Page 16 of We Are Okay

She says, “I love you, too.”

chapter five

MAY

I COPIED DOWNall the passages about ghosts I could find and spread them over the coffee table, sorted them, and read them each dozens of times. I was beginning to think that it was never the ghosts themselves that were important. Like Mabel had said, all they did was stand around.

It wasn’t the ghosts. It was the hauntings that mattered.

The ghosts told the governess that she would never know love.

The ghost told Jane Eyre that she was alone.

The ghost told the Buendía family that their worst fears were right: They were doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

I scribbled some notes and then I tookJane Eyreand stretched out on the couch. Along with my other favorite novel,One Hundred Years of Solitude, I’d read it more times than I could count. WhileOne Hundred Years of Solitudeswept me up in its magic and its images, its intricacies and its breadth,Jane Eyremade my heart swell. Jane was so lonely. She was so strong and sincere and honest. I loved them both, but they satisfied different longings.

Just as Rochester was about to propose, I heard Gramps downstairs jangling his keys, and a moment later he walked in whistling.

“Good mail day?” I asked him.

“You write a letter, you get a letter.”

“You two are so reliable.”

I ran downstairs to help him carry up the grocery bags and put the food away, and then I went back toJane Eyreand he disappeared into his study. I liked to imagine him reading the letters in there by himself, in his recliner with his cigarettes and crystal ashtray. The window open to the salty air and his lips mouthing the words.

I used to wonder what kinds of letters he wrote. I’d caught glimpses of old poetry books stacked on his desk. I wondered if he quoted them. Or if he wrote his own verses, or stole lines and passed them off as his own.

And who was this Birdie? She must have been the sweetest of ladies. Waiting for Gramps’s letters. Composing her own to him. I pictured her in a chair on a veranda, sipping iced teas and writing with perfect penmanship. When she wasn’t writing to my grandfather, she wasprobably training bougainvillea vines or painting watercolor landscapes.

Or maybe she was wilder than that. Maybe she was the kind of grandma who cursed and went out dancing, who had a devious spark in her eyes that would rival Gramps’s. Maybe she would beat him at poker, smoke cigarettes with him late into the night once they found a way to be together instead of several states apart. Once I wasn’t holding him back anymore.

Sometimes the thought of that kept me up at night, gave me a sick feeling in my stomach. If it weren’t for me, maybe he’d leave San Francisco for the Rocky Mountains. Besides me, all he had here were Jones and Freeman and Bo, and he didn’t even seem to like them much anymore. They still played cards like they always did, but there was less laughter among them.

“May I interrupt your reading? I got something very special today,” Gramps said.

He was back in the living room, smiling at me.

“Show me.”

“Okay,” he said. “But I’m afraid you won’t be able to touch it. It’s fragile.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“You just sit here, and I’ll hold it up and show you.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Now, Sailor,” he said. “Don’t do that. Don’t be like that. This is something special.”

He looked pained, and I was sorry.

“I’ll only look,” I said.

He nodded.

“I’m excited,” I said.