Page 66 of Goodbye Days

“Good to meet you, honey,” Linda says. “Y’all need a menu or you gettin’ your usual?”

Nana Betsy looks to me. “I’m fine with whatever the usual is,” I say.

“Usual it is,” Nana Betsy says.

“Comin’ right up,” Linda says. “You tell your grandson we missed him today.”

Nana forces a smile. “I bet he knows.”

We sit and Linda hustles off after pouring us cups of coffee. Nana Betsy leans over with a whisper. “I couldn’t tell her. She’s so sweet, and there wouldn’t be any point to making her sad.”

“Blake would have found this funny.”

Nana Betsy’s eyes twinkle. “I imagine he’s looking down from heaven right this moment and laughing about the little trick we’ve played on Linda.”

I smile and play with my fork.

“You believe in heaven?” Nana Betsy asks.

The easy answer is I used to, as casually as I believed anything relating to the Divine. It was an untested, unexamined belief, and so it dwelled comfortably in me. But now? If you came to me and said, “Listen, Blake’s going to die, but that’s okay because you believe in heaven, right?” my answer would have been no.

“Yeah. Mostly,” I say. “But I haven’t spent much of my life considering it like I am now.”

“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!”