17: it never had that

She died on Tuesday.

I'm going to do this in order because I don't know what else to do.

Thursday she was off. Appointment. Friday she was off, which wasn't on the schedule, and I noticed, and I didn't ask, because I'm not a person who asks. Saturday I was off. Monday she wasn't there and nobody said anything and I did my walk and I stopped at fixture 19 and the run was a run.

Tuesday, 7:41 am, corridor. Four doors. Crack seven to one. My manager was standing under the clock, waiting for me, and I knew from the way she was standing, everybody knows that way of standing, and she said "I wanted you to hear it from me," She said Marisol had passed in the night, at home, and that she'd been sick for a long time, and that she'd been so brave about it, and that the store would be closing early Saturday for the service.

Sick for a long time.

WHAT?

And my manager did a thing with her face that I've been trying to name for four days. It wasn't the held look. It wasn't the ping pong. It was pity. Plain pity, the kind you'd give somebody who'd just asked what year it is. She said "honey. She had cancer. She's had it over a year. You knew that." Not a question. You knew that.

I didn't know that.

I stood under the clock and I ran it back. I ran every single thing I've ever noticed about Marisol and I'm going to put it here because I can't hold it and I need somebody to hold it with me.

The curls. Big brown curls in a claw clip that's always losing. I watched her take it out and put it back two weeks ago, I watched every bit of it, I wrote it down, I said that's what fine looks like. Was it a wig? I don't know what a good wig looks like, I've never had to. Deb says it was a wig. Deb told me that in the break room Wednesday, gently, like she was telling a child, "she had the really nice one, the real hair one, Danny bought it." Deb says everybody knew about the wig.

The cheeks. The color people pay for. I said that. I typed those words in April, people pay for that, and I meant it as a compliment, and Deb says she'd been so pale by the end that she did her face every morning in the car before she came in, and everybody knew, and nobody said anything, because she didn't want it to be a thing.

The humming. Deb says it was the nausea. She hummed when she felt sick. Everybody knew.

The spreadsheet. Fourteen thousand dollars. School. Deb doesn't know about the spreadsheet. Deb says Danny's been paying for everything, the tire place has been so good about it, and I said she was saving for nursing school, and Deb looked at me like I'd said she was saving for the moon.

The appointment. Thursday. I heard her say it fast and I didn't ask.

Here are my two versions and I want you to know that I have never in this entire blog wanted less to write them.

One. Marisol was sick for a year, and everyone in that store knew, and I didn't, because my brain is a brain that sees a hanger backwards from forty feet and slides right off the person holding it. Because I'm bad at faces. Because I've been off my meds for twenty-three days and before that I was on them, and either way I wasn't looking, I was looking at hangers, and a twenty-two-year-old girl was dying six feet from me every day for a year and I wrote a paragraph about how healthy she looked. That's a version where the wrongness is mine, and it's the one that makes me want to lie down on the floor of the break room.

Two. She wasn't sick. She was a person with curls and cheeks and fourteen thousand dollars and a plan, and two weeks ago she looked at a size run and then at me and said they're not all medium, and something noticed her notice. And it fixed the rack. And the rack was her. And now she has always had cancer, the way the sign has always been red, the way the monkey never had a tail, the way Kate's hair on a rooftop last summer was red, and everybody's memory got updated to match, gently, the way they always do, and the only leftover is me. The mistake.

I don't know which. I'm never going to know which. I went to the service anyway.

The address on the card was a building I'd never seen, off the frontage road, a funeral home, the card said, with a name like a law firm. I went. I went alone, in the black pants, on the bus, and I walked in.

It was a lobby.

I mean it was only a lobby. Nice carpet, a front desk with nobody at it, a directory on the wall with one floor listed, floor one, lobby. Two doors off the back, and I opened one and it was a closet, and I opened the other and it was a closet, and a closet, a closet holding a closet, coats on hangers with no coats in them, and I closed it and I stood in a lobby with nice carpet and a guest book on a stand. You didn’t read that wrong.

I signed the guest book. And then I looked at the page. Forty names. Forty signatures. And they were all in the same hand. Not the same name, the same hand. The same slant, the same loop, the same pen. Danny, in that hand. Deb, in that hand. Somebody named Marisol, in that hand, which I didn't understand and still don't. And mine, at the bottom, in my writing, the only one that didn't match.

There were people. Maybe twenty, in the lobby, in black, holding little cups. I didn't know one of them. Not Deb, not my manager, not anyone from the store, not a boy who looked like he worked at a tire place. Twenty people I'd never seen, talking quietly, and not one of them looked at me. Not the held look. Not the ping pong. Nothing. For the first time in two months I stood in a room full of people and nobody looked at me at all, like I'd finally gotten small enough.

The card on the stand by the guest book had her picture on it. Curls. Cheeks. Smiling, at somebody off to the side. And her name.

It's spelled wrong. One letter. The vowel in the middle. Marasol. I've read that name on a schedule every week for two years and it's spelled wrong on the card at her own service, and I stood there, and I did the thing, I looked away and I looked back, and it was still spelled wrong, and I understood that it wasn't going to correct because there was nothing to correct. That's her name now. It's always been her name. I'm the one who has it wrong.

I checked when I got back to the store. Pulled last week's schedule off the board. She's not on it. Not scratched out, not moved. Not there. There's a shift on Friday, two to close, women's contemporary, and there's no name in the box.

I wrote it in, in pen. I don't know why. I wrote her name in the box, my spelling, and I put the schedule back on the board, and I'm sure it'll be gone tomorrow and I'm sure the box will be empty and I'm sure Deb will say the box was always empty.

Kate said she was sorry about my coworker. When I got in tonight. She said "I'm so sorry about your coworker," and made me tea instead of a plate.

I never told Kate about Marisol. I never told Kate her name. I told Marisol “I don't tell my roommate anything” and it was true.

Four views on the counter.

I'm done talking to people. That's not a rule. It's just what's true now. Every person I've said it out loud to, the stranger, Marisol, they're either gone or they were never what I thought, and I can't tell which, and I'm not going to find out on somebody else.

I have a break room and a stapler and a person who laughed. I wrote it down. I said I was putting it where I could see it.

I can see it. I don't know if it's still there.