Nina LaCour - We Are Okay

He was closer to us now, but I knew that he wouldn’t look around and see me and I decided against calling to him. A wave crashed in, took him by surprise, but he barely tried to dodge it. It soaked his pants legs up to the knees, but he kept walking as though nothing had happened.

Emily’s brow furrowed.

“I know I don’t need to tell you this,” she said. “But it can be dangerous out here. Even just walking.”

“Yeah,” I said, and I felt fear rush in, compounding my guilt. Did I dredge up memories he’d worked hard to forget? Did I drive him out here with my request? “I should say something to him about it.”

She kept watching him. “He already knows.”

WE’RE WAITING AT THE BUS STOPin the snow.

Mabel was already showered and dressed by the time I woke up. I opened my eyes and she said, “Let’s go somewhere for breakfast. I want to see more of this town.” But I knew that what she really wanted was to be somewhere else, where it wasn’t the two of us trapped in a room thick with the things we weren’t saying.

So now we’re on the side of a street covered in white, trees and mountains in every direction. Once in a while a car passes us and its color stands out against the snow.

A blue car.

A red car.

“My toes are numb,” Mabel says.

“Mine, too.”

A black car, a green one.

“I can’t feel my face.”

“Me, neither.”

Mabel and I have boarded buses together thousands of times, but when the bus appears in the distance it’s entirely unfamiliar. It’s the wrong landscape, the wrong color, the wrong bus name and number, the wrong fare, and the wrong accent when the driver says, “You heard about the storm, right?”

We take halting, interrupted steps, not knowing how far back we should go or who should duck into a row first. She steps to the side to make me lead, as though just because I live here I know which seat would be right for us. I keep walking until we’re out of choices. We sit in the center of the back.

I don’t know what a storm here would mean. The snow is so soft when it falls, nothing like hail. Not even like rain so hard it wakes you up or the kind of wind that hurls tree branches into the streets.

The bus inches along even though there’s no traffic.

“Dunkin’ Donuts,” Mabel says. “I’ve heard of that.”

“Everyone likes their coffee.”

“Is it good?”

I shrug. “It’s not like the coffee we’re used to.”

“Because it’s just coffee-coffee?”

I pull at a loose stitch in the fingertip of my glove.

“I actually haven’t tried it.”

“Oh.”

“I think it’s like diner coffee,” I say.

I stay away from diners now. Whenever Hannah or her friends suggest going out to eat, I make sure to get the name of the place first and look it up. They tease me for being a food snob, an easy misunderstanding to play along with, but I’m not that picky about what I eat. I’m just afraid that one day something’s going to catch me by surprise. Stale coffee. Squares of American cheese. Hard tomatoes, so unripe they’re white in the center. The most innocent things can call back the most terrible.

I want to be closer to a window, so I scoot down the row. The glass is freezing, even through my glove, and now that we’re closer to the shopping district, lights line the street, strung from streetlamp to streetlamp.

All my life, winter has meant gray skies and rain, puddles and umbrellas. Winter has never looked like this.

Wreathes on every door. Menorahs on windowsills. Christmas trees sparkling through parted curtains. I press my forehead to the glass, catch my reflection. I want to be part of the world outside.

We reach our stop and step into the cold, and the bus pulls away to reveal a lit-up tree with gold ornaments in the middle of the square.

My heart swells.

As anti-religion as Gramps was, he was all about the spectacle. Each year we bought a tree from Delancey Street. Guys with prison tattoos tied the tree to the roof of the car, and we heaved it up the stairs ourselves. I’d get the decorations down from the hall closet. They were all old. I didn’t know which ones had been my mother’s and which were older than that, but it didn’t matter. They were my only evidence of a family larger than him and me. We might have been all that was left, but we were still a part of something bigger. Gramps would bake cookies and make eggnog from scratch. We’d listen to Christmas music on the radio and hang ornaments, then sit on the sofa and lean back with our mugs and crumb-covered plates to admire our work.

“Jesus Christ,” he’d say. “Now, that’s a tree .”

The memory has barely surfaced, but already it’s begun. The doubt creeps in. Is that how it really was? The sickness settles in my stomach. You thought you knew him.

I want to buy gifts for people.

Something for Mabel. Something to send back for Ana and Javier. Something to leave on Hannah’s bed for when she returns from break or to take with me to Manhattan if I really go to see her.

The window of the potter’s studio is lit. It seems too early for it to be open, but I squint and see that the sign in the window says COME IN.

The first time I came here was in the fall, and I was too nervous to look closely at everything. It was my first time out with Hannah and her friends. I kept telling myself to act normal, to laugh along with everyone else, to say something once in a while. They didn’t want to spend too long inside—we were wandering in and out of shops—but everything was beautiful and I couldn’t imagine leaving empty-handed.

I chose the yellow bowls. They were heavy and cheerful, the perfect size for cereal or soup. Now every time Hannah uses one she sighs and says she wishes she’d bought some for herself.

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.