Edith died the day before New Year's, leaving my father and I alone in our blue-clad house on Plum Street to sort through her things amongst our mess of pill bottles, dirty dishes, and inability to speak to the other normally. Five years ago Edith–who I preferred to call Gran despite her insistence on being plainly Edith–had come to live with us after she fell down the stairs of my mother's childhood home. My father and I never got along well, but Gran forced us to coexist in a way that wasn't possible without a third person there to buffer the mix of anger and frustration that my father and I boiled in. The funeral, held two weeks after the New Year had passed, was small. Our family isn't big like Robin's. I invited him to the funeral; he came with Clara, yellow flowers, and condolences that were strangely sincere despite him never meeting the woman who I loved deeply. When Gran's light brown coffin was finally covered by black dirt and speckles of grass that'd mixed themselves into the earth, Robin turned to me and asked if I'd be alright. I hadn't cried the entire funeral. I hadn't cried when Gran died. I told Robin I'd be fine.
My father and I avoided meeting the other's eye line the entire sunny morning. Without question, he and I took separate cars to the funeral and back to the house. Michael insisted on driving me home on his way to work, saying something about last minute problems with a project which seemed unlikely to be true on a Sunday, but I said nothing about it as I calmly took back my car keys which he dangled from his bony ring finger. I drove slowly, taking the route which added an extra fifteen minutes onto the drive because the street on the other end of Plum is narrow and winding. At home, my father and I started in the living room, sifting through Gran's belongings and some of our own in silence; the house slumped under the particular heaviness my father exudes only around family. For the amount of space his presence takes up, my father is a short man, about 5'3, capped with a full head of salt-and-pepper colored hair that's accompanied by a similar colored beard that has trouble filling itself in. Despite needing them for most sighted endeavors, the only glasses he wears without complaint are round, black-rimmed readers my mother picked out at a drugstore for him almost a decade ago. He isn't particularly stuffy when looking at him, but I can't remember a time when he wore pants other than pressed black chinos. When I was little I thought maybe he slept in them too.
Around 6:30 the house took on a musty smell from the opened cardboard boxes that my father and I had pulled from the basement. I went to the bathroom to wash my hands and face with sweet-smelling soap, as if that would dull the reminder of Gran's death that the boxes which smelled like the back of her closet left me with. I stood in front of the mirror examining my purple-tinted eyelids, finally giving into impulse and texting Robin, asking if he wanted to meet for coffee later in the week. Robin is the type of person whose phone is glued to them but if he doesn't have a good response, he won't say anything back. From that purposeful waiting comes accidental ignoring until days later my phone dings several times with the ringtone I picked out for him because he's written an apology and a list of things he'd finally completed his thoughts on. But at 6:31 Robin texted me back,
Meet in 10? Moon's, the usual table if it's empty.
I carefully opened the whitewashed bathroom door, jiggling the brassy handle as I did so, and holding down the light switch which is lazily plastered to the wall so its audible click would be muffled by my palm. Quietly, I walked across the creaking wooden floors of the downstairs hallway, hoping my father had gone to sleep early. I peered into the crammed living room where I'd left him. He was sipping the coffee I'd made early in the morning before the funeral and sitting in the blue recliner Gran had loved falling asleep in. He stared blankly at the wall behind her shut off TV.
"I'm going out; I'll be back," I said with an unfamiliar firmness in my voice as I snatched my brown and green jacket Gran had lined with purple flannel to keep me warm in the winter.
I loved that Gran had used her favorite color to line my favorite jacket which had exactly seven pockets–her eternally lucky number. My house keys jingled in my pants pocket as I walked to Moon's with my face turned down against the cold wind. The well-loved coffee shop sits five minutes from my house and three from Robin's. We decided early on that Moon's was easy for us; an easy place to meet meant we could save our little remaining energy and time to talk about big things. Small talk was never our strength. As I pushed open the heavy door to Moon's, the blue bell tied with fraying twine to the doorframe gave a familiar light ring. Robin was already sitting at our table by the side window with a cup of coffee for himself and a blueberry muffin for me. I slowly dragged a chair next to his and watched Robin adjust himself so his hands were placed neatly on top of the table in what was supposed to be my space. I played with the napkin under my muffin as I stared out the window, listening to him talk on Gran's death and my new living arrangement.
"It's really not a problem," Robin said casually after some time had passed.
"You and I are just friends; my mom loves you, Clara wouldn't think anything of it. Just think it over and if you want to stay with us for a few days while you sort through everything, let me know."
"I'll be fine," I whispered; most of the things Robin says to me are things he later wishes he hadn't said anyway.
While I sat and picked at my sugary smelling muffin, I noticed how our piled-up jackets and bags neatly mingled on the tabletop. My phone was carelessly tossed on top of Robin's jacket, his black backpack propped up my dingy brown purse he once told me was so distinct it was the only way he could recognize me from a distance throughout my various genre changes in hair and clothes over the years. That night I talked as if I were seventeen again and not much else mattered besides friends and figuring out what I wanted my life to be. But I am older than seventeen and know very well what I want my life to look like. Before Clara, Robin and I used to talk about that as if it were the weather. Robin watched me closely as he usually did. When my expression changed from a nervous smile to its resting frown he worried, frantically asking if I was okay. He talks with care that doesn't match the disregard he's habitually approached the topic of us with.
When three hours had easily gone by and out the window of Moon's I could see thick fog setting in from the harbor nearby, we decided as usual that although talking points hadn't run out, there was no sense in using them all up in one sitting. Robin offered to walk me home; as much as I wanted him to, I worried about the dark and the way it makes people feel. It was the dark that made me see Robin differently than I'd wanted to the first night I got coffee with him three years ago. Outside Moon's by the crosswalk at Plum and Ivy, Robin looked at me the way I've looked at him too many times before. I used to joke with Gran that if I didn't have such morals, I'd do more of the things I wanted to. I would've kissed him. I would've meant it. I'd marry him if he wanted me to. On the walk home, alone of course, I thought about calling Robin even though we'd just been talking. I dialed his number three times, one for each time before crossing the street, with numb fingers from the cold that hit them once outside my flannel-lined pockets. My breath hung in the air, trailing behind me while I practiced the short voicemail I'd inevitably leave because when has Robin ever picked up my calls? I felt tears poke at my lips as I walked against the wind because I love him and have been told not to show it. And when I carefully wiped the tears off my cheeks, I found that my jacket which I'd put on in a hurry on my way out of the house smelled strongly of Michael instead of Robin, who leaves my clothes smelling honest and clean rather than heavy.
