Page 91 of Goodbye Days

“No,” Melissa says quietly but firmly. “I want to do it. It’s good to confront feelings. You both know Eli in ways we didn’t, Adair included.” She picks up a mason jar full of brightly colored sand. “We’re going to scatter this at the falls instead. This is one of the first things Eli ever made for me in preschool. It contains his creative energy. That’ll be our ceremony.”

The atmosphere is taut. Eli’s family weren’t cuddly types even before. So we eat, and Jesmyn and I occasionally swap supportive glances.

Five minutes or so later, we hear the front door open, and Pierce walks in, dressed for the outdoors. He also looks haggard. Bone weary. Whittled away, especially in the face. “Hello, everybody,” he says. Even though I don’t have Jesmyn’s synesthesia, his voice sounds gray to me.

“Hi,” Jesmyn and I murmur almost in unison.

Pierce walks over and gives Melissa a peck on the cheek. She gives him a narrow smile. More pressing her lips together than raising the corners.

“Help yourself,” Melissa says.

“I’m fine,” Pierce says.

“Thank y’all for doing this,” Jesmyn says. “It’s good to see you again. I missed you.”

Melissa gives her a warmer smile. “We missed you too. We loved having you around.”

“So,” Jesmyn says, “I’m not sure how this works, but I can tell you exactly how Eli and I met if you’re interested.”

“We’d love to hear,” Pierce says. “We have a vague idea, but only from Eli. Not from you.”

Jesmyn takes a sip of orange juice and wipes her mouth. “I noticed Eli on the very first day at Tennessee Teens Rock Camp. They had us all sitting on the auditorium stage. The counselors were trying to teach us ‘punk rock aerobics,’ but I kept getting distracted looking at him. He was right across from me. I thought he had beautiful hair. All long and dark and curly. He reminded me of Jon Snow from Game of Thrones.”

“I was so afraid of him getting my hair,” Melissa says, “and of course he did. It was endless drama combing it out when he was little.”

Jesmyn continues. “But I don’t dwell because I’m there to make music, not find a boyfriend. Anyway, they assign us our bands, and of course—”

“You guys are in the same band,” Pierce says. “That’s all Eli told us.”

“I’m like ‘Whatever,’ because guitarists are usually the worst. Fine, he’s hot, but who cares? So we start working on our song for the showcase, and suddenly he comes over to me with this idea. He and I will play this ascending and descending guitar-keyboard line, and he’ll harmonize with me. We work it out and try it. It’s this warm red-orange-pink.”

“Carver, you know about Jesmyn’s synesthesia?” Melissa asks.

I nod, weirdly hurt that Eli’s mom found out so much sooner than me. It’s dumb because she’s Eli’s mom and a damn brain surgeon, but…

“I loved seeing that color, so I kept making Eli run that part with me again and again. And I never felt like he was hitting on me. He was a perfect gentleman. If anything, I pursued him. By the end of that week, we were inseparable. You should have seen how I freaked out when I found out we were going to the same school.”

This story is an icepick slipping slowly between my ribs. But in a different way than the stories about Blake were. I fixate on my plate as if the answer to some mystery is written in the crumbs there. I’m afraid to look up, because I don’t want anyone to ask me what I’m feeling. I wouldn’t be able to say.

We eat for the next few minutes, bits of rigid small talk bobbing to the surface and sinking again. By the time Pierce suggests we head out, I’m almost hoping Jesmyn has another story of her pursuing Eli, since her first, while making me uncomfortable, seemed to relieve the tension otherwise.

We wrap up the pastries. We’re almost out the door when Pierce stops us.

“Wait.” His voice sounds even more leaden; rain clouds verging on deluge. “We’re about to take part of Eli from his house for the last time. This is the house we raised him in. The day we brought him and Adair home from the hospital as newborns…” He pauses and coughs, collecting himself. He tries to start again but falters. Finally, he clears his throat and says, “Melissa was feeding Adair. So I sat out on the porch with Eli and let the wind touch his face for the first time. I saw him hear the trees moving, rustling for the first time. That’s quite a thing: to see a human being first feel the wind. He opened his eyes just once, squinting up at me. I wondered how many more of the things of this world I would show him.”

I hadn’t considered this difference between Blake’s goodbye day and Eli’s: Eli’s parents have baby stories.

We step out onto the porch, where the breeze has picked up, tugging at our hair.

Pierce pauses. “Everyone, the plan was to scatter the sand at the falls, but could we do a little part here?”

We all nod. Melissa has been stoic. As a surgeon who deals with death and dying every day, I guess she doesn’t have much room for sentimentality. But tears stream down her cheeks.

Pierce opens the jar, reaches in, and pulls out a pinch of sand. Then he returns that small bit of Eli’s spirit to the wind that once touched his face.

Jesmyn and I sit in the backseat of Melissa’s Volvo SUV. Melissa’s driving. Pierce sits beside her, cradling the jar on his lap and staring at it. The trees whip past on the interstate. Here and there, one is aflame in red, yellow, or orange finery. But for the most part, they remain a faded, weary green, the memory of summer still on them.

I catch Jesmyn’s eye out of the corner of mine. She puts her hand at my side and gives a thumbs-up and raises her eyebrows. I put my hand at her side and make a “so-so” motion. Then I give her the thumbs-up and raised eyebrows. She reciprocates the “so-so.”