The twisted, leafless branches of the beech hedge wound their way into the sky and blocked the view. The grass stood in withered, grey tufts between the mole hills, and the box hedge crept into the vegetable garden where onions, lettuce and carrots had grown wild since summer. The yard seemed abandoned, I thought, as I looked out on it. As if we no longer lived there or had simply given in.
Inside, things weren’t great either. We were out of cucumber and rye bread, so I had tried boiling some eggs for me and my little brother, but ended up frying them instead. The result was odd but eatable. The frying pan was hard to clean, though. I stood over the kitchen sink with the sponge in my hand and stared blankly out the window when the mailman knocked on the door.
“Why don’t you turn on the heat?” He asked when he stepped inside. “It’s freezing in here.” He shivered in his red jacket.
“It’s the oil crisis, you know,” I answered.
“Don’t you normally use fire wood?” he asked.
“You just need a sweater,” I said. I was wearing two; one was my mother’s. The sleeves were too long, and I spilled egg on one of them when I was cooking. It was slimy and looked like dried out snot. I tried rolling up the sleeve, so the mailman wouldn’t see it.
The mailman pushed up his cap and looked at me for a moment. Small, glittery beads of water spread across the shade of the cap and his lapels and shoulders.
“I brought the bills,” he started. “Perhaps your mother …”
“No,” I said. “She went to bed. She’s not feeling good today.”
“But there’s no car in the drive way,” he said.
“Oh, well then she went to the doctor,” I said. “But don’t worry; you’ll get your sherry anyway.”
I pulled a chair over to the cabinet and balanced precariously on my toes for a moment with the round carafe in my arms.
“Don’t you think …” He paused as if he didn’t know how to continue.
“I mean,” he said, “when will she be home? And, well, ah, doesn’t she spend a lot of time in bed?”
I poured sherry up to the rim of the glass and a little over and wiped up the golden puddles with my sleeve – the one without the egg.
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t think she’s doing so well.” I shoved the glass across the table and spilled some more.
“I guess not,” he said.
“Cheers,” I said. “Could you help me find my grandpa?”
“Your grandpa?”
Yeah, in America.”
“Well,” said the mailman. He held out the glass and sipped carefully. “Where exactly does he live?”
“In New York,” I said.
“But where?”
“In New York.”
“Alright, I’ll try,” he said and emptied the glass.
He pulled a pencil and pad out of his mailbag.
“If you turn on the light, I’ll write it all down.”
“The light bulb burned out,” I said.
The mailman nodded.
“And what did you say his name was?”
“Grandpa.”
“That’s not his name, though, is it?”
“No,” I said. “I guess not.”
The mailman wrote. Grandfather in New York it said. He finished with a big question mark.
“It’s a big city,” he said.
“Bigger than Copenhagen?” I asked.
He hesitated. “Well, yes.”
“Okay,” I said.
I waived at him through the window as he left and threw the bills in the trash. I didn’t know what else to do with them.
