My parents sit at the kitchen table having coffee and cereal when I stumble in. They look at me as though I told them I have an invisible friend who tells me to collect knives and save my pee in jars.
“Hey, sweetie,” my mom says. “We heard you up in the middle of the night.”
I rub my face. “Yeah. Couldn’t sleep.”
“You should rest today,” my dad says. “School starts soon and you haven’t been sleeping well. And this Judge Edwards thing can’t be helping.”
“I can’t sleep anymore today. Plus I’m going to go help Blake’s grandma weed her garden and do whatever else.”
My mom hands me a bowl of cereal. “You still haven’t talked to us at all about everything. It’s been a week since Blake’s funeral. It’s not healthy to bottle things up. If you won’t talk to us, we want you to talk to someone.”
“I’ve been through this with Georgia. I’m fine.”
My dad tries to speak gently. “You’re not fine. People who are fine don’t go to the ER with panic attacks.” He sounds frustrated. I can’t really blame him, but he frustrates me too sometimes, so fair is fair.
“That happened once.”
“Are you working on anything new? Any new stories or poems?” my mom asks. “That seems like it would help.”
“No.” Being asked the question while I’m totally blocked up certainly doesn’t make me feel better. Maybe my muse was in the car with Sauce Crew.
As we sit there together, I can sense their minds turning, trying to take advantage of the opportunity. Looking for the right words. I know what the air feels like around people who are trying to find perfect words and coming up empty. So I eat quickly and stay mum.
As I go to brush my teeth, my dad says, “We love you, Carver. It’s hard to watch you hurting.”
“I know,” I say. “I love you guys too.” And if it’s hard to watch me hurting, imagine how the hurting feels.
“Okay, check it out, y’all. Squirrel rodeo,” Blake says.
“What, like we’re going to ride the squirrels?” Mars asks.
“Yeah, we’re gonna ride the squirrels. No, numbnuts, here’s how it works. You see a squirrel by the side of the path, and you move to steer it onto the path. Then you follow it slowly. Not too fast, or it’ll bolt and you’ll lose. Every time it starts to go off the path, you move and cut it off, so it keeps going on the path. You have to keep it on the path for eight seconds. Squirrel rodeo.”
“Just when I’m afraid we’ve reached the limits of your hillbillyness, you dig down deep,” Mars says.
“At least he’s not suggesting that we catch the squirrels and eat them,” I say.
“Yet,” Mars says. “He’s not saying that yet.”
“Y’all are never going to make the professional squirrel rodeo circuit with that attitude,” Blake says.
“Listen, bruh, I signed up for a peanut butter and banana milkshake from Bobbie’s Dairy Dip. I did not sign up to chase no damn squirrels with my last week of summer vacation.”
“What if your dad could see you chasing squirrels around Centennial Park?” Eli asked.
“He’d be like, ‘Thurgood? To what end are you chasing these squirrels? How will the chasing of these squirrels advance your studies and learning? Are you pursuing excellence in the chasing of these squirrels? Your grandfather did not march with Dr. King so that you could chase squirrels.’ ” Mars delivers these lines in an imposing, staid tone.
We crack up because Mars is exaggerating only a little.
Blake raises his hand for us to shut up and approaches a squirrel by the side of the asphalt walking path. “Here we go,” he whispers, phone out and filming. He carefully herds the squirrel onto the path. For about seven seconds, the squirrel trots in front of him. Blake maneuvers to cut off each attempt by the squirrel to veer off the path until finally it bolts. He groans. We laugh.
For the next fifteen minutes, we all try our hand at squirrel rodeo while Blake films us. None of us is very good, but we enjoy ourselves.
Finally we sit under the shade of a tall oak, sweating in the close afternoon heat. Blake edits videos and posts them to his YouTube. Eli texts someone. Mars sketches. I work on a story on my phone.
“New tradition,” I say after a while. “At the end of every summer before school, we grab some Bobbie’s Dairy Dip, come to Centennial Park, and play squirrel rodeo.” If Sauce Crew had official positions, mine would be Keeper of the Sacred Traditions. I love the idea of the families we choose having all the features of familydom, including traditions.
“A tradition to rival Christmas and Thanksgiving,” Mars says.
“Way more fun than Christmas and Thanksgiving, dude,” Blake says.
“What about when we’re in college?” Eli asks.
“We’ll do it while we’re all home over the summer,” I say.
We hang out that way in the relative cool of the tree-formed shadows splayed across the grass, the sunset a purple fire in the leaves. The cicadas hum in our ears like the Earth vibrating.
There’s that feeling that you’ll never be lonely again.
That every time you speak, someone you love and who loves you back will be listening.
Even then I knew what I had.
Nana Betsy takes a while to come to the door after I ring the bell. “Blade? To what do I owe this pleasure?” It’s been a week since Blake’s funeral and she still exudes rumpled bereavement. I’m familiar with this from looking in the mirror. Inside the house behind her, it’s messier than I’ve ever seen it. The lawn is overgrown.
I pull my dad’s work gloves from my butt pocket. “You said Blake helped you with the weeding and it was hard for you to do. So I’m here to help you weed the garden and do whatever else.”
“Oh, heavens.” She waves her hand. “You don’t need to do that. I can pay a boy from the neighborhood a few dollars to do it. But come in. Pardon the mess.”
“I do need to do it.” I meet her eyes. “Please.”
She fixes her genial, even gaze on me. “No you don’t.” She says it softly but firmly.
“Yes I do.” And suddenly I want to cry, so I pretend to cough and look away. I have a flash urge to tell her about the possible DA investigation. As quickly as it comes, I quash it. I can’t bear her thinking of me as a criminal.
She lets me compose myself before she answers. “All right. Let’s go in the backyard. I’ll show you what needs done. Meanwhile, I’ll run to the grocery to pick up a few things to make fresh lemonade and feed you lunch. You deserve better than the week-old leftovers I’ve been living on.”
I really don’t. “You don’t need to do that.”
“Blade. This is not up for debate.”
We go into the backyard. She shows me where to weed. She gets me a basket for the ripe tomatoes. She shows me to the lawn mower and gas, and how to use it. She drives off to the store, and I set to work.
The salt of sweat burns my eyes in the syrupy, stagnant midmorning heat, the sharp, herbaceous scent of tomato vines in my nose. I lose myself in the mindless rhythm of the work. I forget about Judge Edwards. I forget about Adair. I forget about Darren. I forget about the Accident. Maybe this is good practice for when I go to prison and I’m cleaning up the highway in an orange jumpsuit. Bend down. Yank. Toss to the side. Bend down. Yank. Toss to the side. Bend down. Yank. Toss to the side. At first I use my dad’s gloves, but my hands are getting all sweaty so I cast them aside. My hands turn brown with dirt and green from the broken weeds. I don’t even notice Nana Betsy returning.
I’m halfway through mowing the lawn when I see her waving to me from the porch. I cut off the lawn mower.
“Lunchtime! Bring in some of those fresh tomatoes.”
I grab a few of the biggest and reddest ones and step into the blessed cool of the air-conditioned house, thoroughly wiping my feet.
“In the kitchen,” Nana Betsy calls.
I start to enter the kitchen, but for some reason, I can’t make myself. I want to go back outside and keep sweating; keep punishing my body. I want to feel hunger and thirst. I don’t want Nana Betsy to give me comfort and refreshment.
“Come on now,” Nana Betsy calls again.
I break my reverie and walk directly to the sink, scrubbing the dirt and weed juice from my hands. On the kitchen table sits a loaf of white bread, a jar of Duke’s mayonnaise, salt and pepper shakers, a pitcher of fresh-squeezed lemonade clinking with ice, a serrated knife, and two plates.
“Sit down,” she says, pulling out a wooden chair from the table. “Nothing fancy, but to my mind, there’s not a thing on God’s Earth better than a fresh tomato sandwich on a hot day.”
“I agree.” My sodden T-shirt sticks cold to my torso in the air-conditioning.
Nana Betsy picks out one of the nicer tomatoes and cuts it into thick circles. She slathers mayonnaise on a couple of pieces of bread and lays some of the tomato slices on one of the pieces. “I’ll let you do your own salt and pepper.” She makes one for herself.
“Mmmmm,” she says, getting up to fetch a roll of paper towels for us to use to wipe the pink tomato-mayo juice from our hands and faces. “Fresh tomatoes taste like sunshine, don’t they?”
“Mmmm-hmmm,” I say, taking a sip of the sharp, tangy lemonade. It makes my salivary glands ache. “They taste like summer.” Or they’re supposed to. I don’t deserve this and so it tastes like sand on my tongue, even though it’s a perfectly fine sandwich.
“That’s exactly what Blake always used to say. He loved tomato sandwiches.”
“Blake kinda loved all food.”
Nana Betsy chuckles. “That he did.”
“Once, Blake and I were over at my house, and we were starving, but neither of us had any money to go buy something to eat. And our fridge was full of all this gross kale and stuff because my parents were on a health kick. So we went through my kitchen for something we knew how to cook. We found a pack of spaghetti, but we didn’t have any sauce. So we ate it with ketchup and mustard.”
Nana Betsy snorts and covers her mouth. She’s shaking with laughter.
“So anyway,” I continue, “I take maybe two bites, but Blake? He loves it. Eats the whole rest of the bowl. And he goes ‘Blade, Blade, we should make this a new food. We should call it hamburger spaghetti. Hamsghetti. We should sell this idea.’ And I go ‘Blake, the only reason you find this edible is you’re so hungry. This is totally gross.’ ”
Nana Betsy is sniffling and wiping tears, but they’re tears of laughter. For a moment, I don’t feel guilty anymore. The smallest taste of redemption. And it’s sweet on my tongue.
“Boy, between the two of us, we really had Blake’s number, didn’t we?” Nana Betsy says.
I catch an errant drip of tomato juice. “Yeah.”
“Funny how people move through this world leaving little pieces of their story with the people they meet, for them to carry. Makes you wonder what’d happen if all those people put their puzzle pieces together.” Nana Betsy takes a big bite and stares off, looking contemplative. “I have a crazy idea. I think it’s crazy.”
“Go ahead.”
“Something I most regret is that I never got to have a last day with Blake. Nothing fancy. No climbing Mount Everest or skydiving. Just doing the little things we used to love to do together. One more time.”
She rocks gently and closes her eyes for a second. Not as if sleeping. As if meditating. She stops rocking and opens her eyes. They’ve regained the tiniest glimmer they had before all this, and it’s the only ray of hope I’ve felt in the last month. As if happiness is something that you can never extinguish entirely, but that lives smoldering under wet ashes.
“What if we were to have one last day with Blake? You and I.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“I mean we get together and have the last day that Blake and I never got to have; the one that you and Blake never got to have. We put our pieces of Blake together and let him live another day with us.”
I feel like I’m halfway to my car with something I’ve shoplifted, and I hear a security guard yelling for me to come back. “I mean, I—I don’t know if I could—I—”
She’s sitting forward now. “Course you could. First off, you two were thick as thieves. Bet you knew him in ways I didn’t.”
“Maybe.”
“And I bet I know plenty about him that you didn’t.”
“Definitely.”
“Second of all, Blake’s let me read your writing.”
“He did? What?”
“The story that takes place in East Tennessee after a volcanic eruption kills most everyone off. I loved it. I’d meant to say something earlier.”
“Wow.”
“Point is: if anyone can write Blake’s story again for one more day, it’s you.”
“But. Are you sure you want me?” Because I wouldn’t want me.
“I’m sure. Who else could do it?”
Deep trepidation knots my guts. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to answer now. Think about it. What’s the worst that could happen? It wouldn’t be exactly like having Blake. But we can’t have Blake. So maybe we can have this.”
Her eyes are gentle. There’s less distance in them than the last time I saw her. I don’t want to say no. But I can’t bring myself to say yes.
“You don’t owe me a thing,” she says. “If you can’t do this, I’ll understand. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and think it’s a bad idea or that I can’t handle it. But will you consider it?”
“I will. I promise.” I study her face for any sign that I’ve broken something. I see none. At least there’s that. “Thanks for lunch. I better finish the mowing.”
Nana Betsy leans across the table and hugs me for a long while, her hand on my cold back. “Thank you,” she whispers.
I lie on my bed, still wet from the shower, with my fan blowing on me. I find this soothing. It conjures up getting out of the wading pool when you’re a carefree kid and letting the sun dry you.
I plan my night. Most have been spent sitting around watching Netflix with Georgia. But she’s going out with friends. I suddenly realize how quiet and barren my life has become. How little my phone beeps with a new text or call. How many solitary nights lie ahead of me.
I don’t want to be alone. Normally I’m fine with it. But not tonight. My mind turns to my sole possibility for company.
I start to text Jesmyn but equivocate. Is this weird? We’ve had a sort of emotional connection, but was it somehow conditioned on the moment? On the detachment of texting and talking on the phone?
Under other circumstances, I might have agonized more. But loneliness breeds a desperate courage—the what-do-I-have-left-to-lose? kind. I text her before I can reconsider.
Hey. Want to hang out tonight?
My phone buzzes. Totally. What time?
I sigh in relief. 7? I can pick you up.
Cool. 5342 Harpeth Bluffs Drive.
It’s like I finally opened the seal on a jar of salve.
I go to the kitchen and warm up some grocery-store rotisserie chicken I find in the fridge.
“What are you up to tonight?” Georgia asks. She sits at the kitchen table, texting, dressed to go out.
“Hanging out with a friend,” I say through a mouthful.
“A man-date or—”
“No, Jesmyn. Eli’s girlfriend. The girl you saw with Eli’s parents at Mars’s and Eli’s funerals.”
“The hot one? You should’ve introduced me.”
“She and I have gotten closer since then.”
“What’re you guys doing?”
“I have a couple of ideas. Mostly talking.”
This is the point when Georgia would ordinarily be teasing me. Mussing my hair. Trying to give me a wet willie. And I wish she would, because that would be a concession to normalcy. It sounds weird to say out loud that I’m hanging with my deceased friend’s girlfriend. I need Georgia’s teasing to tell me it’s okay.
Instead, she gives me an aw-isn’t-it-great-that-your-life-is-moving-forward pat on the shoulder. “It’ll be healthy to talk with someone.”
My mom walks in. “Hey, honey. How’s Betsy doing?”
“Fine,” I mumble through a bite. “Sad.”
“Dad and I are watching a movie tonight. You’re invited.”
“I’m going to hang out with a friend tonight.”
Her face registers pleased surprise. I didn’t know you had any other friends. “Do we know him?”
“No.”
“Okay. If you change your mind or get home early, we’re here.”
“I appreciate it.”
Georgia’s giving me a look, so I scrupulously study my plate until I’m done eating.
Jesmyn lives in Bellevue. It’s about fifteen minutes from my front door to sitting in front of her house in one of the treeless, anonymous tracts of new housing that dot that part of Nashville.
I’m fifteen minutes early. I’m chronically early places. I’m used to waiting for things to start.
I sit in front of Jesmyn’s house until seven, listening to music and wondering what Eli thought when he pulled up here for the first time. This neighborhood couldn’t be more different from Eli’s. He lived in Hillsboro Village, near Vanderbilt University, in a beautiful old house on a tree-lined street. I wonder for a second if he can see me sitting in front of his girlfriend’s house. I hope that if he can, he can see into my heart and see how much I wish it were him sitting here instead.
At exactly 7:02 (I’ve learned it unnerves people when I walk up right on time), I knock on Jesmyn’s front door. A tall white guy with thick gray hair answers.
“Oh…sorry, I might have the wrong house,” I say.
He smiles. “Are you looking for Jesmyn?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Jesmyn’s dad. Jack Holder. Nice to meet you.”
We shake hands. “I’m Carver Briggs. Good to meet you.”
“Come in.”
Her house is spacious, clean, and white. White ceilings, white walls. The scent of berries and green apples. The hardwood floors gleam. Everything looks new. A huge grand piano occupies part of the living room.
“You have a beautiful house,” I say as I follow him up a carpeted staircase.
“Thanks,” Mr. Holder says. “We only completely unpacked a month ago. We’ve been here since about mid-May, right after Jesmyn’s school let out.”
“What brought y’all to Nashville?” I ask.
“Position with Nissan. Realizing that the Madison County school system was probably not the springboard to Juilliard that Jesmyn needed.”
We walk down the hall. Mr. Holder turns to me. “So…were you friends with Eli?”
“Best friends.” I knew I’d get the question, but it still stings.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.” I wish I could gather into a stadium every single person on Earth who’d ever be inclined to express their sympathies for my loss at any time. Then, at the count of three (and perhaps the firing of a cannon), everyone would express their sympathies simultaneously for thirty seconds. I would stand in the middle of the field and let the sympathy wash over me in a tidal wave. And then I’d be done once and for all with the slow trickle.
“To a father, no guy is ever good enough for your daughter. But I always thought Eli seemed like a nice and talented young man.”
“He was.”
We walk up to an open bedroom. Mr. Holder peeks his head in and knocks on the doorjamb. “Jes? Honey, your friend is here.”
I peek around him. Clothes are strewn everywhere. Concert posters cover her walls. Modern music, classical music, new posters, vintage posters. Jesmyn sits at a synthesizer connected to a laptop with a cable. I hear the hushed thumping of keys as she plays with her eyes closed, headphones on. Her face has a beatific expression—so different from her mournful look when last I saw her, which was at the funeral. I regret interrupting. She jumps at the sound of her dad’s voice. She glances over at us and then at her laptop. She hits the space bar, pausing what appears to be a recording program. She pulls off her headphones and sets them on top of her synthesizer.
“Hey, Carver. Sorry, lost track of time.”
“No worries,” I say.
Mr. Holder leans against the wall.
“Seriously, Dad?” Jesmyn says.
“Jes.”
She rolls her eyes. “We’re gonna be up here for like two minutes while I put my shoes on.”
I blush. “I can wait downstairs—”
“No, it’s fine. Carver, it’s a pleasure,” Mr. Holder says. He holds up two fingers to Jesmyn with a cautionary lift of the eyebrows. “Two minutes and I’m coming back up.” He goes downstairs.
Jesmyn rolls her eyes at his back. “Sorry.”
“Dads be daddin’.” I nod at the laptop. “What are you working on?”
She waves it off. “Oh…it’s—I write and record songs. Just a thing I’m trying. Come in. The clock is ticking, apparently.”
I step over a pair of jeans and sit on her bed (the bed Eli used to sit on). “I thought you only played piano.”
“It’s all I do well. Eli said you write.”
“Yeah. Not songs or anything. That’s my dad’s thing. I write short stories and poems and stuff. I want to write a novel someday.”
“He said you were good.”
“I don’t know.”
“You got into Nashville Arts.”
“Yeah.”
Jesmyn walks to her closet. She faces away as she sits and pulls on a pair of socks and her battered brown cowboy boots. This is how I’m used to seeing her (if you can be used to seeing someone you’ve seen maybe seven other times). Not in funeral black. A flowy, white sleeveless blouse and cutoffs. Her fingernails and toenails are painted two white, one black, one white, one black. Piano keys.
It casts a shadow on my heart that these are the circumstances under which I’m watching a beautiful girl ready herself to leave the house with me. In an ordinary existence, this moment would hum with endless possibility. It would be the precise second when the supernova of love is born. Something you tell your grandkids about: I remember when I went to pick up your grandma for our first date. She wasn’t ready yet. I got to see her playing her keyboard for a second or two, looking like a leaf slowly falling; drifting on the wind. She stopped and I sat on her bed and watched her find a pair of clean socks. She grabbed the straps on the sides of her cowboy boots and sat on the floor, pulling them on, leather creaking. Her room smelled like her honeysuckle lotion and some sort of heady incense that smelled both new and ancient to me. I watched her making these everyday movements, and even in such an ordinary moment she was extraordinary.
This moment is a cruel parody of that. It doesn’t belong to me. There’s nothing beginning here. We’re bidding something farewell; laying one more thing to rest.
I hope someday it feels right again to pick up a girl and get ice cream and eat it at a park.
I hope there are beginnings in my future.
I’m tired of burying things.
I’m tired of the liturgies of ending.