I GOT lost twice trying to remember Emily’s directions to the cafeteria: take a left at the first turn in the back hall, then a quick right, then take the freight elevator, then at the third floor make another left and a quick right after that. The first time, I ended up in a dead-end hallway filled with linen carts heaped with damp towels. The second time, I pushed through a door that led to a loading dock. Three men in janitorial uniforms looked up from their cigarettes to eye me warily.

“Looking for a delivery, sweetheart?” one of them said. “I’d load you up all right.” I was too stunned and insulted to say anything back, so I simply turned away as the three of them laughed.

I found the freight elevator on the third try. When the doors groaned closed, I leaned back against the far wall and shut my eyes. I willed the elevator to get stuck, so that I could stay like that for hours, alone and quiet, no one asking me for anything at all. But all too soon, the doors opened again.

The caf smelled depressing, even from a distance. All of the hot food had an overcooked, stewed quality. I let a grim-faced woman splatter a scoop of mashed potatoes onto my tray and helped myself to a pile of iceberg lettuce, brown at the edges, and a mealy tomato slice, then topped it off with a heap of croutons. I slid into a booth with a plastic-covered bench that squeaked every time I moved. I knew I should eat: my stomach had gotten better and I was starving, yet all of the food on my plate seemed like the most depressing version of itself.

As I poked at my lunch I thought about how, after my dad’s funeral, the casino had sent a catered meal to my mother’s house, but the timing was off and by then anyone who had been staying with us—my grandparents from Ohio, my aunt and uncle from Arizona—had already gone. Huge silver chafing dishes full of roast beef, pasta in a vodka cream sauce, shrimp fra diavolo, scalloped potatoes, Caesar salad, chocolate mousse, two kinds of cheesecake, and a greasy paper sack of garlic bread for just the two of us. We ate in the living room, so we didn’t have to sit at the table with his empty chair, the rich sauces roiling in our guts.