Marilyn's grandmother, fraternal grandmother, was old enough to know the body's erudition and its crimes, shrinking as all the women did before her -- as all the women would after her -- into folds of cloth the light passed on. "We have time," she told Marilyn, as if they should all believe the truth of those three words. Whole worlds resided in the phrase, lives played out in unexplained trajectories that organized religions could not resolve. Her grandmother meant it as a gesture of hope and renewal. All this will be yours, could be yours.

We have time.

Marilyn did not believe. Her grandmother had bent closer to the earth in the time since they were last together. Bones decalcinated, joints lost their lubrication. With the horizon suddenly closer she avoided the lake. Proof lived before Marilyn's eyes and ears, her grandmother's speech reduced to simple sentences, no longer able to account for verbs. The words went as did mobility: merged to a new form her grandmother had be helped into a chair, helped to her feet, helped in the short walk across the grass, helped up stairs, helped into the house, helped.

On clipped and proper lawns Marilyn's family gathered every odd year for a reunion, her grandmother's way of tethering old to young, and in this, a concrete recognition of her blood. Grass crushed under the feet of squealing children, so many children crawling at her legs, her smile touched by some private construction, hers, alone. The family ate and drink, together, her bread, her wine -- that was what she left them.

Marilyn had stayed away too long, spent her summers and winters on the other coast pretending she had no time for little things -- like this -- still avoiding the questions from the aunts about the lack of men. She rested over by the tree where as a young girl she chased her cousins around. They were taken up in chasing their own children pretending to invent the same games invented years ago as if in this new first time they find another kind of laughter.

Still, no holding back the afternoon, the moment melding the next and beyond. They ate and they drank, too many sandwiches, more than the stomach could take, they renewed the daily cycle. A cake was brought out and a wish made. Pies and melted ice cream. Engagements were announced, graduations, job promotions, the birth of children. Sustained applause.

This family of achievers bid good bye to one another with the best intentions of writing more often, calling more often, speaking before the next time they gathered on the lawn.

Marilyn was the last one to leave the lake and her place before the stone wall where the water lapped up high. The tables turned in, legs folded down, the chairs stacked for the taking tomorrow by the silent blond men who had brought them in the morning of the party. Now the last door had closed, the last car driven away, the grass beginning to recover. The trash bagged and carried to the curb. All that remained for her was to find some way to make the distance to the house covering all the necessary steps that would let her return, clasping what was remembered, holding it to an inner light as shadows elongated in time.