— 17 —

“I’m fine, Bama. Really fine,” he says. “I don’t want you to worry. It’s all cool.”

PHYLLIS RAPHAEL (GRANDMOTHER) AND MAX GLEZOS-CHARTOFF

My grandson Max, who died in 2012 at the age of seven, has agreed to meet me at La Caridad, the Spanish/Chinese restaurant next to my apartment building on the Upper West Side that was his favorite place for a takeout lunch.

He’s there before I am, waiting on the bench next to the kitchen, dangling his legs. His face lights up when he sees me. Mine does, too. I can feel my heart beating faster, and I wind my arms around him. Alive. So alive. “Oh, Max,” I say. “I’m so glad to see you.”

I’ve promised myself not to cry and I’m not going to. He looks beautiful. He’s wearing the gray zip-up fleece jacket I’d bought him in the Patagonia store. All the ravages of his illness are gone, and he looks just as he did before the brain tumor made its inroads upon him. His skin is white, and his hair is dark and shiny and wavy. His eyes are their normal shade of gray/green, and the one that was crossed (the first sign of his illness) no longer is. If this is what happens in heaven, it can’t be too bad.

“So what will it be?” I ask (as if I didn’t know).

“I’ll order,” he says. “Boneless chicken with yellow rice,” he tells the stone-faced waiter who wears a white short-sleeved shirt and clear glasses and is all business.

We sit on the bench waiting for our order. The palm of his hand in mine is unbelievably sweet, and I give his hand a quick kiss on the knuckles. The restaurant is full of lunchtime diners: taxi drivers, West Side workers, a pair of lovers, boys from the exclusive Collegiate School around the corner. But I can’t take my eyes off Max. He’s so beautiful.

“How are you, really?” I ask.

“I’m fine, Bama. Really fine,” he says. “I don’t want you to worry. It’s all cool,” he says, leaning his shoulder against me.

“Okay,” I say. “If you say so.”

“I do,” he says.

There are a million questions I could ask him, but somehow I don’t want to. Where has he gone? What is it like? Answers will just beget more questions. It’s enough just to be here with him, the two of us together. I’m happy just being with him to share a lunch. I don’t want anything more.

The bag with our food is set on the counter, and Max jumps up. “I want to pay,” he says.

This is total Max.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Yes,” he tells me. “Then you can pay me back.”

This, too, is Max. I should have known there would be a catch.

He’s into money. He saved the dollars he wheedled from me, from his step-grandfather—my husband Bob—and from his California grandfather, and his banking skills display the workings of the mind of a future Wall Street power broker.

One afternoon he and his best friend Nikki tried to sell their paintings in the lobby of their apartment building. The prices were exorbitant, but Max wasn’t worried. He said, “Don’t worry. My grandma will pay.” And I did.

He produces a grown-up leather wallet, a gift I recognize from his aunt Jen, from the pocket of his jacket, and together we take out two ten-dollar bills. He hands the money to the counter man, who misses the humor of being paid by a seven-year-old with a Ferragamo wallet, and I take the change, and Max takes the warm plastic bag that holds our lunch and carries it close to his chest. Once at my building, he waves to our gateman, who hollers, “How’s it going, Max?” as we ride the elevator upstairs to my apartment. In our formal dining room he takes his customary seat on one of the French chairs at the head of our long pine dining table. I put down the place mats that I brought back from India.

“I like those,” he says.

“I know,” I say.

“No red stuff,” he warns me as I dish out the chicken and yellow rice.

“You think I could forget?” I say as I pick out the strips of pimento from his serving, and we both dig into the warm food. One order is enough for a family of four, and there’s crusty bread and pats of butter.

“I’ve read all your schoolwork, all the stories you wrote,” I tell him. “They were really good.”

“I know,” he says. (Modesty was never his strong suit. The boys in his class used to fight to see who would sit next to him in the lunchroom. When his mother asked him why he said, “Because I’m famous.”)

“I don’t know which story I like best,” I say. “It’s a tough choice. Maybe ‘How to Walk My Dog.’ I like when you say, ‘Find a tree.’ ”

“You don’t have to pick,” he says. “You can like them all.”

He’s looking at me earnestly, and I have the wish that this moment would last forever, just me and Max and our chicken and rice.

I spoon out a second helping of chicken and rice and butter a piece of bread for him.

“I like what you wrote about money,” I say. “ ‘Children should be paid to go to school, like thirty dollars,’ ” I read. “ ‘Why don’t they get paid?’ ”

But Max has lost interest. He’s finished his chicken and rice and is on his way to the kitchen freezer and is soon back with a carton of Häagen-Dazs ice cream and two bowls and spoons. That’s my cue to get the sprinkles—not chocolate, the rainbow sprinkles are the ones he likes, hot pink, green, blue, white, yellow, orange, and red. He sprays them over his mountain of vanilla ice cream, so thick the spoon is dense with them as he fills it up. I pick some sprinkles off his lip, and we sit looking at each other and eating ice cream together.

Our spoons are scraping the bottoms of the bowls. Lunch will soon be over and he’ll have to leave. I feel a wave of anguish wash over me. Our time is coming to an end. “You know that La Caridad may soon be gone, don’t you?” I say. “It’s going to be bulldozed to the ground. A high-rise will be going up where it is now.”

“I know,” he says. “But I’ll never forget it. Will you?”

“Never,” I say.

Max takes the bowls into the kitchen, and when he comes back I hold him tightly, my lips pressed against his cheek, hearing the soft sound of his breath and feeling his bones against my chest as he slips away.

“I love you, Bama,” he says.

“Oh, Max, I love you, too,” I say.

I walk him out to the elevator. The door opens, and he’s gone.

Standing in the empty hallway I have a sudden recollection of Emily Gibbs in Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, learning how painful it is after death to go back among the living. Just as unbearable, I think, for the living to have one last chance to be with the dead.

Phyllis Raphael is the author of the memoir Off the King’s Road: Lost and Found in London. Winner of a PEN Award for short fiction, her stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times, the Village Voice, Vogue, Boulevard, Creative Nonfiction magazine, and the Norton anthology The Seasons of Women. She has taught creative writing at the New School, at New York University, and in the undergraduate creative writing program at Columbia University.