The television blares between us.

Us: me and my grandmother, my only remaining grandparent and the only grandparent I learned to love. She's an Ashkenazi Jew from Brooklyn. Well, from Poland but now from Brooklyn. She watches only Jeopardy and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. She reads only romance in large print. She smokes Parliaments and drinks diet Pepsi. She eats matzah with butter but only before ten a.m.

On the television, a man in a suit says "American History for 200."

Right now, I'm at her assisted living facility in California—a state she hates because it only reminds her of the death of her second husband and the fact that my parents forced her to leave her city for a countryside studded with apple trees. Her life expectancy is narrowing: breast cancer. In two days, I'm driving myself east to New York, to Brooklyn. To make a life for myself. We're swapping places. It feels profound. I want to tell her this. To tell her something.

My grandmother slinks her eyes away from me and toward the screen: she loves this category. Anything history. She's always stumped, but she says she learns something.

Television says, "Out of the wars the US participated in, this one lasted the longest."

My grandmother claps her hands together, a small thrill.

"Grandma," I say.

She says, "Yes dear."

I say, "I'm leaving."

She says, "Okay dear, have a good evening."

I say, "Not like that."

Television says, "Geography for 400."

I say, "I'm moving."

She says, "Have fun dear."

Television says, "This body of water surrounding New York City is 507 kilometers long, with enormous biodiversity."

My grandmother perks up. New York, she hears. New York City.

She says, "What is the Hudson River?"

Television says, "What is the Hudson River?"

She's delighted.

My grandmother is 95. She deserves to watch Jeopardy. In her twenties and thirties, she had three miscarriages and two stillborns. She also birthed my uncle and eventually my father.

I say, "Grandma, I'm moving away. To the east coast."

She says, "What is the Sahara Desert?"

Television says, "What is the Sahara Desert?"

I'm impressed she knows this. So I say so. "Nice."

She smiles, and tries, for the second time since I've arrived, to pull her cigarettes out from her pocket.

"Not inside," I say.

She glares at me. "I wasn't going to."

Lately, she's been lighting up inside her room. Then sometimes she puts the lit cigarette in her pocket, burns a hole in the fabric. The facility manager takes issue with this. He's confiscated her cigarettes and now she has to ask to smoke one. But she always has a pack stashed somewhere. I'll have to remove this pack before I leave.

"Did you hear me?" I say.

She nods.

"I'm moving," I say.

Television says, "Science for 200."

My grandmother says, "I heard you."

"To Brooklyn," I say.

She hesitates. She says, "I heard you."

Television says, "This is the name of the pre-programmed death cell process."

She stares at the screen and fumbles with another cigarette.

The facility manager has also taken away all her lighters.

I say, "I'll miss you."

Television says, "What is apoptosis?"

My grandmother says, "Yes dear."

This is going nowhere.

I stand up to leave. I hold my hand out and she sighs.

"You know you can't smoke them in here," I say.

She hands over the cigarettes, glaring.

Television says, "This Roman goddess is equivalent to the Greek goddess Athena and is associated with wisdom."

"I'll miss you," I say again.

She says, "You be good."

Television says, "Who is Minerva?"

I say, "I love you."

She tells me she loves me too.

Then, she says abruptly but deliberately as if she knew she would say it all along: "No good to be in the city alone." She says, "You'll want to see Charlie on Y and seventh. Near Coney Island. Tell him I sent you. He'll take care of you."

I say, "Thanks. Anything else?"

She says, "Who is Michelangelo?"

Television says, "Who is Michelangelo?"

I sigh and leave her fixed forward, gazing at the television.

I don't give the cigarettes to the manager. Instead, I stand outside in the driveway with one in my mouth. I reach into my car and pull out the cigarette lighter that I've never used. I smoke in the cool fall air. I cough a little, but force myself to inhale. The apple trees are damp and so is the earth around them. It's gray and green and brown. I glance at my grandmother's room, expecting nothing but the closed curtain of her sliding doors that lock from the outside. Instead, I see her small body, her face, watching me. I wave. She stares. I wonder if she recognizes me, if she remembers I was just in there, saying goodbye. I keep waving. She keeps staring. Then she recedes into the television-lit room, and the curtain falls back into place.


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