by Jeff Zentner
“I believe in heaven,” she murmurs. “I believe in a resurrection of the flesh when the dead will rise. I believe all that. And you’d suppose that’d make all this easier. Believing in my heart that I’ll hug Blake again someday. It should be as easy as if I were sending Blake off to camp for the summer. But it’s not.”
Linda reappears with two plates piled high with waffles and a large plate of bacon. “Y’all enjoy now.”
“You bet we will,” Nana Betsy says.
We both look out the window at the cars passing, the people coming and going. Listen to the clink of silverware, the sizzle of the grill, the crunch of bacon. The hum of conversation and the occasional shouted order.
I feel a confessional yearning. “What do you think it takes to keep you out of heaven?”
Nana Betsy holds my gaze while she finishes her bite and takes a sip of coffee. “What do you mean?”
“I mean what if God thought I had something to do—” Linda approaches and fills our water glasses.
“Y’all good here?” Linda asks.
“Right as rain,” Nana Betsy says. Linda leaves again.
I speak with a light tremor. “What if God holds me accountable for the Accident?” I want to say more, but Mr. Krantz’s words resonate in my head. I’ve always found it baffling why criminals ever confess to crimes. Especially when they hand police the only thing they have to go on. I understand perfectly now.
“Let me tell you about the God I know.” She looks out the window for a second and looks back. “My God judges a whole life and a whole heart. He doesn’t judge us by our worst mistakes. And let me tell you something else. If God is someone who makes us walk a tightrope over the fires of hell, then I don’t care to sing his praises for eternity on some silver cloud. I’ll jump off the tightrope before I’ll do that.” Her voice trembles as she says the last part, but it doesn’t blunt the edge of her conviction.
I suddenly feel like I have a huge ice cube stuck in my throat. I try to swallow it away. I’d love to borrow her conviction, but I can’t quite.
“Do you mind if I tell you a totally random story that has nothing to do with this topic?” I ask.
“Not at all.”
“I remember once, Blake was over at my house and Georgia had a couple of friends over and they were listening to music with the bedroom door open. And Blake and I go into the hall, where they can see us, and we start doing funny dances. Twerking and hulaing and the chicken dance and stuff. At first they were screaming at us to go away, but by the end they were laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe. Anyway. I guess it doesn’t sound that funny when I tell it. Maybe you had to be there.”
Nana Betsy is shaking; she has her hand over her mouth and tears are streaming from her eyes. I can’t tell if she’s laughing or crying. Finally she gasps, and it sounds like a laughing gasp. “Aren’t most stories about the people we love that way? You had to be there.”
We finish eating and stand to leave. Nana Betsy pulls yet another folded-up piece of notebook paper from her pocket and places it on the table, along with a twenty and a crisp, new hundred-dollar bill and sets an empty glass on top of it all.
“Bye now—y’all enjoy your day!” Linda says, bustling past with a pot of coffee. “See you later!”
“Bye, Linda,” Nana Betsy says. “Thank you for everything. And Blake says thank you too.”
Linda doesn’t seem to detect the finality in Nana Betsy’s voice, but I do.
We walk out to the car in pensive silence. As for me, I’m pondering hell. I’m wondering if rather than some ardent lake of fire, filled with the shrieking damned, it’s an endless corridor of noiseless, windowless rooms. And inside, each one of the damned sits comfortably on a perfectly ordinary office chair, stares at the bare gray walls, and relives their worst mistake.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Nana Betsy planned well, because she knew we’d need some quiet by this point. So we go to an early movie, which works because she and Blake used to love to go to movies together.
It’s an adaptation of Danny, the Champion of the World. It was one of my favorite books growing up, and I’d been planning to see it anyway. Of course, I usually saw movies with Sauce Crew or Georgia. Yet another way that my life has changed that hadn’t occurred to me until now. Jesmyn might have been game. That seems probable, in fact. Possible wishful thinking on my part.
Nana Betsy and I get a huge tub of popcorn to share. “I don’t blame you a bit if you can’t eat another bite. I sure can’t. But Blake and I always split a big popcorn and tradition is tradition.”
As we sit in the dark and watch, I reflect on the mundane rituals, laid end to end, that form a life. We work to make money and then hopefully use that money to buy ourselves memories with the people we love. Simple things that bring us joy.
I don’t pay much attention with my swirling thoughts, and most of the movie slips past me. Maybe I’ll come see it again with Jesmyn.
Neither of us touches the popcorn.
The movie ends and Nana Betsy pulls herself out of her seat with a groan. “These movie theater seats do a number on me. Getting old is no fun.”
Not getting old is also no fun.
Nana Betsy shuffles toward the exit. “I guess I won’t make it to the movies much anymore. At least until the other grandkids get a little older. I don’t like going alone, and Blake was my movie buddy.” She opens the door to the outside, and we squint in the brilliant afternoon sun after the cool dark of the theater. I wonder for a second if this is how resurrection feels. Stepping out of darkness into blinding light.
As we make our way to the car, Nana Betsy shades her eyes and says, “I always told Blake he should try to find some pretty girl to take to the movies instead of me. He always said ‘No, Nana, I’d rather go with you.’ Truth be told, it makes me a little glad he never found the right girl.” She starts to unlock her door.
And now I have a huge, huge problem.
“Yeah, well you’re gayer than…riding a white pony through a field of dicks,” Eli says to Mars. They crack up again. Eli slaps Blake’s arm as I pull up to Eli’s house. “Come on, bro, you must have one.”
Blake sort of half smiles and shifts in his seat. “Naw, y’all got this.”
“Come on,” Mars says. “Do Blade. Dunk on him.”
“Naw, I got nothing here.”
“You’re losing your edge,” Mars says as he and Eli hop out.
“Your mom is losing her edge,” Blake says.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Mars says.
“Your mom doesn’t even make sense.”
We laugh, and Mars and Eli run up the walk to Eli’s house.
I pull away and start driving to Blake’s house. I’ve never heard him this quiet. I reach over and punch his arm playfully. “It’s cool, dude. We just need to have a gay-joke training montage, where you’re running while I ride a bike, and lifting weights while screaming gay jokes, all in preparation for your redemption from this humiliating defeat.”
Blake chuckles, but his heart’s obviously not in it. “Yeah.”
“I’m kidding with you, man.”
“Yeah.”
“You cool?”
“I’m good, I’m good.” Then after a few seconds: “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” I say.
“Naw, never mind.”
“Dude.”
“Naw, it’s weird.”
“Obviously. It’s you asking.”
“Promise I can trust you?”
“Yeah, man. Totally. For real.”
He sighs and scratches his head. He starts to say something and stops. He tries again. “How did— When did you find out you liked girls?”
I’m stunned. “Uh. You mean sexually or whatever? Since I was probably eleven or so. Why?” In my heart I already know exactly why he’s asking.
He takes a deep, shuddering breath. As if he’s about to try to escape a s
inking ship. “Because. I…have never been into girls…that way. Ever.”
A long silence.
I want Blake to be the one to break it when he’s ready, but he doesn’t, so I do. “Are you into…?”
“Sheep? Naw.”
We laugh.
“Yeah,” Blake says quietly. “I think…it’s guys I like.” He adds, hastily, “Not you; don’t worry.”
“Wow.”
“Obviously I like you as a friend. But not that way.”
“Jeez, now I’m wondering if I should have moisturized or exfoliated more. I mean, I work out,” I say.
“No you don’t,” Blake says.
“Hey. I’m sorry, dude,” I say, my smile drifting off. “About every gay joke I’ve ever made. I didn’t mean it maliciously. Mars and Eli would be sorry if they knew. They aren’t really homophobic. None of us are. We just—didn’t think. It was dumb of us. I’m so embarrassed.”
“It’s cool. I’ll tell them someday, but let’s keep this between you and me for now, okay?”
“Yeah, man. Of course. But I am gonna tell them to chill and knock it off next time they make gay jokes. It’s shitty to joke like that anyway.”
“That I wouldn’t mind. It’s good to get this off my chest. You’re the first person I’ve told. Thanks for listening.”
“No problem. This won’t make us any less friends.” And after a second: “But real quick, is it my haircut?”
He didn’t tell her. I figured after he told me he’d tell her. It had been a little less than a year ago. And now I have to decide whether to let her completely know Blake.
If he wanted her to find out, he would have told her.
If he didn’t want anyone to find out, he wouldn’t have told me.
Maybe he wanted to wait for the right moment to tell her. He would have told her eventually.
That moment will never come now.
He never told you that he was going to tell her.
He never told you that he wasn’t going to tell her.
She’ll be perfectly happy with her memories of him if she doesn’t know.
Her memories of him will be incomplete if she doesn’t know.
It will hurt her to learn that I found out before she did.
She invited you here today because you hold pieces of Blake that she doesn’t.
It’s the wrong thing to do.
It’s the right thing to do.
Nana Betsy gets into the car and so do I. “All right, now we—”
“I should tell you something.” This is a bad idea.
“Okay. Sure.”
The words stumble in my mouth on their exit. “Blake…never found the right girl because he…didn’t want to.”
“Ain’t that the truth. Seemed like dating was the last thing on his mind.”
I wait to catch her eyes before she starts the car. “That’s not what I mean.”
Her expression doesn’t change for several seconds. Then realization slowly dawns. She shakes her head like she’s half-asleep and trying to rouse herself. “He wasn’t…”
My heart drips cold and viscous down the inside of my chest—whites from broken eggs down refrigerator shelves. I really wonder if I’ve done the right thing.
She takes her hand from the keys and deflates into her seat, paralyzed. The only thing more stifling than the heat in the car is the silence. She leans forward and starts the car, and the air conditioner wheezes blessedly to life. But she sits back again and we don’t move.
“I had no idea,” she says. “We lived together for years. I hadn’t the slightest notion.”
“Me neither until he told me.”
“When did he tell you?”
“Little less than a year ago.”
Her face creases and she starts weeping. “Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He…was going to. He told me.” This is an unambiguous lie. But necessary to fix what I fear I’ve broken.
“But why wait?”
“I think he…knew how much your religion means to you, and it worried him how you’d react.”
She fumbles in her purse for a pocket pack of tissues and dabs at her eyes. “Our religion definitely doesn’t approve of that lifestyle, but I never did believe that people choose to be that way. I wonder—if maybe I’d gone and gotten Blake from Mitzi’s sooner—”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. I think he was born that way.”
“I can’t wrap my head around this. There was a huge part of him who was a stranger to me.”
“It was just one part of who he was, though. You knew him as well as anybody on Earth.”
“Not as well as you, I guess.”
“But you know tons about him that I didn’t. I think the only person who knows someone completely is that person. And even then not always.”
“I pictured his future all wrong. I pictured a girl in a wedding dress and grandkids.”
“You can still picture a wedding and grandkids. Just that there’d be a tux instead of a wedding dress.” Please let me be making this better and not worse.
“I’ve only ever known one gay person. My hairdresser in Greeneville. I loved him. But it was easy to tell with him.” Nana Betsy blows her nose and presses her hand to her forehead. Her face crumples and her weeping becomes sobbing. “So often I let people talk awful ‘Adam and Steve’ sort of hateful nonsense in front of Blake and didn’t say a thing. It’s no wonder he was scared to tell me.”
My heart keeps dripping. “I’m sorry if my telling you this hurt you. I tried to do the right thing.”
Her voice quavers. “You did right. You’re here to help tell Blake’s story.” She hesitates. “Blade, do you think he ever got to love anyone the way he wanted to?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
“Me too.”
She goes to put the car in gear but stops again. “You can say no to this, but would you do a little playact with me?”
“I’ll try.”
“Will you be Blake and tell me so I can say out loud what I would’ve said? In case he can hear us?”
“I guess so. Okay. This won’t be as funny as if it were Blake.”
“That’s all right.”
“Okay. Um. Nana, can I talk to you about something?” I don’t know how to do this. I guess there’s no manual for coming out of the closet on behalf of your deceased best friend.
She wipes her eyes. “Yes, Blake, you can.” We both laugh even though it’s not funny.
“I’ve known this for a while, but I need to tell you I’m gay.”
Nana Betsy looks skyward. “Blake, honey, if you can hear me, listen real good now.” She faces me and swallows hard, and when she speaks, the tremor is gone from her voice and it envelops me like a down quilt. “That doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to me. I love you more than I love God himself. So if he’s got a problem with anything, he can talk to me, because I love you how you are. Now, if that’s all you had to tell me, we’d best go have some of my homemade fried chicken and cornbread. Your favorite.”
She nods once, like a judge pounding a gavel, and puts the car in gear, and we leave.
She wasn’t speaking hypothetically when she mentioned the fried chicken and cornbread. We’re sitting in her kitchen while she waits for the Crisco to heat up in one of her black cast-iron skillets. Another skillet is in the oven, getting hot for cornbread. A mound of flour-and-spice-dredged chicken thighs sits on a platter. A mixing bowl of yellow cornbread batter sits beside it.
My emotions roil. In some ways, this day has sharpened everything I’ve felt over the past weeks. The guilt. The grief. The fear. It’s honed them to a razor, singing edge. But in other ways, it’s removed that edge slightly and replaced it with a dull sense of absence. While the grief feels like a more active emotion—a process of negotiation—the absence resembles grief with a measure of acceptance. If grief is a pounding surf, the absence is a melancholy, gently tossing sea.
“Are you glad you d
id this?” Nana Betsy asks out of the blue. My face must have betrayed my emotion.
“Yes.” This is largely true. The untrue part of it relates mostly to my wishing I never had occasion to be sitting in Nana Betsy’s kitchen, having a goodbye day for Blake. “My therapist thought this would be a good idea.” This is also not completely true. In fact, it’s mostly not true.
“Goodness, a therapist? I thought this had hit me hard.” Nana Betsy tosses a pinch of her chicken seasoning in the oil, where it pops and sputters. Using tongs, she carefully lowers a few pieces of chicken into the oil. They sizzle and bubble.
I guess I might as well tell her. I wouldn’t have brought up Dr. Mendez if part of me didn’t want to. “I was having panic attacks. I’ve had three so far. The first was a couple hours after I left your house on the night of Blake’s funeral. The second was on the first day of school, right as I was walking in the door. The third was after I found out—” This confession is going further than I’d planned.
“Found out what?”
My mouth goes dry and I’m lightheaded. “Found out that the DA is looking at pressing charges against me for the accident.”
“Do what now?” She turns from the stove, her mouth agape, her tongs at her side.
My voice is small—that of a kid who peed his pants in class. “Mars’s dad asked the DA to investigate the accident and see if there are any charges they can bring against me.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“I wish.”
“What on Earth?”
“We talked to a lawyer, and he said they might be able to charge me for negligent homicide.”
“How?”
“I guess if they could prove that I was texting Mars, knowing that he was driving and knowing that he would text me back and that I knew texting while driving is dangerous.” My insides are a writhing ball of eels.
Nana Betsy turns to the stove and flips the pieces of chicken. “But you didn’t know all that.”
I’m paralyzed. I don’t say anything. I don’t move. Nana Betsy catches my gaze. It feels like holding my hand too close to a fire. Appropriate, since this whole conversation could burn me someday. But again, that irresistible compulsion to purge myself of the poison of this guilt.