14

Sylvia

Sunday, October 1st, 1989

Today is my birthday. Seventy-five: a milestone. Since John died, I haven’t seen much point in celebrating birthdays. After he passed, I would get invitations to lunch or to tea. And at first, they were genuine, but then they began to feel stiff, obligatory, and after I was shunned, the invitations thinned out and then stopped altogether.

I now mark it the same way every year: I pad to the mailbox in my house slippers—there will be a card from Evelyn and another one from the March of Dimes. I might have something sweet to eat, if I have the energy to make it.

Today I pull an apple pie from the oven. I found a bushel of pink ladies from a nearby farm stand this weekend, and so this morning I sliced them up into thin discs and tossed them in my cream-colored mixing bowl with cinnamon, lemon, and a little brown sugar—I like mine tart, the way they make them in the north, not so sugary—and filled them into a store-made pie crust, no longer having the pep to make my own.

Today I do this because it is a milestone, but also, I do it for Delia. We have the same birthday week. Hers will be October 8th. Exactly one week apart.

Delia. That’s not even her real name—I never knew it, that’s just the name I gave her—but I was able to draw out some facts, like her birthday, for instance, and when I told her late one night at the hospital that we shared this week, she smiled.

The warm yeasty smell fills the kitchen. I take the pie from the oven and let it rest on top of a hand towel, and decide to brew a pot of fresh coffee, which I only drink on special occasions. I shake the bitter grounds into the filter and then sit at the table and watch as red hummingbirds light on my feeder. The kitchen window is open and a quick rush of wind sweeps through, giving me a chill and making the pile of dried curled leaves clatter along my sidewalk.

The summer Delia vanished she was nineteen, going on twenty. I bought her a card that year when I hoped she might still be alive. But it’s here, in this house somewhere, never sent. This year she would’ve been thirty. She might’ve been a wife, perhaps, or even a mother by now.

When the coffee is done, I pour myself a cup, top it with cream, and set out a plate for the pie. I also set one out for Delia, and say the words aloud to her that I’ve been saying every year since she vanished: “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”