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Olivia winds around an end-of-aisle
sugar cone display and I follow. Her heels tap loud, and sharp
waves of yesterday’s perfume, heavy on her skin, make me nauseous.
I breathe in through my mouth, out through my nose, and pull a can
of spreadable cheese from the shelf and drop it in the
cart.

“Oh, Jake doesn’t like that kind,
hon.” She puts it back on the shelf and replaces it with a milder
flavor.

“He does,” I say. “He tried it and
said he liked it more.”

“But it’s so rich,” she
says. “He doesn’t like rich foods.”

“He likes that
one.”

She looks at the cheese on
the shelf, the cheese in the cart, me.

“Help you find something?”
The stockboy is eighteen, maybe, and wears a red apron.

“We’re fine,” she says.
“Thank you.”

Olivia watches his back
until he is gone, then watches me exchange the cheeses. When I
start to push the cart forward, she lays her fingers on the metal.
“Was that your type?”

“Pardon?”

“That boy. Was he your
type?”

“Jake is my
type.”

“But you looked at him. He
was attractive—even I could see that. Would you date someone who
looked like that?”

“I wouldn’t date anyone who
looked like anyone but Jake. And I didn’t look at him. He asked us
a question.”

She moves the cheese to a
different spot in the cart. “And six months from now? Will he still
be attractive?”

“Who? Jake?”

“Jake. Or the boy—either
one, I suppose.”

“Jake will. I already forget
what the…boy…looked like.”

“Do you?”

“Mostly.”

“So, you did notice him,”
she says.

“He stood right
there.”

“You noticed him and you
were attracted to him.”

“No,” I say, “I was
not.”

“Jake could die,” she says.
“He could die right this minute and you’re noticing a boy in a
grocery store.” Wet mascara dots the skin under her eyebrows when
she blinks.

“I noticed no one. Please
believe me.”

“You’re staying at men’s
houses, flirting with stockboys—”

“For—! Olivia, I told you I
didn’t stay at his house. And I didn’t flirt with the
stockboy.”

She wipes her face, pulling
a streak of black from her eye to her temple. “Will you be faithful
to my son?”

“Of course I
will.”

“Will you write him more
often? One letter is simply not acceptable, and—”

“Yes. I’ll write
more.”

“Send him more
packages?”

“I’ll send one every
day.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She
shakes her hair and sniffs. “You’ll grow tired of missing him, you
know.”

“I am already.”

“You’re a woman. You’re
human. You’ll eventually want companionship. And when you do, what
will you do? He loves you so much,” she says. “He would die if you
hurt him.”

“I won’t hurt
him.”

“It could be an
accident.”

“Accidents do
happen.”

“What if you decide you want
someone like that cute boy to keep you company?”

“I didn’t even notice the
boy.”

His eyes were green, not
like olives but like leaves, and there were two freckles on his
cheek in a direct line from the corner of his mouth his earlobe. He
wore a loose hemp bracelet that fell low on his hand and he was
tall, taller than I am by at least six inches—shorter than Jake,
but not by much—and if he were to have held me, my head would have
fit comfortably into the curve of his neck, just under his
chin.

“Oh, hon, are you sure? Are
you positive?”

“I promise. Six months or
six years, I’m waiting just for him.”

“And that man, the one on
the machine. Since you quit your job, I don’t suppose you’ll have
any reason to stop by his house again.”

“No. I don’t suppose I
will.”

“Good, that’s
good.”

She turns and continues down
the aisle and I hang a few steps behind. “Olivia?”

“Mm?”

“Has Jake said anything to
you about leave?”

“About—what? Leave? What do
you mean?”

“A friend of mine said her
husband said they might be getting leave. Midtour
leave.”

She bites her lip and picks
up a can and reads it. “I’m sure, no. No, he hasn’t said anything
like that, hon.” She sets the can in the cart and pulls it along,
past the fruit cups, which he likes. Peach squares, the ones in the
jellied sauce.

________

With Olivia gone, the
apartment is twice as quiet, twice as empty. Chancey scratches the
litter box and I hear it through the walls, nails-on-chalkboard
scraping, and it goes on and goes on until I scream his name and he
runs past me, into the living room and under the coffee table,
where he stays.

Nine in the morning is too
early to have already finished half a normal day’s activities, too
early for it to feel like noon but without the benefit of those
three hours having truly passed. I’d thought of asking Olivia to
stay. Not for me and not for her, but because that’s what people
do, they encourage visitors to stay. She stood in the doorway the
same way she’d come in, hands clasped between her breasts,
and—words stuck to my tongue—I opened my mouth to force out the
words, but she said, “Well. I really should start heading back,
because I have an appointment I’d forgotten about
entirely.”

I read, again, the card she
wrote and sealed and asked me to include in the box. On the front
is a picture of one polar bear beside the dotted-line tracing of
another. The inside reads, in comic handwriting and signed with a
cartoon pawprint, “Something’s missing. I think it’s you.” Olivia’s
note is written below it:

Dear Jake,

I do miss you. It feels
like you have been gone for so very long. I hope you are well,
because everything here is fine. I am taking care of Mia as you
asked, so please don’t worry. She is working hard and she loves and
misses you very much, as I do. I hope you like the food, as Mia and
I picked it out together. Take care of yourself, and please stay
safe. I love you—Mom.

I throw away the envelope
and toss the card into the box and spend the next three hours
packing and unpacking it, arranging and rearranging, stopping to
watch the news, and then starting over from the beginning when one
pack of cigarettes or one candy bar doesn’t fit, until every last
thing is in, even if it’s smashed. Except for the sucker-dart gun.
That stays.

On the way back from the
post office, I stop at the liquor store.

________

Jakey,

That’s what she calls you, and it
makes me sick.

I miss you. You can’t know how
much, because I can’t tell you. It’s like guilt, in a way. The way
it just sits there.

She told me about
Shelby/Shelbi/Shelbey (however you spell it), your mother did. I
never knew you had a sister.

Why? Why didn’t I know about her?
Jake, I’m getting so confused. First it was just one thing, and now
I find out about your sister, and I feel so far away from you in so
many ways.
Maybe it's nothing to you, your
baby sister dying. Maybe it was so long ago that it ended up being
just some
thing
that happened, but how could you not have told me? What does
that make me, to you?

Olivia still thinks you want to be
buried in that place in Colorado. Yes, she talked about that, too.
I wish you would be, because then I could be buried beside you,
unlike at Arlington where I’d have to pass the wife test to get
in.

I never told you I can’t stand her,
did I? I never said anything because I know how much you love her,
but I can’t not tell you now. You know how alcohol makes you
honest? I’ve only had a couple of glasses—enough to be honest!—but
not so much I can’t type. Unfortunately(?)

Anyway. (I stole that segue from
you.)

Your mother is manipulative and
depressing.

There!

I understand, now, why you try so
hard to make her happy. Why you let her come to the hangar and why
you’ve called her so often. I love you, you are my life, I’m crazy
sick with worry and fear and have this…this rolling, moving
pain—(last week when I was driving, I sped, Jake, so fast that I
even scared myself, and I thought, just for a split second and in a
not-real way, what if I pull the brake and turn hard? wouldn’t it
be easier?)—and she is the one you called. Olivia. Your goddamn
mother.

She’ll tell you this eventually,
but I’ll tell you first: I stayed the night with a man. The one I
wrote you about, Donny (did I write you about him?). But I didn’t
even stay, and that’s the thing! I was there a long time, and I
think I fell asleep for about an hour before I woke up to call a
cab. You can call Lionel the next time you’re near a phone. Don’t
call me, call Lionel, and he’ll tell you I didn’t stay the night.
Do you remember the number? 7465, if you don’t. Please call him.
He’ll tell you.

But I did stay a while, and we did
drink together, and he drew me. It’s the most beautiful drawing,
Jake. Not because it’s of me, obviously, but because of the way he
did it. If you saw it you would think so, too. But he has this
horribly pained soul, is the thing, and it came out in his drawing,
I think. I am pained, in the picture. I think I am him. Or he
thinks so. I don’t even know. You have to see it, Jake. It’s
beautiful.

Did I already say that?

Olivia doesn’t know anything. You
have to believe me. I told her all about it—because, yes, he
called—but she didn’t believe me, and I don’t think she ever will.
She doesn’t like me. She doesn’t like me with you, but I don’t
care. I like me with you. And I wish you would call and I wish you
had told me about your dead sister and I wish I could be buried
beside you and I wish we had gotten married before you left. Will
you marry me, Jake? Will you do it through the mail? No. That’s
stupid. Forget I asked. I don’t know what I want.

You. That’s what I want. And I want
your mother to explode.

Not really. But I would like
it.

Jake.

I’m drunk, now. But look! No typos!
That must mean I need more. I’m drunk a lot, though I probably
shouldn’t tell you that. Don’t worry, okay? ‘A lot’ still isn’t
very much if you compare me to the blonde woman.

But you don’t know the blonde
woman.

I still love you.

Mia

________

Safia—wasn’t it?—said something
about writing by hand. More personal, she said, so I try. I try to
write
Jake
but it
won’t come, looks like
Yuri
then
fuze
, and then I remember the letter I
wrote earlier and put downstairs for tomorrow. Sealed and
stamped—the front twice-kissed with lipstick—and I can’t send it,
not that one. My chair skips, groans rough when I slide it back,
and the table isn’t heavy enough, pulls toward me when I try to
stabilize myself with it, and three inches off the chair makes me
dizzy.
Fall soft
,
my father said when I was little and liked falling,
fall soft, sideways, and bend your
legs
. I try it now, and yes, it is softer
that way. Still fun.

“…candles and wine? Come…one year
anniversary. Don’t you want…me and you?”

“I…but—”

“But what?”

“If…woods, we have a tent,
and…when…pictures, they…better.”

“Than what?” he says.

Safia is not so easy to hear, even
with my head pressed flat to the floor. “Speak up!” I say and shift
and slide, looking for ear-suction. I stick my finger in my other
ear.

“…if we are just sitting at our
table…can take…sitting… means nothing…that movie?”

“What are you saying?”

“…thing.”

“Safia.”

“Nothing, I…Okay?. . .not be an
asshole.”

Chancey’s nose tickles my hair when
he sniffs it and I laugh. They stop talking. I hold my breath,
listen, but there is nothing for several minutes, and soon I forget
I’m listening and their voices, up again, scatter like words tossed
around in a crowd of foreigners, and I wish he were here to hold
onto.

APRIL 21, MONDAY

The sound of their door slamming
through the floor wakes me, face flattened and head spinning, and
her laughter and his cheery “Of course, doll!” has me following
them down the stairs, in my mind, to the bottom landing, the door.
To the mailboxes and my letter. My head is in a sunspot, hot, hair
wet around my face, and I know, I know it’s too late, that it must
be four, at least, and that he must have already come, but maybe
once, maybe today, he is not on time. I crawl to standing and wipe
my face and take the two flights down to the boxes, some of
them—not mine—stuffed so full with envelopes they’re not latched,
and the outgoing is bin empty.