by Jeff Zentner
“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 friend
s.” 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.
We sit in my car outside Jesmyn’s house.
“Do you have something in mind?” Jesmyn sits cross-legged in the passenger seat. Girls are light-years ahead of guys in sitting-on-car-seat innovation.
“Kinda, yeah. You down with Bobbie’s Dairy Dip?”
“Never been.”
“Your dad said y’all just moved here. I remember Eli mentioning that.”
“Yep, from Jackson, Tennessee. Few months ago.”
“Do you like Nashville?”
“You kidding? There’s music everywhere. I belong here.”
“So Bobbie’s Dairy Dip is an ice cream place. We used to get peanut butter and banana milkshakes there.”
“ ‘We’ meaning you and Eli, Mars, and Blake?”
“Yeah. It was kind of a tradition.”
“Both the Southerner and the Filipino in me dig the sound of peanut butter and banana milkshakes.”
I start the car and pull away. My mouth outruns my brain. “So I didn’t realize—”
“What?”
Shit. “You’re adopted.”
She cocks her head quizzically. “Wait…what?”
“Uh.”
She turns in her seat. “What—what are you saying?” she asks softly.
I’m slack-jawed.
“My whole life is a lie,” she whispers, her face solemn. “My obviously white dad and mom are not my real parents?”
I’m still speechless.
She laughs. A clean, bright, and silver sound, like wind chimes. “Come on, dude,” she says. “Does ‘Jesmyn Holder’ sound like a Filipino name to you?”
I can’t help but join her laughing. “I’m not an expert in what’s a Filipino name and what isn’t.”
“Holder. As in the English word for one who holds something.”
“All right. Well.”
“Well.”
“Were your ancestors way into holding stuff or what?”
“I guess? Like…swords or geese or horseshoes or whatever old-timey people were into holding.”
“Whatever it was, they were into holding it enough that that’s what everyone thought they should be named.”
We pull up to Bobbie’s. “So what’s your deal, ancestry-wise?” she asks, not moving to unbuckle her seat belt.
“My dad is Irish—like literally from Ireland—my mom is some mix of German and Welsh or something.”
“Really? Your hair and eyes look too dark to be Irish.”
“My dad says we’re called ‘Black Irish.’ ”
“Does your dad have a cool accent?”
“He’s lived in America for a long time, so it’s pretty faded, but yeah.”
A stab of guilt steals my breath. Eli isn’t here because of me, while I joke around with his girlfriend and talk about who we are and where we came from; while we partake of a tradition that should have been Eli’s. I beat down a wave of queasiness and dread. Please, God, not here. Not now. Not a panic attack in the Bobbie’s Dairy Dip parking lot with Jesmyn Holder sitting cross-legged in the passenger seat of my Honda Civic. I stare forward and inhale deeply. And again. And again. Jesmyn’s voice snaps me back.
“Hey. Carver. Are you okay?”
I look over at her but can’t form words. I’m trying to decide how honest to be, but my mind isn’t working right.
“You look pale,” she says. “Everything cool?”
I nod unsteadily and take another deep breath. “Yeah. Just…a thing. I’m cool.”
“You sure?” She unbuckles her seat belt.
I start to say yes but surging nausea cuts me off
, so I give a thumbs-up.
By the time we get our milkshakes, I’m better.
“Did Eli ever tell you about squirrel rodeo?” I ask, pulling out of Bobbie’s parking lot and driving toward Centennial Park.
Jesmyn gives me the expression you would expect from someone just asked about her familiarity with something called “squirrel rodeo.”
“I’m guessing not,” I say. “We had this tradition where after we got milkshakes, we’d go to Centennial Park and play squirrel rodeo. It’s a game where you try to steer squirrels along a path.”
“I can’t imagine why Eli didn’t brag to his cool girlfriend about this,” she says.
“It’s more fun than it sounds.”
“Is that even possible?” A hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth.
I smile and we drive on.
“So,” I say after a while. “How are you?”
“I’ve been having trouble sleeping,” she says.
“Same. I wonder if I’m ever going to feel normal again.”
“I was talking about it with my mom. She lost a friend in college. She said it takes time. There’s not a pill you can swallow or anything.”
Even if there were such a pill, I’m not sure I’d let myself have it. I’m not sure I would feel deserving.
“So your parents are pretty good to talk to?” I ask.
“Definitely.”
“That’s cool.”
“Do you talk with your parents?”
“Not really.”
“Why?”
“I mean, they’re great parents and they’re always telling me I can talk to them. I just don’t. Too weird.”
She licks a drip from the side of her cup. “Do you have anyone to talk to? Obviously we’re talking, but…”
“Yeah, my sister Georgia. We’re tight. But she starts up at UT like a week after our school starts.”
“I wish I had siblings closer in age. I have two older brothers, Bo and Zeke, but they’re ten and twelve years older than me.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, they’re married and have kids and stuff. They don’t even live around here. I’m basically an only child.”
It’s dusk when we arrive at Centennial Park. We start walking.
“All right, squirrel rodeo time,” I say.