We Are Okay(46)

As soon as I turned the page I saw myself.

Instead of leaving a blank space where my baby picture was meant to be, the editors made my senior portrait big enough to take up both spaces. All around me were my classmates as babies and then as their current selves; and then there I was, as though I had entered the world at eighteen in a black sleeveless blouse and a stiff smile. I thought I couldn’t be the only one, but I got to the end, and I was. Even Jodi Price, adopted at eight, had a baby picture. Even Fen Xu, whose house had burned down the year before.

Those days and nights at the motel, I thought I was afraid of his ghost, but I wasn’t.

I was afraid of my loneliness.

And how I’d been tricked.

And the way I’d convinced myself of so much: that I wasn’t sad, that I wasn’t alone.

I was afraid of the man who I’d loved, and how he had been a stranger.

I was afraid of how I hated him.

How I wanted him back.

Of what was in those boxes and what I might someday discover and the chance I may have lost by leaving them behind.

I was afraid of the way we’d lived without opening doors.

I was afraid we had never been at home with each other.

I was afraid of the lies I’d told myself.

The lies he’d told me.

I was afraid that our legs under the table had meant nothing.

The folding of laundry had meant nothing.

The tea and the cakes and the songs—all of it—had meant nothing.





chapter twenty-seven



I AM AFRAID he never loved me.





chapter twenty-eight



THE WINTER SKY is bright gray and sharp. I see a bird come and go outside the window, a thin branch snap and drop.

   I should have gone with her.





chapter twenty-nine



I’M SITTING ON TOP OF MY BED, leaning against the wall, watching the snow fall again. I want the thunder of ocean, a day that’s cold but dry, the feeling that comes with heavy clouds in the distance. Relief from the drought. The novelty of being homebound. Wood in the fireplace, heat and light.

I didn’t ask Jones what he meant when he said he kept the real stuff. If he meant my shells. Or the blue-and-gold blanket. Or the kitchen table with its collapsible leaves and the chairs that go with it. I try to imagine a future apartment. My own kitchen with decorations on the wall. Shelves with my collection of Claudia’s pottery.

I don’t know if I see the table and chairs and the blanket. I don’t know if I want to.

If I keep looking out the window, I’ll see the snow settle on the paths again, cover the trees where hints of branches have started to show through.

I find a documentary online about an old woman who makes pottery every day from her home on a farm. I prop the computer on my desk chair and pull my blankets up and watch it. In ten days, it will be time to call Claudia. I hope she’ll still want me. There are all of these close-up shots of the potter’s hands in the clay. I can’t wait to feel that.

My body is so still. This movie is so quiet. I want to swim, but I can’t. It will be more than three weeks before everyone comes back and the pool is reopened and I feel that plunge, that rush. But I need to do something. Now. My limbs are begging me.

So I pause the movie and I stand up and go out in the hall. I take off my slippers and feel the carpet under my feet. I stare down the long, empty hallway, and then I’m running. I run until I’m at the very end, and then I run back, and I need something more, so this time, I open my mouth and my lungs and I yell as I run. I fill this designated historical building with my voice. And then I push open the door to the stairway and in here my voice echoes. I run to the top, not to take in the view but to feel myself moving, and I run and I yell and I run, until I’ve gone up and down each hallway of each floor. Until I’m panting and sweaty and satiated in some small but vital way.

I go back into my room and collapse on my bed. The sky is changing, becoming darker. I’m going to lie here, in this silent place, and stare out the window until the night turns black. I’ll witness each color in the sky.

And I do. I feel peaceful.

But it’s only five thirty, and there are ten more days until I can call Claudia, twenty-three more days until everyone comes back here.

I was okay just a moment ago. I will learn how to be okay again.

I turn the movie back on and watch until the end, and the credits roll and stop and the screen changes. There’s a list of documentaries I might like. I hover over them to see what they’re about, but I don’t care enough to click on one. I lie back instead. I look at the dark ceiling and think about the door shutting between Mabel and me. She waved good-bye to me from inside the cab. Her boots were dry by then—we’d set them right next to the radiator and left them there all night—but they were blotchy and warped. I wonder if she’ll put them in the trash when she gets home.

She should be arriving home around now. I get up to reach for my phone. If she texts me, I want to get her message right as it comes in. I want my reply to reach her right away. I lie back down with my phone next to me. I close my eyes and wait.

And then I hear something. A car. I open my eyes—light sweeps across the ceiling.

It must be Tommy, checking on me or the building. I flip on my light and step to the window to wave.