,
standing on a beach somewhere with their first daughter,
Becky (who died before she was twenty-one due to an allergic
reaction to penicillin). My Aunt Becky is standing in between
my grandparents as they each are holding one of her hands.
Without thinking, I gently place my finger on my grandfather’s
right temple—no lump.

___ Mr. Black is done fiddling with my grandmother’s hair
and he calls me over to her casket to examine her bullet
wound. Grandma Louise looks like she always has, pretty
but aged—a hint of sadness in the circles around her
eyes. There is no “temporal cavity” this time, as with my
grandfather.

___ “Your grandfather’s bullet came in from point-blank range,
as I had said before,” Mr. Black begins, “but with your grandmother,
it wasn’t as close, so there is very little swelling around
the entrance and exit wounds.”
___ “Exit wounds?” I ask, trying to remember if I had heard
this phrase before in any of my vocabulary lessons.
___ “Yes, the ballistics of it doesn’t make sense,” Mr. Black
begins, with his arms crossed, his left hand cradling his chin,
“I don’t understand how the bullet did not pass through your
grandfather’s head at such a close range.” He looks at me
and shrugs his shoulders in confusion.
___ I shrug back.

___ “Your grandmother’s wound was clean, though, and the
bullet came out the other side.” Mr. Black takes his hand from
his chin and points to the corner of my grandmother’s head,
above her right eye.
___ I lean in over her body, my feet once again dangling off of
the floor. Up close, I see what Mr. Black is talking about. In the
very centers of each of her temples there are wounds the size
of shirt buttons.
___ “The weapon used was a .22 caliber pistol. This pistol
is weak enough that when a bullet passes through a
target, there is typically no swelling,” Mr. Black explained.
I think this is his way of trying to help me deal with the situation. I pay close attention, aware that if my parents were
listening to this conversation, Mr. Black would likely be out
of a job.
___ “Well, Tony, I have some other business to attend to,” he
says, probably realizing it too. “If you need anyone, your family
is outside waiting for your father to arrive.” My first lesson
in “ballistics” appears to be over as Mr. Black quickly leaves
the parlor. I don’t reply, as I am too focused on staring at my grandmother’s face, thinking about what Mr. Black meant by “exit and entrance wounds.” I touch my grandmother’s temples.
Nothing. No thunder this time. I let go of the side of the casket
and drop to the floor.
___ I am thirteen years old and I just touched a dead person.
I don’t understand what all the fuss is about; my friends told
me that if I ever touched a dead person that their ghost would
come and haunt me forever. I’m not too scared, though, because I remember my grandfather always telling me that when he died I shouldn’t be frightened, because he would never come haunt me, anyways.
___ On my way out of the parlor I turn around and view both
of the caskets from the center of the room. They are far apart,
each one beside opposite walls. The distance doesn’t make
sense to me—my grandparents always wanted to be close to
each other. Almost every time that they were together, they
were close. They would take me to movie theatres and hold
each other’s hands, even as they suffered through all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies. But now, on the last day that I will ever see them, they are not together and this frustrates me. I leave the parlor with a huff and go out to the foyer and wait for my father.
___ I am twenty-two years and I remember the story of my
grandparents’ death as I look at one of their old photo albums.
The tragedy happened on one of those clichéd July
days that are too perfect. It had all the ingredients of such a
day: birds chirping, bees buzzing, friendly neighbors shooting
me a wave as I pedal past the police cars and fire trucks and
an ambulance next door in my grandparents yard. . .what?
I recall biking up our driveway to find my father leaning
against the wall of the garage, with his head between his legs.
I had never seen him do this before.
___ “Dad, what is it?” I asked.
___ “They’re dead,” he said.
___ “Who?”
___ “Your grandparents.”
___ “Both?”
___ “Yes.”
___ “How?”
___ My father paused, trying to think of the right words to say
so he wouldn’t make my grandfather look like a murderer.
“Your grandmother asked your grandfather to do something.
He loved her, so he did it.”

___ “What did he do?” I asked my father.
___ “He shot your grandmother, then shot himself,” my father
answered. He is a very factual man—kind, but abrupt.

I remember this scene with my father as I flip through the
rest of the old photo album. The last few pages are blank,
the cheap plastic holding non-existent pictures crackle, grunting like something hungry and desperate for substance to fill the void. I look down at my cat, still sitting in my lap, purring, and looking up at me. I touch her nose and she rubs her face against my finger. She is simple; all she wants from me is to love her, to lend my hand whenever she needs it.
When I get up to put the photo album back into storage, a
few old pictures fall out of it. I must have missed these before.
As I pick them up, I notice that the pictures are newer, almost
artful. The caption underneath one of them says “1960:
Ronny and Us.” It was of my dad when he was very little, in
almost the same exact photo and pose as the picture I found
with my Aunt Becky and my grandparents.
___ I sit back down with my cat and open up the album to a
blank page; placing the newer photos in the old blank spaces.
There are more pictures of people who are still living—my dad,
a few of my aunts and uncles, and a few older cousins. But
there is one image that I keep for myself. It is a plain image,
one of just my grandparents standing in front of the house
that they used to live in. My grandfather has his arm around
my grandmother, and she is tucked into his body, gazing up
at him, beaming like a school girl at her first crush. She must
have given my grandfather a version of this look right before
she asked him for the last time to pull the trigger.
___ She fell ill in the spring of 2000 and had asked my
grandfather several times to lend her his hand. Treatment after treatment failed and in July, my grandmother asked her husband one more time. She wanted to leave, but not without
him. He wanted to stay, but not without her. My father found
them holding each other’s hands.
___ The cat playfully bites at my hand as I pull it away from
her face. She is young and frisky, pawing at my hand like a
toy as I move it back and forth in front of her. When I close
the album and set it down, she jumps into my lap and looks
up at me with her blue Siamese eyes. As I rub her ears and
stroke her back, she flicks her tail to and fro and I notice, for
the first time, near the tip, a spot of gray hair about the size of
a shirt button.