That’s not what I was going to say, but I smile anyway because it’s a good answer and it shows me that he was paying attention when I told him my memories of Sydney. Gavin looks down at Wally again and then he puts him back into the crate.
I have to ask. “Where were you yesterday?”
“Sleeping, mostly. Trying to.” He scratches his fuzzy cheeks. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear any more about Sydney. I wasn’t sure if it was doing me any good. I’m still not sure.”
I’m afraid of what might be happening right now. “Are you quitting?”
“No,” Gavin says, his voice changing to something higher. “No, I’m not quitting. I still want to help you with your song.”
I take a deep breath.
“And I still want to know whatever you can tell me about Sydney.” Now Gavin is the one taking the deep breath. “For better or worse, I have to know.” He leans back against the wall. “I think we were up to 2010.”
He’s right, so that’s where I start.
“May twenty-first is a Friday,” I say, making myself comfortable on the bed. “After school Mom drops me off at a guitar lesson that’s supposed to be free this one time. If you come back another time you have to pay, but Mom never takes me back another time because my teacher isn’t as good as Dad. After my lesson Mom picks me up and Sydney is with her and they have coffee cups in their hands that say modcup on the front. We start walking down Palisade Avenue. Sydney says, ‘You’ve gotten taller, Miss Joan,’ and I don’t know if that’s true or not because I never measure my height and I can’t see myself grow. I try to see what’s different about him but it looks like maybe he’s exactly the same, except for one thing.”
“What thing?” Gavin asks.
“He’s wearing a new bracelet. The same bracelet that’s on your wrist now.”
Gavin touches the bracelet to make sure it’s still there. “We both had them and then Syd lost his.”
I’m ready to tell him more about the memory from 2010 but he isn’t finished talking.
“We took a trip to Mexico. After dinner one night we were walking and we stopped at a street vendor. This woman was selling these leather bracelets with little animal shapes carved into them. They were really ugly. I made a joke that we should wear them to keep other people away. Syd never wore jewelry. He hated the feeling of having any extra weight on him. He wouldn’t even keep his phone in his pocket. But he said he’d wear the bracelet for me. One bracelet had a fox and the other one had an eagle.”
With his head leaning back against the wall and his eyes closed, Gavin looks like he might be sleeping, but his mouth is moving just enough to let the words out.
“The woman who sold us the bracelets had a story. She said the eagle was a golden eagle and that it was strong enough to drag a goat off a cliff. She gave me the golden eagle and she handed Syd the fox. She told him to be careful around me.”
“And then the fox disappeared?”
“Yes.”
“That’s spooky,” I say. “What happened to it?”
“He must’ve left it somewhere, I don’t know. He’d always take it off. I was bummed when he lost it, not because I cared about the bracelet, just because I liked the idea of him having to wear it. It made him a little less perfect, less in control.”
“So how did he end up with your bracelet?”
“He joked that he was going to hire a detective to go down to Mexico and find the lady who sold us the bracelets and buy a new one. But instead, he took the eagle bracelet from me and swore he’d never take it off. He wore it in the shower, to the gym; he slept with it. It started to have this funky smell. I told him he was off the hook, he’d passed the test, but he refused to take it off. And the thing is, he really hated this bracelet. I mean, he loathed it. When people asked him about it—and they did—he’d tell them how much he despised it. He’d play it up, how hideous it was, how much it pained him to have to endure it. He did that so they would know, and I would know.”
“Know what?”
He swallows hard. “How much he loved me.” His lips tighten and his head shakes back and forth. “To think I almost tossed it in the fire.”
I understand why he’d want to throw the eagle bracelet into the fire because that bracelet is one hundred percent bad luck and also it’s confusing to have an eagle on his wrist when he’s supposed to be a blackbird. But the rest of it I don’t understand. “Why did you want to burn Sydney’s things?”
“Because it’s too painful to remember.”
I know this so well and it makes me feel so close to him, like maybe we’re more than just songwriting partners, like we’re on the same team in some other way. But I still don’t understand. “Then why are you here now? Why are you talking to me?”
“Because it’s even more painful to forget.”
I never heard anyone say that before. I don’t really know what it’s like to lose a memory, but I guess it’s true that I’ve seen people get pretty upset about it, like when Dad can’t remember the name of an old club that one of his bands performed at or when he forgets the name of another kid’s dad even though they’ve talked before at the park. I also saw it with Grandma.
“My grandma Joan started forgetting before she died. There was this sad look on her face all the time. She was always arguing with Dad and Grandpa. It was like she was trying to tell them something but she couldn’t think of the right way to say it and she felt like no one could understand her.”
Gavin lifts his knees and hugs them. “You think about your grandmother a lot, don’t you.”
“Yes, every time I see old hands on a piano or the baby blankets with the holes in them or when someone says rascal. And whenever I go to Grandpa’s house and the front door opens, I still think Grandma Joan is going to be standing there with her arms open, ready to give me a big hug, but it never happens.”
Gavin rests his chin on his knee. “I know what you mean. I’m reminded of Sydney everywhere I look. When there’s a napkin folded into a rectangle, I always want to refold it into a triangle. That’s what he would do. Or when I’m at a restaurant and they have Tabasco sauce at the table. Usually it’s the brand that says Avery Island on it and Syd used to have a friend named Avery. Every time we saw that bottle of Tabasco sauce, I’d tease him and say, ‘Look who’s here.’ I still say it to myself now.”