Red

You come home from work and find a package on your doorstep. It’s from your mother; you recognize her writing on the return address—slanting cursive like trees bowing in the wind. You come in and set the package on the floor. Your cat sniffs the brown paper cautiously, and then rubs her face against it. You eat a bowl of cereal, watch a bad movie, and go to bed. In the morning you see your cat atop the package, asleep. You join a friend for coffee, buy groceries, and come home. You practice yoga. In downward-facing dog, you look through your legs and focus on the package. You decide to open it. “Nana,” you sigh. It’s an odd assortment of her belongings: cookbooks, holiday pins, old black and white photos taken in the days when no one smiled, a tube of bright red lipstick. What you really wanted was the old captain’s chair she kept in the basement. Nana died three weeks ago. Cancer. She died on her birthday. You didn’t go to her funeral. You had seen her a few weeks before she died. You’d said your goodbyes. You examine the lipstick; the case is gold and has a little mirror that flips up, just big enough to see your mouth. You notice the hair on your upper lip. The phone rings, it’s your friends: a salsa band is playing tonight and you agree to go. But first, you nap. Later, your hair is wrapped in a towel and depilatory hangs upon your lip as a white mustache. You stand before the fogged mirror and think of Nana. You think of her as you last saw her in the nursing home: her hair, the color of the beach in winter, swaying in the air like dandelion fluff. Each time you visit she’s a little bit whiter, as if performing a slow disappearing act, but her mouth remains red, like a gash beneath her nose. The lipstick makes you feel contempt toward her—you don’t try to understand why. She leans toward you, her nightgown falling away to reveal shrunken breasts, gray and lifeless like the underbellies of trout dangling on a line. She smiles and squeezes your hand tightly. You tell yourself to smile back as you envision a car disappearing into darkness, a forlorn, blinking taillight. You don’t stay long. You think, it’s better this way. Now the doorbell rings. You shimmy into your dress, spray perfume, give your cat a clump of salmon-flavored food. Before leaving, you see the tube of lipstick lying on the floor next to the opened package. You smooth the red across your lips in long, lingering strokes, tickle your cat at the base of her tail, turn off the lights, and enter the night.