Page 57 of We Are Okay

“The cherry pie is special today.”

I said thank you.

I said see you.

I looked both ways.

I crossed the street.

I turned on the television.Judge Judy. Laugh tracks. Always. Dove. Swiffer.

I pulled back the blankets, ignored the stains. I burrowed under like a rodent in a wall. I kept trying to find the right position. I made myself very still. I made my eyes shut.

“You’re okay,” I told myself.

“Shhh,” I said.

chapter twenty-three

“COME WITH ME,”Mabel says.

Our talk is over. We’re on the floor across from each other, each of us leaning against a bed. I should feel a weight lifted now that I’ve told her everything, but I don’t. Not yet. Maybe in the morning some new feeling will settle.

“I promise, this is the last time I’ll ask. Just come home for a few days.”

If it weren’t for the lies he told me.

If Birdie had been an elderly woman with beautiful penmanship.

If his coats were all that hung in the closet and he’d known his lungs were black and he drank his whiskey without suspicion.

If I could stop dreaming up a deathbed scene where his hospital blankets are crisp over his stomach and his handsare holding mine. Where he says something like,See you on the other side, Sailor. Or,I love you, sweetheart. And a nurse touches my shoulder and tells me it’s over even though I can already see it by the peaceful stillness of him.Take your time, she says, so we just stay there, he and I, until the darkness falls and I am strong enough to leave the room without him.

“How am I supposed to leave you here?” Mabel asks.

“I’m sorry. Iwillgo with you. Someday. But I can’t do it tomorrow.”

She picks at the frayed edges of the rug.

“Mabel.”

She won’t look at me.

Everything is quiet. I’d suggest going somewhere, just out for a walk even, but we’re both confounded by the cold. The moon is framed perfectly in the window, a crescent of white against black, and I can see by its clearness that it isn’t snowing anymore.

“I shouldn’t have only called and texted. I should have flown to you.”

“It’s okay.”

“He seemed sick for so long. Kind of frail or something.”

“I know.”

Her eyes tear over, and she looks out the window.

I wonder if she sees what I do. If she feels the same stillness.

Mabel, I want to say.We don’t have much time left.