Goodbye for Now by Laurie Frankel Read Free Book Online Page B

next,” said Meredith. Then she let go of his hand and turned back toward the stadium and said, “Bye, Grandma. Have fun in Florida. See you soon and talk to you sooner.”
    “That was cheesy,” said Sam, putting his arm around her and pulling her against him at least as much for love as for body heat.
    “And then she’d say, ‘Not if I see you first.’ ”
    “What does that even mean?” said Sam.
    “I have no idea.”
    On the wet walk home, Sam wondered what his mother might say about the necessity of staying all the way to the end of a cold ball game or what she might like to snack on while she was there or where her cutoff point was for the price of a ballpark latte. He had no idea whether his mother even liked baseball. His dad had never mentioned it, but thatdidn’t necessarily mean anything. Sam’s first semester at college he took a beginning piano class on a whim (okay, the professor was hot), and it turned out he was astonishingly good at it. When he reported this at home over fall break, his dad smiled wistfully and laughed. “Must be hereditary.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Mom was an incredible pianist.”
    “She was?”
    “Oh yeah. Minored in it at school.”
    “You only ever told me she was an English major.”
    “With a minor in piano,” Sam’s dad added. He liked to dole out stories one at a time. He never spent an evening reminiscing, telling one memory into another. Instead, Sam got his mother’s life one moment at a time. This way the stories were fresh, organic; Sam got to hear them only because he’d happened to bring them up. This way, there were always more, ones Sam hadn’t heard yet, ones his dad hadn’t told. It was like there was still more life to be lived there, more to discover, an unnoticed corner to turn. For all Sam knew about his mother’s baseball proclivities, she could have been a second baseman for the Mets.
    It was later in bed, warm at last, when it hit him that what he was was jealous. What wouldn’t he give to know what his mom might say at a baseball game? Meredith, on the same train of thought apparently but in a different boxcar, wondered aloud, “Is it weird to miss her so much when I know everything she’d say if she were here? I could do both sides of the conversation through the entire game. I can practically re-create the whole day, frame for frame, just as if she were here with me.”
    “I don’t know why,” said Sam, “but it’s not the same.” Obviously.
    She shrugged. “At least now I can just pretend she’s in Florida. It’ll be easier knowing I wouldn’t be seeing her anyway.”
    “Absent is absent?”
    “I guess so. But also we’d e-mail. We’d video chat. She’d text me from the beach just to rub it in. You know?”
    “I do,” said Sam. “Absent is less absent than it used to be.”

A PLACE FOR IT TO GO
    M eredith’s question got stuck in Sam’s brain and wouldn’t leave, in part because Meredith was contentedly colonizing every corner of his mind but also because it was an interesting question. Why did she miss her so much if she knew everything she’d say if she were there? What are we missing from loved ones we know so well we could finish their sentences and think their unthought thoughts?
    “Do you think it’s the random, interstitial stuff?” Sam asked after dinner the next night.
    “Do I think what’s the random, interstitial stuff?”
    “If you know the highlights of what she’d say at the ball game, is it the random stuff in between that you miss?”
    “About my grandmother?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Like telling me about her bridge game the night before or bitching about the shortstop or should she get a Coke or just fill up her bottle from the water fountain?”
    “I guess.”
    Meredith thought about this. “I don’t think so. I miss the essence of her, her real self. Everyone thinks about what to drink when they’re thirsty. Only she would argue that relievers should be pushed out of airplanes in