We Are Okay(37)

I’d slept in. It was already eleven when I got into the shower. Once out, I boiled some eggs and left two in a bowl for him. I made tea for myself and then placed a second bag into a teacup for him to find when he returned. I read on the sofa for a while. Then I went out. I spent the rest of the day in Dolores Park with Ben and Laney, throwing the ball for her, laughing with Ben, going over every shared memory from the last seven years of our lives. We tied Laney to a pole outside Ben’s favorite taqueria and watched all the hipsters stop and pet her.

“How will you live without this?” he said as we bit into our burritos. “Is there even Mexican food in New York?”

“Honestly? I have no idea.”

It was past eight when I got home, and immediately, I felt the stillness.

“Gramps?” I called, but just like the night before, he didn’t answer.

His door was closed. I knocked and waited. Nothing. The car was out front. I took the stairs to the basement in case he was doing laundry, but the machines were silent.

In the kitchen, the eggs I’d left him were untouched in their bowl, the tea bag dry in the cup.

Ocean Beach. I would look for him there. I grabbed a sweater and went out to the street. The sky was darkening and the headlights on the Great Highway shone as I darted across. I ran onto the sand and up through the dunes. Beach grass grazed my ankles, a flock of birds flew overhead, and then I was passing the warning sign that everybody ignored, even though the danger it warned of was undeniably true. I thought of Gramps’s soaking pants legs, of his skeleton body, of the blood on the handkerchiefs. I had a clear view of the water now, but not enough light to make out details. I wished for my mother’s friends, but skilled as they were, even they didn’t surf at dusk.

There were a few clusters of people out walking, a couple lone figures with dogs. No old men that I could see. I turned back.

Inside again, I knocked on his door.

Silence.

Panic tilted my vision.

A succession of flights and drops. The right throbs and the wrong.

This was my mind, playing tricks on me. I was being hysterical. Gramps left the house all the time, and I had barely been home all summer, so why would he be here now, for me? I stood right on the other side of his door. “Gramps!” I screamed. It was so loud he couldn’t have slept through it, and when silence still followed, I told myself that everything was fine.

In the kitchen, I put a pot of water on the stove. Before the water reaches a boil, he will be here. I dropped the pasta in and set the timer. Before the ten minutes are up. I melted some butter. I wasn’t hungry, but I would eat it anyway, and by the time I was done, he would walk through the door and call out my name.

The clock ticked. I ate as slowly as I could. But then the bowl was empty, and I was still alone. I didn’t know what was happening. I was trying to understand. I was crying, trying not to cry.

I picked up the phone and dialed Jones’s house. I made my voice steady. “Nope,” Jones said. “Saw him yesterday. I’ll be seeing him tomorrow.” I called Bo. “Poker’s tomorrow night,” he told me. I went back to his door. I banged so hard I could have knocked it down, but there was that knob, and I knew all I had to do was turn it.

Instead I picked up my phone again. Javier answered.

“You’ve looked everywhere?” he asked me.

“Not in his room. His door is closed.”

I heard the confusion in Javier’s pause.

“Open it, Marin,” he finally said. “Go ahead and open it.”

“But what if he’s in there?” My voice was so small.

“It will be slow crossing Market, but we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“I’m alone,” I said. I didn’t even know what I was saying.

“I am calling the police. They’ll probably be there before we will. You just wait. We are coming to you. We can do it together. We’re leaving now.”

I didn’t want him to hang up, but he did, and my hands were shaking and I was facing the closed door. I turned away from it, toward the picture of my mother. I needed her. I took it off the wall. I needed to see it better. I would take it out of its glass frame. Maybe holding it in my hands would help me remember. Maybe I would feel her with me.

At the coffee table, I knelt on the carpet and lifted the small metal tabs that held the frame back in place. I lifted the cardboard, and there was the yellowed back of the photograph, with a line in Gramps’s handwriting: Birdie on Ocean Beach, 1996. My vision doubled, then righted itself. The dark pressed against me.

Maybe my mind was taking me in convoluted directions. Maybe Birdie was just like sweetheart or honey, a name that could apply to anyone.

I opened his doors for the first time.

Here I was, in his study. In the fifteen years I’d lived there, I’d never stepped inside. One wall was lined with shelves and on the shelves were boxes and boxes of letters. Hands shaking, I reached for one. The envelope was addressed to his PO box. The handwriting was his own.

I unfolded the paper.

Daddy, it said. The mountains look beautiful today. When are you going to visit me? Just for a little while? Marin has school and her own friends. You can leave her for a couple weeks. I stopped reading. I turned to the letter behind it. Addressed to Claire Delaney, Colorado, no stamp, never sent. I pulled out the paper. You know I can’t do that. Not yet. But soon. Soon. I grabbed another box of letters. They were all from him to her, or from her to him. They were all in his handwriting. They dated back so many years. I was trying to read, but my vision kept blurring.