Nina LaCour - We Are Okay

“What have you been doing for dinner?” she asks.

I gesture toward the desk, where an electric kettle rests next to packages of Top Ramen.

“Well, let’s do it.”

“I bought food,” I say. “There’s a kitchen we can use.”

She shakes her head.

“It’s been a long day. Ramen is fine.”

She sounds so tired. Tired of me and the way I’m not talking.

I take my usual trip to the bathroom sink for water, and then plug in the electric kettle at my desk and set the yellow bowls next to it. Here comes another chance. I try to think of something to say.

But Mabel rushes in before me.

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Okay.”

“I met someone at school. His name is Jacob.”

I can’t help the surprise on my face.

“When?”

“About a month ago. You know the nine hundredth text and phone call you decided to ignore?”

I turn away from her. Pretend to check something on the kettle.

“He’s in my literature class. I really like him,” she says, voice gentler now.

I watch until the first puffs of steam escape, and then I ask, “Does he know about me?”

She doesn’t answer. I pour water into the bowls, over the dried noodles. Tear open the flavor packets. Sprinkle the powder over the surface. Stir. And then there is nothing to do but wait, so I’m forced to turn back.

“He knows that I have a best friend named Marin, who was raised by a grandfather I loved like my own. He knows that I left for school and a few days later Gramps drowned, and that ever since the night it happened my friend Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone back home. Not even to me.”

I wipe tears off my face with the back of one hand.

I wait.

“And he knows that things between us got . . . less clearly defined toward the end. And he’s fine with that.”

I search my memory for the way we used to talk about boys. What is it that I might have said back then? I would have asked to see a picture. I’m sure there are dozens on her phone.

But I don’t want to see his picture.

I have to say something.

“He sounds nice,” I blurt. And then I realize that she’s barely told me anything about him. “I mean, I’m sure you would choose someone nice.”

I feel her staring, but that’s all I have in me.

We eat in silence.

“There’s a rec room on the fourth floor,” I say when we’re finished. “We could watch a movie if you want.”

“I’m actually pretty tired,” she says. “I think I might just get ready for bed.”

“Oh, sure.” I glance at the clock. It’s just a few minutes past nine, and three hours earlier in California.

“Your roommate won’t mind?” she asks, pointing to Hannah’s bed.

“No, it’s fine.” I can barely get the words out.

“Okay, great. I’m going to get ready, then.”

She gathers her toiletries bag and her pajamas, picks up her phone quickly, as though I might not notice, and slips out of the room.

She’s away for a long time. Ten minutes pass, then another ten, then another. I wish I could do something besides sit and wait for her.

I hear her laugh. I hear her grow serious.

She says, “You have nothing to worry about.”

She says, “I promise.”

She says, “I love you, too.”

MAY

I COPIED DOWNall the passages about ghosts I could find and spread them over the coffee table, sorted them, and read them each dozens of times. I was beginning to think that it was never the ghosts themselves that were important. Like Mabel had said, all they did was stand around.

It wasn’t the ghosts. It was the hauntings that mattered.

The ghosts told the governess that she would never know love.

The ghost told Jane Eyre that she was alone.

The ghost told the Buendía family that their worst fears were right: They were doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

I scribbled some notes and then I took Jane Eyre and stretched out on the couch. Along with my other favorite novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude , I’d read it more times than I could count. While One Hundred Years of Solitude swept me up in its magic and its images, its intricacies and its breadth, Jane Eyre made my heart swell. Jane was so lonely. She was so strong and sincere and honest. I loved them both, but they satisfied different longings.

Just as Rochester was about to propose, I heard Gramps downstairs jangling his keys, and a moment later he walked in whistling.

“Good mail day?” I asked him.

“You write a letter, you get a letter.”

“You two are so reliable.”

I ran downstairs to help him carry up the grocery bags and put the food away, and then I went back to Jane Eyre and he disappeared into his study. I liked to imagine him reading the letters in there by himself, in his recliner with his cigarettes and crystal ashtray. The window open to the salty air and his lips mouthing the words.

I used to wonder what kinds of letters he wrote. I’d caught glimpses of old poetry books stacked on his desk. I wondered if he quoted them. Or if he wrote his own verses, or stole lines and passed them off as his own.

And who was this Birdie? She must have been the sweetest of ladies. Waiting for Gramps’s letters. Composing her own to him. I pictured her in a chair on a veranda, sipping iced teas and writing with perfect penmanship. When she wasn’t writing to my grandfather, she was probably training bougainvillea vines or painting watercolor landscapes.

Or maybe she was wilder than that. Maybe she was the kind of grandma who cursed and went out dancing, who had a devious spark in her eyes that would rival Gramps’s. Maybe she would beat him at poker, smoke cigarettes with him late into the night once they found a way to be together instead of several states apart. Once I wasn’t holding him back anymore.

Sometimes the thought of that kept me up at night, gave me a sick feeling in my stomach. If it weren’t for me, maybe he’d leave San Francisco for the Rocky Mountains. Besides me, all he had here were Jones and Freeman and Bo, and he didn’t even seem to like them much anymore. They still played cards like they always did, but there was less laughter among them.

“May I interrupt your reading? I got something very special today,” Gramps said.

He was back in the living room, smiling at me.

“Show me.”

“Okay,” he said. “But I’m afraid you won’t be able to touch it. It’s fragile.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“You just sit here, and I’ll hold it up and show you.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Now, Sailor,” he said. “Don’t do that. Don’t be like that. This is something special.”

He looked pained, and I was sorry.

“I’ll only look,” I said.

He nodded.

“I’m excited,” I said.

“I’ll get it. Wait here.”

He came out with fabric folded in his hands, a deep green, and he let it unfurl and I saw it was a dress.

I cocked my head.

“Birdie’s,” he said.

“She sent you her dress?”

“I wanted to have something from her. I told her to surprise me. Does it count as a gift if you ask for it?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

Something struck me about the dress. The straps were scalloped; white and pink embroidery decorated the waist.

“It looks like something a young woman would wear.”

Gramps smiled.

“Such a sharp girl,” he said approvingly. “This dress is from when she was young. She said she didn’t mind sending it, because she isn’t as slight as she used to be. It doesn’t fit her and it’s not appropriate for a lady of her age.”