Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Letter on Another Occasion
for Arline Raab (1936–1999)
Steve Kistulentz
Christmas Eve, the forecast seventy-nine and sunny,
no hope for snow, your daughter and I drove
in from Miami, instead of across town. Near water,
in a rented apartment, we hatched a memory
narrow as the kitchen that required perfect choreography
to fit three cooks, each of us assigned specific duties,
so that when the day finally gave in, the table where we sat
might look the same as the table from any other year.
In those quarters, your daughters diced and nipped. Cooking,
you explained, was passion, practice. The secret to the sauce—
the temperature of the butter before I set in the whisk.
We were all older, and that Christmas you were sick.
On another occasion, there might not have been leftovers,
but Christmas morning, I brought you eggs with béarnaise,
angels on toast. In bed, you shared Ted’s letters asking
your parents for your hand in marriage, though I am sure
you would have run off with him anyway. On the bed,
we talked about absent, dead brothers. And today, here, now,
I am afraid, and I cannot remember who exactly was there,
so for these purposes, I have decided that everyone was.
Crab Orchard Review ◆ 111