Page 8 of Goodbye Days

I get to Nana Betsy’s house and let myself in. There’s a laptop set up as you walk in the front door, and it’s playing Blake’s videos. So amidst the somber hush of conversation, you hear the occasional flatulent toot emanate from the laptop speakers, followed by chuckling from the groups of two or three people alternating standing around the laptop.

The photo of Blake that rested on top of the casket now sits on the coffee table. The house is warm in the way of confined spaces full of people. It smells of potluck food and the aftershave and perfume that men and women get as presents from grandchildren.

I pause in the living room for a second, unsure of what to do. Nobody acknowledges my presence. A gust of guilt buffets me, so powerful it makes my leg bones feel like they’re resonating to some low frequency. You filled this house with mourners. You created this occasion. I have that feeling when you think everyone is staring at you even though you can see they aren’t.

I spot Nana Betsy in the kitchen, talking with her brothers. Our eyes meet and she motions for me to come in. I enter the kitchen and Nana Betsy, without interrupting her conversation, points me to the adjacent dining room, where steaming slow cookers, casserole dishes, and disposable aluminum pans crowd the table. Cold grocery-store fried chicken. Squash casserole topped with Ritz crackers. Turnip greens with chunks of pork. Little smoked sausages swimming in BBQ sauce. Mac and cheese with the top baked brown.

It’s strange that this is the best we can do. We don’t even have a special ceremonial mac and cheese to mark someone’s passing from this world. We only have the normal stuff that your mom feeds you on any given day when someone you love hasn’t died.

I pile food precariously on a paper plate, grab a clear plastic fork and a red Solo cup of sweet tea, and find a corner of the living room. The couch and most of the chairs are taken, so I sit on an ottoman and eat, trying to make myself invisible, carefully balancing my cup on the carpet. I have to force down each bite through a constricted throat. Hungry as I am, my body is telling me I’m unworthy. Replaying my conversation with Darren in my mind every few minutes also doesn’t help.

People bump into each other, interacting. Fish in an aquarium. The men wear wrinkled, ill-fitting sport coats and sloppily tied ties. They look uncomfortable, like beagles wearing sweaters.

I finish and I’m about to stand when Nana Betsy shuffles in. A woman rises from the rocking chair, and she and Nana Betsy share a long hug and kiss on the cheek. Nana Betsy bids her farewell and tells her to take a plate of food for the road. Then Nana Betsy drags the rocker beside me and sits with a soft groan. She looks bone weary. Her eyes normally dance. Not today.

“How you doing, Blade?”

Nana Betsy was the only person on Earth outside of Sauce Crew who called me Blade. The nickname tickled her to no end.

“I’ve been better.”

“I hear you,” she says.

“Blake’s funeral was beautiful.” I’m saying it without conviction. I’m not even fooling myself. A beautiful funeral for your best friend is a species of drinking a delicious poison, or being bitten by a majestic tiger.

Nana Betsy sees right through me. “Oh, baloney,” she says gently. “A beautiful funeral would have been Blake making everyone laugh once more. One his mama was at.”

I hadn’t wanted to ask about that. But Nana Betsy says it with a certain yearning, something she wants off her chest but she needs someone to ask her about it.

“Do you know where she is?”

She blinks away tears. She folds her hands on her lap, prayer-like. “No,” she says softly. “I don’t hear from Mitzi but once every couple years. When whatever man she’s taken up with leaves her high and dry again and she needs money to feed her habit. She’ll call from some motel in Las Vegas or Phoenix on a disposable cell phone. I have no number for her. No address. No way to reach her. On top of everything else, I guess I’ll have to hire someone to track her down so’s I can tell her Blake is gone.”

“Man.” What do you say to that?

“Thing is, she’ll be devastated even though she’s never been interested in being a mother to him.”

A weighty silence. A blessed fart from the laptop. Nana Betsy laughs through her tears. “I miss him so much. I don’t know how to live without him. I’m not even sure how I’ll weed the tomato garden with my knees bad as they are. Blake always did it for me.” She produces a handkerchief and wipes her eyes. “I loved him as my own.”

It’s several seconds before I can speak; I’m swallowing the sobs trying to claw their way out of my throat. “I don’t think I’ll ever laugh again.”

Nana Betsy leans over and hugs me. She smells like dried roses and warm polyester. She doesn’t seem to have a single sharp edge. We hug and rock side to side for a second or two.

“I better keep making the rounds,” Nana Betsy says. “You’re a good friend. Please don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t. Oh, my mom and dad wanted me to tell you again they’re sorry they couldn’t come. They tried to make it home from Italy, but they couldn’t in time.”

“You tell them I understand completely. Bye, Blade.”

“Bye, Nana Betsy.”

Before I leave, I take a last look around. I remember the occasions Blake and I sat in this living room planning his next video. Playing video games. Watching a movie or some sketch-comedy show.

I wonder if the actions we take and the words we speak are like throwing pebbles into a pond; they send ripples that extend farther out from the center until finally they break on the bank or disappear.

I wonder if somewhere in the universe, there’s still a ripple that’s Blake and I sitting in this living room, laughing ourselves silly. Maybe it’ll break on some bank somewhere in the vast sky beyond our sight. Maybe it’ll disappear.

Or maybe it’ll keep traveling on for eternity.