Page 20 of Goodbye Days

“I agree.” My sodden T-shirt sticks cold to my torso in the air-conditioning.

Nana Betsy picks out one of the nicer tomatoes and cuts it into thick circles. She slathers mayonnaise on a couple of pieces of bread and lays some of the tomato slices on one of the pieces. “I’ll let you do your own salt and pepper.” She makes one for herself.

“Mmmmm,” she says, getting up to fetch a roll of paper towels for us to use to wipe the pink tomato-mayo juice from our hands and faces. “Fresh tomatoes taste like sunshine, don’t they?”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” I say, taking a sip of the sharp, tangy lemonade. It makes my salivary glands ache. “They taste like summer.” Or they’re supposed to. I don’t deserve this and so it tastes like sand on my tongue, even though it’s a perfectly fine sandwich.

“That’s exactly what Blake always used to say. He loved tomato sandwiches.”

“Blake kinda loved all food.”

Nana Betsy chuckles. “That he did.”

“Once, Blake and I were over at my house, and we were starving, but neither of us had any money to go buy something to eat. And our fridge was full of all this gross kale and stuff because my parents were on a health kick. So we went through my kitchen for something we knew how to cook. We found a pack of spaghetti, but we didn’t have any sauce. So we ate it with ketchup and mustard.”

Nana Betsy snorts and covers her mouth. She’s shaking with laughter.

“So anyway,” I continue, “I take maybe two bites, but Blake? He loves it. Eats the whole rest of the bowl. And he goes ‘Blade, Blade, we should make this a new food. We should call it hamburger spaghetti. Hamsghetti. We should sell this idea.’ And I go ‘Blake, the only reason you find this edible is you’re so hungry. This is totally gross.’ ”

Nana Betsy is sniffling and wiping tears, but they’re tears of laughter. For a moment, I don’t feel guilty anymore. The smallest taste of redemption. And it’s sweet on my tongue.

“Boy, between the two of us, we really had Blake’s number, didn’t we?” Nana Betsy says.

I catch an errant drip of tomato juice. “Yeah.”

“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.”