ghosts.
The kitchen calendar was gone. It had hung by the phone for eight years. Every Thursday, there was a little C written on it in her perfect cursive. I used to see it and feel something I couldn’t name.
I kept reaching to move things that weren’t there anymore. I went to lift the picture frames off the piano, and there was no piano. I went to straighten the guest towels, and there were no towels. I went to check the sticky drawer, and the drawer was empty, and it slid open without sticking at all,
because somebody had finally fixed it.
It was me. I had fixed it two years ago. With a bar of soap on the runners.
Mrs. Whitaker was there. She was sitting in one of the two chairs she’d kept, at the small round
kitchen table by the window. She didn’t read. She didn’t drink her tea. She just sat there and watched me work.
At two o’clock, I was done. I put my supplies back in my bucket. I carried it to the front door.
Then I took the brass key off my key ring. The one she’d handed me eight years ago in this same kitchen. Don’t lose it. I hadn’t. Not once.
