Chapter 3 Griffin
THREE
GRIFFIN
Six-fifteen. Four minutes before the alarm.
My body does this now. I lie there until the alarm goes off, then turn it off and get up.
The apartment is cold. The radiator does what it wants.
I make coffee in the small pot, the one that does four cups even though I only ever drink two.
I watch the steam come up off the burner because I’m not awake enough to do anything else.
No class until eleven. This is the bad part of Wednesdays.
I take the coffee to the desk by the window.
The desk is too small for the laptop and the notebook both, so I stack them.
I open the laptop. I look at the syllabus.
I’ve already read what I need to read. I’ve already done the response paper.
There is nothing for me to do until ten-thirty.
The window faces the back of the next house over.
There’s a bird feeder hanging off their porch and a squirrel has figured out how to get to it.
The squirrel is there now, hanging upside down, eating.
I think he would have laughed at that. The thought arrives whole, like it’s been queued up.
I don’t know why today. I don’t know why the squirrel.
There doesn’t have to be a reason. I learned that early.
I put the coffee down. I don’t say his name in my head.
I haven’t, not really, in months. You think him or he and that’s enough.
The name is louder than the rest of it. The program comes back first. They’d printed a typo in it, celabration of life, and his mother had been more upset about the typo than about anything else that day.
Like the typo was the thing she could fix.
His cousin cried in a way that was almost angry.
Like she was mad at the room. Someone put a hand on my shoulder afterward and I thought please don’t.
They took it away. I never figured out who it was.
For a while I wanted to know. Then I didn’t.
The coffee is cold. I get up. I rinse the cup and put it on the drying rack.
I stand at the sink with my hands on the edge of the counter and I count the tiles on the backsplash.
Forty-two. Always forty-two. I go back to the desk.
I open the response paper I’ve already finished.
I read it again. I change two words and change them back.
I do this for forty minutes. At ten-fifteen I close the laptop.
I put on the damp shoes. I go to class. I take notes. I come home. I put the empty cup, the one from this morning, in the sink next to the rinsed one.
Two cups. Same sink. I don’t know why I notice.