Stolen Days

We never mentioned the word "back" again. My suitcase lay open in the guest room; garment by garment, my clothes migrated into the wardrobe; at some unmarked point my toothbrush acquired a permanent address in his bathroom. No one announced anything. The days simply grew into this shape on their own.

Urk's summer is short as a joke. We lived it like a year.

The good days went like this: on mornings when he was strong, we walked the harbor out to the lighthouse, slowly, while he narrated every boat's name and its gossip — which skipper hadn't spoken to which skipper in thirty years, and over which single net of fish. Afternoons he slept, and I tidied the kitchen the way Old Yang tidied it, or apprenticed under Old Yang at frying fish. Old Yang teaches frying the way he'd run a code review: stands there, says nothing, intervenes only at the precise point of failure. "Heat's too high." "Turned it too soon." "Good. That one's right."

One evening I produced a flawless herring, and Old Yang tasted it, nodded, and said abruptly: "I taught Lucas's mother this fish." He said nothing further, and I asked nothing. Grief in this house has its protocols: it may be taken out and glanced at; it may not be unfolded.

Evenings, the three of us ate together. Before dinner Old Yang bowed his head and prayed — Dutch, brief. One night I caught a single word repeating, and afterward asked Lucas what it was.

"Dank," he said. "Thanks."

"Thanks for what?"

"There is no 'for,'" he said. "Just thanks. My father's prayer hasn't changed in twenty years: no asking. Only thanks. He says asking is haggling with tomorrow, and our family lost its haggling rights — you've already seen the merchandise, what's left to negotiate?" He smiled. "So: thanks for today. That's the whole prayer."

Thanks for today. I took those three words and put them away somewhere deep.

It was in those days, too, that Lucas taught me to polish the mirror. At night, before sleep: don't chase the dream, don't shoo it, "watch it like water — keep your eyes loose." I was terrible. I've spent twenty-eight years wrestling my own brain for the steering wheel; being told to let go of it was harder than quitting my job. But a few times — just a few — I managed it. The dream came and I neither woke nor sank. I just stood in it, watching. And saw clearly things I'd never once seen clearly.

I didn't tell him what I saw. He never asked. That was our new protocol, unspoken and absolute: he doesn't ask what I see. I don't ask how long he has.

Two mirrors, standing back to back, and between them the days we stole.

One night it rained hard and neither of us slept; we lay listening to it. Out of nowhere he said: "Daisy. Thank you for coming back."

"Don't start," I said. "I still haven't settled the bill for the six months you left me outside that door."

"Mm," he said in the dark, and I could hear the smile in it. "Settle it slowly. As slowly as you possibly can."

It rained all night. Listening to him breathe, I thought: if the days could just stay like this — one, then another, frying fish, walking, listening to rain, settling a bill that never quite settles — if they could just stay like this.

I didn't finish the thought. Thanks for today.

Old Yang's prayer is one word long: thanks.

I understand it now. When you've already seen tomorrow, thanks is the only prayer you can say out loud that isn't a lie.