Chapter 6: Letter, Knowing

Dear Marguerite,

It feels strange to write that name, so I'll say why.

For two years I wrote to a woman I pictured with a cat and a porch.

You turned out to be six feet tall with a red pen, and I don't know where to put the cat.

I am still angry about the room, but I am angry in a way that wants you to be better at it, not gone.

I think I wanted you to be a person all along.

Late Shift

I wrote that on Saturday night at my kitchen table, and then I rewrote it four times and sent the first version.

On Sunday I drove to Lynnwood to help at my mother's dry cleaner, which I do every other week.

The shop smells like steam and starch, and the conveyor rack hums.

My mother, Soo-jin Park, was behind the counter in her canvas apron, counting tickets with a pencil behind her ear.

"You look thin," she said, instead of hello.

"I'm the same."

"You look like a thin person in a same person's coat."

I took a pile of shirts to the pressing table and started on the collars.

She watched me for a while.

"You're writing to somebody," she said.

My hand stopped on the iron.

"Every Sunday you hide in the back with your phone, and you smile at it like a fool."

"It's a pen pal."

"Since when does a person of twenty-seven have a pen pal?"

"Since two years ago."

"Two years." She put the pencil down. "Is it a man?"

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