Grandpa Tinker died a few years after I was born. I'm told he met me before he left though I was still asleep then. Lulled in a cradle, in a peace made possible by men like him. A Marine Corp officer stationed at Pearl Harbor who awoke to the sound of shouts on a day the world would never be allowed to forget. Mother said he never spoke a word about the war. Maybe that was his way of forgetting; his gift to my mother's generation was to bury that pain. He let it die inside so the fear, the anguish, the terror could not touch the ones he loved. The world gave him something he could not forget, something so painful he buried it in his heart with the memory of fellow marines and sailors in watery graves.

Grandpa Harry was a gunner on a B-29. The son of orthodox Jews, a first generation American born in New York. When he was stationed in Texas he met a young W.A.V.E. who would become my grandma. They couldn't wait for the war to end before getting married. When Granpa Harry was shot down over the Burma theatre they sent grandma a letter. Heartbroken and desperate she prayed. He and the survivors of his crew were picked up weeks later in the jungle, but not before contracting maleria. They went on to have 8 children, 3 their own and 5 adopted. Grandma always loved children. She became a school teacher. Grandpa Harry died before I was born, the world gave him something he could not forget either.

I do not like to think of the war as a battle between nations of this world. Good and evil do not fight under banners of nations, they have no borders, no anthems, only memories. They fight and die on battlefields of hearts that have buried hate, pain, and terror. My grandparents' hearts are memorials. Gleaming white tombstones on a field I cannot see, and cannot forget.

The road hissed under balding black
punched staccato rhythms up your back
Wind whining through the window crack
but you knew:
You knew where you were
Felt the dark spaces between
Here and there

You didn't see the car that swerved
in and out of traffic as if threading
The eyes of unseen needles.
But you knew all about needles

The car pitched upward slowly gaining
like a rollercoaster just before the drop
fighting inertia, trying to build momentum
You knew you'd never use, like your body

You didn't see the man outside the waiting room
sitting silent, motionless
Studying the ceiling with an anguished look
A prayer of supplication written on his still lips

The air was still as we suddenly felt heavy
Lifted through a concrete column in a metal box
you felt the ding as much as heard it
The doors slid open, then cool air and a new smell
Somehow more metallic than the elevator

You didn't see me close my eyes the whole way up
Didn't see the expressions I could not hide from me
Or shift my hands in my pockets, uselessly
Or my face when they told you two months, maybe three
My voice you knew all too well when
A month ago I sang in G, but all I could say now
was in a minor key, we both tired of being weary

The corridor was bright, obscenely lit in false light
not unlike the perfume of the week old roses passed
and in a moment they were threading needles in you
a perfect traffic jam of hopes choked and left
to die on the blacktop

You didn't see the church where we held the service
Or your sister and mother who, though she could barely stand
Stood by you one last time.
And I could not think of anything to say.
Had you been there you would have teased
"But you were always so good with words"
And all I could muster? "I wish you'd stay"

It was strange and didn't register as a serious request. She wanted to take care of me. Nothing ******. Just a meal here and there, maybe a little tidying up of the house.

She wanted me to talk. And that part, the talking, always felt transactional, a repayment of her cleaning and cooking. She didn't ask questions. Just nudged me on with emphatic nods in the living room, sitting six feet away from me in a stray office chair. She listened as if I were recounting a past life of her own.

I told her once I loved her little feet, especially in those heels. The next week she wore sneakers. She was older but not old, fifty or so. Two children a few years younger than myself.

She made a point of not staying past ten or drinking more than a single glass of wine.

I was always a little embarrassed by the state of the house. The ***** clothes strewn across the room indistinguishable from the clean. Earmarked novels, long novels, the kind you could bludgeon a person to death with, gathered dust on the coffee table, the desk, the kitchen counter. She touched them, fascinated by what secrets or sage advice might lay within, but she never read a page.

One night I realized I'd never said her name out loud. And she said, "That's impossible. Of course you have." But neither of us could think of a particular moment. And just when I was about to, she said, "Why break the streak?"

We grew more comfortable with one another. She wore less makeup and let her age show. She'd show up in sweatpants. Some nights we'd order Chinese and play that familiar game where every fortune is punctuated with "in bed." A stranger will change your life forever tomorrow in bed. Lies lead to great calamities in bed. So on.

We called them dates, our lunches in the break room, taken each day around 2 p.m. She would bring me leftovers from the night before, always making a point of saying something like, "My husband just couldn't finish it."

She brought baked ziti on a Wednesday last March. I told her it was the best I'd ever eaten as I forked it out of the tupperware container, the edges still hot from the microwave. She said she hadn't been intimate in two years.

"Is that possible?"

"It is."

*** didn't transpire immediately. We worked up to it.

I liked the way she directed me. I'd never experienced anything quite like it. She'd tell me to touch myself while she held me in her arms, she'd snag a handful of my hair, she'd dig her nails into my thigh, but her words were always beautiful, whispered, tender, spoken in the sacred and profane language of lovers.

I'd come and she'd make a comment about the quantity, comparing it to her husband's.

In the serene afterglow before we toweled ourselves off, I'd rest my head against her breast, and I'd say, "I could stay here forever."

"Every man I've ever slept with has said that."

"How many men have you slept with?"

"Has anyone ever liked the answer to that question?"

"I don't mind. We could compare data."

"Including you?"

"Including me."

"Two."

She crawled out of the bed and turned on some music, Neil Young, "A Man Needs a Maid."

"I always felt guilty for liking this song," I said.

"Me too," she said.

We drank coffee on the back porch before the sun came up. "There was a man," she said, "before I married. He was an artist, a painter. We were in college and I loved the deliberate way he spoke. He'd think, sometimes for a full minute, before he said anything. There was a softness in his voice that required you to pay closer attention to him. Your voice is not all that different."

The Department of Transportation began tearing down the houses in my neighborhood to make room for an additional two lanes of traffic. By October mine was the only house left on the block. The apocalypse in miniature. We'd drive by piles of brick and fencing and she'd begin to cry.

It was a particularly brutal winter, and she buried her car in mud and snow when she tried to back out of the yard on the day of her son's graduation. I offered to drive her.

"No, no, no no no."

We sat in the snow, our backs against her car. She leaned in and said, "Your cologne is new."

"Yes."

"You've cut your hair."

"Yes."

"Your shirt, it's actually ironed."

Silence for a beat.

"Who is she?"