The day dawned cold but bright; the fog hugging the winter-brown Missouri hills like an old friend, wanting to linger but having to let go. As old Jenny watched from the kitchen window, wearing an old faded nightgown with a coffee cup in her hand, a deer walked out of the woods and started to graze in the back field. Jenny's family lived a good way out in the country; the nearest city was almost an hour away, and while this sort of thing wasn't unheard of out here, it was certainly a rare treat. The animal was a young doe, and it couldn't have been more than fifty yards from where she stood; they were separated only by the glass of the window and the wood of her son's small house. At eighty her eyesight was still good enough to see the steam coming from the doe's nose. As she stood watching, two young fawns materialized from the fog, the spots bright on their russet coats, following their mother on awkwardly skinny legs. She smiled, pleased at having been awake and lucky enough to see this, and sipped her coffee. After about a minute the trio sensed something and moved in funny little jumps quickly back to the safety of the trees. Jenny turned her attention to making breakfast before her son's busy family started their day.

An hour later as she was turning the last few eggs she heard the alarm clock upstairs. The sound of footsteps soon followed, then a deep male voice telling the kids that no, they have to get up now. Soon after, there were four freshly washed, if slightly sleepy, people sitting down to breakfast.

Michael, as always, smiled and pecked her cheek before he sat down. He was a good boy, always had been. She was lucky to have him, Henry and she had tried for almost two decades before she finally caught pregnant for the first and only time. 'What's new, ma?'� he asked as he scooped some potatoes onto his plate. He had to raise his voice a little to be heard over the racket the twins were making, whining that they'd rather have Lucky Charms, and their mother telling them to be quiet. 'What do you have going today?'�

'Oh, nothing much. I'll probably putter around the house awhile, maybe clean up a little. A nap in the afternoon, probably.'� She was getting ready to relate her story of the deer, wanting to phrase it just right so as to convey the beautiful, almost magical nature of the encounter, when Linda spoke.

'That sounds nice, Genora,'� Linda said with her patented painted-on smile, the one that didn't touch her eyes and showed that she only tolerated Jenny, nothing more. Whenever Linda spoke to Jenny she always did it in these tiny sentences, condescending and bereft of any real interest or affection. She spoke to Jenny the way a younger person spoke to the elderly, waiting only for a chance to go and do something else. On top of that, there was the way that Linda always used her proper name, Genora. Always Genora. Jenny had been Jenny to everyone who knew her well since she was a little girl; only teachers, doctors, and government officials had ever called her Genora.

She supposed that Linda was a nice enough woman and a decent mom (although Jenny thought she let the boys get away with way too much), but Jenny knew that she hadn't really liked her staying with them for these last five years. She and Michael had most certainly fought about it, but Linda wouldn't say anything to her face and Michael insisted that his wife was happy to have her here. That there'd been no other choice had only seemed to exacerbate the situation for Linda; there was no money for one of those 'assisted living communities' (a fact that Jenny was secretly and infinitely grateful for) and Henry's meager life insurance policy from a lifetime of work at the power plant had long since been spent. She couldn't afford to live on her own, and her only son's family couldn't afford to support her if she were to live somewhere else. She knew that Linda resented having to share her home, money, and three boys with her. Not that Jenny could blame her, the last thing that a young married couple with eight-year-old twin boys needed around the house was another mouth to feed and another person to look out for. Still, it hurt Jenny's feelings, and in silent retaliation she bit back the story of the deer. She was being stupid and petty, she knew, but in this house where so few things were actually hers, she thought she would keep this experience for herself, at least for now.

Breakfast went by in a blur, the younger generations scrambling to get to work and school, and after the door closed for the last time Jenny was alone again. Another day to fill up with trivialities, all she had left was time. She turned on the television so she could listen to The Today Show while she did the dishes. After that there was The Price is Right, and then even the TV couldn't keep her company because she hated all that crap they played on weekday afternoons that old women were supposed to like: courtroom shows; soap operas; Maury. She was old, but she wasn't an idiot, for Christ's sake.

From where she stood in the kitchen, her view of the television was obscured by a china cabinet standing adjacent to the doorway between the kitchen and living room, but she could hear Matt Lauer grilling an Exxon vice president about the rising price of gas. As he fumbled to defend his company and the fact that they had made record profits that year while at the same time trying to explain his company's justification for rising gas prices, his voice was suddenly cut off mid-sentence and replaced by complete silence. Jenny thought that the station was having what they used to call 'technical difficulties' and would come back on in a minute, but after she had finished the dishes and still no sound came from the living room, she went to investigate.

The TV was still on, and it seemed to be working. There was a young man on the screen, and although he was talking, no sound came from the speakers. It was an odd scene; the man was probably twenty years old, very nicely dressed (if a little old fashioned) in a grey twill suit with his hair slicked straight back from his forehead. Behind him there was absolutely nothing, just a pitch-black background. He stood stock still, his smiling mouth the only thing moving. The camera was panned out enough that she couldn't see his face clearly, but she knew him immediately. It was Henry, as he'd been sixty years ago, when they'd first met. Weakly, Jenny edged backwards towards the couch, her frail heart hammering in her chest. When her knees struck its edge, she fainted.

The first thing Jenny was aware of when she woke up was Al Roker's voice, saying something about her neck of the woods. She dimly wondered why she had fallen asleep sitting up on the couch, but then everything came crashing back to her. Her heart started trip hammering in her chest once more, but she took deep breaths until it quieted. She couldn't have seen what she thought she had seen; it was impossible. She was getting old, and old people see strange things. Is this what it's like to go senile? she wondered. She looked warily at the TV, but there was only Al, cheerfully talking about the weather and joking with the people standing outside watching the show; she'd only been unconscious for a couple of minutes. Just your imagination, old girl, she told herself.

But what if it was real? some older, darker part of her mind, the part that still believed that seeing an owl in daylight was bad luck and that a bird in the house is a sign of impending death, whispered in her mother's voice. You didn't live to a ripe old age out in the country without picking up some appreciation for superstition along the way. What if he has something important to tell me? What if that was my only chance to hear?

In a fit of guilt, she picked up the remote and turned from channel to channel, seeking her dead husband. Nothing out of the ordinary. She sighed shakily and decided that maybe she would take her real nap early today. She switched off the TV and struggled to her feet. The TV came back on.

This time there was no trouble with the volume. White noise blared out of the set, startling Jenny and forcing her to plop, once again, onto the couch. Her heartbeat accelerated to an alarming pace again (that can't be good for me, she thought dimly) but at least she managed to stay conscious. The white noise was unbearably loud to her ears; it seemed to her that surely no TV speakers had ever achieved that level of sound before. The noise filled the house and everything in it. On the screen was what one would expect to see with that kind of sound; nothing but static. On trembling legs she slowly made it over to the wall behind the TV and, laboriously bending over, pulled the plug. The noise stopped instantly, the ensuing silence made all the more profound by the earlier commotion. She took a deep breath and tried to slow her heart, ease the nervousness in her stomach.

Her eyes turned to the pre-paid cell phone that Michael had gotten her in case of emergencies and had shown her how to use, but what would she say? That his dead father had been on the TV for a while and had given her quite a fright? That the TV itself must be haunted because it was acting on a will of its own? She knew what would happen if she related such a story; Michael would have to leave work, then would come the hospitals and the condescending looks of Linda wordlessly blaming her for all the added expense and trouble of the fancies of an old woman. No, bothering her son at work was not an option that she was willing to pursue. Unless she really was going senile, there had to be an explanation. After a moment of reflection, she thought she had it.

The dish was out, that was all. It had picked up something strange the first time, maybe even a channel from another country, and now it was completely off its rocker. With the way TV had progressed since she was young, the satellite dish pointing straight up to an unseen object in space, it was a miracle that the signals didn't get crossed more often. But it came back on, that stubborn part of her mind whispered. How'd it come back on? Nonsense, she affirmed. She must've hit the power button on the remote a little too hard, caused it to power back on a split second after it had begun to shut down. With these more or less solid hypotheses in her mind, she felt much better and decided to go ahead and take that nap before she went as bonky as the TV.

Jenny's room was on the ground floor, of course, in what used to be Michael's and Linda's room. She hadn't wanted to put them out, but the only other two bedrooms were upstairs and Michael hadn't wanted her to risk climbing up and down. They had moved into one of the smaller bedrooms and had put the twins into the other one, Michael patiently winning out over her protestations with the argument that twins would be happier sharing a room than other siblings. It was true, they didn't seem to mind (they were only three at the time) but she knew she was an imposition. Linda, of course, probably resented the loss of her bedroom the most, but Michael wouldn't be deterred. So she had set up shop in here and had changed things to her liking. Some of her old dresses were hung up in the closet in case she ever had need of them, and pictures of friends and family long dead lined the walls. She had her record-player set up on the dresser, but her arthritis made it hard some days to put music on, and it was dusty. It was the only room of the house that felt like home, but she knew that to be an illusion. Her home, the one she had shared with her husband of sixty years before the heart attack took him, had long since been sold, most of the money going towards his medical bills and final expenses.

She made her way to the bed and sat down on its edge. The occurrences of the last half-hour or so had shaken her badly, but she had regained enough of her senses to at least be able to think. What in her mind had caused her to think that that silent, smiling man from a crossed digital signal had been her Henry? True, she thought of him often and she supposed that was reason enough, but it still seemed kind of macabre. Even though she hadn't seen him clearly, the man had certainly looked like Henry as a young man, complete with that grey twill suit that he only used to wear when they went out dancing. She smiled at the memory of how nervous he had been when he'd first began to court her in the summer of 1940.

It had been devilishly hot that summer, and America had been on the brink of war, but all of that had seemed unimportant to her then. She had been only twenty years old, and the troubles of the world had taken a back seat to her new romance. It had been easy to fall for Henry; he'd had a great smile, a gentle demeanor, and a kindness towards others that seemed endless. He didn't have a lot of money, to be sure, but he did have a good job at the power plant that would never make them wealthy but would certainly be enough to live on.

While she reflected, Glenn Miller's 'In the Mood'� played its gay melody in the back of her head, as if it were the soundtrack for the film unreeling itself in her mind. She remembered their first date, how nervous he was as he asked her to dance to that very song. He'd had sweat on his brow and his hand trembled a bit when he took hers, but she'd accepted. Still new, the song had sounded fresh and exciting to her, awakening a thrill as she spun in his arms. She remembered the day that he'd left to fight the Nazis, kissing her tears away and promising to come back. He'd kept that promise two years later, undecorated but also unhurt. She remembered telling him the news that they were finally going to be parents, that Michael was coming. He'd picked her up and spun her around, laughing and kissing her flushed face. She had been happy then, and young, and needed. Like the deer she had seen that morning, she had belonged to someone, and someone had belonged to her.

That had lasted for sixty years, and it had been too short. She hadn't been an imposition then, just waiting to die in someone else's house so that they could go back to their normal routine and get on with their lives. The deer had been young too, a young mother with her two babies. The world was for the young, she reflected, and truth be told, she had outlived her usefulness. She had become a burden.

This last, unwelcome thought brought her abruptly back to her room. She was surprised to find her vision obscured by a film of tears, and she thought what a pretty picture she would cut if Linda could see her now. A dotty old woman, sitting alone and crying over lost happiness that she'd never have again. She still heard the music, the warbling saxophones and trumpets, and she realized with a start that it wasn't in her head at all; it came from her oversized clock-radio on her bedside table. She must have had an alarm on or something, and lost in her memories, she hadn't noticed it when it had started. Jenny certainly didn't remember setting an alarm; indeed, she couldn't remember the last time she'd slept deeply or long enough to warrant one. Still, she didn't feel frightened at all now; if there wasn't an explanation for these things that had interrupted an otherwise normal day, she didn't care. It was Henry she had seen, after all, and Henry would never hurt her. Henry had needed her. Henry might still need her.

'Is that right, Henry? Do you need me? Is that what you're trying to tell me?'� she asked the empty room through more tears. Only Glenn Miller and His Orchestra answered her at first, then she heard the sound of footsteps in the hall. As she looked up, Henry smiled in her wavering vision and held out his hand, a final invitation to dance.

Linda found her three hours later, dead in the middle of her bedroom floor. She'd called the ambulance right away, of course, and then Michael, but there was nothing anybody could do. The doctors said it was a brain aneurism, she'd probably had it all her life, and that it was an absolute miracle she had made it this long with that time bomb embedded in her skull. They grieved as a family, but the twins took it pretty well and Linda stayed strong, Michael thought for him.

'It's not like it was a big surprise, Michael,'� she pointed out a month later, while she and Michael were clearing the last of the boxes out of Jenny's room. Michael was having a hard time of it, trying to not to cry but intermittently breaking down anyway. 'She was eighty, after all. She had to go sometime.'� These words sounded harsh to her own ears, but she held him while she said them, letting him cry on her shoulder, and that made them okay.

'I know, I know,'� he said into her shirt. 'She was old, but she was my mother. It's just going to take some time. The idea that she died alone in this room, listening to big band music on that old radio of hers, it just seems so sad to me.'�

'I don't think that's a bad way to die at all,'� Linda objected. 'She loved that room, she was comfortable there. We should all hope to go out that comfortably. Regardless, she's in a better place now,'� Linda said. She thought how easily such ridiculous platitudes sprang to your lips in times of crisis. 'You've taken good care of her. I hope when I get to be her age, one of the twins will be as good to me as you were to her. She died happy.'� As she finished this last sentence, she wondered if that was true. She hadn't always been as nice as she could have been to Genora, but she loved her son and grandchildren very much. As Michael gave another sniff and stood up, trying to look brave, she guessed it didn't matter much either way.

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