We Are Okay(16)

No one is behind the counter when Mabel and I walk in, but the store is warm and bright, full of earth tones and tinted glazes. A wood-burning stove glows with heat, and a scarf is slung over a wooden chair.

I head toward the shelves of bowls first for Hannah’s gift. I thought I’d buy her a pair that matched mine, but there are more colors now, including a mossy green that I know she’d love. I take two of them and glance at Mabel. I want her to like this place.

She’s found a row of large bells that dangle from thick rope. Each bell is a different color and size, each has a pattern carved into it. She rings one and smiles at the sound it makes. I feel like I’ve done something right in taking her here.

“Oh, hi!” A woman appears from a doorway behind the counter, holding up her clay-covered hands. I remember her from the first time. For some reason it hadn’t occurred to me then that she was the potter, but knowing it makes everything even better.

“I’ve seen you before,” she says.

“I came in a couple months ago with my roommate.”

“Welcome back,” she says. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“I’m going to set these on the counter while I keep looking,” I say, holding out the green bowls.

“Yes, sure. Let me know if you need me. I’ll just be back here finishing something up.”

I set the bowls next to a stack of postcards inviting people to a three-year-anniversary party. I would have thought the store had been here longer. It’s so warm and lived-in. I wonder what she did before she was here. She’s probably Mabel’s parents’ age, with gray-blond hair swept back in a barrette and lines by her eyes when she smiles. I didn’t notice if she wore a wedding ring. I don’t know why, but I feel like something happened to her, like there’s pain behind her smile. I felt it the first time. When she took my money, I felt like she wanted to keep me here. I wonder if there’s a secret current that connects people who have lost something. Not in the way that everyone loses something, but in the way that undoes your life, undoes your self, so that when you look at your face it isn’t yours anymore.

“Who are the bowls for?” Mabel asks.

“Hannah.”

She nods.

“I want to get your parents a present, too,” I say. “Do you think they’d like something from here?”

“Anything,” she says. “Everything here is so nice.”

We look at some things together and then I make another round and Mabel drifts back to the bells. I see her check the price of one of them. Ana and Javier keep flowers in every room of their house, so I take a closer look at a corner of vases.

“How’s this?” I ask her, holding up a round one. It’s a dusty-pink color, subtle enough that it would work in their brightest rooms.

“Perfect,” she says. “They’ll love it.”

I choose a gift for myself, too: a pot for my peperomia, in the same color as Ana and Javier’s vase. I’ve kept my little plant in its plastic pot for too long, and this will look so much prettier.

The potter is sitting at the counter now, making notes on a piece of paper, and when I take the vase up to her I’m seized with the wish to stay. I hand her my ATM card when she gives me the total, and then I work up the courage to ask.

“I was wondering,” I say as she wraps the first bowl up in tissue paper. “By any chance, are you hiring?”

“Oh,” she says. “I wish! But it’s just me. It’s a tiny operation.”

“Okay,” I say, trying not to sound too disappointed. “I just really love your shop so I thought I’d ask.”

She pauses her wrapping. “Thank you.” She smiles at me. Soon she’s handing me the bag with the wrapped-up vase and dishes, and Mabel and I head back onto the snowy street.



We hurry past a pet store and a post office and into the café, both of us shivering. Only one table is occupied and the waitress looks surprised to see us. She takes a couple menus from a stack.

“We’re closing up early because of the storm,” she says. “But we can get you fed before then if you can make it quick.”

“Sure,” I say.

“Yeah,” Mabel says. “That’s fine.”

“Can I get you started with some coffee or orange juice?”

“Cappuccino?” I ask.

She nods.

“Same for me,” Mabel says. “And I’ll just have a short stack of pancakes.”

I scan the menu. “Eggs Benedict, please.”

“Thank you, ladies,” she says. “And just, excuse my reach for a second . . .”

She leans over our table and turns the sign in the window so that it says CLOSED on the outside. But on our side, perfectly positioned between Mabel’s place and mine, it says OPEN. If this were a short story, it would mean something.

The waitress leaves and we turn back to the window. The snow is falling differently; there’s more of it in the sky.

“I can’t believe you live in a place this cold.”

“I know.”

We watch in silence. Soon, our coffees arrive.

“It’s so pretty, though,” I say. “Isn’t it?”

“Yeah. It is.”

She reaches for the dish of sugar packets, takes out a pink one, a white one, a blue. She lines them up, then reaches for more. I don’t know what to make of her nervous hands and faraway expression. Her mouth is a tight line. At another point in my life, I would have leaned across the table and kissed her. At a point further back, I would have sabotaged her, scattered the packets across the table. If I were to go all the way to when we first knew each other, I would have built a careful pattern of my own and both of ours would have expanded until they met in the middle.