“Hi,” a little voice says. “Hi, hi, hi. Guess what! Waffles!”
I peek one eye open. Leah’s grinning back at me, bouncing at the edge of my bed. I was up till sunrise with Vivi two nights ago, and I’ve had a pounding headache since.
“Jonah, come on,” Leah says. She pushes all her weight onto the bed, jostling me. “You’re the only one who’s not up.”
“Okay, okay.” I sit back against my elbows. “Your hair looks nice.”
“Thanks.” Leah’s hands move to the ends of her braids. They’re the fancy kind. I can’t even fathom how to bend hair like that. “Mom did it.”
I trudge downstairs with Leah traipsing in front of me. Something stops me in the kitchen doorway. And it’s not just the smell of hot waffle batter.
Naomi is manning the waffle iron. Isaac is trying, and failing, to juggle three oranges. Bekah’s tongue is sticking out in concentration as she slices up strawberries. Silas is stuffing his face with the first batch of waffles, piled high with whipped cream and powdered sugar.
My mom is putting water in the coffeemaker. She’s in her pajamas, but then so is everyone but Silas, who’s wearing his work polo.
My family is everywhere, busy with individual tasks and reaching over one another. But, somehow, doing it all together. It’s such a familiar scene that part of me expects to turn the corner and see my dad. I know he won’t be there. But it feels like he’s in the kitchen all the same—in Naomi’s determination and Silas’s easy humor and Bekah’s sensitivity and Isaac’s precociousness and Leah’s everyday excitement. In my . . . well, I don’t know what. But I hope something. Something good.
Silas’s plate clatters in the sink, and he sees me as he turns back. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty.”
I grunt. He swats me with his apron as he passes by.
“Silas,” my mom calls over her shoulder. “Before you go off to work, leave the dorm packing list out, okay? The one from the website? I’ll see where we are with it.”
“Okay,” he calls, hurrying up the stairs.
“Jonah,” Bekah says. “What toppings do you want?”
“Um. Strawberries and chocolate syrup.” I sit down on a stool. Leah grabs the whipped-cream canister and sprays it into her mouth. My dad used to do that with us. We’d all shriek with joy. It was too good to be true, eating straight whipped cream.
“Hey,” my mom says to Leah. “No spoiling your breakfast with pure sugar, missy.”
“Swrry,” Leah says, with her cheeks puffed out. She’s clearly not sorry.
My mom shakes her head but in an oh-you-kids kind of way. “Morning, pal. You want some coffee?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
She pulls another mug from the cabinet. Naomi slides a waffle to Bekah, who tops it with whipped cream and strawberries and passes it to Leah. They’re an efficient assembly line, like the kitchen staff at the restaurant. My dad would be proud.
“Isaac,” my mom says. “Put the fruit down and eat your food.”
One of the midair oranges hits the counter with a thud.
When the coffee is ready, my mom fills up the mugs and hands one to me. She sits down at the kitchen table with a plate of waffles. Bekah and Isaac sit on either side of her. I stay seated at the island between Naomi and Leah.
I have to find a way to tell Leah that Vivi’s leaving today and probably won’t stop in to say good-bye. I wait until she takes a bite, so she’ll have a second to process it. I use a calm, quiet voice.
“I’m going to see Vivi today, before she has to move. Do you want to draw her a picture or something?” I texted Vivi yesterday, to see if she needed help packing. She said no. I was so disappointed that I almost went over anyway. But then she told me to meet her at the park today. Of course—it’d be a dramatic farewell, with a meeting time and anticipation. I’m half dreading it. I’m half desperate for it.
Leah shakes her head. “I already gave her one. She came over yesterday morning, and we played.”
“Vivi came over while I was at the restaurant?”
“Yep! We played ponies and stuff.”
I glance at Naomi for more information. “Were you here when she came over?”
Naomi nods, not looking up from her waffle. “We all were.”
In a quieter voice, I ask her, “Why did she come over? To say good-bye?”
She chews a bite and swallows. “She came to pick up something of Sylvia’s, she said. I think she actually said ‘seeya’ as she was leaving. She was just . . . I don’t know. Being Vivi.”
I turn it over in my mind. I’d understand if she wanted to slip out with the shadows, after all she’s been through. Instead, she came over here, when she specifically knew I wouldn’t be home. To spend one more happy day with my brothers and sisters. My throat aches. I don’t think it’s the too-big bite of waffle I just tried to swallow.
Leah swings her feet below the island ledge. “I wish Vivi didn’t have to leave. It makes me sad when I think about it.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”
Naomi shakes her head. There’s something ironic in her smile. “You know what? Me too.”
I shower and shave and try to make my hair look presentable. There’s a sailor’s knot in my throat. I’m supposed to walk to the park, toward Vivi, and that part’s fine. It’s the walking away from her that I can’t imagine.
On my way, I think about how Isaac is obsessed with archaeology. I get it. The dinosaur bones and ancient artifacts and excavated graves—it’s cool. It comes to mind because Vivi climbed into my life with her fossil brush, and she swept away the dust. She rediscovered me under all that rubble, and that means I’ll always be a little bit hers. How am I supposed to say good-bye to someone like that?
I’m still yards away from the park when I realize she’s not here. You can feel a girl like Vivi. She shifts the ground under your feet. And I don’t sense them, the tremors beneath me.
There’s a note pinned to the oldest tree in the park—a tree scratched with her name. So this is how it will be. She gets to say good-bye. I don’t. I should have known.
Dear Jonah,
I lied. “Good-bye” is my least favorite word in my entire vocabulary, much worse than even “squish” or “protuberance,” and I just can’t say it to your handsome face. Give your family kisses from me, will you? I think I fell for all seven of you a little more every day. But mostly you, Jonah. Mostly, madly, beautifully you. Don’t tell okay? He’d be crushed.
Maybe in my next life, I’ll be a wave in the ocean, and you’ll be a mountain, and we’ll spend years and years brushing up against each other. You’ll shift so painfully slowly, and some days I’ll crash right into you and other days I’ll approach gently, licking your sides. That sounds like us, doesn’t it?
Or maybe we’ll meet in this same life. Maybe I’ll be working as a costume designer for a movie that’s filming in a city where you’re the chef of your own restaurant, and our eyes will lock in the middle of a busy street, and I’ll whisper, “It’s you.” Maybe I’ll sneak into your little bungalow house while your fiancée is out of town on business, and we’ll make love like we have in past lives and in this life. That doesn’t sound like something you’d do, but a girl can dream.
Either way, Jonah, I simply cannot wait to see who you become.
Until someday,
Vivi
P.S. I left something for you on the restaurant patio. Took me all night. I call it “How We Say Good-bye.”
I blink, taking in the sharp lines of her name and, next to it, a red lip print, kissing me good-bye. Of course she’d make a dramatic exit, even without being here. We can’t keep each other—I know that. But I wanted to see her one last time. I wanted to say thank you; I wanted to make one last attempt at memorizing her.
I hurry to the restaurant, clutching her good-bye note. What would she leave for me? What would take her all night?
I don’t even bother going into the restaurant itself. I cut through the side alleyway to the patio, and I stop dead in my tracks. I expected that she left something for me on the picnic table. But it’s not that.
On the wall opposite the patio, she painted me a mural.
My heart beats like tripping feet. I try to imagine her, balanced on a ladder all night with a sling on her arm. The patio lights are on—I never leave them on—so she must have painted by the light of them. She did this for me. How We Say Good-bye.
The Verona Cove lighthouse is in the right foreground. Beyond it, there are ships in the harbor—seven of them—all with white sails. I’m not sure how she gave a flat wall so much movement, like each sail is flickering. I can almost hear them beating against the wind. There’s one bigger boat in the distance, sailing toward the upper left corner. The horizon, gold and blue, looks inviting and limitless. The lone boat’s sails puff out in pride, a pioneer to the unknown. The seven boats in harbor seem to be waving good-bye, cheering Bon Voyage! Vivi crammed all her vivification into this one painting, right down to the nautical flags on the biggest ship.
I learned the letters associated with nautical flags when I was a kid. The first is a “D.” The second, blue and white: an “A.” Wait. My eyes skip down the mast. They spell out D-A-N-I-E-L-S. It strikes me like whiplash—there are also seven little ships in harbor. One for every living member of my family.
This is not a painting about Vivi and me saying good-bye.
The large boat sailing away for new adventures . . . it’s my dad. Oh my God. She painted a family portrait. She painted us as sailboats. I see it now—how could I have missed it at first?
My eyes fill, hot with tears. Because, apparently, casual crying is just something that I do now. My chest caves in with missing my dad.
I touch the horizon line, skimming my hand over the still-tacky paint. Gold melts into every color of blue where the ocean dips off into nothing. Do you believe in heaven? Vivi asked me once, and I told her the truth: that I want to. In one painting, she gave me something I’ve needed for months now: happiness even in uncertainty. What’s past that horizon line? And how many of us get our somedays? I don’t know.
But just because I don’t know doesn’t mean it can’t be great.
It takes me a second to notice the small letters painted in the bottom corner. But I knew they’d be there like I know they’ll be all over the world someday.
Vivi was here.