Page 45 of We Are Okay

“No,” I say. “I’ve thought of that, too. It was impossible to know what the subject of the lecture would be until he started it. And some of them felt so random at the time, but maybe they weren’t. Once, he did a three-day series on stain removal.”

“Like, for laundry?”

“Yeah, but with lots of variations. It went beyond clothes. How to get a stain out of a carpet, when to use fizzy water and when to use bleach, how to test to see if the colors would bleed.”

“Amazing.”

“Yeah, but I really learned it. I can get stains out of anything.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she says. “Don’t be surprised if you get packages of my laundry.”

“What have I started?”

We smile; the joke settles.

“I miss his face,” Mabel says.

“Me, too.”

The deep lines by his eyes and mouth, in the center of his forehead. His short, coarse eyelashes and ocean-blue eyes. His nicotine-stained teeth and his wide grin.

“And how he loved jokes,” she says, “but always laughed the hardest at his own.”

“It’s true.”

“There are so many other things, too, that are harder to put into words. I could try, if you want me to.”

“No,” I say. “It’s enough.”

I stop my mind from taking me back to that last night and my discoveries. Instead, I play each thing that Mabel said over and picture them all, one by one, until they turn into other memories, too. How it sounded when he walked the hall in his plaid slippers, how clean and short he kept his fingernails, the low rattle of his throat clearing. A soft glow settles in, a whisper of what used to be. It fends off some of the loneliness.

And then I think of something else Mabel said.

“Why were they clearing out Carlos’s room?”

She cocks her head.

“For you. I already told you they redid it.”

“But I thought you meant the guest room.”

“That room is tiny. And it’s forguests.”

“Oh,” I say. A mechanicaldingblares. “I guess I just assumed...”

Thedingrepeats. It’s the oven timer. I’d almost forgotten where we were. I don’t know what I’m trying to say anyway, so I check on our corn bread and find it risen and golden.

Something is shifting inside me. A heavy cloud passing. A glimpse of brightness. My name painted on a door.

After searching a row of drawers I discover a worn oven mitt, covered in illustrated gingerbread men. I show Mabel.

“How seasonally appropriate,” she says.

“Right?”

It’s so threadbare the pan’s heat seeps through, but I manage to drop the loaf on the stovetop before it hurts too much. The scent fills the room.

We spoon chili into mismatched bowls from the cabinet and heap them with sour cream and pre-shredded cheese. We spoon out the honey for the corn bread, unwrap the butter.