Hay hay mim! Ha. Beck told me wee’re going, so we are going but I miss you sooper big already. Doing the do, and oh i thought about the time we first met under that brige and how funny you look when you sleep maybe I nevr told you. but Also pritty. You looked pritty. so I will miss you while wee’re away but he says we can see you at the game, so thats what we will do. See you then cant wait!
Sinsearly yours forever and ever.
Walter
I didn’t think I could cry anymore. I was wrong.
Flipping to the next page, I see Beck’s reckless penmanship, scrawled across the picture of some top prospect. Even through my tears, I laugh at the salutation.
DEAR MADAGASCAR—
“I don’t know how to say good-bye to you,” said Mim, staring into the devastatingly handsome eyes of Beck Van Buren.
“I know,” said Beck, in a devastatingly handsome tone.
How do you like it so far, Mim? It’s for my memoir, The Devastatingly True Story of the Handsome Beckett Van Buren. Too writerly? Okay, how about this . . .
“I don’t know how to say good-bye to you,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
And I don’t, Mim. God. I really don’t.
But I had a thought . . .
On the way over here, Walt showed me a photograph. He’s with his mom in front of Wrigley Field, and I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but Mim, the kid looks 100% happy. Like, lifetime-supply-of-Mountain-Dew happy, and maybe his mom died, but what if she didn’t? Either way, if Walt has family somewhere, I intend to fififfiind them. Chicago is quite a drive, but I think Uncle Phil is up to the challenge. You found your home. It’s Walt’s turn.
Last night, I promised not to leave you high & dry. Please believe me when I say—I kept this promise. And while I still don’t know how to say good-bye to you, I know a certain devastatingly handsome character who would like another shot. So here goes:
“I don’t know how to say good-bye to you,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
They sit together, trying to locate the impossible words. She finds them first. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be, like, a solid good-bye, you know?”
He looks at her, wondering how he got to be so lucky. “As opposed to a liquid one?”
“Yes, actually. I much prefer liquid good-byes to solid ones.”
“Fair enough,” he said, kissing her lightly on the forehead. “When the day comes, you shall have your liquid good-bye.”
THE END
LOVE,
AFRICA
P.S.—I’m sure you’ve put this together by now, but I’ve basically stolen your truck. I feel like an ass, just so you know. Please don’t press charges. I’ll reimburse you at the game. Which brings me to . . .
P.P.S.—Flip the page for your liquid good-bye . . .
Barely able to breathe, I turn to the next page in the program. It’s a schedule for the following year’s slate of Reds games. One game in particular is circled: Opening Day. Reds v. Cubs. Then, next to it, three words in red: “Remember the rendezvouski!”
I imagine Walt with a butterfly in his bottle, and Beck with the camera around his neck, and together, we stand around the statue of some old baseball player turned rendezvous point. Opening Day is early April, and suddenly, spring can’t get here soon enough.
“You okay, Mim?”
I look up, wondering how long Kathy’s been standing there. “Yeah,” I say, stuffing the Reds program in my bag. “You find your keys?”
She holds up the key ring, gives it a shake. “It was in my purse the whole time. So. How about that Chinese food?”
I hook my thumbs in the straps of my backpack, and follow her down the stone steps to the parking lot. “Could we do Mexican instead?”
“Honestly, I don’t really care what we eat so long as we do it soon.” She pushes a dyed curl out of her face. “Izzie’s starving. Which reminds me, we’ll probably have to split up the trip—half today, half tomorrow. I get tired quick these days.”
Kathy rubs her stomach, and again, I wonder if my sister can feel her mother’s touch. I hope so. And I hope she knows that kind of love is not nothing. It’s a huge something, maybe the biggest of all. It’s a mini-golf kind of love, the kind of love people like Claire and Caleb never experienced. Maybe those two never really got a fair shake. Maybe if they had fathers who let them win at meaningless games—or mothers who rubbed their pregnant bellies, reassuring Fetus Claire and Fetus Caleb that yes, even though the world was fucked up beyond measure, there was beauty to be had and it was waiting for them—maybe then, Claire and Caleb would’ve turned out differently.
I watch Kathy walk toward the car, and I think about Dad—how his sister and first wife were both incredibly complicated women prone to topics of substance and despair. No wonder he wanted me to avoid those particular subjects with Baby Isabel. And no wonder he ended up with Kathy Sherone-Malone, she of the Grand Slam breakfast and glue-on nails, a wholly uncomplicated woman prone to topics of pop-culture and cheer.
From the passenger-side door, I look at Kathy over the top of the PT Cruiser. “So this is why you didn’t want me to call her,” I say. “And why she stopped writing. This is why Dad moved us cross-country. So I wouldn’t have to see her like this. So we could all have a . . . whatever . . . a fresh start.”
“Maybe. But then, we wanted you to visit, so . . .” She puts her keys in the door, pauses. “Let’s not do this, okay?”