Or Not to Be

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Or Not to Be Page 12

by Laura Lanni


  Daddy was steaming when he managed to speak. “Pull over, Anna. Driving lesson’s over.” Then, hitching his thumb over his shoulder, he told my passenger, “Free ride’s over for you, too, buddy.”

  | | | |

  “Yes, Anna, driving lessons were a special part of being your dad.”

  “Hi, Daddy! Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been here, watching. You know me, not much to say.”

  It is such a relief to have him with me. He was my rock. I still have so much to figure out.

  “Now you do know the rules, right? I expect your mother remembered to tell you all about this guide stuff? I’m not usually a guide. But, apparently, you need more guidance than your mother can give. Is that right?”

  I don’t want to make Mom seem like an inadequate guide, but there are other issues I need to cover. So I just say, “You were always good at helping me change lanes, Daddy. Will you help me with this?”

  “I will,” he says, “as much as I can.”

  27

  Dogs

  When I was little, my fear of dogs made me tremble. As an adult, I was never afraid of dogs, or anything, anymore.

  Then I met those three dogs on my long run and my old fear boiled back up. The six-mile training circuit was my favorite before half-marathons. Once I could do the six miles without hurting, I’d add two miles every two weeks until I got up to twelve miles. That’s how I’d know my legs could carry me for the race.

  The long loop had it all. Winding, lazy hills. A pond with horses. Lots of shade. A few houses. A toilet in a ditch. A small farm with a rooster that always crowed for me. A creek beside the road. Once I was warmed up, if nothing hurt or distracted me, I’d dive deep into my thoughts. My brain would just go and go and leave my body. I’d solve physics problems, contemplate science and religion, ponder the number of stars and galaxies in the enormous universe, and agonize about personal problems, like my crumbling marriage and what to do about Eddie. Lately, running was my favorite way to get away from Eddie’s funk.

  Back to the dogs. One day after dropping Joey at a friend’s house, I found myself driving on the last two-mile stretch of my running route and saw three dogs at a mailbox up the road from the horses. I’d never seen them before, and I wondered whether they lived there or if they were a pack of strays. Either way, their presence on my quiet running path disturbed me, and I was glad to be safe in my car.

  The next time I ran, I remembered them as I approached the horses by the pond. When I got closer, I picked up a stupid little stick that I planned to use to defend myself against three large German shepherds who looked like wolves. Thank God they weren’t there. And again, a week later, I took an early turn before their mailbox to avoid them, but I peeked around the corner and again they weren’t there. So I had years of running data showing no dogs on this route, considered together with a couple more runs without them. My statistical brain concluded that the dogs did not live there. It was a fluke that I saw them when I drove by. Hence, my run was theoretically safe again.

  I decided that I was not even scared the next time I ran the cycle, and I didn’t even bother to pick up a dirty old log for protection. I said hello to the horses like I always did. As I started up the long hill and approached the dogs’ mailbox spot, I saw movement through the trees. I saw one dog lounging on the driveway. He didn’t move, but I was so spooked I turned around and ran halfway back down the hill toward the horses. The dog didn’t chase me. My mind did the calculation of “five miles if I backtrack, one and a half miles if I can get by.” The big dog seemed to be alone. I turned around and risked it. I ran by him, exuding the stench of fear, with all of the hairs on the back of my neck standing at attention.

  His ears perked up as he studied me with sharp, black eyes. I stared back. The other two dogs were resting in the sun behind him. One heaved himself to his feet and paced when he saw me. When the third dog stood up, I almost peed myself. They didn’t chase me, but their eyes followed me. They barked while they weaved an agitated dance in the high grass. I held my breath until, without warning, they all turned and ran toward the house. Away from me. My heart was beating in double time. I sprinted up the hill. The dogs barked from the woods but didn’t chase me.

  “That’s not exactly how it happened.”

  My dad’s voice.

  “Daddy? What do you mean?”

  “You should go back again and watch more carefully this time. Watch how the details change.”

  “The details can change? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “I know, doll. Just let me show you. If you can manage to get through it on your own, you’ll understand much more about time travel and your choices.”

  I jogged past the horses and approached the black mailbox beside the driveway where the dogs were spotted weeks ago. Movement through the trees. One dog, the biggest one, rested in the shade on the driveway. He didn’t move, but I was so scared I backed away, slowly, down the hill. His ears perked up as he studied me. I stared back at him. Sweat streamed down my spine. I looked around for a stick, and found one that was both too heavy and too brittle. The other two dogs walked past the chief. They inched closer to the road, closer to me. My heart was beating so hard I could feel the blood pulsing in my temples. I turned and sprinted up the hill. They were too fast for me, barking close behind me. I ran as fast as I could, fighting gravity, blindly waving the branch as they nipped at my heels. The barking stopped. I felt something rip into my thigh. The ground rushed up to meet me as I fell fast, and my head hit a rock in the ditch beside the road. More barking. Pain in my leg. My head throbbed. And then there was nothing.

  My body is by the side of the road. Blood is everywhere. Maybe I’m not all the way dead yet. The dogs stare at me from across the road.

  The air is still. The birds are quiet. The dogs trot up the driveway, back to the house. The runner gets up and wipes grass and dirt from her hands and legs. She looks up the hill and begins to run. She is me.

  The dogs did not chase me but acted spooked and ran around each other barking and then turned and ran toward the house. Away from me. My heart was beating so fast. I sprinted up the hill. The dogs barked behind me but did not chase me.

  They did not chase me.

  Did not chase.

  They ran the other way. They did not bite me.

  I took a full breath and ran for my life.

  Now they chased me. I ran faster. Not fast enough.

  I fell. I bled. I heard music. Eddie cried.

  It was a nightmare, rewinding, replaying, and changing each time.

  “Now do you see?” asks Daddy. “It was fall. You were training for a half-marathon. It was November eleventh.”

  Another November eleventh. Space-time opened up for me. I must have passed through. My matter and antimatter had separated. I died and came back. How many times? Different each time. Why do I have no memory of this?

  “What year was that?” I ask him.

  “Oh,” he says, “it could’ve been any year. The year isn’t important. What’s most important is that you see the various versions of the incident, each influenced by the innumerable choices you made that day, before that day, and even after that day.”

  “I see the event has many layers. That’s because of different choices?”

  “Yes, honey.” My dad is gentle with me. “Once the space-time gap opens on your deathday, the opportunity to pass through beckons you. But to pass back through to your life, if your atoms of that part of the core of your brain are even strong enough to take your antimatter back, is a solitary choice. It’s a decision that the individual must make.”

  I’m stunned as Daddy continues to explain, “When you go back, you must leave all of your death memories behind on the dead side. Imagine how life would be if living humans remembered their deaths and reentries. People survive in the space and time of their lives because these variables are distinct entities at earthly speeds. They vary directly and the proportionality constant is
the speed. You know all of this, right? Speed is the magnitude of the velocity vector. Velocity equals distance over time, so distance or space in one direction equals velocity times time. Right?”

  “Daddy? You understand physics?” This makes me laugh. This was so my mother’s realm. In life, my dad shunned technical explanations of any natural phenomenon. He and my mother thought and spoke different languages. It was amusing to watch them communicate, he with emotions and she with facts. It worked for them, but Michelle and I knew to go to Daddy for hugs and support and to Mom for homework help.

  “I always understood. I just didn’t enjoy applying it.” He’s quiet for a while. Silence hugs us. What I’m beginning to understand in death is so crystal clear that I wonder why the living can’t comprehend it.

  Daddy answers my thoughts. “It isn’t so much that they can’t. Living humans don’t want to comprehend it. It wouldn’t fit in with the energy that is life. You should think about this, Anna. I’m sure you will see why it is so.”

  And once again I am alone. Oh, so alone, but not lonely. Now I know that I can go and do and see whatever I choose.

  Regardless of how I died, I can go home again. I can live. I can kiss Joey’s head again. I can hug my Bethany and vent to Michelle and yell at my students. I can continue fighting and loving Eddie. Or maybe I could just skip past that last part.

  I can remain dead.

  As antimatter, I can consider the universe forever. The freedom of thought that almost always consumed my fourth and fifth mile of a six-mile run is mine for eternity if I choose it. I can loop back and reenter my life just by deciding to do it. I can reconnect my antimatter to my body and continue my life. Or not.

  Death doesn’t hurt anymore.

  28

  Friday, November 11

  One more time travel, just a little side trip, and then I’ll decide. I’m in better control now, and I know exactly what day and what people I want to see. I even think I can get there all by myself.

  On the morning of Friday, November eleventh, the day I died, I rolled over in bed and cracked Eddie on the nose with my elbow. Not the best way to start my last day on the living side. It was still dark, too early to get up, but Eddie got out of bed and started sneaking around the room the way he did when he thought I was asleep. He was horrible at being quiet. Even when he managed to avoid running into things in the dark, his ankles cracked with each step.

  When I asked what he was doing, he said he was checking the time.

  Though it was ridiculous for me to crave his attention, I hoped he’d get back into bed. But he didn’t. A few minutes later, I heard him whispering with Joey. I smelled coffee. I stumbled to the shower where I washed my hair for the last time and scrubbed the last sleep from my eyes.

  In the kitchen I ignored Eddie and went straight to Joey. While I sipped my last cup of coffee, which was sweet and strong, I rubbed Joey’s morning hair and sensed the guilt vibe hovering near Eddie. He was acting even stranger than normal. Our last morning matched our last two months together—we didn’t communicate or acknowledge one another.

  Watching now, it seemed I was ignoring him. Eddie’s eyes were fixed on me.

  Joey had all of my attention, especially when I saw the chocolate crumbs in his teeth. My little boy complained of a bellyache, and he leaned to me for a hug. Our last hug.

  I wasted it.

  When I said, “Show me those teeth,” my boy giggled and my husband gasped.

  I looked up at Eddie, caught him staring at me and saw him look quickly away. “Hey!” His eyes locked on mine. They were the same eyes as Joey’s, green and wide, but sad. On the last day of our marriage, we had our last fight before I turned my back on my best friend and huffed out of the kitchen with my coffee.

  I was still crying behind my sunglasses when I left for work. I couldn’t stop. I was relieved and even eager to leave my own house. I had to get away from my husband.

  Until he called me “honey” and made my hope bubble up again.

  Eddie leaned his head in the passenger window of my car and knocked me off my guard. I breathed in his soapy-clean morning smell, felt his gravity reaching for me. His face was shaved close. He smelled so good. I should have reached out to feel his face one last time.

  He asked, “Honey? How about a day off today? You and me and Joey. Let’s all play hooky.”

  My heart leapt, skipped a beat, and then hid down in the dark, afraid to take the bait. He would hurt me again if I gave in. I knew not to trust Eddie with my fragile heart, so I threw up the gates and defended myself with my furious offense.

  “You’re calling me honey now? Where’d that come from? I’m going to work.” I was glad the sunglasses blocked my wet eyes. Then, the last thing I said to my husband on my last morning alive, as a renegade tear of weakness snuck down my face and dripped from my chin, was sarcastic. I said, “See you tonight, honey,” and I fled.

  I wish I had kissed him good-bye and felt those arms around me one last time. I wish I had stayed home and played hooky. I wish I knew how I died. I wallow in my many ungranted wishes drizzled with regret.

  Suddenly, out of the unending nowhere all around me, I have that odd sensation which I’ve grown accustomed to on the dead side—the uneasy feeling that I’m not all alone.

  “Mom?” I try.

  Nothing.

  “Daddy? Who’s here?”

  “Maybe Old Man Eddie finally lost it and just snuffed her?” This wasn’t Daddy or Mom. A new guide with a sick sense of humor?

  “No, you fool. Eddie would never hurt me. He wasn’t even there when I died,” I said.

  “How do you know?”

  That’s when I recognize the voice. His voice. How is this possible?

  Eddie

  29

  Invitation

  I lived with the knowledge for a quarter of my life. It ate me alive. I knew Anna would die. I even knew when she would die, but I was powerless to stop it. I tried but failed to keep her with me.

  Now she’s gone, and I find it’s quite impossible to move my body out of this chair. My arms and legs are liquid. My neck and back ache. Head throbs. Eyes are scratchy, dry sockets. The only functioning part of me is my mind, and it won’t stop flashing numbers and memories, taunting me with a running commentary of I toldya so, if, and should’ve, reminding me that my life is now deficient of the billions of trillions of precious atoms that comprised my wife.

  Anna did it. She left me right on schedule. I never deserved her. I could rarely comprehend the complexity of her mind.

  Anna. I give up the fight and let my trolling mind go to her, engulf her, remember her. I embrace the pain with doses of her, letting them simultaneously sting the open wound in my heart and wrap me up.

  Despite its frequent short circuits, my Anna’s mind didn’t rest. She was endlessly entertained by her fixation with numbers. When she saw 1:23 on the clock, she’d call out, “My birthday!” Her fascination with 11:11 was broadcast twice each day. Although she didn’t often or intentionally stay awake until after eleven at night, she had the time on the alarm clock by our bed programmed twenty minutes fast so she could trick herself into waking up each morning. So when she called out, “Eleven eleven, again!” to me, as she turned out the light by her side of the bed every night, I knew she was delighted that her favorite time was when she always went to sleep. It didn’t matter if I argued that it was only 10:50. To her it was 11:11.

  Every fall she anticipated November eleventh like a kid waiting for Christmas. She was so naïve. She had no idea how inextricably those numbers were linked to her death. Through the years it became more and more difficult for me to refrain from explaining it to her—11/11 would be her deathday.

  When I met Anna she was a student in Particle Physics and I was the graduate teaching assistant for her section. I held recitation on Tuesday mornings during that spring semester while I wrote and defended my doctoral dissertation, took the MCAT, and applied for medical school. There seemed no
time for a love interest during that insanely busy time of my life. I was so self-absorbed that I almost didn’t notice when Anna’s light threw a shadow over my life.

  She was young and lovely and intelligent. Wildly, unstoppably intelligent. Self-assured beyond her years. And she was independent, in need of no one. But all of her self-esteem was fueled by her confidence in her intellect. She had no idea that she was a beauty.

  I couldn’t look away.

  On a Saturday in late March, a week before my birthday, I found Anna’s apartment and boldly knocked on her door. She seemed confused by my presence.

  “Um, hi. Mr. Wixim, is there a problem? I did turn in the last problem set. Didn’t I put my name on it? It was the one in green ink on the pink grid paper.” She smiled hopefully. She had an animated talking face with a furrowed brow, her chin down, her head turned to one side while she looked at me out of the corner of her eye. She also nodded while she talked in rhythm with her words. Her eyebrows never stopped moving, and I just about drowned in her big eyes.

  “No, Anna. There’s no problem with your assignment. I’m sure you turned it in,” I stammered and stopped. “Could you, um, could you call me Ed, instead of Mr. Wixim?” I lost my train of thought, distracted by the summation of details that comprised this girl. She wore plaid shorts, a little tank top, tube socks, and a bright yellow apron.

  “Sure, Eddie.” She tipped her head to one side, studying me back, pulling my attention back up above her neck. Her auburn hair was bunched in a loose pile and held in place by a pencil. Flour on her right cheek. Some wet white cream, maybe toothpaste, on her chin. “If my assignment’s okay, then why’re you here?”

 

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