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I wasn’t there. I was with her. I hadn’t been home but a month, barely long enough to develop a comfortable routine. Monday, I spent with them, my grandparents. Talking with grandma. Doing chores around her house. And, taking her to visit grandpa in the nursing home. She would only stay for an hour. I would take her home and return to read to grandpa. Something light. The paper. A children’s book I once loved. Last Monday, I sketched his face while he slept. Tuesday through Saturday I waitressed at a diner a few minutes from my parents house where I was staying until I became financially stable—whatever financially stable means. I painted during the days and waitressed at night. Saturday night I drove the two hours to see Jessie at medical school. We spent Saturday night in each others arms. Sunday morning I cooked breakfast and helped her study. I painted while she memorized the names of the different diseases which could be associated with neck pain. We were comfortable with the routine, like an old married couple, like my grandparents. We had been separated for a long time. Time enough to discover our need for each other. Her phone rang early Monday morning. I woke up first, but it was her phone so I didn’t want to answer it. I didn’t want her to wake up either. She had a test at nine a.m. we had spent most of last night studying for. We joked over dinner about how after she became a rich doctor she could pay my medical school tuition. It was the first time we had discussed a future together. I answered the phone.

"Hello," I whispered, staring at Jessie hoping she would remain asleep, peaceful.

"Katie?"

"Huh?"

"It’s your mother."

I rolled my eyes and slowly got out of bed. I shivered. I was naked. I looked around the floor trying to find a discarded shirt and sweatpants.

"Katie?"

"Yeah. Hang on a sec." I grabbed a pile of clothes and exited the bedroom quietly closing the door. I looked back first. Jessie had shifted and taken over the entire bed. I pulled a shirt over my head. It was Jessie’s shirt. It was a little small on me, but it had a cute picture of butterflies on the front. "Mom, I told you to only call me here if it was an emergency." I pulled on a pair of sweatpants which were mine. "Mom, what time is it?" It hit me.

"Katie, dad—your grandfather—past away."

Grandpa past away. "Oh."

"He went in his sleep. The nurse went to check on him around four and he wasn’t breathing. He went peacefully."

I heard her choke back tears. I’m surprised she called. My dad was the calm one. He should not be making her call me. "Okay." I moved a book from the couch and was surprised by its heaviness. How did Jessie carry this book around all day?

"I’m sorry I called, but I thought you would want to know."

"Yes." Yes, Mom, call me. Death qualifies as an emergency. I wanted to say this but I could hear her crying. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and smelled the sex on my hands. Guilt coursed through my body. I remembered the taste of her last night. The smell of sweat and apple shampoo in her hair.

"Katie, how are you doing?"

How am I doing? Okay. Everyone knew this was coming. Everyone in the family. Everyone who was close to them. I joked once with a cousin about placing bets on the day or which one would go first. No one laughed. I’m worried about mom. About Mikey, my younger brother. Jessie opened the door and I looked at her naked body leaning on the doorframe and felt guilty. I wanted to drop the phone and take her back to bed. I wanted her legs to be wrapped around me and her lips on mine. "I’m fine, Mom. I’ll be there before eleven, like normal." Normal?

"Okay."

I heard her sob again. I watched Jessie wrap her arms around her body as the cold hit her. "Bye, Mom." I turned off the phone and let it fall to the floor.

"Is everything okay?"

I didn’t answer her question. I walked across the room and wrapped my arms around her pushing her back to the bed.

She had never met my family. To them, she was only a voice on the phone late at night. "Katie, Jessie’s on the phone." My mother would shout down the basement stairs. I would pick up the receiver and shout back, "I got it." We would wait for the familiar click of the upstairs phone turning off before talking. "I missed you. How was school?" She had to study, so the calls were short—ten or fifteen minutes. Enough time to remember what she looked like. Enough time to know she still loved me. Enough time to want to jump in my car and drive all night in order to spend at least a couple hours watching her sleep. My parents didn’t know I slept beside her naked on those Saturday and Sunday nights I spent with her.

The funeral was on Thursday. Wednesday my mom yelled at me until I left and crawled into bed beside Jessie who was expecting me. Thursday morning she skipped all her classes and put on a long, black skirt and grey blouse and sat next to me in my old Bronco as we drove to my grandparents house. The house was empty. Everyone was at the funeral. I refused to go which was why my mom yelled at me the day before. We were there to prepare for the wake. We silently walked into the house. The familiar smell was so overwhelming to me I apologized to Jessie who said she didn’t smell anything. We gathered all the chairs into the small living room and set up the table in the kitchen for food. She heated up the cheese dip and started the coffee. I cleaned the bathrooms removing the special seat in grandpa’s bathroom which hadn’t been used in two years since he’d been in the nursing home. I replaced the towels with clean towels; made sure there was enough toilet paper in each bathroom. The phone rang. It had been too quiet and we both jumped. I hesitantly picked it up. Who could be calling? Everyone is at the funeral. Did someone get lost? I don’t know how to get to the cemetery. The church is on Willow street by the post office, but I can’t remember which cemetery mom said. "Hello?"

"Katie, it’s your mother." She always said that—it’s your mother—as if after twenty-four years of telephone calls I couldn’t distinguish her voice from a telemarketer.

"Hi."

"We’re on our way to the cemetery." My parents had become obsessed with their cell phones a couple years ago, about two years after everyone else did, but now, they were a necessary part of my parents existence. They can’t program their nineteen-ninety model VCR and they can’t leave the house without their cell phone.

"Okay."

"How are things going?"

"Fine. Jessie and I are setting out the food, making coffee. I cleaned the bathrooms like you asked."

"Jessie’s with you?" Her tone changed. I hadn’t questioned Jessie coming. I hadn’t thought about the implications. Grandpa’s dead. Who would notice Jessie and I holding hands?

"Yeah. She made sure I wore something appropriate." I half laughed. Mom didn’t.

"Oh. We’re here. I’ll call you when we leave the cemetery."

"Okay." I put the rotary phone back in the cradle and turned to Jessie who was chopping carrots.

"What did your mom say?"

"They’re on their way to the cemetery." I leaned against the wooden desk next to the refrigerator. The suncatchers in the window above the sink were bouncing rainbows on Jessie’s hair and I smiled. She noticed and put down the knife. She hugged me.

"You haven’t cried?"

"No." She knew I hadn’t. At that moment, I didn’t think I would cry over the death of my grandpa. I loved him. I didn’t doubt my love for him, but I didn’t need to cry. We knew he was going soon. Every holiday was "our last together." The last time I had talked to him I was covered in charcoal. I had spent three hours doing a charcoal drawing of him. He was telling me a story from his days as a high school principal. He kept dozing in and out. I was having problems getting his eyes down, so I would have to remind him where he was in the story. He would get excited, opening his eyes wide, and continue for a few minutes with a small burst of energy before tiring out. The drawing rested on the coffeetable. I had brought it over yesterday to show grandma, but I wasn’t sure if it was the right time, so I gave it to mom. She must have showed it to her last night or this morning and left it on the coffeetable. His face looked odd. The sunlight coming through his window had sent odd shadows over his face and I had spent a lot of time trying to decide whether or not to ignore the shadows. I left the them in but without the window in the drawing it gave his face a surreal look. As though a big ball of light was off to his left and he was looking directly into it. Jessie squeezed her arms around me tighter and I had to fight the urge to take her away from the darkness. To take her to the nearest motel and strip the dark clothes off her body so I could feel her white skin against mine. Jessie released me from the embrace.

"You can cry."

I gave her the look she had seen before. The look I always gave her when I doubted what she said. She didn’t like that look. She returned to cutting carrots.

The smell of the lasagna I had made filled the entire house drowning out the decay smell. Jessie and I were waiting for the dozens of depressed people in uncomfortable suits and dresses to enter the small house. After mom had called to give their estimated time of arrival, I told Jessie the plan. "Okay. There are going to be a lot of people here. I’m not sure how many, but this house seems small with four people in it. We can escape through the back door or the front door. Quietly. The front screen door will slam if you let go of it, so be careful. We can meet back by the shed." I pointed through the back door to the metal building in the backyard. The bright green paint had faded to a color resembling puke. I hadn’t been in the shed in years. It was always a mystery to me as a kid with its tools and mower crowded into the little space I wasn’t allowed to play in. Jessie only nodded. I sighed. Jessie and I sat on the edge of the couch. She was tracing circles on the back of my hand telling me some amusing story from her dissection lab. I wasn’t paying attention. I was watching the driveway through the front door looking for a car. I wasn’t sure what vehicle they would be arriving in. A limo? My parents car? Grandma’s car? My aunt and uncle’s rental car? It didn’t matter. I was mad at my mom. When she called from the cemetery, she had mentioned something about me and Jessie being discreet. She was vague, but I knew what she meant. She didn’t want Jessie and I to be kissing or holding hands in front of our relatives. I had never mentioned my relationship with Jessie to my family. No one asked. Although my other friends were invited over to my parents house for dinner, Jessie had never been invited. I choose not to care then, but now, I wanted Jessie here to hold my hand. I needed her to hold my hand. She offered to hold my hand. Jessie stopped talking when we heard the car engine in the driveway. It was my parents Buick. I dropped Jessie’s hand when I stood up and immediately felt chilled.

The hundreds—or what seemed liked hundreds—of relatives and family friends filled the living room and kitchen. The youngsters—those under the age of fifty—stood leaving the few chairs for the ones who qualified for senior citizen discounts. There still weren’t enough chairs. From my spot next to the bathroom door, I figured the average age of the room to be sixty-seven. I was probably wrong. I could hear my mother in the kitchen encouraging the telling of stories about my grandpa. She was already sweating. Beads of sweat clung to her upper lip, and she would occasionally pull a Kleenex from her waistband to wipe it away. Jessie was standing on the other side of the room talking to my great uncle, grandpa’s brother, about medical school. She smiled at me over his shoulder. I mouthed, "Are you okay?" She nodded and continued explaining how many more years she had before she could be called doctor. I watched my younger brother talk to a relative he had seen once in his life at a time before he could speak. Mikey was good at making conversation. He smiled and nodded at the relative’s retelling of a story he was too young to remember. I began planning my escape route. Time had past, but I wasn’t sure how much time since I didn’t wear a watch.  Yesterday, my grandma had been shocked when she realized I didn’t have a watch. "Well, I know what to get you for your birthday now." "Grandma, I don’t wear watch, not because I don’t have a watch, but because I don’t need to wear a watch." She scoffed at my lack of conformity as though I was confirming my current slacker status by not being concerned with time. "Everyone needs a watch." Her husband of almost sixty years was going to be locked in an overpriced wooden box and lowered six feet into the ground and covered with dirt the next day and she was insisting that I wear a watch she will purchase for me as a birthday present. I’m reassured that this will never happen ten minutes later when she forgot my name and called me Mikey. Mikey would try to correct her when she called him Katie. My escape route was blocked. To leave by the back door, I had to pass through the kitchen where my mother would be sure to assign me some meaningless task. To exit by the front door, I had to pass my grandma who was sitting in her chair talking to someone I don’t think I had ever seen before. I didn’t want my grandma to see me skipping out. I had run away already. I had left for eight months. I had left at a time when half a dozen of my relatives were dying. I had left at a time when Jessie and I were fighting. Jessie had forgiven me, but my parents and grandparents were not shouting my praises anymore. And to make things worse, I was in love with the beautiful girl standing across the room smiling at me. I felt sorry for everyone in the house at that moment. No one had Jessie to smile at them and make them feel better. I did. Jessie nodded her head at me and motioned to the door. I nodded back. My great uncle had moved on to my pizza delivering cousin from Texas, so Jessie could easily leave through the front door. I watched her quietly close the screen door and disappear out of sight. I lowered my head and started to follow.

"Katie."

Uh, oh. I turned around to look at my grandma. She was holding my drawing of grandpa up to the unknown woman on her right.

"Katie drew this of Lowell last week." She looked at me. "It’s a beautiful drawing. She’s very talented."

I smiled and nodded my head. My hand was on the handle of the screen door. Half the room was looking at me. Fifty pairs of eyes. I was suddenly aware of the charcoal stains on my khaki skirt and the hole in my black dress shirt which I had refused to tuck in.

"Katie is becoming quite the artist. We are very proud of her." Grandma smiled at me and turned back to the unknown woman. I released the handle and walked over to give grandma a half hug—one of those hugs you give to someone who is sitting when you are standing. She patted my hand and nodded toward the door silently giving me permission to follow Jessie.

Jessie stood up when she saw me walk around to the back of the shed. "Hey."

"Hey." She was beautiful. I could feel the tears forming. She noticed and hugged me tightly. I wrapped my arms around her waist and buried my face in her neck.

"Hi." Jessie was talking to someone behind me. I released from her embrace and turned around.

"Hi, Mom."

"How are you girls doing?"

I wiped the few tears out my eyes and felt Jessie wrap her hand around mine. "Okay. Mom, this is Jessie. I don’t think you two have ever met."

Mom extended her hand to Jessie. Jessie shook with her right hand and squeezed my hand with her left. "I appreciate your help. I know Katie is glad you are here too." Mom looked at me and smiled. I nodded. Jessie nodded. "Okay, then." She turned around and returned to the house.