The Leftovers by Michelle La Vone

The Leftovers | Michelle La Vone

Oma holds the pesto jar up to the light. I tell her not to worry about scraping, but still she wields a long-necked spoon. “Opa hasn’t been eating enough,” she declares. Clink clink clink. “Half the time his lunch is still sitting there when I visit, and he wants me to eat it,”—clink clink clink—“and I say no, I didn’t come all this way to eat up your food!” Splat! onto the chicken bake.

I squint at the cryptic oven symbols, slide the dish in, and set the table. One plate, two plates. Butter dish, bread basket. Napkins scissored in half. I think about when I was here last: platters of jams and cheeses, pastel forks in fruit. Opa to my left, slow-chewing the soft yolk of a sawed-off egg, trying to teach me a valuable life lesson: slowly, child. You have time. 

Today, the table feels smaller. To my left, a home phone, a stack of papers. After the oven beeps, Oma sits across from me, chewing on chicken and childhood stories of the 1940s: running to bomb shelters on the walk to school, losing playthings but trading grenade splinters like playing cards. Sleeping under blanketed roofs of fireproof sand. Slurping Grützwurst and Sauerkraut soup given by a kind Soviet soldier. Other Soviets banging on the bunker door. As I smear another slice of bread with butter, she recites wartime national anthems and nursery rhymes. 

Eine alte Frau kocht Rüben,
Eine alte Frau kocht Speck…
…Und du bist weg!

She giggles, clears her throat, pulls white asparagus strings from her dentures. I scrape my plate as she swallows two gulps of water and commends the pesto for helping the chicken slide down. “Take more!” she tells me, then places both hands on her belly and declares, “I can’t eat as much these days. You know, I’ve lost a lot of weight from all the chaos with Opa.”

I nod. Oma’s cheeks are sunken, her creases more pronounced. She follows me into the kitchen, pokes the still-steaming asparagus stalks, and slips four into a bag for Opa. Limp-bodied, they fold into a heap. “Like worms!” Oma laughs, then tucks them away next to a tub of linseed oil and quark— her sworn superfood. Just like Opa’s honey, mom’s fish oil. 

At the hospice that afternoon, Opa offers me firm jello, peeled apples. A chocolate bunny wrapped in foil. “I still have a yogurt to gift someone,” Opa waves the container, his voice frail. 

“I’m still full from lunch,” Oma defends herself. “You should save it for later, in case you get hungry.”

“I have everything I want here. I just have to say, bring me this and that, and they do.”

“Well then, it’s good you’re not at home!” 

In their laughter, I picture them in their apartment together: Oma in an apron, always. Opa in slacks and a belt, slicing fresh-baked Brötchen. Poppy seeds flying. I picture myself with them, sliding my plate over to Opa, my eyes too big for my stomach. I imagine the clink clink of the mini marmalade spoon, the eventual pat of Opa’s hands on his stomach. The sigh of a satiated man. 

Bedside now, I notice how Opa’s white sheets swallow him whole, how his contours are jagged cliffs, not the slopes he used to ski. I am aware his body is preparing its feast for flies, just like Mom’s, when two men in black business suits carried her deadweight into the summer night. I am aware that it will always be too soon.

“Anything you want, just ask,” Opa looks over at me and smiles when I tell him I’m getting ready to leave. I squeeze his liver-spotted hand, assure him I have everything I need. I thank him for his decades of gifts: money for college, houses, cars. Then he motions to the tray beside him. “Take something with you—everything needs to be eaten,” he raises an eyebrow. I shake my head no, but no one, nothing listens.  The doctors tried to scrape it all out, they promised us, but the cancer marches on.

***

Less than two years later, my sister and I knock on Oma’s door. When she opens, she is all eyes, a skeleton hunched in sagging skin and distended stomach. We walk her back to the bed, where she slips out and onto the rug. Her bones are heavy; I need my sister to help heave. What is wrong with me? She asks. We tell her that half-cookies don’t count as meals. We tell her that, just like Opa and Mom, her body is losing the war. 

After she dies, we pour paper clips out of the pesto jar, collate hospice bills and bank statements. We toss out smalec, salmon creme, slimy turnips. We throw away canned liver, jarred capers, bottled linseed oil. We shred signatures, account numbers. We pack up four cubic meters of marble table, porcelain dishware, and family heirlooms that we slow-ship by sea. We leave behind the rest of the household, poorly stacked pots and half-used honey. We whisper through time and space and to unmarked graves that we rescued what we could, but please understand–sometimes, the leftovers go to waste.

about the author: