Nina LaCour - We Are Okay

But he put the car in park. He turned around to see me better.

“I do not mean the difficulty. I do not mean the sex. I mean there are too many failings. Not enough hope. Everything is despair. Everything is suffering. What I mean is don’t be a person who seeks out grief. There is enough of that in life.”

And then it was over—the car ride and the discussion, Mabel’s body against mine—and we were letting ourselves into her garden and I was trying to call it back. The night was suddenly colder, and Courtney’s voice was in my head again.

I wanted it out.

We climbed the stairs to Mabel’s room and she shut the door.

“So was he right?” she asked me. “Are you the kind of person who seeks out grief? Or do you just like that book?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t think I’m that kind of person.”

“I don’t either,” she said. “But it was an interesting thing to say.”

I thought that it was more likely the opposite. I must have shut grief out. Found it in books. Cried over fiction instead of the truth. The truth was unconfined, unadorned. There was no poetic language to it, no yellow butterflies, no epic floods. There wasn’t a town trapped underwater or generations of men with the same name destined to repeat the same mistakes. The truth was vast enough to drown in.

“You seem distracted,” Mabel said.

“Just thirsty,” I lied. “I’ll get us water.”

I walked barefoot down the stairs to the kitchen and flipped on the light. I crossed to the cabinet for the glasses and turned to fill them when I saw that on the island Ana had propped up her collage with a note in front of it that read, “ Gracias , Marin. This was exactly what I needed.”

Black satin, the remnants of my dress, now made waves at the bottom of the canvas. It was a black night, a black ocean. But the kitchen light sparked flecks of fool’s gold stars, and out of the waves burst hand-painted shells, white and pink, the kind my mother loved.

I stared at it. Drank my glass of water and filled it up again. I kept looking for a long time, but I couldn’t think of a single thing it might mean.

I UNDERSTANDwhat a New York winter storm is now. We are safely inside my room, but outside snow pours—not drifts—from the sky. The ground is disappearing. No more roads, no more paths. The tree branches are heavy and white, and Mabel and I are dorm-bound. It was good that we went out early, good we came back when we did.

It’s only one, and we won’t be going anywhere for a long time.

“I’m tired,” Mabel says. “Or maybe it’s just good napping weather.”

I wonder if she’s dreading the rest of the hours in this day. Maybe she wishes she hadn’t come.

I think I’ll close my eyes, too, try to sleep away the sick feeling, the whisper that I am a waste of her time, her money, her effort.

But the whisper only gets louder. Mabel’s breaths deepen and steady with sleep, and I am awake, mind swarming. I didn’t answer her texts. I didn’t return her calls or even listen to her voice mails. She came all the way to New York to invite me home with her, and I can’t even tell her yes. A waste, a waste.

I lie like this for an hour, until I can’t do it any longer.

I can make this better.

There is still time left.

When I get back to my room twenty minutes later, I’m carrying two plates of quesadillas, perfectly browned on both sides, topped with sour cream and salsa. I have two grapefruit sparkling waters nestled between my elbow and my ribs. I push open my door, grateful to see Mabel awake. She’s sitting on Hannah’s bed, staring out the window. Pure white. The whole world must be freezing.

As soon as she sees me, she jumps up to help with the plates and bottles.

“I woke up starving,” she says.

“The stores here don’t have crema ,” I say. “Hope sour cream is okay.”

She takes a bite and nods her approval. We open our cans: a pop, a hiss. I try to determine what the feeling is between us at the moment, and hope that something has changed, that we could be, for a little while, at ease with each other. We eat in hungry silence, punctuated by a couple comments about the snow.

I wonder if we will become okay again. I hope for it.

Mabel crosses to the darkening window to look at my peperomia.

“There’s pink on the edges of these leaves,” she says. “I didn’t notice before. Let’s see how it looks in your new pot.”

She reaches toward the bag from the pottery studio.

“Don’t look!” I say. “There’s something for you in there.”

“What do you mean? I saw everything you bought!”

“Not everything ,” I say, grinning.

She’s happy, impressed with me. She’s looking at me the way she used to.

“I have something for you, too,” she says. “But it’s at home, so you’ll have to come back with me to get it.”

Without meaning to, I break our gaze.

“ Marin ,” she says. “Is there something I don’t know about? Some recently discovered family members? Some secret society or cult or something? Because as far as I know, you have no one. And I’m offering you something really huge and really good .”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I thought that you liked my parents.”

“Of course I like them.”

“Look at this,” she says, picking up her phone. “My mom texted it to me. It was going to be a surprise.”

She turns the screen toward me.

My name, painted in Ana’s whimsical lettering on a door.

“My own room?”

“They redid the whole thing for you.”

I know why she’s angry. It should be so simple to say yes.

And I want to.

The walls of their guest room are vibrant blue, not a paint color but the pigment of the plaster itself. The wood floors are perfectly worn. You never have to worry about scratching them. I can imagine myself there, a permanent guest in my guest room, walking barefoot into the kitchen to pour myself mugs of coffee or glasses of water. I would help them make their delicious feasts, gather handfuls of sage and thyme from their front-porch herb garden.

I can imagine how it would look to live there, and I know the things I would do, but I can’t feel it.

I can’t say yes.

I have only just learned how to be here. Life is paper-thin and fragile. Any sudden change could rip it wide-open.

The swimming pool, certain shops on a certain street, Stop & Shop, this dorm, the buildings that house my classes—all of these are as safe as it gets, which is still not nearly safe enough.

When leaving campus, I never turn right because it would take me too close to the motel. I can’t fathom boarding a plane to San Francisco. It would be flying into ruins. But how could I begin to explain this to her? Even the good places are haunted. The thought of walking up her stairs to her front door, or onto the 31 bus, leaves me heavy with dread. I can’t even think about my old house or Ocean Beach without panic thrumming through me.

“Hey,” she says, voice soft. “Are you okay?”

I nod but I don’t know if it’s true.

The silence of my house. The food left, untouched, on the counter. The sharp panic of knowing I was alone.

“You’re shaking,” she says.

I need to swim. That plunge into water. That quiet. I close my eyes and try to feel it.

“Marin? What’s going on?”

“I’m just trying . . . ,” I say.

“Trying what?”