4 October 2015
Nana leaned on the shopping cart as we strolled through Publix, ignoring the other customers who shot us pissed-off glares every time she blocked the aisle to scan the shelves for some item from the crumpled list in her hand.
“What about pork chops?” she asked. “I could stuff them. Maybe fry some okra.”
“Sounds good.” I grabbed a jar of spaghetti sauce and tossed it in the cart, which was filling up rapidly because Nana couldn’t decide what she wanted for dinner. So far she’d suggested tacos, salmon with spinach, shepherd’s pie, and lasagna, and we’d gathered the ingredients for each. “Did you teach Mom how to cook?”
Nana kept shuffling down the aisle as if she hadn’t heard me. I started to repeat the question when she said, “Eleanor loved to watch me in the kitchen when she was a little girl, but I was never much of a cook. My grandmother passed her recipes to my mother, and she passed them to me, but your mother doesn’t need recipes. She’s quite gifted.”
I grimaced. “So the Lewis women have been inflicting that meatloaf on their families for four generations?”
Nana smacked my arm. “For your information, your mother loves my meatloaf.”
“Get real. She spits it out in her napkin and flushes it down the toilet. Haven’t you ever noticed how often she visits the can on meatloaf nights?”
Nana hit me again, harder. “That’s for lying to your grandmother.”
I smiled and hugged her. She felt small and fragile, the way ice over a lake thins as the weather turns warm. Cracks were beginning to appear on the surface, but she’d always been a stubborn constant in my life, and I refused to count her out.
“It was your father,” Nana said as we moved from one aisle to the next. “He encouraged your mother to become a chef when they were still in high school.”
“If she loves it so much, she should quit waiting tables and get a job cooking.”
“Cooking reminds her of him.” Nana stopped the cart and seized a box of couscous, ignoring the frustrated grunt of a red-faced man as he squeezed past us. “Sometimes, Henry, remembering hurts too much.” She patted my arm, her wrinkled fingers like dry carrots.
“Then they shouldn’t have gotten divorced.”
“Life rarely works out the way we plan it.”
“He left because of me, didn’t he?”
Nana stopped pushing the cart. She leaned on it heavily like it was the only thing holding her up. “Why would you think that?”
“It was my fault. I know it.”
“You know that’s not true, Henry.” Her words were sharp, and they stung more than her slap. She continued walking. “Now, enough of this. Tell me one good thing that happened to you today.”
At first I thought she was joking, but she was lucid and totally serious. “Nothing happened.”
“One thing, Henry.”
“It was a boring day.”
Nana motioned for me to grab a gallon of milk as we passed the dairy case. “When I was sick—so sick, I thought I would die—sometimes the highlight of my day was that I hadn’t soiled myself.”
“Gross!”
“When the days are darkest, dear, you latch on to happiness wherever you find it.”
Mom hadn’t let me or Charlie see Nana when she was going through chemotherapy, and we didn’t talk about it after, either, but the specter of death had haunted us for months. Even when her doctors said her cancer was in remission, I still felt the weight of death in Nana’s house. I figured if she could find joy during those terrible times, I could give her one good thing. “I had lunch with this guy. It was pretty okay.”
“Does this young man have a name?”
“Diego Vega.” I liked the way it rolled off my tongue. “He’s new. We’ve been eating together the past few days.”
Nana tossed creamed corn and green beans and artichoke hearts into our cart. “I like new. New is mysterious. Tell me about him.”
Lunch with Diego had become a thing, against my better judgment, but with each day that passed, I learned more about him. He lives with his sister, Viviana, who is a neat freak; his favorite cereal is Fruity Oatholes; he loves superhero movies, even that train wreck Green Lantern; he drives a twelve-year-old Jetta named Please Start that frequently doesn’t; and his greatest fear is being murdered by his time-traveling self from the future. We both had things we refused to discuss—I steered away from asking him why he moved, and he didn’t bring up the sluggers—but Diego had become part of my life by default, and I didn’t hate it. In fact, I began looking forward to lunch, to discussing our favorite bands and which teachers were probably doing it in the break room.
“There’s not much to tell.”
“Don’t lie to your grandma.”
I knew she was trying, but there was nothing going on, and nothing likely to happen. “He’s just a friend, Nana.”
“Why?”
“He had a girlfriend, which means he’s probably not looking for a boyfriend. Honestly, neither am I.”
“Well, a regular old friend is still a good thing to have. Since Jesse passed, I’ve been worried about you. And what happened to the young woman who used to come around? She always brushed my hair.”
“It’s complicated. Everything’s complicated.” Only, sometimes I wonder if it has to be. I could call Audrey anytime, and we could pick up our friendship like nothing happened. But something did happen. Jesse is dead, and it’s my fault or her fault or both our faults. There’s no room in my life for Audrey in this After Jesse world.
“Still, Charlie—”
“Henry.”
Nana frowned. “Henry’s dead.”
“No, I’m Henry. Your grandson.”
“That’s not funny, Charlie.” Nana shook her head and kept on like I hadn’t interrupted her. “It’s nice that you’ve made a new friend. You should invite him over for dinner.”
It seemed pointless to even consider it. Pointless to put in the effort to get to know him when the world was going to end. Except, I could imagine him sitting between Mom and Nana, kicking me under the table as my brother unleashed his most embarrassing stories about me. I could picture Diego sitting where Jesse once had, and that stirred up emotions—both pleasant and painful—I wasn’t equipped to deal with in the cereal aisle of the grocery store.
“Maybe,” I said. “Just so long as you promise not to cook meatloaf.”