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probably
won’t be around for you much.”
    “I think that’s what I love most
about him,” she said as she pressed her fork into the leftover potatoes on her
plate. She could feel everyone’s eyes on her. She looked up to her mother. “Is
that wrong?”
    “Well…” Her mother stood and
began stacking dishes, holding forks in one hand, piling plates in another.
“Maybe,” she said.  
    *****
    In the kitchen, Olivine stood at
the sink and squirted a stream of orange liquid soap into the water. Christine
moved from the counter to the trash, scraping the dishes. The congealed spots
of gravy. The potatoes. Things half eaten and left there. Yarrow pushed through
the swinging door.
    This had always been one of
Olivine’s favorite parts of the meal, when everything was finished and it was
just she and her mother and her sister, moving through the kitchen, as though
choreographed. Yarrow owned a dishwasher, but Olivine loved to wash dishes by
hand. She loved scrubbing the white plates, bringing them up, still sudsy, to
catch the light. To ensure they were clean. And then setting them aside to be
rinsed and dried.
    Olivine watched the soap suds
rise for a moment and then she slid a stack of dinner plates, one by one, into
the bubbles, watching as each vanished under the white foam.
    “How are your classes going,
Ollie?” Christine asked.
    Olivine watched the bubbles and
formulated her response. She opened her mouth. Shut it again.
    “Is there something you want to
talk about?” Christine asked.  
    “No,” Olivine said, without
turning around. “Why?”
    “Because you seem a million miles
away.”
    “Oh.”
    “Really, Olivine. Are you sure
there isn’t something?” Christine came to stand next to her at the sink “You
wash. I’ll dry,” she said.
    Olivine nodded without looking
up.
    “Is it Grandma?” Christine asked.
“Are you missing her?”
    “No. I mean, yes. Of course, I’m
thinking about her. And missing her. How is Grandpa?”
    “He’s okay. I’ll go back down to
the retirement home tomorrow. I’ve called him each day. It’s too bad he’s not well
enough to live here with us, but the doctor says the elevation is just too
high. He’d need to be on oxygen all the time, and even then...” She held the
plate she was drying up to the light. “ It just wouldn’t be good for him. And I
understand that. I do. I just don’t like him down there in that…that facility.Without her. ”
    “He likes it there, Mom. You know
he does. He’s got all kinds of friends, and he does way more than he could
living here with us.”
    “I know. You’re right. His
buddies are taking him to a model train show this weekend.”
    “Nice.”
    “And I’ll spend the day with him
Thursday. The whole day.” She turned a dish over in her hand, ran her fingers
along the ridge on its back. “Imagine, Olivine, being married to someone for
sixty-five years and then, one days, she’s gone. Eating toast or eggs with that
person for sixty-five years of breakfasts. Turning off the light next to her for
sixty-five years of bedtimes.”
    “I know. It’s hard to imagine.”
Olivine shook her head. “Impossible, actually.”
    “No one expects him to live long,
you know.”
    “He’s in great shape, Mom.”
    “I know, but this is what happens
with a relationship like that one. They were one and the same. He’ll let go. He’ll
let go of this life. Soon. Watch and see.”
    Silent moments followed. They
scrubbed, cleaned, stood side by side, swaying with the rhythm of the water and
their own thoughts.
    “Isn’t there something we can
do?” Olivine asked, finally.
    “No, I don’t really think so,
dear. We just have to let him know he is loved, and we have to let him know
that we understand what she was to him.”
    Olivine nodded and dunked another
dish into the bubbles.
    “Mom?” she said, her voice small
and low.
    “Yes, love?” Christine looked up
from the dishwater and met Olivine’s eyes.
    “I got engaged