Minimalist Gossip Magazine Cover (49).pdf (13) - Flipbook - Page 61
NANNY'S BATHROOM
by Christian Butler-Zanetti
The family had two grandmothers – one kind and one very cruel.
Each of the grandmothers lived far away and the family visited
them only rarely. On this day, Mother and Father and a selection
of the children were to visit the kinder of the two, in the house
that she shared with her youngest son.
It had been a few years since they’d been here, and Nanny had
grown weak and ill. Her eyesight was almost completely gone, her
irises trapped behind a thin, yellowish film. She now had the
unfocused gaze that is common among blind people, but which
frightened and confused the younger of the children.
The dementia that would later destroy her mind had by then only
begun to take hold. Mother later told the children that Nanny had
twice called the police on the neighbours, having developed the
delusion that they were drug dealers, but that day she was quite
lucid. She remembered each of the children’s names and dealt each
of them pennies from a huge jar, just as she had always done.
Conversation was difficult, for though Nanny was kind, she was
also very old and there was little in her talk that meant anything
to the family at all. The older children at least were able to
make an effort, but the younger ones sat in silence, feeling
strange.
At some point talk began to centre on Nanny’s new shower. It was
a sit-down shower, custom made, the latest thing. The family
discussed it with great excitement, and eventually Mother led a
scout pack of older siblings to see it for themselves. They
returned full of enthusiasm, urging the younger ones to take a
look. The very youngest shook her head, ‘no’, leaving the second
youngest, the boy, little choice.
“You must have a look,” Mother told him.
“Oh, it’s amazing,” his older siblings promised and so, slightly
baffled, he went.
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The bathroom lay at the end of an unlit hall. A great hump of
coats clung to the wall on the left like the domed back of an
enormous beetle. A handful of jackets had fallen to the radiator
beneath, and another lay on the floor. To the boy’s right as he
progressed through the hall, a narrow mantel housed a procession
of miniature gargoyles. Nanny had collected these without meaning
to, through a magazine subscription she didn’t know how to cancel.
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