Page 50 of After His Eulogy
“What.”
“You’re deciding for me. Deciding I shouldn’t be in this. Deciding I shouldn’t get to choose. I’ve already buried you once. You decided that for me. You decided I shouldn’t have to be in proximity to your situation, and you decided it without me, and you spent two years inside the consequences. You’re doing it again. Right now. In my kitchen. With the garlic burning.”
“It’s not burning. I turned it off.”
“Reed.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t say sorry. Pick a different word.”
“Okay.”
“You are doing it again. You are deciding for me.”
“I…“
“Don’t. Reed. Don’t. Don’t do it again. Don’t be the person who does it twice.”
I look at him. I look at him across the counter and he is not crying. I am not crying. Neither of us is doing the thing where we cry. He is just looking at me and he is asking me, with his whole face, not to be the person who does it twice.
I sit down on the kitchen floor. I do not decide to. My legs do it. I sit down on his kitchen floor with my back against his cabinet. I put my hands flat on the linoleum. I sit there and I do not say anything.
He comes around the counter. He sits down on the floor next to me. Not facing me. Next to me. His back against the cabinet too. His shoulder against mine. He does not touch my hand. He does not put his arm around me. He just sits next to me on the floor of his kitchen and lets me be on the floor. We sit there.
After a while he says, “Tell Mendez.”
“Griffin.”
“Tell him. Tomorrow. I am not asking you to tell him tonight. I am asking you to tell him. I will be here when you do.”
“He is going to…“
“I know what he is going to do. He is going to ask questions. He is going to put me in a file. He is going to consider whether to move you. Maybe you. Maybe both of us. I do not know. We do not know. We do not know because we have not asked him. We are operating on a two-year-old assumption. You said it. You said it tonight. We are operating on a two-year-old assumption and we are going to find out what is actually true by asking. By calling him. Tomorrow. With me here.”
“You want to be there when I call.”
“Yes.”
“Why.”
“Because if I am there, I am part of the conversation. If I am part of the conversation, then whatever happens next issomething we are figuring out together, not something he tells you and then you tell me. I do not want to be told. I want to be there.”
“Okay.”
“And the other thing. The you-stopping-checking thing. We figure that out. I do not know how. I do not know what it looks like. I know that the answer is not you leaving. I know that the answer is something else. We figure out something else.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
We sit on the floor for a long time. The garlic doesn’t burn. The kitchen smells like the dinner he was going to make me. The smell is going to fade. We’re going to have to figure out what to do about the dinner. We’ll figure that out too.
“Griffin.”
“Yeah.”
“I almost did it.”
