We Are Okay

Marin’s maternal grandfather and sole living relative, Gramps, is a character with tremendous influence in the text. The way LaCour presents him to the reader is particularly interesting. Marin is the sole narrator, so every character is viewed through her eyes; Gramps stands out because Marin has lost her ability to describe or interpret him with any confidence. Each scene he appears in, weighted with the knowledge of his death, raises more questions than it answers about his character and mental state.

Gramps’s character unfolds through Marin’s painful recollections of him in the months preceding his death. He appears to be a lonely man, despite being surrounded by friends and a loving granddaughter. He appears, too, to have never truly recovered from his daughter’s death. This is evident in the letters he writes to and from Birdie, but also in his angry response to Marin’s teacher encouraging him to keep her mother alive for her in memories. The reader knows that Gramps has been hospitalized for psychiatric care at least once, when Marin was a child. Marin is never given a diagnosis for Gramps’s mental illness, so the reader is left to speculate based on the observations of a lonely teenaged girl; there are clues that could suggest a variety of conditions: Gramps’s sporadic but impassioned loveseat lectures could be a sign of mania, his response to a friend refilling his drink could be paranoia, and the closely-held secret about Birdie could indicate delusions. His physical health is fragile, too.

There are so many secrets and shocking revelations surrounding his death that Marin—the lens through which we view him—struggles to know whether her grandfather loved or resented her. The reader does see a man who cared for his granddaughter, who adopted an orphaned toddler, and who raised and prepared her for the world. Marin, however, believes she suffered from the absence of an authentic and truthful emotional connection.

Gramps’s death, like his life, requires Marin and the reader to indulge in pure speculation. His thoughts, feelings, and motivations are as obscure on the day of his death as they were in the months and years preceding it. It is interesting, too, that Gramps may have chosen to walk into the same dangerous ocean that claimed his daughter’s life. Not having certainty about his death or a body to bury makes even his departure a point of confusion in the narrative. In some ways, Gramps is a character whose entire existence is as a stimulus—he acts, and Marin must react. His behavior doesn’t serve to calm Marin or provide her closure or certainty.

Mabel is Marin’s best friend and, for the last few months of their pre-college years, her girlfriend. Mabel is Mexican and lives with her parents, Ana and Javier. While Mabel is Marin’s closest friend, she also has a life and a confidence to which Marin aspires. Mabel’s family is full and together. She has loving, attentive parents. Mabel genuinely loves Marin on many levels, and it is her presence that allows Marin to begin healing. Her love appears to have validated Marin in the past, making her feel connected and a part of the world. Mabel represents warmth, love, and normalcy for Marin.

Mabel is as important in her absence as she is in her presence. She sends hundreds of unanswered text messages and makes hundreds of unreturned calls. Despite her love for Mabel, Marin seems unable to recognize that she is causing her friend pain—instead, she visualizes Mabel as perpetually happy and well adjusted, always belonging and fitting in easily wherever she is.

Interestingly, it is Mabel who overcomes her pain and rescues Marin from the depths of her own sadness. Mabel, whose girlfriend disappeared and didn’t speak to her for months, who shares her vulnerabilities and fears with Marin. It is Mabel, too, whose intimate knowledge of Marin allows her to understand what Marin is feeling even when Marin cannot quite articulate it. Mabel’s openness and forgiveness ease Marin into opening up and forgiving as well.

Ana is Mabel’s mother. She is a Mexican artist who produces works of collage and is increasingly known in the art world. Though Ana is present mostly on the fringes of Marin’s California memories, she is instrumental in Marin’s breakthrough at the end of the novel. Ana is the only maternal presence in the novel, a sharp contrast to the obscured absence of Marin’s own mother. It is through Marin’s time at Mabel’s house that she is able to understand the role of a mother and, subsequently, to realize what’s lacking in her relationship with her grandfather.

When Ana and Javier visit, their loving parental presence helps Marin break through the isolation and grief she’s been suspended in since her grandfather’s death. When Ana tells Marin that she has always wanted to be her mother, she breaks through to a part of Marin that had been stifled for years. It is her maternal love and support that allows Marin to finally find what she’s spent her life looking for: a memory of her mother.