by Laura Lanni
“All right, Joey. Two Oreos, with a big glass of milk—”
“Chocolate milk?” he suggested.
“Don’t push your luck. Two Oreos, white milk, and then toast and orange juice when Mom gets out of the shower. Deal?”
“Deal.” He climbed up on the stool and pulled down the Oreos. Then he asked, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why can I have Oreos for breakfast?” That’s my boy. Questions all day long.
I took the plunge. “I need your help with something. I want you to stay home from school today.”
“Cool! Can we ride bikes?”
“No, Joey. I want you to tell Mom you don’t feel well so she’ll stay home with you.” This would be a tough sell. The kid never got sick. And when he was sick, he never complained. Snot running down his nose, cough and fever, and he’d be out playing in the snow.
“Why?”
That word was gyped out of its fourth letter. “Don’t worry about why. Will you do it?”
The little shyster saw he had something I wanted. His brain gears were rolling. He smiled his cat smile at me and said, “For three cookies, no milk.”
“Deal.” I delivered the goods, he scarfed them down, and we were moving on to toast and juice when Anna walked out of the bedroom with a towel on her head.
She walked straight to Joey to pat down his morning hair and wordlessly accepted the cup of coffee I had ready for her. She was taking her first slurp, nose buried in the cup, eyes momentarily closed, when Joey looked up at her with his grimace face. In that split second, I regretted the absence of the milk. It would have helped to wash the chocolate crumbs from his teeth. His mother opened her eyes and saw the remnants of Joey’s forbidden breakfast. That’s when he began his fake whining, and he leaned to her for a hug.
Anna wrapped one arm around him in what appeared to be a hug, but she was just getting a firm grip on him so her free hand could tilt up his chin. Joey was nose to nose with her when she said, “Show me those teeth.”
I held my breath and hoped he’d keep his mouth shut. When he giggled, my heart burst open. His mother was going to kill me and then leave me.
With an accusing glance in my direction, which I shamelessly avoided, Anna released Joey and grabbed her coffee cup. She stole all the air out of the room when she marched back to the bedroom to get dressed.
Joey and I looked at each other. He smiled, showing big brown chunks of Oreo between each pair of his little teeth. I couldn’t share his amusement. My plan was unraveling.
I watched in horror as Anna packed her school bag and headed out the door. I had failed to trick my wife into staying home, staying safe. I tried one more desperate tactic as she was starting her car. I was going to tell her the truth. Universe be damned.
“Honey?” I said as I leaned my head in the passenger window and boldly asked my wife to stay home with me, to stay safe with me, to live. Breathless, I reached out across our dividing line and held tight to her wrist while I pleaded with her to choose me. I glanced around, scared shitless, like a fugitive on the run, and told her this day would be dangerous. She could get hurt. She had to be careful of forces acting on her today, every second of this interminable day. This damned day. She didn’t hear me. She couldn’t hear me. My words spilled unheard from my lips and were sucked into the void.
“Anna, honey, please be careful today.” She heard that.
My wife looked at me with a quivering chin. She wrenched her arm from my fingers and slowly, repeatedly, shook her head at me in wonder, left eyebrow raised, surely thinking Why is this man such an ass? “Enough with the honey crap. I’m going to work,” she said curtly as a tear crept from behind the dark glasses that hid her eyes.
In a pained whisper, “Good-bye, Anna,” came from my lips. Solemn, final, defeated.
She pulled down the glasses, and her sad eyes met mine one last time. She blew out her breath as she said, “See you tonight. Honey.”
And she left me.
Oh, please, I begged, please let me see her tonight.
41
My Deaths
On April Fools’ Day the year I was born, my mother called my dad at work at two in the afternoon to tell him she was starting her labor and needed a ride to the hospital. Dad was a famous jokester and was certain Mom was playing games with him. I wasn’t due until late May.
Dad’s reply was, “Call a cab, babe.”
There was no way my mother could pull an April Fools’ joke over on him. He had one planned for her that night. He was going to make her get all dressed up to go out to a fancy dinner, makeup and jewelry and all that girly stuff. Then he was going to pull into Jack’s Drive-In and order her a hot dog and chocolate milk shake.
Dad loved April Fools’ Day. I heard his stories every year. They were the background music while I ate my birthday cake.
So when Mom called him, in labor for the first time, and asked for a ride, Dad didn’t fall for her old tricks. When she started protesting about a cab, he said, “Right. I’ll meet you at the hospital.” Click. Dial tone.
Mom cried for a little while, and then she called her mom and her sister and they drove her to the hospital. It wasn’t until Dad arrived home that night and found the house empty that it occurred to him that something was up. The phone rang as he unwound his tie.
“Jack, are you coming to the hospital or not?” demanded his mother-in-law.
Dad snickered. He was impressed. This was good stuff. Mom was taking this charade pretty far to have her mother call and get in on it. Before he could reply, my grandmother said, “I told Debbie not to get involved with you. You are never serious. Poor girl is a mess of worry over this baby coming so early, and you ignored her.” Then she hung up.
With a jolt, my dad doubted himself. Maybe Mom really was at the hospital. He drove like a maniac and arrived in time to see her and beg for forgiveness before I was born.
Mom was in labor all night, and I was born at 3:57 a.m. on April second. Premature babies back then were not expected to live. I heard the story of the odds of my survival and my valiant struggle so many times it’s almost like I remember it. Obviously, I lived.
When I died again six years later, my guide on the dead side helped me look around, and I got to spend some time reliving my birthday and my perilous loitering at the edge of my two-way portal.
I was diagnosed with leukemia a week before I started kindergarten. The chemotherapy treatments knocked out all of my hair and left me physically weak, but I loved to go to school. It didn’t matter to me if the kids thought I was a freak. One little red-haired girl cried whenever she had to sit by me. It didn’t help that Jimmy, the biggest bully, always made her rub my bald head and told her that it would make all her long hair fall out. I liked getting my head rubbed. It felt good.
Kindergarten was the coolest place to be. We colored and played and counted and learned to read. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Everyone around me was concerned that my life was ending, but I don’t recall any fear of my illness. Although I was weak, I was able to play and learn. Hug my mom. Sit on my baby brother’s head. Roll in the wet grass with my big, smelly dog, Beau. Eat ice cream and chocolate cookies and licorice. Life didn’t feel so different to me sick. I loved being a kid.
A week before my sixth birthday, I was hospitalized for a dangerously high white blood count. I was still in the hospital on April Fools’ Day, the day before my sixth birthday, so Dad stayed with me, pulling jokes on the nurses. He had me giggling so hard I couldn’t catch my breath when he held down the call button for Nurse Edna, but acted surprised each time she came to the room to ask what I needed. Dad was perfectly straight-faced when he was in a prank. The third time he hit the button, he made me hide under the bed and he got in it. When Edna came in the room, fuming that he wouldn’t stop calling her for nothing, he was cowering under the sheets. When she yanked them down, he pretended to be asleep. She shook him again and again, and he wouldn’t budge. Then she he
ard me laughing under the bed and pulled me out and sat me on top of Dad.
That night I turned six years old and I died.
Dad was devastated. I watched him for whole days and missed him. I’d never seen him cry before.
Mom was all business after I died. She took care of my little brother and arranged for my funeral. She angrily tossed away my birthday cake and candles and balloons and streamers. Dad was a puddle.
Maybe because I was so young, it wasn’t hard for me to understand the matter and antimatter stuff. It was obvious that I didn’t have my body anymore, but I knew I was still me. I couldn’t feel anything, and it seemed like I was flying, but I remained still most of the time. I just hovered among my family. They didn’t seem to know I was there. Well, I think maybe my Mom did.
At four o’clock in the afternoon on the day after I died, the doorbell rang. My friends from kindergarten arrived for my birthday party laden with gifts. Mom told them the party was canceled and sent them home.
42
First Guide: Grampa
I was four when Grampa died, just a few months before my little brother Billy was born. Grampa was my pal and taught me to be quiet while we fished. He also taught me to stay quiet when Grandma was yelling at me and to smile when she was yelling at someone else. That’s how Grampa dealt with any conflict. He was quiet.
Grampa was so quiet in death that I didn’t even know he was with me when he found me on the dead side. Then, when I felt his presence, I asked, “Grampa, is that you?”
“Yep,” he said. “What in the world are you doing here already?”
“I don’t know. I was playing with Daddy, and then I got here and everything was so quiet.”
“Yep,” he said, again. “I like it quiet. But I bet you’ll find it a bit boring after time with your Dad.”
“Grampa, how come I can watch them, but they don’t know I’m there?” One thing about Grampa, he knew everything.
“Well, boy, they don’t know you’re there because your body doesn’t work anymore. See, you got real sick. Without a working body, you can’t be alive anymore.”
“Oh.” I thought about it a little while and then asked, “Your body doesn’t work either, huh?”
“Nope. Listening to Grandma complaining all those years wore my old body out.”
“But my body wasn’t too old. I was only just turning six.”
“That’s right. It was your birthday, eh? I guess I should say happy birthday then.”
“Guess not. I been watching Mom, and she threw out my happy birthday and sent my friends away.”
“Yep. That’s your mom. She can deal with stuff if she keeps on moving. Your dad’s not doing too good, though. Did you see him crying?”
“Uh huh. He’s real sad.”
Grampa hid in his quiet for a long time. I watched Daddy, and I felt like I was alone. He sat by himself with the old TV on but without the sound. He didn’t even change the channels or adjust the bunny ear wires to make the picture better when it started to flip. Mom came in, looked at him and turned off the TV, and he didn’t even yell at her.
Late that night when the house was dark, I was still watching them. Mom got up from bed. She walked through the house without turning any lights on and wasn’t even scared. She went into my bedroom and took my blanket. Then she sat in the dark at the kitchen table. I wished I could be with her and have her hold me like when I was little.
And then, in a flash of sparks, I was little. Even smaller than little. Mom was in the hospital and Daddy and Grandma were arguing in the hallway outside her room. Mom was crying and grunting and sometimes yelling bad words. A doctor and two nurses were talking to her, trying to calm her, but she stayed real mad. After a while, there was different crying in the room with Mom. It sounded sort of like a kitten. Daddy started to go into the room, but a nurse came out fast and stopped him on her way by. Then two more nurses ran into the room and came out with a teeny tiny baby and ran down the hall with him. Daddy and Grandma stopped arguing.
I followed the baby.
That’s when I realized he was me.
They named me Premature. When Mom finally pushed me out, I was blue, and the doctor was worried. But my antimatter rushed to my body, and I started breathing and cried out. The matter was weak, though, and the antimatter hesitated. That’s the minute they all thought that I would die, and the nurses started running around. Down the hall in the new room there were oxygen tents and machines. The nurses hooked up my tiny body to a respirator, and I started to breathe with help. That’s when the antimatter, which was hovering just above the matter, reattached, and my pulse started again.
This was my first clear understanding of matter and antimatter. Body and soul. I was six years young, newly dead, and watching my own birth.
In the eight weeks after my physical birth, the doctors wouldn’t give up on my body, and my antimatter was never far away. Gradually my body became stronger and the antimatter didn’t dislocate anymore. They renamed me Stable then and sent me home.
Now, at six years old, I was dead again, and it didn’t hurt. It wasn’t scary. But I missed my mom and daddy. I missed my smelly dog. I sort of missed my baby brother. I could be with them, but they didn’t know I was there.
It was Grampa’s idea to send me back.
I asked him, “How come I kept almost dying after I was born?”
“Well, Eddie, it seems your antimatter wanted to join your matter real bad. They were a good, strong match, but they weren’t ready for each other. The matter, a special group of molecules in your brain, had more growing to do, and your antimatter wasn’t expecting to join it for a few months. Once your body was born, the antimatter accelerated to it at the speed of light. I know you don’t understand how fast that is, but it’s way faster than your dad’s car.”
“Dad’s car is superfast! On the highway, when we go for rides without Mom, he really gets her going.”
“I know. I’ve spent some energy watching you. Now your antimatter joined your body with some incredible force.”
“Like a punch?”
“Yes! Quite a lot like a punch. And it bounced back off right away, then landed again and popped away sort of like a bouncing ball—each bounce gets lower until the ball stops bouncing. Do you see what I mean?”
I thought about a bouncing ball, and that made sense. I liked to play with the balls on the playground at school.
“So then what made my antimatter finally stick?”
“Well, a good match between matter and antimatter makes a strong attraction for each other. Kind of like two magnets. Once the antimatter slows down its bouncing, it can feel the attraction for the matter better.”
“Why was my antimatter coming in so fast? Is it always that fast?”
“The antimatter of you is what you are now, Eddie. It’s your soul. It doesn’t weigh much compared to the atoms and molecules of your body, and naturally travels at the speed of light. When your body arrived early, your antimatter whipped in fast to get to it. That caused the force and the bouncing.”
Grampa was so smart. I think he knew everything. “Once it stopped bouncing and stuck, I didn’t die anymore?’
“That’s right.”
“Well, how come I died on my sixth birthday?”
“That has puzzled me. Your body was getting stronger in the last months, until your white blood cell count went back up a week ago. It’s possible your body was just weak enough that when your deathday, which, in your case, happens to be your birthday, came along, you just slipped through the crack.”
These were some big ideas for a little kid, but I got the gist of what Grampa was saying. “Eddie, your crack in space-time is still open. You haven’t traveled far since you died.” He paused for a long time then said, almost in a whisper, “Why don’t you slip back in?”
It sounded like he was telling me a secret, so I whispered, too. “Back into what?”
“Back into your life. Go back. Be a kid. Live a good, long life.
I’ll enjoy watching it.”
And that’s what I did. Grampa helped me travel back in time about half an Earth day. Then he helped my antimatter cling to my body during the night that I died. He sort of hovered above me and used his antimatter force field to push down on mine and keep it in my body.
The next morning I woke up. The doctor decided my white blood count was low enough to send me home for a few days, and my mom threw the best birthday party I ever had.
Although I was so young, I instinctively knew I couldn’t make my living family understand what had happened to me. Mom would say it was just a dream, and Daddy would make a joke about it. I also had a strong feeling that Grampa wasn’t supposed to do what he did for me. The next time I died, I found out I was right about that.
It might be because I had these life-death crossovers so young that I remember a lot about them. They gave me an insight into what life and death really mean, but they isolated me from the rest of humanity who were blissfully unaware of it all. At times, for the rest of my life, I felt lonely and joked with the few close friends I found that I wanted to return to my home planet.
43
Another Birthday-Deathday, Another Guide
When I turned twenty, it happened again: I died in my sleep on April second. I didn’t wake up on my birthday-deathday. I was on the dead side. That’s when I met the little red-haired girl from kindergarten.
This time I wasn’t sick; my antimatter just detached. Luckily, my new guide joined me right away and clearly explained my situation.
“You’re dead,” she said.
“Oh. Again?”
“Yes. Mistake this time, though. Just a little slip-through, so they sent me to do a Rebound. Looks like your space-time crack is wider than normal—a bit flexible, not zipped up too tight—possibly because your birthday and deathday are the same.”