Page 85 of Goodbye Days

I’m nervous about calling them until I remind myself that I recently informed a mother over the phone that her son died. If I can do that, I guess I can do anything. Phonewise. That still leaves Adair to be apprehensive about, but I’ll leave that up to them.

I thought I would have to explain more, but I don’t. I talk with Eli’s mom. She tells me Nana Betsy called them shortly after Blake’s goodbye day and recommended the experience as therapeutic. So they’ve been considering it but were worried about how to approach me. And it’s perfect timing, because they have a plan to scatter Eli’s ashes at Fall Creek Falls this autumn. They think he would have liked that. She tells me to invite Jesmyn. I tell her I will.

I don’t tell her how I hope this will allow Eli to finally rest in my mind, because death becomes real only when people rest finally.

“Tell me a story.” It’s the first thing Dr. Mendez says when we settle into our chairs. We skip the small talk entirely.

I came ready. Why not? I knew he’d wheedle it out of me eventually and I’d have to invent on the fly. “In 2001, Hiro Takasagawa was a safety engineer at Nissan. He was actually an artist—he built moving sculptures. But people didn’t buy them, so he had to take a real job with his skills.”

“The world is a difficult place for artists.”

“Yeah. But Hiro loved his job because his parents died in a car accident when he was really young. They rear-ended a truck on an icy road. He wanted to prevent that from happening to anybody else. So he designed a safety system for cars where there was a pair of mechanical white wings—a crane’s wings—folded underneath the car. And there was—a radar sensor or something on the front of the car, and if you were coming up on an obstacle too fast, the wings would open and start beating and lift the car over the obstacle. It would glide for a while and you could still steer in the air by using your steering wheel. Until you got to a place where you could land safely.”

Dr. Mendez looks genuinely absorbed in the story. “The year 2001. You were very specific about that.”

“So Hiro took the idea to his boss. The idea was to start putting it in 2002 Nissans. But his boss was furious. ‘Takasagawa, do you have any idea how much this will cost?’ He screamed. ‘But it works,’ Hiro said. ‘I built a prototype and tested it. What are people’s lives worth?’ And the boss is like ‘You idiot! We’re running a business here. You wasted time and money with this?! You’re fired!’ ” I’m getting into the story. I’m doing different voices for Hiro and the boss.

“What’s the boss’s name?” Dr. Mendez asks.

“Yoshikazu Hanawa. CEO of Nissan in 2001. Looked it up.”

“Good,” Dr. Mendez says quietly. “Very good. Sorry. Please.” He gestures for me to continue.

I take a deep breath. “So Hiro leaves Hanawa’s office and he’s devastated. He thinks he failed his parents and brought dishonor to himself. So he goes and gets in his car and drives away. He intends to commit suicide. He tries to drive into the side of a building, but at the last second, a pair of gleaming white crane’s wings unfurls from beneath his car. And the thing is, he wasn’t driving his prototype. These just appear. They carry him up, up, over the building, into the sky. And he never comes down. He’s still soaring on those wings.”

There’s a long pause before Dr. Mendez says: “And Mars drove—”

“A 2002 Nissan Maxima.”

“Unequipped with Hiro’s wings.”

“It would have been too expensive.”

“But if Mr. Hanawa had approved Hiro’s idea—”

“Then even though Mars was texting, the wings would have carried him up over the truck.”

“Billy Scruggs’s truck.”

“Right.”

“No matter what you did or didn’t do.”

“Right.”

“How did it feel to tell that story?”

“Like I’m still lying to myself and trying to blame someone else.”

“Why?”

“Because. Hiro’s story didn’t really happen.”

Dr. Mendez tilts his head with a gleam in his eye and I see the question.

“Fine,” I mutter. “I don’t know.”

Dr. Mendez smiles broadly. “So. How are you?”