I was twenty-five when I met Hazel. She was, like, 100 years old, a widow, and lived in the apartment next door. I had seen her in the lobby, checking her mail, and in my haste, as a young woman, I thought I could just avoid her. The old ladies in my family were dangerously boring and could trap you for hours with their meandering versions of family history that they thought you ought to memorize. Because I was new to the building, and mostly not there—job, parties, the search for a decent boyfriend—I thought she might not even notice me. But that was not the case.

First she came over with an apple pie that she had made herself. The smell of pie preceded her, and I opened the door wondering why the air in my apartment suddenly smelled so strongly of cinnamon, and there she was, short, wrinkled, with curly white hair, and so obviously pleased with the pie which was still hot enough to require potholders.

“I’m Hazel,” she said. “I live next door. You must be O. L. Strayer.”

Which was how my name was on the mailbox in the lobby. “Oh!” I said. “I’m Olivia.” And because I had been properly brought up by the old women in my family, I said, “Come in! Would you like a cup of coffee?”

She bustled right in with her amazing pie and set it on my kitchen counter. She stuffed the potholders into the pocket of her apron (it was perfectly clean and might have been pressed as well) and started telling me about how impolite the last people in this apartment had been and how pleasantly surprised she was to find such a nice young person as her neighbor. As she talked, she rummaged in my kitchen for a pie server and the exact right knife, neither of which I had. At that point I was a lowly sub-editor, just a drone in a cubicle under unrelenting fluorescents. I pulled out a steak knife and a serving fork from a recent trip to Goodwill and we sat down at my tiny kitchen table to dig in to what turned out to be an incredible pie.

“You’re too thin!” said Hazel. “You should come over on Sunday and have dinner with me.”

Cool, I thought to myself. A nice old lady next door who likes to cook and share her meals. In my mind, I saw myself partied out and hung over on Sunday mornings, not worried about my next meal, or the fact that I hadn’t seen the inside of a grocery store for weeks. Hazel would be happy to feed me. She would feel great about looking out for me. We would chit chat when we saw each other at the mailboxes. We would be family-lite, without excessive obligations. I was a young person, after all, with responsibilities of my own, whatever those were, and in my mind, I thought Hazel understood that.

For a while that’s how it was. On Sunday afternoons when I dragged myself out of bed and went downstairs to get Saturday’s mail (often Friday’s mail, too), I’d see her with her little old lady wire grocery cart, just coming in from shopping. There was always a long baguette sticking out of a bag and some sort of healthy vegetable, and probably a chicken hidden underneath. She’d invite me over for Sunday night each week, never ever commenting on how I looked, even when I looked like I’d been dragged in by cats. She was always cheerful, always positive, and when I called home on Sunday afternoons, I had to keep myself from gushing about her to my dour family, who, for deep, ancestral reasons, were rarely cheerful or positive, and would have had serious questions about the intentions of strangers—even harmless little old ladies.

Hazel introduced me to her friends in the building. I met Marietta, Gladys, and Francine—all widows, all in their eighties, who sometimes came to Sunday dinner as well. They were nice to me, but also guarded about their opinions concerning my friendship with Hazel. They reminded me of the old women in my family, especially Marietta, who, after a couple of glasses of wine would fall into a deep funk and weep over how her sons never called. “I gave them everything,” she’d sob, and to me, “Never get married! Men are terrible creatures!” Marietta had a touch of The Dementia, Hazel once told me in private, and that was why she would repeat her sad stories over and over again. I was familiar with The Dementia, though the old women in my family just really enjoyed telling people repetitive stories about their miserable lives. They hadn’t actually lost their minds yet, and I suspected that was where Marietta was coming from, since she seemed perfectly normal in all other ways.

Marietta died in March, about six months into my relationship with Hazel. Hazel seemed resigned instead of sad, even though I knew she was very upset. She asked if I would drive her to the viewing, and I said yes.

The funeral home was unremarkable except that the old people who attended the viewing seemed very familiar with the place, as though, like a bar, they went there all the time. One confused old woman asked me where the bathroom was. I didn’t know, but another old woman took her there, holding her hand as though they’d known each other for centuries. Marietta looked good, although it was clear from her expression that she would have preferred to be almost anywhere else. I’d been to viewings and funerals before, but mostly when I was very young, and too short to see the body in the coffin. It was a new experience for me, to be face to face with the corpse of someone I’d had adult conversations with. I was standing there, staring at what was left of poor Marietta when Gladys and Francine wandered over and began their critique.

“They did a good job with her hair,” said Francine. “Very natural.”

“But the makeup,” said Gladys. “Did they even pay attention to what they were doing? She just looks dead.”

Hazel wandered over with a cup of hot tea. “She always loved that green suit,” she said sadly.

“That suit!” said Gladys. “Oh my God.”

“Green was not her color,” added Francine. “And just look at those shoes.”

We all looked at Marietta’s scuffed black heels. Even though she was dead, Marietta cringed with embarrassment. The shoes were old and lumpy with wear. They’d been polished, but it was a half-assed polish. It looked like someone had used spray paint on them.

“Oh my God,” Gladys said again. “Oh my God.”

Poor Marietta, I thought.

The very next day, which was a Sunday, Hazel knocked on my door. There was no pie this time, and she came in and sat down without saying anything. I brought her some coffee and tried to get her to chat. I’d just landed a job as an editor at a big magazine in a different state. It started in two weeks and I was incredibly excited. I wanted to tell Hazel all about it, but she seemed preoccupied, and I figured it was about Marietta. I tried to think of what to say to cheer her up, but all I could come up with were things like, we’ve all got to go sometime, or, at least it was quick. As a young person, I knew nothing about death, and I was very aware of that, so it was a surprise when the first thing she said was, “I need to go shopping.” She gave me an earnest little-old-lady look. “Do you have time?”

“Of course,” I said. “Where do you want to go?”

“Macy’s,” she said, and I realized she wasn’t talking about the grocery store.

So I drove her to Macy’s. We walked in through the revolving door, and I looked around at the options; sportswear, evening wear, office wear, casual.

“Where do you want to start?” I said.

“I want a nice suit,” she said. “And new shoes.”

And that was when I realized we were shopping for her funeral.

“Oh,” I said.

“Let’s see what they have in formal attire,” said Hazel.

In the women’s section of formal attire, we found clothes for fancy graduations and big-ticket fundraisers. There were dresses for galas, covered in sequins and slit down the leg.

“You should try that on,” said Hazel. “You’ve got the perfect figure for it.”

Of course it was way out of my price range. “I could wear it to work,” I said, joking.

“You’d have a boyfriend in thirty seconds,” said Hazel, and we both laughed.

Deeper in the racks we found last year’s stuff on sale. It was nice, and it was certainly cheaper.

“Slacks or skirt? I said, holding up a dark blue jacket set which included both.

“Gladys hates blue,” said Hazel. “She says it makes you look even older. And she would hate those buttons.”

I put the suit back. “Not green, then?”

She shook her head. “It’s not my color.”

We kept looking, slowly moving through the racks, and I found myself getting angrier and angrier with Gladys. “You know,” I said finally, “who cares what Gladys thinks?”

She fingered a beautiful herringbone jacket with black silk slacks. “I just want to look respectable,” she said. “I don’t want to look poor and worn out.” Her shoulders slumped and she turned away from the herringbone.

“That one’s gorgeous,” I said, “and very respectable. The shoulders are even a little bit padded.” I showed her. “You’d look commanding. No one would dare make fun of you.”

She turned back halfway to the beautiful jacket and slacks. “Should I look commanding?” she asked, sounding for the first time, querulous and old.

“You should look like yourself,” I said, with a ridiculous amount of wisdom. “And no one should make fun of you. Poor Marietta! That wasn’t fair.”

“Poor Marietta.” Hazel turned back to the jacket. “You’re right,” she said. “And why would I care if Gladys likes it or not? She’ll only see it once, and afterwards, I’ll never see her again.” She picked up the hanger with the jacket and the slacks. “I think I’ll try this on.”

When I left for my new job, there were heartfelt goodbyes between me and Hazel’s elderly friends, but of course Hazel’s goodbye meant the most to me. She’d looked great in the store in her herringbone jacket and silk slacks. Her new shoes were a size too small, but she told me it didn’t matter. She didn’t want to look like she had banana feet at her viewing. I told her that I would smack Gladys as hard as I could if she said anything mean, but I had a deep and unhappy feeling that neither Gladys nor anyone else would let me know when Hazel died.

I started crying when she kissed my cheek.

“I’m glad I met you,” she said.