Goodbye for Now: A Novel

by Laurie Frankel

  Despite his earlier enthusiasm, Sam began lightly suggesting that they might think about leaving when the Angels scored five runs in the sixth and the temperature dropped into the low teens.

  “My butt is frozen.”

  “Livvie’s Law: No matter how bad it gets, real fans stay for the whole game.”

  “I can see my breath.”

  “It’s like fifty-five degrees out, Sam.”

  “It’s winter.”

  “It’s the first weekend of October.”

  “Baseball is a summer sport.”

  “My grandmother thought the season should end on Labor Day. Not because she was such a big baby about the cold though. Just because she was anxious to get back to Florida and see all her friends there.”

  “I’m not a baby. It’s eight to one. It’s negative four degrees. We’re out of cocoa. I’ve been banned from the seven-dollar lattes. We could go home and remember Livvie in front of the fire.”

  “No matter how bad it gets, real fans stay for the whole game,” intoned Meredith happily.

  Just outside the gate, having seen nine sodden innings through to a miserable eleven-to-one conclusion, Meredith squeezed Sam’s mitten with her own.

  “Thank you. For making me come today. You were right. It’s what she would have wanted.”

  “It was fun,” said Sam.

  “I could tell.”

  “I was just teasing about freezing to death.”

  “Wait until Opening Day. That’ll be even colder.”

  “Opening Day?”

  “Oh yeah. My grandmother thought it should be a national holiday. Of course you go to Opening Day.”

  “Of course,” said Sam.

  “I’m sorry about the incredibly cheesy thing that’s going to happen 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 that didn’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

  Meredith’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 parachutes punched with the number of holes equal to their ERA.”

  “Is it touch?” Sam asked gently.

  “Maybe. Some. I don’t know. My grandma and I were mostly down to quick hugs and pecks on the cheek.”

  “You miss her voice? You miss seeing her?”

  “I don’t know,” said Meredith again. “You’d think predictable conversation would be boring, but it’s not; it’s reassuring. It’s not about knowing what she’d say. It’s about hearing her say what I know she will. Familiarity is comforting. Me saying her lines in her seat at her ball game, me knowing she’d be supportive and proud of me and encouraging of whatever I tell her … that’s not about her; that’s about her absence. Knowing is beside the point. I just want to be with her again, hear from her again, even an e-mail, even a text, even a canceled dinner date. I just want to believe that she’s still out there somewhere. I know how to miss her in Florida. I know how to miss her for a few months. I just don’t know how to miss her forever.”

  Did Sam say, “Missing her is a good thing. It means you loved her”? Did he say, “Missing her is a good thing. It means you’re mourning”? Did he say, “You’re lucky you were so close,” or, “You’re lucky you had her in your life for so long,” or even, “What are your thoughts on the designated hitter”? No, what Sam said was, “Maybe you should e-mail her. Just to make yourself feel better.”

  Meredith laughed. “I wrote a letter to my pet turtle after he died when I was six.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I don’t remember. ‘Dear Mr. Turtleton, Thank you for being a good turtle. I’m sorry you died. I hope you’re enjoying turtle heaven.’ Something like that. My mom thought it would be therapeutic.”

  “Was it?”

  “I don’t remember. I do remember getting in trouble though for throwing the letter in the creek. My dad was mad at me for littering, but that’s where he’d put Mr. T, so that’s where it made sense to put the letter. I couldn’t understand why putting a letter in the creek was littering but putting a dead turtle in the creek was A-okay.”

  “It’s the beauty of e-mail,” said Sam. “At least there’s a place to send it, a place for it to go.”

  Meredith did e-mail her grandm
other just to make herself feel better. But it didn’t work. How could it? Even for e-mail, it was soulless. There was no one on the other end. And she knew it. And Sam knew it. But he also knew something else. Or suspected he did. Sam suspected it wouldn’t be that hard to make Livvie respond. There were a lot of examples to model on because Livvie had sent a lot of e-mails. And they were fairly patterned and predictable, especially the ones to her granddaughter. Once Sam filtered the archive by date so that he included only the winter e-mails, mostly Livvie wrote to Meredith that she missed her and loved her and hoped she wasn’t working too hard, that Florida was sunny and hot and fun, and that Meredith should come visit. Sometimes she added that she was kicking someone’s ass in cards.

  Sam’s dad had a favorite story about an early experiment in language and computers called ELIZA that was developed in the 1960s at MIT to play therapist. It used pattern matching to listen to users’ problems and respond with appropriate psychotherapist questions. A user would sit down and type, “My sister’s always hated me,” and the program would say, “Why do you say your sister’s always hated you?” It was at once very simple and very complex programming, a lark, a parody, a joke, and groundbreaking science. Sam’s father’s favorite part of the story though was that all the grad students who were working on it would end up staying after hours getting therapy from ELIZA. They knew they weren’t talking to a real doctor. But they did it anyway. Sam was never clear whether the moral of the story was that computer programs can model human behavior so closely as to be indistinguishable or that graduate students are chumps.

  Meredith had e-mailed her grandmother as though she were really in Florida, not an e-mail full of misery and mourning, which was certainly not going to make her feel better, but the e-mail she wished she could write to a summering Livvie from the granddaughter still spending fall in Seattle. If there was perhaps somewhat more bitter in the sweet than usual, you’d have to know to know. She had written:

  Hi Grandma,

  How are you? How is it there?

  Here, I am missing you so much. But I have a little bit of news. I am dating a great new guy. His name is Sam. I met him at work. You’d love him—very smart and funny and kind. He’s really great to me, and we’re really great together. I can’t wait for you to meet him.

  Anyway, I feel a little silly sending this, but I know you’d want to know. Hope it is warm and sunny and wonderful where you are. I want to tell you too that I love you so much and miss you every day and think of you always!

  Love,

  Meredith

  And not right away, but eventually, after some trial and error on Sam’s part, her grandmother wrote back:

  Hi honey,

  I miss you too, but I’M SO EXCITED YOU’VE MET SOMEONE. Tell me all about him! What’s he look like? Is he a baseball fan? What’s his team? Is he a computer geek? Didn’t I tell you when you started working there that you were risking marrying a computer geek? Hooray!! Can’t wait to hear details. Maybe you and Sam could come visit me down here. The weather’s perfect, and the water’s calling your name. I bet it’s cold and rainy there. Poor you :(

  Let’s video chat soon. Right now I’m off to play bridge with the girls.

  Love you too!

  Love,

  Grandma

  Entirely computer generated. It hadn’t even been that hard. He’d written a program that combed Livvie’s old e-mails for clues: what she said about missing her granddaughter, what she said about the weather, what she said when Meredith met someone she liked. Didn’t I tell you when you started working there that you were risking marrying a computer geek? She had. Many times. The e-mail simply plugged in details, echoed back what Meredith said, and did a good job of sounding exactly like Livvie always sounded. It was eerie and a little uncanny but surprisingly simple when you got right down to it.

  Sam thought it was impressive, but he worried it might be too impressive, at once too real and, of course, not nearly real enough. This was what Meredith had said she wanted, but he wasn’t sure it was what she meant. Did she want the e-mail or the fact of the e-mail, the woman behind it? Sam couldn’t give her the woman behind it. But he could give her the e-mail. It wouldn’t be enough—he knew that—but maybe something was better than nothing at all, ever again.

  Or maybe it wasn’t. Sam always had this problem. He could and he was impressed that he could, and the combination of those two things made him think that he should. But that wasn’t always the case. He decided to call in an expert on the subject of Stupid Things Sam Did Just Because He Could.

  Jamie was full of frustrations. Work wasn’t fun anymore now that Sam was gone. BB was at once demanding better performance and forbidding anyone to even think about revisiting Sam’s algorithm. Clients were circulating myths that there was some magic formula to pair them with their perfect mate, but it had been taken away from the masses, and only the chosen would be allowed to use it. Others were convinced the answer was locked away somewhere in their file—that if only they were given access to it, they could have the name, address, social security number, and star sign of their soul mate—but no one was allowed to see. Online communities spoke of Sam Elling as a god. BB banned his name from ever being uttered in the building again.

  “It’s a nightmare,” said Jamie.

  “It’s fantastic,” said Sam.

  “How do you figure?”

  “I am vindicated. Nothing like being fired and still managing to wreck things for BB remotely.”

  “It’s very frustrating,” said Jamie. “That algorithm was the best piece of software ever developed on my watch, and no one even gets to use it.”

  “Well, not no one,” said Sam.

  “Explain.”

  “Meredith’s grandmother died.”

  “And you’re fixing her up with Abe Lincoln.”

  “Abe Lincoln?”

  “Just trying to name a dead American.”

  “And Lincoln was who came to mind?”

  “I’m not from around here. Quick, name a dead Brit.”

  “Shakespeare,” said Sam.

  “Shakespeare’s not British. He’s universal. But never mind. What are you doing with the algorithm really?”

  “Not using it. Just using the idea of it. Looking through someone’s e-mails to learn more about them.”

  “You’re stalking Meredith’s dead grandmother?”

  “Meredith wanted to write her grandmother a letter. Say goodbye and she loved her and missed her and whatever. Not that unusual an impulse, right? But we’re living in her apartment, so she couldn’t send it there, and they e-mailed each other quite a bit, so that’s what we settled on. She e-mailed her grandmother.”

  “And? I’m waiting for the punch line.”

  “Her grandmother replied.”

  Jamie grinned. “Zombie-mail. No wonder BB fired you.”

  “I wrote a script that looked at her back e-mails and compiled a reply to Meredith that’s pretty much indistinguishable from what she’d have actually written if she were still alive.”

  “Pattern matching? Fill in the blanks?”

  “Basically. How varied are your e-mails with your grandmother?”

  “My gran wouldn’t know what e-mail was if she woke up in bed with the ‘You’ve got mail’ guy, but I take your meaning. That’s pretty clever.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So what’s the question?”

  “Do I show it to Meredith?”

  “No way.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Too unsettling. What was useful in this exercise for Meredith was her writing to her grandmother. She’s obviously not expecting a reply.”

  “But she said she wanted one. She said all she wanted was e-mail from her grandmother.”

  “Correspondence from one’s dead relations can never be anything but disturbing, Sam.”

  “I don’t know,” said Sam. “Maybe it would be cathartic.”

  IT WAS NOT CATHARTIC

  He de
cided to sleep on it. He routed the e-mail to Meredith’s inbox but then stashed her laptop under his pillow in case he changed his mind. In the morning when they woke up, he began with, “This is weird. It is. And I’m not sure about it, but I want to show you and let you decide. I have a surprise.”

  “Oh goody.” She reached over for him.

  “Not that,” said Sam and then thought better of it. “Well, sure, that first if you want.”

  “First? What else is on offer?”

  Sam produced her laptop from under his pillow.

  “You got me … my laptop?”

  “I sent you an e-mail.”

  “I think I pick sex,” she said, reaching for him again.

  “It’s not really from me though,” Sam hedged.

  “You forwarded me an e-mail? This surprise gets less and less exciting.”

  “Check and see.” Sam held the laptop out to her nervously. Meredith opened it and scanned her inbox.

  “No e-mail from you. What are you …? Wait … oh my God. Oh my God, Sam.” She looked at him, and he held his breath while for a moment, then two, she didn’t do anything. Then she clicked on the e-mail. Read it. Paled to whitewash. Looked confused. Then angry. “My grandmother replied to my e-mail.”

  “Yes.” Sam waited. And then added, “Well, I helped.”

  “To trick me?”

  “No!”

  “To fuck with me?”

  “Merde, of course not.”

  “Do you think this is funny?”

  “No, I—”

  “Why would you—How could you?”

  “I didn’t actually.”

  Puzzled silence. Quiet anger. “You just said you did.”

  “I did. I mean I did say that. I didn’t e-mail you. Your grandmother e-mailed you. I just helped.”

  “You helped?”

  “Not even me, actually. I just pushed start. Well, jiggered the program and then pushed start.”

  “You logged into my grandmother’s e-mail account and e-mailed me as a joke.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. Does that e-mail sound like me?”