Or Not to Be

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Or Not to Be Page 21

by Laura Lanni


  “I haven’t noticed any danger or pain yet, just copious fear. How could my life end up like that?”

  “Hold on,” Anna demands. “Let me wrap my brain around this. I died when I was in my midforties. I’d been married to you for half of my life. You died when you were twenty? And we just bumped into each other here because we both happened to be watching the same scene in our lives. Don’t you find this bizarre?”

  “I guess. But see, you also have to understand that I don’t know you. At all.”

  When she doesn’t respond, I ask her, “Have you decided? Are you going back?”

  “I’m still not sure. According to my parents—my guides—I have a lot of choices. What about you? Why don’t you just go back to your body like you’re supposed to?”

  “I’m just too curious to give up the chance to look around and find things out. Wouldn’t you look around?”

  “Not if they told me to go back. God, I’d love to be told what to do but, in my case, they say I have to make my decision all by myself.” Anna sounds confused, so I decide to take a stab at it and act as her guide.

  “Well, I don’t have to follow those stupid guide rules. I’ll tell you what I think. If I were you, I’d stay dead.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve been watching your life, and it doesn’t look that great. You and Eddie don’t talk at all; you fight with your little boy; Eddie is mean to you and has been since you met him, and he has a nasty sense of humor. The guy doesn’t even watch football right. And you! You have no memory. You lie at bookstores. You are grumpy all the time. Seriously, all the time, Anna. You are never happy. Why would you go back to that?”

  “Ouch. Thanks for the advice.” After a while she says, “It’s interesting to have my life analyzed by an uninvolved observer. Things have been bad the last few months, but Eddie usually snaps out of his annual funk by now. I was looking forward to it. But in our defense, you obviously haven’t seen any of our good times.”

  “You two have good times? You’re telling me the guy has an annual funk? He’s like this every year and you stay with him? Why?”

  “I love him,” she says.

  “Does he love you?”

  “Can’t you answer that for him?”

  “No, I’m not him yet.”

  “I think Eddie loves me.”

  “Does he say it?”

  “Would you?” she challenges, a bit defensively, I think.

  “I’ve never loved a girl enough to say it. I mean, I’ve said it when I needed to, like to get my way—you know what I mean. Everybody, every guy, says it then.”

  “You ass! If you don’t mean it, don’t say it. Better yet, you should just avoid the word. You’re not qualified to use it. You know, in about five years you’re going to be a great guy. I’m glad I didn’t meet you when you were twenty.”

  “Are you advising me to go back?”

  “I’m no guide, but yes, absolutely. You should go back, Eddie. Even though I think you’re an idiot right now, and my mother will always think you’re a talking horse, I know how awesome our life was together. Most of the time. You have to go back. There won’t be Bethany or Joey without you there.”

  “What about you? Are you going back?”

  “That’s still on the table. But you’ve given me a lot to think about. If you won’t even push me that way, and you are the main reason I’d go back, why should I bother?”

  I can feel Anna leaving me, and I don’t want her to go yet. I’m compelled by some force to stay with her, and, though she is scary as all hell, it takes almost no effort for me to follow her. I squelch my irrational fear of the woman by convincing myself that she’s unaware of my stealth presence.

  49

  Old Man Running

  I watch dead Anna spying on Old Man Eddie. She finds him running in the rain. It’s dark. He’s wearing scrubs and sneakers. His glasses are fogged. He’s crying.

  I watch them both: my future wife listening to the thoughts of my future self.

  I haven’t done a single thing right in months. All I do is hurt her. Anna’s going to leave me. For good.

  Old Man Eddie runs through the downpour, head down, out of the neighborhood and turns left.

  I can’t talk to her when she’s so angry. There’s nothing I can say to make her understand what’s wrong. She just watches me with those big, sad eyes that accuse me of being mean to her. I just keep hurting her. It’s all my fault, I know it, but I can’t make it better. She’ll be gone soon. What will I tell the kids? How will I tell them that their mother is gone, and I didn’t even try to make her stay?

  For miles, he runs in the dark with an empty mind and sad heart. Up a hill beside a white church and past some horses. There is nothing to hear. Old Man Eddie just runs and cries in the rain, taking random turns on his path until he loops back to their street and he slows to a walk.

  Home. Back to Anna. I made it home without thinking. Maybe it isn’t dangerous, her running that loop. There weren’t any dogs. He grins, thinking about the pockets in her shorts.

  He walks around the house, hidden in the dark, and looks in the window and sees Anna in his blue chair, drinking tea and grading tests. Right where she should be. Safe.

  Dead Anna murmurs, “Poor Eddie.”

  “Poor Eddie? Did we just see the same thing?”

  She’s surprised by my voice. “What are you doing here?”

  “Watching, just like you.” I’m curious to understand her mindset, so I ask, “What did that look like to you?”

  “It looked like Eddie was sad before I died, just like I was. He was thinking about me, about us.”

  “Well, what I saw was Old Man Eddie acting strange yet again. Who the hell runs in the rain in the dark and then peeps on his wife through the windows of their house?”

  “He’s hurting, though, just like I was.”

  “So that makes you feel bad for him? I’ll never understand women.”

  “No. You won’t,” she says.

  “But I think I understand that guy,” I insist, “probably better than you do. Do you really think he loves you?”

  “I did, but you’re confusing me.”

  “No, you’re confusing yourself. Did you listen to him? Even he knew that it was over. Even he knew you were going to leave him. He was ready for it. He accepted it as a done deal. Were you not listening?” She doesn’t respond.

  Instead, she leaves me. I don’t follow this time.

  50

  Future

  Anna’s gone. I should go back, but I’m still not satisfied. I may never have this chance again, and I want to see as much as I can from the dead side. I’d rather do it without Lizzie, so I think strong thoughts: I want to see my future, the distant future. How old might I end up?

  On a crowded, noisy street, old Eddie is walking fast with Bethany beside him. She looks to be in her late twenties. They find a hotel room and spend the night. It’s filthy, and the door won’t lock so they don’t sleep much. They carry backpacks loaded with medical supplies, and it seems they are there working on a medical mission. The city is familiar. Definitely in America. Maybe on the East Coast. But everything is dirty, and the people look fierce and foreign as though some military occupation is underway.

  The next day we’re back on the street. We find an open restaurant and trade my coat for food and then spend the afternoon hiding in the back of the dining room. Three armed men walk in and scan the room, looking for someone. I duck my head. After a few tense moments, they leave. Every face is stressed and worried. Gunshots are fired on the street in the middle of the day.

  As it grows dark, we try to leave, but crowds of people block the door from the outside. Who are these armed men that we see everywhere? Military police? I pull on Bethany’s wrist, and I try to exit but her hand is pulled from mine. The door closes, and I’m outside in the dark, alone in an angry crowd.

  I panic and push my way back into the restaurant.

  A man’s voice behind
me hisses, “What have you stolen, good doctor?”

  I turn to face him. I am wild with worry for Bethany. “I have nothing. Where is the girl?”

  “We have taken her in the back for a full search. She is a thief.”

  “No!” I yell. “She’s a nurse, and she’s under protection for her skills. You cannot harm her.”

  “No harm, good doctor. Just a search. If she has stolen nothing, we will set her free. Mostly unharmed.” He sneers. “She will retain all of her nursing skills, I assure you.”

  An empty bottle sits on a table nearby. I have no training in self-defense. I have no physical strength. All of my efforts my entire life have been to develop my mind. I am an old man, and I cannot even protect my daughter. He sees me look at the bottle and grabs it. He throws it against the wall with a crash.

  “That is not how I saw it! I was there!” I didn’t know she was with me, when Anna’s voice pulls me from the nightmare. She followed me this time.

  “What are you talking about? You weren’t there.”

  “Eddie, I saw that restaurant. I was there with you and Bethany. When I first died, I accidentally traveled alone to the future and saw that. I thought it was just a nightmare. It’s different every time I go there. Where was I this time?”

  “How the hell do I know? Maybe you stayed dead like I told you to,” I suggest.

  No reply.

  “Anna? Are you still here?”

  “Listen, Eddie, I need to rewatch one more thing, and you should see it, too. There was another future scene, a nightmare that I didn’t understand. It was Joey all grown up. And there was a baby.”

  “Whose baby?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know whether I can get back to it. Where are all the guides when you need them? I swear, my mother wouldn’t leave me alone, and now I can’t find her.”

  “My guide was a pain in the neck, too, and now she’s gone.”

  “She? You had a woman guide?”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “Who is she?” she asks, suspicious.

  “Anna, I have no idea what your Eddie was up to before you died. From what I’ve seen, hey, I agree he was an ass.”

  “So are you,” she says. I don’t argue.

  Awkward silence. The entire universe is silent with us. Then Anna’s sad voice says, “This whole time travel thing has been quite disorienting. Then meeting you here and having you be so very different from the man I ended up loving and spending my life with. The whole thing has me very confused.”

  “Tell me about it. Let’s get a guide, huh? Lizzie!”

  “Mom! Daddy?” she calls out.

  Nothing.

  Anna says, “I think my mother is avoiding me. I bet she’s enjoying an ‘I told you so’ moment. Eddie, there’s one thing you can do for me that’ll help me make a final decision.”

  “I thought no one could help,” I say.

  “But you’re not my guide. And you’re not supposed to be dead. And my decision will affect you. So, agree to this: go with me to just one more future place I’ve seen. It was an awful thing. A baby girl. I tried to help her!”

  “Hey, slow down. Just take me there, and we’ll watch it together, okay?”

  Anna manages to pull us into the future. Early morning light shines on a tiny baby’s foot, which is sticking out from beneath a fluffy pink blanket. A hand pats the baby’s back, rubs her tiny toes and then rolls her over.

  Bethany screams. Joey, all grown up, runs into the room. They are frantic as they try, and fail, to resuscitate the baby girl.

  She remains as still as a porcelain doll, beautiful and unresponsive.

  “No!” Anna’s voice interrupts the scene, “it wasn’t Bethany! I’m supposed to be there. What the hell is going on? This isn’t how I saw it the first time. Don’t watch anymore, Eddie. Don’t watch it. It’s too horrible.”

  Somehow, Anna pulls us from that place. I am too stunned to speak. We drift together in space.

  A long time later, Anna speaks to me. “Ed, I’ve decided. Living hurts too much. You’re right. He doesn’t love me, so I can’t go back to him.”

  I reply, “But I do have to go back.”

  Once decisions are made, there is no hesitation, no pause for reconsideration. I was immediately whisked back to my twenty-year old body, waking up on my birthday in my dorm room, very late for class and feeling hungover.

  And Anna? I assume she departed.

  Anna or Eddie

  51

  Dead

  Anna

  Deciding to stay dead—to depart, as my mother called it—turned out to be a simple thing. There was no ceremony or even a pause in the action. On Earth, people were born and people died. The universe went on peacefully. Time continued on its wandering path, fast or slow, forward or backward or stopped.

  I could watch events as they occurred in the life I left behind at my leisure. I could watch time as it passed while the world orbited the sun. Living people call this the present. I could fast-forward Earth time to watch the future. Or, of course, I could endlessly torture myself and review the love and pain of my life. At first, I just watched my family in their present time, dealing with life without me. I zeroed in on my memorial service once more.

  I nestle down next to Joey, in the spot he saved for me in the front pew, to check him out up close like I used to do each day at breakfast. He looks rumpled in his suit, like he’d been under his bed sleeping in it not ten minutes ago. There’s sand in his eyes from a recent snooze, a chocolate mustache above his upper lip, snot wiped on the knee of his pants, and the stubborn cowlick at the back of his head is blooming today. What a mess, my boy. His birthday is coming up. He’ll turn six without me to make the cake and wrap the presents. I begin to doubt myself. Maybe I made the wrong choice.

  The school chorus launches into an a capella rendition of “River in Judea.” It is beautiful and fills the chapel with harmony. It also makes a lot of people cry. This is good. Crying helps. I remember that.

  After the song, a pastor who never met me starts to sing my praises. I wonder where he got his information. Most of it sounds rote.

  “Today, my brothers and sisters, we celebrate the life of a loving mother, sister, wife, teacher, and friend. Anna Wixim was all of these things to so many of us. She touched our hearts and lives, and she will be missed each and every day. Let us take solace in the knowledge that our beloved Anna is now resting at peace with our Lord.”

  I check around me. No Lord yet.

  He continues reading his script about the dead woman, a stranger to him. “She cared about her community and the environment and was a loving wife and best friend to her husband, Eddie.” Best friend, right. I sneak a peek at Eddie to register his reaction. My husband surprises me again. He is weeping, but silent, as he listens.

  “As we mourn the loss of our great friend and mentor, we will be comforted by our fond memories of Anna’s laughter and sense of humor. Let us pause now and bow our heads and ask for God’s grace and blessing of the soul of Anna Wixim as we prepare to return her ashes to the earth.”

  The church is hushed. My soul feels blessed. What is left of me, my antimatter, is truly eternal. At the instant of the blessing, what remains of me is swooshed into the universe and, with a blinding light, bursts into cosmic energy.

  I don’t depart. I remain at my memorial service. At the same time, I am everywhere else. I don’t mean everywhere like all around the world. I mean everywhere in the entirety of infinity. It is both disorienting and liberating.

  Mom was right: dead, I am everywhere and at all time. It is impossible to explain. It can only be imagined until it is experienced.

  My husband stands up to speak, and I dread hearing what he’ll say. The end of my life with him was so painful. We hurt each other, time after time, every minute of my last months alive. I’m afraid from his actions, and from the perspective and advice his younger self provided to me in death, that the man I loved might be incredibly relie
ved to be rid of me. How will he manage to talk to this large group without indicating his pleasure in my absence? This is one mystery that I need to have solved.

  He walks to the podium slowly, head down. He takes some papers from his pocket and unfolds them, clears his throat, and begins to read.

  “As Anna’s husband and best friend, I would like to take a moment to talk about how special she was to me. My Anna was a unique and happy person, one whose smile could light up a room. She could always make me laugh ...”

  Boring. He could be talking about a pet turtle. Someone must have put him up to this—told him he had to speak, so he just jotted the first trite lines he could come up with. Perhaps he even Googled “tribute to dead wife.” This hurts.

  Mom? Are you watching this?

  No response. No “I told you so.”

  Eddie drones for a few more minutes and stops. He looks up at the crowd of people and blinks as though he just realized they were there. Then, with a rough shake of his head, he crumples the paper. There you go, Eddie, tell them the truth about us. I think if I had a heart it would rip in half right now. I was right. Eddie doesn’t love me anymore.

  He looks out at the hundreds of people crowded into the pews. The sniffling teenagers, the men standing in the back, the chorus sitting on the risers. He looks to Bethany, sitting up so straight, eyes shiny. Our little boy, leaning his head on his Aunt Michelle’s shoulder, looking like he might fall asleep. Then Eddie scans the room and his eyes rest on a teenage boy, about sixteen, in a long black coat in the last row. I follow his gaze, and at first, I don’t recognize the kid. Then, with a shock, I know him.

  He is Pizza Boy.

  52

  November 11

  Eddie

  After Anna left for work on her final November eleventh, there was nothing left for me to do but worry. She was gone. I knew I was going to lose her. I went to work.

 

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