Page 87 of Goodbye Days

“I’m not as sure where Eli’s parents stand on the blaming-me thing.”

“I assume, if they held you responsible, they wouldn’t be amenable to the idea and that would be that.”

“I guess. Another thing is that I’ve gotten really close with Jesmyn, Eli’s girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend. Widow-girlfriend. Whatever you call what she is.”

“And that worries you because?”

“I don’t want to look like I’m trying to take anything from Eli. I’m not. There are already rumors at school. I suspect Adair started them.”

“This is the same Jesmyn who would have rightly taken me to task for my unfortunate sexist joke last visit?”

“Exactly. Nice remembering.”

Dr. Mendez makes a triangle with his fingers in front of his mouth. “From the little you’ve told me of her, she wouldn’t acquiesce in the giving or taking of her.”

“Oh, definitely not.”

“So whatever you or Eli’s parents think about your relationship with her is irrelevant. She would never allow herself to be in a relationship that she didn’t want. Fair to say?”

“Definitely. But we’re just friends.” It always sounds wrong to say that. Boners notwithstanding (let’s be honest: a Kmart lingerie ad can get things moving under the right circumstances), I don’t think we’re anything but friends. Yet we’ve shared an emotional intimacy that I’ve never had with a friend before, so I’m not sure if “just friends” totally describes what we have.

“I understand.”

“I talk with her about this whole deal more than with my parents.”

“Are your parents available to listen?”

“Yeah. But I’m not a big talker with my parents. I have a hard time being vulnerable with them. It’s nothing they’ve done. I guess…I don’t want to disappoint them or something? I just want to be independent? I like my space? Maybe I’m weird, I don’t know.”

Dr. Mendez shakes his head. “No, not at all. Look, I’m trained to talk to people and still, my son, Ruben—he’s a little older than you—doesn’t often talk to me. It doesn’t make you weird.”

A few moments pass.

“Allowing yourself to be vulnerable with your parents and open up to them is something we could work on,” Dr. Mendez says.

“Yeah. But I have enough to deal with right now.”

“I know. For the future.”

“Will I ever be okay again?” I ask.

“I expect so. It’ll take time and work. But someday your world will be put right. I’ve never found it to be a matter of purging yourself of feeling, but rather of coming to live with it. Making it a part of you that doesn’t hurt so badly. You know how oysters make pearls?”

I nod.

“Like that,” he says. “Our memories of our loved ones are the pearl that we form around the grain of grief that causes us pain.”

I reflect on this for a while before speaking again. “I remembered something funny and random.”

“I like funny and random.”

“Jesmyn’s dad works for Nissan. Like Hiro. That’s why they moved here.”

Dr. Mendez just smiles.

Nana Betsy sells her house in a matter of weeks. She gets enough to cover some new little place and Blake’s funeral. I hope there’s a little left over for Mitzi’s, which didn’t sound far off.

I spend a day, along with her sons, helping her move. We throw away more than we load into her rented U-Haul. Jesmyn comes by after she’s done teaching and helps us with odds and ends.