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“
Mia, hon, it’s Olivia. Are you
there?… Hello-oo…Well, I received a phone call from Jakey just a
little bit ago and he said he tried to reach you, but that you
weren’t there…Where are you? Are you all right?. . .We’re just
worried and want to make sure you’re safe, so give me a call, if
you will, when you get in. If I don’t hear from you by this
evening—well—I suppose I’ll drive out…It’s a very long trip, of
course, but we have to know you’re okay, because if you’re not, as
Jake’s mother, I can get a Red Cross message to him if I need to…He
wouldn’t be able to come home, of course, if something’s happened
to you—sorry, dear, they just don’t do that for girlfriends, and I
think they should, really—but at least he wouldn’t be
uninformed…Not that I think anything’s happened to you. Heaven
forbid…But—Oh, this is silly. I’m sure you’re fine. Please call me
when you get this? Our Jake is so worried about you—oh, and he said
he forgot to ask you to please send him a care package. Unless
you’ve already sent one, of course, but if you haven’t, we ask that
you please do it soon. He said you know what he wants…If you’re too
busy, hon, I can certainly put one together and get it out for him
tomorrow…Okay, dear. I hope to hear from you later.”

APRIL 19, SATURDAY

The setting sun falls bright
and warm on my face and Chancey meows from the floor. I turn my
back to the window and cover my head with the pillow, try to
remember whether I fed him before going to sleep but after
shopping, after coming home and listening to Jake’s message the
fourth, fifth, or sixth time. After checking the number he called
from and then dialing it, knowing it wouldn’t work. Clicks and
fuzz.

Sharp pain in my heel. Chancey, his
claws plucking my sock. “Sorry.” I slide out of bed and follow him
to the kitchen, pressing play on the machine on the way. “Mia. I
wish—man, I can’t believe I missed you. I was sure I’d catch you
after work…What time is it there? Six-thirty, right? …”

When his food bowl is filled I sit
beside him on the floor and stroke his tail and watch him jam his
snout into the kibble. “I’m the worst cat mother, I know. I promise
I’ll take better care of—”

“Mia?” Her knocks come brief and
rapid.

On the other side of the front door,
the sound of shifting feet, swipes on gritty linoleum. How many
hours since she called yesterday? How many times today did I open
my eyes, a second at the most, to gauge how high on the wall the
day-shadows climbed? I was going to call her. I’d meant to call
her. The microwave says it’s eight o’clock.

“Mia?”

I sit stone-still and breathe
shallow, open-mouthed, and wait for her to leave. Chancey twitches
his whiskers at me, round black eyes watching, watching, and then
he is meowing, and I cover his nose and his mouth until he squirms
free and runs out, into the bedroom. I think,
Sorry.

She didn’t wait a full day. Here to
confirm I’m no good and that anyone but me would be better for
Jake. He must have told her when they talked that he’s only
received one letter. One, compared to how many written by people
like Denise? How many letters and stamp-collaged boxes clutter
William’s side of the tent? I wonder if Jake pretends to be happy
for him while making excuses for me. “She’s not much of a writer,”
he might say. “She’s not good at putting her feelings into words,
you know, but I know she’s thinking of me.” And William would say
that was odd, for an ex-English instructor, and nice try,
Jake.

Any other woman, a better woman,
would send weekly packages and write letters every other day, would
be home when he called. No wife material here, Olivia will tell
him. At home at her table she’ll write a long letter all about me,
hint not too subtly that I’m an unlikely candidate for
marriage.

I believe that’s how she would
phrase it, anyway.

“Mia.” She knocks again. “Hon, are
you in there? Are you okay?”

I stay quiet. Chancey pads in, his
toes lightly
pat-pat-pat
ting
on the floor, and eats his last
piece of food, sniffs the water.

“I heard you talking before, Mia.
Please answer the door.”

Damn the cat, anyway.

The sink shines, empty, but the side
counters are sloppy-stacked with dirty dishes, plates speckled with
stuck food bits and glass-bottoms crusted with dried milk and
orange juice.

“Mia?”

Dust devils hug cabinet edges and
the final wedge of setting sun falls in orange highlights, as if
making a concerted effort to magnify the cat hair and litter on the
floor.

She knocks again.

“Just a minute.” I get up and rush
to the living room—two pictures, there, to turn face-up—and the
bedroom—one—and back to the kitchen for the picture on top of the
refrigerator, her voice carrying on meanwhile.

“Oh! Mia, I’m just glad to hear your
voice. Jakey was so worried. We both were. That’s why I
couldn’t—well, I’ll just wait until. . .” She trails
off.

I wish there were time to do
something with the dishes, the litter box, the stovetop. A cheesed
noodle clings to the edge of a burner, and circles of…something
brown…spot the white porcelain top. But, no time. I straighten my
sweatshirt, check my jeans for dirt and stains, and wipe anything
off my eyes. I open the door and downstairs spices mingle with—is
it rose? some strong flower—perfume. A yellow ribbon pin clings to
the spot over Olivia’s heart, and at her feet stands a square bag
on wheels with an extended, extendable handle.

“I’m so glad you’re home.” Her hands
clasp in the tight space between her breasts. “I wasn’t sure until
I heard you. I saw your lights on, and I thought it was your car
out front, but…well, you took so long to answer, and you never
know. I know how young women like to go out on the town on
weekends, and sometimes they can’t get home, so they take cabs
every—”

“Well, here I am.” I ask if she’d
like to come in. She picks up her bag, small enough for less than
three days’ clothes.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she says,
“but it’s a long drive, so I brought some things. I thought maybe
you and I could shop for care package items for Jakey. Unless
you’ve already sent one, of course. Look at me, talking without
even thinking. Did you, hon?”

“I tried and tried, but there’s
just—I’ve been working so many hours, and everything. I was going
to do it tonight.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, that’s fine, then.
But, let’s not go tonight. Let’s go in the morning, together, all
right?” She moves past me into the kitchen and stands there in the
middle, then pulls a ribbon-magnet from her purse and hands it to
me. “Here you go, hon.”

“Thanks.”

She sets her purse on the counter
and I stick the magnet to the oven door.

“I’m just so glad to be here. I know
how alone you must be; Jakey said you don’t have many friends, and
going through something like this by yourself can be—well—it can be
difficult.”

Jakey
.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m glad you came, too. I was dying for some
company.” More and more, her voice comes easier to me.

“Oh, good!”

I start a pot of coffee and line
glasses in the sink, spray water in each, and wipe off the counters
while she sets up in the guest room. It’s the one room I don’t use,
so it’s clean, at least. By the time she finishes and joins me in
the kitchen, the pot’s filled halfway.

“That smells wonderful.” Her eyes
pass over the sink and she says, “Do you have a clean mug?” She
sits at the table and folds her hands in front of her and
yawns.

There are no clean mugs, so I wash
one and wait for the coffee to finish brewing. She looks again at
the sink and then at me, starts to say something, stops, then says,
“You’re not eating, hon.”

“I am.”

“Have you looked in a
mirror?”

“I’m just tired,” I say. “The shifts
are long. And they start early. I have to be there at six, you
know, so I—I mean, it’s…I’d have to get up too early if I wanted
breakfast.”

“You looked just beautiful at
Christmas, and you had the same job, then.”

I wipe off the outside of the pot,
where dust has layered. Jake and I never think to wash the whole
pot. We only swish water inside.

“Mia,” she says, “you’re a stick.
And what is all that?” She flips a hand at the mess on the
counter.

“Dishes.”

“Those aren’t dishes, hon.” She
slides out from the table and goes to the counter and picks up a
sauce pan. “And this?”

“A lot comes in a box.”

“Sweetie, I’ve made pounds of
macaroni and cheese in my time. Jake’s favorite side—when it’s not
homemade—and I know how much comes in a box. It’s this much,” she
says, pointing inside the pot, “plus about a half cup.” She picks
up a short stack of black, plastic microwave trays with serving
dividers. “What they put in these could hardly feed a
child.”

Coffee’s on, so I fill a mug and set
it on the table. She sits in front of it. “You really should eat
more.”

“I eat just fine,” I say. “I was
eating too much before, is all. I’m on a sort of diet.”

“Well, I don’t know what for. Jakey
never liked his girls very skinny.”

I scratch my forehead to hide my
eyes when I check the clock. Olivia has been here ten minutes and I
can’t see past another ten, can’t see the inside of an hour, or a
whole evening. Five in the morning, Jake’s time, and that he’s
probably waking up right now brings a little comfort, stirs
something in my stomach. I think,
G’morning,
and say, “How’s your
coffee?”

“Perfect. Thank you, hon. I need it
after that drive. I’d have been here sooner, but the weather was
just awful.”

“Really? How long ago did you leave?
I got your message just a little bit ago, and I was calling you
back when you knocked.”

“Well, I left that quite a while
ago, and I suppose I thought, why not? You need somebody, I need
somebody. I’m just thankful the weather didn’t get any worse.” She
looks out the window. “It’s fine here.”

“I wish you hadn’t put yourself
through that,” I say. “It wasn’t necessary. I—really, I was just
about to call you.”

“Don’t be silly.” She waves me off.
“Anything for Jake. And you. You know that.”

I pour my own mug and the hot coffee
melts the rubbery ring of a different day’s coffee circling the
inside. I join her at the table.

“It was awful,” she says. “It got so
bad I couldn’t even see and had to watch the tail lights in front
of me just to stay on the road. And even then, you never can tell.
They might pull off to the side to wait out the weather, and then
what? I’d run right into them and be stranded.” She lifts her mug,
sips, sets it down. “But I kept going, anyway. If you stay far
enough behind, you have time to react to anything, and it was just
fog and rain, after all. Though, we did end up standing still for
about five minutes when we came across a tractor-trailer jackknifed
in the median. Horrible,” she says. “I don’t know if the driver
died. There was an ambulance, so I suppose he could have died. It’s
dangerous out there today. Any other time I’d have stayed home.
Dear, I so hope you’re careful. You are careful, aren’t
you?”

“I try to be, yes.”

“Well. Because when you look at what
it was like today, it just seems there are times when no one has
any business being on the road.”

“You’re a saint to have made the
drive,” I say.

“Oh, now,” she says. “Not a saint.
Just a mother. It’s the least I could do. Jakey would do the same
for me, for you, for anybody. He’d give you the shirt off his
back.”

Not laughing outright means
holding my breath. Two, three winters ago, Jake and I rented a
cabin in the woods in Georgia, a two-bedroom, two-story house in
the hills, cheap because it was off-season. The forecast had called
for spring-like temperatures in the low to mid-fifties, so I left
my coat on its hanger and packed light sweaters and sweatshirts.
Our first morning there, Jake and I left the cabin with full travel
mugs and slid down a rocky slope to a narrow, leaf-padded
trail.

The first ten minutes had
been lovely, had passed as advertised: a brochure morning of bird
calls, twigs snapping in echoes, and a tree-silhouetted, bright
orange sunrise over the mountain on the opposite side of the
valley. The air smelled like fresh bark and we stopped for a minute
to breathe it.

We walked half a mile before
the crisp, refreshing breeze turned into a slicing, burning wind. I
pulled my hair over my cheeks and said, “It’s freezing.”

“Yeah,” Jake said and closed
his jacket tighter.

I tucked my hands in my
sleeves, looping a cold finger around the travel-mug handle. The
other hand I alternated from ear to ear, warming each for a few
seconds before switching. “The forecast said at least
fifty.”

“I know,” he said. “They
also said a ten percent chance of snow.” He looked up at the sky.
“Too bad you didn’t bring your jacket.”