We Are Okay

In August, Marin awakes to the sound of Gramps leaving the house. She makes boiled eggs and leaves him two along with a teabag ready in a cup. She goes to the park with her friend Ben and his dog Laney, and they talk about good memories and how unknown New York feels. Marin gets home after 8 pm, but there is no sign of Gramps; the eggs and tea remain untouched on the kitchen counter. She goes to the beach to look for him, thinking of Gramps’s frailty, the bloody handkerchiefs, and his habit of walking the dangerous surf. She returns home and knocks at his door, screaming his name through the door but gets no response.

Marin returns to the kitchen and prepares dinner. Increasingly anxious and upset, Marin starts calling his friends to see if they’ve seen him, but none have. Next, she calls Javier, who urges her to open Gramps’s door and, when she can’t bring herself to do so, tells her he is heading over and calling the police. Panicked, Marin takes the photograph of her mother from the wall and removes it from its frame to be closer to her. On the back of the photo, she finds written “Birdie on Ocean Beach, 1996” (168). She hopes that Birdie is a generic pet name, but this discovery gives her the courage to open Gramps’s doors and enter the study, which she’d never been in before. One wall is full of shelves containing many boxes of letters. She discovers that the letters from Birdie, though addressed to Gramps’s PO Box, are all in Gramps’s handwriting. The first one she picks up begins with “Daddy” (168). She checks more letters, dating back many years, and finds that they’re all in his handwriting.

Marin hears the sirens approaching and enters Gramps’s bedroom closet. The closet is full of Marin’s mother’s possessions, all neatly preserved and labeled. One wall is covered in photographs of Marin’s mother, including some of her with Marin. The police enter the house, but Marin, shocked and deeply upset, asks them to take her away from the house.

They go to the station, and Marin answers some questions about Gramps’s activities and behavior. They ask about his mental health, and Marin says, “You saw that room” and that “he thought his friends were poisoning his whiskey” (171). She tells them that she thinks he had cancer. They tell her that there are witnesses who report seeing an old man going into the water at Ocean Beach, where Gramps usually walks. Officers are searching for him, but if reports are true, he entered the water over eight hours before. The currents could easily sweep a person away.

A police officer tells Marin that Ana and Javier are waiting for her in the lobby, but Marin panics at the idea of telling them what she now knows. She insists on taking a cab rather than leaving with Ana and Javier.