Or Not to Be

by Laura Lanni

  After my morning rotation I needed a status update to find out whether my wife was still alive. I knew Anna had lunch duty on Fridays, but I thought maybe I could catch her at the end of it, before she went to her afternoon classes. I tried her cell phone. No answer. I called the front office and the head secretary answered in a snit.

  “Belleview High School,” she barked.

  “Anna Wixim, please.”

  “She’s in class right now. Care to leave a message?”

  “No. No message. Just a question. Is everything all right at the school today?”

  “Seems all right to me. What do you mean? Who is this?” she asked.

  “This is Anna’s husband, Eddie Wixim. I was just a little worried. I wanted to make sure Anna made it to school all right, and there were no emergencies today.”

  “Well, I know Anna’s here, but I didn’t actually see her. She called down this morning to tell us she was taking her first class to lab. That’s what those science teachers do, you know. They call us all day long telling us where they’re going.”

  “No emergencies?”

  “Like what do you mean?”

  I tried to explain without sounding like a nutcase. “Like fires or intruders or fights on campus—any of those things?”

  “Oh, now, Dr. Wixim, we have some of those things every single day. Today’s no different ...” Her voice trailed off and sounded like she was covering the mouthpiece, talking to someone else. I heard her say, “Yes, sir. No, sir. Of course, I’ll call on his walky-talky.” Then back to me, “Dr. Wixim, you hit it on the head. We have one of your emergencies right this minute. I have to go help call up all the administrators. I’ll tell Anna you called.”

  “No. Wait!” I yelled into the phone. “What is the emergency now?”

  A voice over her walky-talky came through the phone before she could cover the mouthpiece: “Gun in the cafeteria.” She hung up.

  Gun in the cafeteria. I froze.

  Was Anna still in the cafeteria?

  I dialed the school again. Busy. I tried again for five minutes, then ran out of the hospital and drove like a mad man to get there. When I arrived fifteen minutes later, I charged into the front office.

  “I need to see Anna Wixim right away,” I demanded to the secretary at the first desk.

  “No sir, we’re not allowing visitors right now. Lockdown.” She picked up her radio and hissed into it, “Jake? Jake! Get up here and lock these front doors! Now!”

  “Why are you in a lockdown?” I asked, as every hair on my body stood at attention.

  Her radio beeped. She held up her palm to me while we listened through the static. “Yes, ma’am. I’m on my way.”

  Back in charge, she turned to me and said, “Dr. Wixim, it’s a safety precaution. Everything appears to be okay, and the police are here, but the lockdown helps keep the kids in their places until we know it’s safe to change classes again.”

  “Just tell me where Anna is right now.”

  “Hold on a sec.” She pulled a massive stack of stapled papers from her bottom desk drawer and started flipping through them. She glanced at the clock. “Hmm, 11:27, normally she’d be finished with lunch duty, but I bet she had to stay in the cafeteria until the lockdown ends.”

  “Isn’t that where the gun is?” I was losing control.

  “How’d you know about the gun?”

  “Heard it over the phone. That’s why I came.”

  “Yes, sir,” she admitted, “that’s where the gun was spotted, but the administrators are all there, and they haven’t confiscated a gun yet.”

  Somehow, incredibly, I kept breathing. And standing. I didn’t pass out, but I was close. I sat down in a chair by her desk, and she said, “Sir, you look a little pale. Are you feeling all right?”

  “No. I think I might be sick.” Then I was sick into her wastebasket.

  Her walky-talky beeped, and a man’s voice said, “Front office. All clear. No gun in the cafeteria. Call an all-clear please.”

  She sighed and said to me, “See? Everything is fine. These things blow over fast around here.” She picked up her walky-talky and said, “All clear, I got it. Thanks. And if there’s a janitor listening, I need a cleanup in the front office.” She gave a weak smile to me and a sick look to the stinking trash can.

  I was embarrassed. I got up quickly, nodded good-bye, and got out of there.

  53

  Pizza Boy

  Anna

  What is Pizza Boy doing at my memorial service? Why isn’t he in jail?

  Daddy’s voice says, “Calm down, honey. You’re not supposed to need a guide anymore after you depart.”

  “Daddy, that’s the kid who killed me! What’s he doing here?” I’m shrieking, bordering on hysteria. The peace I felt just a few moments ago has vaporized.

  “Anna, that boy did not kill you.”

  “What? Then why am I dead?”

  “Well, consider it. Of course your space-time gap opened up on November eleventh. You left your atoms behind and passed through. That could have happened at any time of the day.”

  “And it did happen,” I say, “right on time. Pizza Boy had a gun in the cafeteria and shot me, and I died at 11:11 on 11/11.”

  Daddy sighs. “It looks like we need to do a little time traveling to help you clarify your deathday.”

  So, Daddy takes me to November eleventh. He plops me into lunch duty at eleven o’clock on the final day of my life.

  Rewind. Replay.

  The cafeteria fills quickly with noisy, hungry, hormonal teenagers. Dreaded Friday Lunch Duty: Four hundred kids, one administrator, four grumpy lunch ladies, twenty-two minutes, not enough ibuprofen, and me. A deadly mix.

  At the pizza line, as usual, the skinny mobster is trying to buy pizza with his free tax dollars. After the lunch lady denies him this forbidden pleasure, he has the nerve to argue with her, so I offer my assistance.

  He says, “What? Are you the Walmart greeter or something?”

  I order him to go to the turkey-and-mashed-potato-entrée line.

  “But I don’t want no turkey on my tray. I want pizza!” he demands.

  “That’s your misfortune. Come with me now, or I’ll call the resource officer to escort you out of the building.”

  He takes a stand and blatantly threatens me, warning about gangs and guns in the school.

  “I don’t care if you have a gun,” I reply, aware that my mouth is talking again without consulting my mind. “If you don’t have money, you may not have pizza. Even if you have a gun, without money, your only lunch option is the turkey. Now, move!”

  He drops the tray of pizza on the floor and storms away.

  Seventeen minutes to go. Time crawls by.

  I block my door to keep kids in or out.

  I break up a girl fight.

  On my way back across the cafeteria, I hear the growing rumble, the bubbling up of fear, the screaming. The panic on the faces of the children stuns me. Then I hear, “Gun! He’s got a gun!” and crowds of kids all run wildly for the door.

  I don’t see anyone with a gun as I stand in the center of the cafeteria while waves of kids run past me. Then I spot my pizza-not-turkey boy, and he is walking fast. Right toward me.

  “This is it, Daddy. It’s 11:11. This is when he shoots me!”

  “No, Anna. Keep watching.” Daddy is calm and certain. I am horrified to watch the details of my death, but I look back.

  Pizza Boy walks straight toward me. I stop him and ask, “Hey, the kids saw someone with a gun. Did you?”

  He looks right into my eyes and says, “No, ma’am, I didn’t see anyone with a gun.”

  I say, “Well, hurry. Come with me, and we’ll get you out before whoever it is gets in here.” I take his arm and pull him toward the other door. I lead him and more scared kids into the library and push them under tables. “Code red,” I tell them. “Remember? It’s the hiding drill. Stay quiet. We’ll tell you when to come out.” They all huddle together
. The nasty, flirty freshmen girls, the two Goths, and my Pizza Boy. They are all just scared kids.

  What the hell? “Daddy, he didn’t shoot me.”

  “No, Anna. If you think back, you’ll remember the gun kid went out the back door of the school when he was spotted and made a run for it. He drove off campus and was arrested later that day at a gas station.”

  I do remember now. We closed school early. I got home at around one o’clock. The house was quiet and empty. I was a little freaked out, but antsy. I almost called Eddie to tell him about the excitement at school, but I remembered, just in time, that he was a horse’s ass, so I couldn’t make myself voluntarily speak to him. Finally, I settled down enough and realized it was a perfect day to run. I figured that would calm me down.

  It was a crisp, fall day with an endless deep blue sky. Just like the day when I was a baby and Mom took me for a walk and later Molly chomped my arm. Just like the day I left Bethany’s soccer game and got into the car wreck that totaled my van. Just like my other deathdays, a perfect, sunny November day. I see that now. I had no idea of it then.

  “Daddy? Did something happen while I was running? Was I hit by a car on the church hill? The road is so narrow there, and the cars whiz by so fast.”

  “No. You weren’t hit by a car. But you did die on that run, Anna. Do you want me to just tell you about it, or do you want to see it?”

  “I died running?” That’s so ironic that it’s almost comical. My entire body and mind churned at high speed when I ran. My thoughts and body were in harmony. My matter and antimatter practically hummed with life. “I don’t know if I want to see it. Did I have a heart attack?”

  “No.”

  “Was I alone when I died?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, all right, show me, Daddy.”

  His ears perk up as he studies me with intense black eyes. I stare back. Then I see the other dogs behind him. My heart beats too fast. I sprint up the hill.

  Dogs bark behind me. I run as fast as I can. Fighting gravity. Wanting to live.

  Loud barking. Blind fear.

  I feel something rip into the back of my leg. I fall hard and my head hits the pavement, and I tumble into a ditch kicking wildly. My foot meets a muzzle with a satisfying crack. The barking stops. I feel pain. And then there’s only nothing.

  My body lies crumpled in the tall grass in the muddy ditch by the side of the road. Blood is everywhere. Maybe I’m not all the way dead yet. The dogs are gone. I feel blood on my leg, and my head hurts. I go to sleep.

  I hear a song. Billy Joel is singing to me. I drift in and out of consciousness, and Billy continues to croon, periodically floating me to the surface, loving me just the way I am. It is so familiar. I know I’m supposed to do something when I hear this song, but I’m so sleepy.

  It gets annoying. The song won’t stop. Somehow, I realize it’s my cell phone. Somehow I pull the bloody phone from the pocket Eddie sewed into my shorts and find the green button.

  Eddie’s voice in my ear pleads, “Anna?” He sounds scared. Why is he scared?

  “Don’t be scared, Eddie.”

  He yells, “Anna! Where are you?”

  “Running ... dogs ... on the hill ...” Then I pass out again.

  Eddie’s truck comes around the corner. He jumps out and finds me in the ditch.

  The air is still. So quiet. Eddie is crying and holding me and saying, “Come back, Anna. Come back. Don’t listen to that punk. Come back to me! Anna!” He is wailing.

  The echo of “come back” rings in my ears. Why didn’t I notice it until now?

  “There’s always so much to listen to and see and consider when you’re newly dead. It’s difficult, almost impossible, to distinguish a single human voice through all of the turmoil. Especially when you don’t want to hear it.” Daddy explains this as if he was telling me how to change lanes.

  “But, Daddy, this was vital information! I needed to know how I died before I decided to depart! I needed to know that my Eddie, not that young Eddie, wanted me back. That would’ve helped so much. It’s not fair!”

  “Yes, it is. Anna, you saw all you asked to see. You just assumed Pizza Boy killed you. It’s over now, honey. Watch the rest of the memorial service, and then you can find some peace.”

  54

  Anna’s Hitch

  Eddie

  The hospital was quiet when I returned from my futile trip to the high school. I skipped lunch and was making afternoon rounds when I got that dread feeling again.

  I found a phone and called the high school like a paranoid fool, needing reassurance to calm my fear, to survive this endless day.

  “Yes, Dr. Wixim, everything here is fine. No guns, but we have closed early because of the commotion. Didn’t Anna call you? The kids were all upset and out of control. Parents started calling for their kids to go home early. So we just gave up and cancelled classes for the rest of today.” The secretary I almost puked on was more patient than I deserved. The principal must be a genius to have found her for the front line.

  I asked a colleague to finish my rounds and left early, too. I got home that afternoon expecting and hoping to find Anna reading on the swing or napping—her two favorite activities when she was home alone. But she wasn’t there. Like a detective, I snooped around my own house for clues of where my wife might be.

  Her bag was by the back door, so she had come home from school.

  Her car was in the garage, so she didn’t leave by car.

  Her cell phone wasn’t in the charger and also not in her purse, which I found in the kitchen. Interesting, where would she go without her purse?

  Then it occurred to me. I didn’t need to figure out where she was. I could just call her cell phone. I dialed. No answer. I left a message. “Anna? Call me back.” Two minutes later I dialed again. No answer. I was pacing the kitchen while I dialed over and over, when I noticed that Anna’s running shoes were missing from the shoe rack.

  She was running. Where? I dialed again. It was definitely ringing. Maybe she was ignoring it. Saw it was me and decided to blow me off. I wasn’t exactly her favorite person these days. Please, Anna, live through this day. Just a few more hours. Be so very careful.

  I dialed again. And then it stopped ringing. Did she answer? No sound.

  I yelled, “Anna?” into the phone, helpless and petrified. Where was she?

  “Don’t be scared, Eddie.” Anna’s voice. Weak. Far away.

  “Anna! Where are you?”

  “Running ... dogs ... on the hill ...” And she was gone.

  On the hill?

  Oh. My. God. The dogs. The ones she was afraid of.

  I grabbed my keys and leaped into my truck and drove the two miles to the hill where she told me she saw the dogs. I turned the corner and screeched to a stop and jumped out of the truck.

  A large German shepherd was pacing on a driveway, looking across the road. I followed his gaze, and there she was.

  My Anna.

  Lying in a crooked heap.

  Blood ran from a gash on her face. Her hands and leg were covered in blood. So much blood. Too much blood for one small woman to lose. Her life dangled by a thread that was snipped by a freak accident. Dog bite meets head injury. Right on the edge of her space-time gap.

  I pulled bandages from my medical bag and applied pressure to the worst bleeding, which was coming from a bone-deep slash in the back of her leg. The gash above her eye streamed blood steadily down her lifeless face. Anna was unconscious. She didn’t even know I was there.

  I checked her pulse. Weak.

  Breathing. Slow.

  She was fading fast.

  I called 911.

  Within minutes, a siren was coming. By then she had stopped breathing, and I was performing CPR on my wife in a ditch by the road. I was sobbing and yelling, over and over, “Come back, Anna. Come back, Anna. Don’t listen to him, come back to me.” But she was gone. She didn’t hear me. That damned twenty-year-old shithead!

>   The EMT technicians ran to us from the ambulance and assessed her. I moved away and watched. They established what I already knew. My Anna was gone. One of them looked up at me and asked, “We can resuscitate? Intubate her? Try to hold her until we get back to the emergency room and get some blood in her? Is that what you want?”

  Is that what I wanted?

  “Yes!” I said. A chance. Maybe it would give her time to come back.

  Anna, come back!

  Then, I yelled, “No!” as he started the tube down her throat. “No!”

  If they resuscitated and succeeded in bringing her matter, her body, back to life, it would be without her antimatter. No soul. In a coma, indefinitely. And from what I understood from my deaths, and from what I knew from working with dying children, if my wife came back it would not be in a few days or weeks to a comatose body. If my Anna came back, it would be to her body before she died. When I first arrived, she was still breathing. That was the time she could return to.

  I thought hard. Was there a hitch? Did time stutter while I was trying to breathe life back into her? I thought so. The disastrous whirl of dogs barking, me crying, checking her pulse, Anna leaving, performing CPR—it was all in slow motion, then fast-forward, then rewind. Discontinuous time. A hitch for sure. I convinced myself. Yes, there was a glorious, hope-inducing hitch. There was nothing left for me to do but wait.

  I remembered watching my parents after I died when I was six. I watched almost the whole next day pass by without me there, and then I came back and they all pulled back to the moment of my death. Indeed, the family never seemed to have any inkling that my death had occurred at all. So I knew Anna could still come back. She could control time and pop back in, and I’d forget any of this ever happened.

  For the next three days, I waited in agony. I waited for her to choose me. I waited to go back to November eleventh and get my Anna back.

  I remembered that smartass twenty-year-old Ed, that know-it-all punk who watched my life with an air of superiority. He judged my existence and my life with Anna and told her to stay away. To stay dead. I, in some other parallel universe, another layer of time, had convinced my Anna not to come back. I could ache with every atom in my being for her to return to life, to return to me, but my antimatter told her not to.