Grampa’s on the couch in the den when I come down from changing out of dress clothes into sweats. His tie’s off, his dress shirt untucked and unbuttoned, his belly pressing against his thin undershirt as he flips through channels. He stops on a replay of last night’s Wizards game, sighs, and tosses the remote down on the couch next to him. He looks over the back of the couch when he hears me behind him.
“Murray okay?”
I nod. “In his room.”
Grampa must have told him to change into pj’s, but he only got as far as undressing; when I walked past his room, he was playing with his stuffed animals in his underwear. I could hear him talking to them in different voices, carrying on conversations between animals, but I didn’t stick around to hear what may have been playing out.
Grampa pats the seat next to him, and I sink into the cushion and lean into him, his arm around my shoulder. He smells like old-man aftershave and breath mints. It’s overpowering and completely welcome. We watch an entire quarter in silence. I’m grateful for his Jedi-like ability to know when we don’t need to talk, that it doesn’t help to ask if I’m okay.
I think we’re both dozing, because when we hear the door open in the kitchen, they’re finishing the halftime report on the TV. We look at each other with bleary eyes. He gives my knee a squeeze and stands.
When we get into the kitchen, Mom and Gramma are wrapped in a hug. Dad stands behind them holding two huge bags of Chinese food. Grampa kisses Gramma and Mom each on top of their heads.
“Matt, why don’t you get some plates and forks and set the table,” Grampa says, relieving Dad of the food bags and carrying them to the dining room table.
I nod and move toward the cupboard, but not before Mom brings me in for another hug, pulling my head down next to hers.
“I’m so sorry, Matthew,” she says, squeezing me, her tear-soaked cheek pressing against the side of my head. She’s the first person to actually say that to me, and the air burns in my nose as I try to breathe.
She squeezes for what feels like another five minutes before saying, “The graves are in a beautiful spot. I’ll have to show you, when you’re ready.”
Which for some reason makes me suddenly furious, and I have no idea why. I force a nod and break away from her embrace to grab a stack of plates from the cupboard behind her, after which, thankfully, she heads upstairs to find Murray. I’m hoping it takes her a while because I don’t think I can deal with another hug at the moment. My inner–movie director has me standing at the grave site holding fresh-picked daisies—Tabby’s favorite—in the rain, like always, and I want to punch him in his stupid fucking face. I don’t know what Tabby’s favorite flowers are—were—if she even ever had any. Who the fuck under fifty years old has a favorite flower?
I set out the plates while Gramma puts the takeout boxes in the middle of the table and Grampa busies himself with making a pyramid of egg rolls on a big plate. Gramma keeps touching me when I get near her—little affectionate squeezes on my elbow, or a hand on the small of my back—and I know she’s fighting hard not to hug me, too, so I head back into the kitchen to pour water for everyone. When I come back, Mom’s carrying Murray to the table in his pj’s.
We eat in awkward, terrible silence. But what the hell is there to say? The funeral was really sad, but Chinatown fucking killed this moo shu tonight!
Gramma’s the one to break the silence a few minutes later, and as soon as she starts, I’m wishing for the scrapes of silverware on dishes again.
“I remember the first time we met Tabby. I bet she wasn’t two yet, and you were already babysitting her full-time by then.”
Mom nods, her face frozen between a smile and a sob.
“We stopped by one day after lunch. I remember I pulled Matty up on the couch with me to read a book. What’s that book he used to love, with the chubby little cat and dog?”
Hondo & Fabian.
“Hondo and Fabian,” Mom says, smiling and pressing her napkin to the corner of her eyes.
“That’s right, Hondo and Fabian. I sat down with little Matty to read Hondo and Fabian, and that little girl—didn’t know me from Adam—climbed right up on that couch next to me, all ready to read.”
“I remember that,” Mom says.
“Two of them laughing and pointing at that cat—doesn’t it mess with the toilet paper or something?”
I liked the turkey sandwich page even more.
“Next time we came, Grampa’d gone out and bought another copy for Tabby to take home with her.”
“Remember she brought it with her the first time they both stayed over at our house?” Grampa says, setting his napkin on his empty plate and leaning back in his chair. “Probably about first grade, I think. They talked us into letting them stay up late to watch a movie, and I let them watch some old kids’ movie, ended up scaring the bejeezus out of them.”
The NeverEnding Story. That was a weird-ass movie. I remember that one.
“They ended up piling blankets and couch cushions and pillows into our room to sleep on the floor at the end of our bed. Then we couldn’t get the little boogers to stop talking to us or whispering to each other and get to sleep.”
Dad laughs now. “God, you were a sucker for her,” he says, smiling and shaking his head at Grampa. “I was never allowed to do that kind of stuff as a kid.”
“Eh, you weren’t that cute of a kid,” Grampa says, winking at me. I look down at my plate, start peeling the wrapper off a half-eaten egg roll.
“I remember the first day Steve brought her over here,” Mom starts, her voice thick, unsteady. “She was only a few months old. Crystal had been gone a week, but she was gone for good. In fact, today’s the first time I’ve seen her since they moved in—almost fifteen years.”
“We felt stupid, we hadn’t even introduced ourselves yet,” Dad says with a humorless chuckle, steering Mom back to her story. I’ve heard this one, too, and I just want it to stop.
“Nope, but he came across the circle with this beautiful, screaming, furious baby in his arms—he looked like he was about to lose it when we opened our door. We invited him in. I remember I was holding Matt when he came in, and I took that little girl out of his arms and held you both. You just stared at her.”
I know she’s talking to me, but I’m still focused on dismantling the egg roll on my plate.
“She screamed for a few more seconds, and then stopped and stared back at you. Just like that, she’s smiling and yelling baby gibberish and smiling some more. And you stared at her. I could feel you wriggle when she yelled to you, but you just watched her. From the first day, you were the quiet one, following her lead.”
She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand, and my lungs immediately stop working, again. I reach for the lo mein with my other hand, and she lets go so I can dump another pile onto my plate. It doesn’t taste like anything. Just weight in my mouth and a reason to look down as Mom continues.
“Steve had already missed a week of work, and he didn’t know if Crystal was coming back, or what kind of shape she’d be in if she did, and he just sat there and told us everything that day. How Crystal had done really well through most of the pregnancy, and how he thought buying the house up here would change things for them.”
Mom trails off, thinking. They’ve never talked much about Tabby’s mom—at least not with me—and Tabby never said much, either. She wondered sometimes, and we’d search the Internet, and play the what-if game. But it was always just her and her dad, and that was fine. She was happy.
“I remember how desperate he was,” Mom starts again. “He had no one else to help them.”
“Thought you’d lost your mind,” Grampa says, a humorless laugh to match Dad’s. “Just had your first child of your own, barely settled into this house, and you get involved with a drug-addict mom and a desperate dad working swing shift in a factory.”
“Best decision we ever made,” Mom says, and she can do nothing to stop the tears from flowing down her face now. She doesn’t even try.
My brain tries to imagine what would have happened if my parents had said no. That it was too much for them. That they were sorry and they felt for them and all that, but they couldn’t manage that kind of new commitment in their young lives.
Would she have been my best friend? Would we have ever shared Little Hugs on the bus? Would we have shared a secret love of Ewoks and a blatant love of Nerds?
I try to imagine not knowing these things, just knowing her as the girl across the street, someone your parents wave to out of neighborly obligation.
She wouldn’t have been Tabby. And I wouldn’t be me.
But now, there is no Tabby.
And I hate being me.
When I look up from my plate, they’re all looking at me. I don’t know if they think it’s my turn to share, or if I’ve been staring at my plate too long, or if I’ve got a huge snot bubble coming out my nose, or what. I blow my nose in my napkin to be sure.
This is some kind of therapy for them—some clinical step in the grieving process we’re supposed to go through, where we remember the dead so that they live on in our hearts, or some shit like that. But I can’t do it. All these people can follow the steps, and say goodbye, and laugh and tell stories, and remember without hating themselves. What the fuck is wrong with me?
I can’t. I don’t want to remember Tabby. I want to go throw on Return of the Jedi with a big-ass bowl of popcorn and a box of Nerds and veg out on the couch with my friend. It feels like it’s been so long, and it’s not that much to ask, and everyone could stop fucking crying.
“I remember trick or treat,” Murray says, beaming at his chance to join the storytelling. “Me and Matt were eagles, and Tabby went, too. And I got so much candy. And Tabby said she’d give me three Reesie cups for one little box of Nerds, ’cause Reesie cups are my favorite.” He holds up three fingers with his left hand, one with his right, smiling for the first time today, like this fucking therapy session is working for him, wiping away his sadness and ensuring she lives on in his tiny little heart, and it hits me that by the time he’s our age—my age—he’ll barely remember her, and I just need him to stop fucking talking.
Instead, he does a fake-sounding laugh and keeps going.
“I told her she’s too old to trick-or-treat, and she didn’t have a costume, and so she didn’t even have any Reesie cups. But I gave her some of my Nerds anyway.” He does his fake laugh again, like he’s a grown-up telling a story, and I can’t stand it. I don’t even know if it’s true, or if he’s just making it up as he goes, or if his four-year-old brain knows the difference. I just know I can’t deal with any more of this.
So when Mom reaches over and runs her hand through his curls and says, “She was a pretty special friend, huh,” I have to get up and leave the table.
I hit every other stair up to my room and close the door behind me. Put my music on and collapse onto my bed. My fingers brush against my basketball under my bed, and I automatically scoop it up and roll over onto my back. I shoot the ball toward the ceiling with my right hand, focusing on the backspin, over and over until the burning in my forearm locks into a full-on cramp, and I switch to my left.
My brain needs to turn off again for a while, but when the fuck has my brain ever done what it’s supposed to do? All their perfect memories flash through my head, their cherished first moments with our Tabby. I can see the divot still in my door without looking at it, and my brain slows down to show me replays of essentially telling Tabby to fuck off on one of the craziest, most confusing days of her life. Because I couldn’t handle it.
And I see her lying in the street, Corey Sheridan pedaling away on his bike.
And I can see her stretching and not reaching back in science.
Air-balling shots and throwing temper tantrums on the court when she wasn’t really there to see me.
Every time I’ve been a worthless-cock-loser-fucking asshole, and now she’s fucking gone.
I sit up and fire my ball at my door, as hard as I can at that fucking divot. It slams off the door and rolls to a stop under my desk, and now it’s a divot inside a dent. Stupid inside of stupid.
All these fantasies about finding each other—about realizing our childhood friendship was really love in its infant form—all of these stupid daydreams come flooding through my stupid brain. And what of her fantasies? What happened to them? Where did they go? I realize I don’t even know what Tabby’s are. Were. And that only makes it worse, because it’s like it’s always been all about me. Stupid, selfish me.
“Matt? Are you okay?” Mom says from the other side of the door. The knob turns slowly.
“I’m fine!” I yell, too loud. Then, “Please don’t come in.”
It’s silent for a moment, and I can hear Dad’s voice speaking softly to Mom. I don’t know what he says, but Mom sniffs again and then releases the knob, and the two of them walk slowly back down the steps.
I pull my laptop off my desk because I just want to see her. I lean my back against the wall and pull up Tabby’s page. I’m met by literally thousands of messages, saying goodbyes, and sending prayers, shitty song lyrics and angel emojis, and I see myself standing in the back of the church, unwilling to go up and say goodbye, climbing into the car headed away from the cemetery instead of following the procession and paying my final respects.
What would Tabby say if she could somehow know?
All these people can follow the steps, and say goodbye, and laugh and tell stories, and remember without hating themselves. What the fuck is wrong with me?
Tabby could probably tell me.