Life and Other Near-Death Experiences

by Camille Pagán

  Then a peaceful feeling passed over me. I could have been dreaming, but it felt as though there was a cool, steady hand stroking my forehead.

  As quick as it came on, the paralysis was gone. I sat straight up and reached for my phone on the bedside table, knowing what had to be done next.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I signed the real estate papers early, and had a notary sign a letter stating that Raj had the power to make any outstanding decisions on my behalf. Either Tom or I had to be present for the closing, but I was hopeful that Jess, newly aware of my predicament, would somehow be able to convince Tom to attend. The apartment sale would net nearly twice the amount I’d inherited from my mother’s life insurance.

  It was a lot of money, at least to me. And yet the entire sum could be erased with one medical treatment, and it could turn out that said medical treatment did not make a lick of difference in my survival. I hated to even think about it.

  I called Paul on the way home from Raj’s office. “Well?” he said.

  “Well, what?” I said, knowing precisely what he meant.

  “Have you called your doctor yet?”

  “He’s not my doctor, and yes, I did call him.”

  “So what did he say about treatment?”

  “He said you and I should go to Detroit together.”

  “No, he did not.”

  “Okay, he didn’t exactly say that. But since you’ve gotten over your fear of flying—”

  “Gotten over? More like developed urinary incontinence and a consortium of ulcers.”

  “Even so, you got on a plane. Twice, in fact. So . . . would you consider coming with me to visit Mom’s grave? It’s been years.”

  He was quiet for a minute. “It has been a long time,” he conceded. “I’m not exactly itching to join you, but you knew when you called that I wouldn’t say no.”

  This was true. “It’ll be good for you,” I told him. “For us.”

  “What would be good for us would be for you to get your butt in treatment. As in yesterday. Detroit can wait until you’re done.”

  “It can’t, and I’m going either way. Before a single needle touches my body. It would mean a lot if you came with me.”

  “What happened to the lovely and compliant sister who was under my sway not one whole week ago?”

  “She’s still here, Paul. Mostly. And she needs you.”

  “You’re the worst, Libs. The absolute worst. Call me tonight so we can coordinate flights.”

  I sighed with relief. In spite of my threats, there was no way I was doing this without him.

  Two days later, I touched down in Detroit, where Paul was waiting for me at the rental-car desk. As he embraced me, he said, “Sweet, sweet Libs. Have you slept since we last spoke?”

  “I wouldn’t be so quick to judge, chunks,” I said, attempting—and failing—to find extra flesh on his side to pinch. “What are you up to now, seven percent body fat?”

  He took my suitcase from me. “Don’t try to change the subject.”

  “All I’ve been doing is sleeping,” I said, thinking of the twelve hours I logged the night before. “It’s like I’m falling into a coma at an incredibly slow speed.”

  “And what does your doctor say about that?” he asked as we walked through a set of automatic doors to the parking lot where our car was waiting.

  I shrugged.

  Paul stopped in the middle of the walkway connecting the airport to the parking lot and stared at me.

  “Move before you get run over,” I said as a small red car sped at us.

  Still staring, he didn’t budge. “You’re really starting to freak me out. Don’t you think exhaustion is something to talk to the doctor about, given the circumstances?”

  The red car honked at us, long and loud. Paul glared at its driver before moving. “It’s getting ridiculous,” he huffed as he pulled our bags behind him. “I’m basically waiting for you to tell me that you’ve tapped into The Secret and aren’t doing chemo because you plan to manifest your own good health from the goodness of the universe.”

  “That would require far more optimism than I have at my disposal right now, Paulypoo,” I said, calling him the nickname I used to piss him off when we were kids.

  “Just know that Paulypoo is not above having you committed, dear sis,” he said without so much as a hint of humor.

  We checked into a generic hotel in a beige suburb not far from the airport. Paul only reserved one room because, as he told me, “I knew you wouldn’t want to be alone,” which was accurate. After settling in and freshening up, we drove into Detroit to a barbecue place Paul’s coworker had recommended.

  The food was good, I guess; I didn’t much feel like eating.

  Rather than continuing to prod me about my health, Paul found a fresh wound to poke at.

  “You haven’t spoken to Shiloh once since you got back to the mainland, have you?”

  “And what makes you say that?”

  He extended his hand. “Hi, I’m your twin brother. Have we met?”

  I didn’t shake it. “Perhaps we should dine in silence. You can scan my mind while I try to remember that deep in that dark heart of yours, you really do love me.”

  “I’m surprised you fell so hard,” he said, ignoring my snark. “I really thought it was just a fling.”

  “It was just a fling,” I said. Then I added morosely, “Unfortunately, I love him.”

  “I know you do, you hopeless sap. I’ve gotta give it to you: I was almost convinced you would stay in Puerto Rico for him. He’s a nice guy, but I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “Yeah.” I reached for the star around my neck.

  “Ooh, shiny!” Paul said, noticing the necklace for the first time. “From him?”

  “Yeah.”

  He smiled wistfully. “It doesn’t have to be over, you know.”

  “I know,” I said, though in truth, I knew no such thing.

  Paul got up and moved his chair to the side of the table closest to me, then put a hand on my back. “It doesn’t have to be over,” he repeated. “Treatment won’t last forever.”

  “It’s meant to be over. We barely know each other, and I have to focus on getting better.”

  He squeezed my shoulder lightly. “That’s the Libby I know and love. Are you feeling better about Tom?”

  “Tom who?”

  “I take it you still haven’t told him.”

  “Never will.”

  “I’m not going to tell you what to do, but he’ll find out at some point. You might want to be the one to deliver the message.”

  I pointed my fork at him. “I’ve delivered all of the messages I have for Tom.”

  “You don’t feel bad for him? Just a little?”

  As I moved the chicken on my plate around in small circles, I thought of an evening earlier in the year, probably no more than a few weeks before I first discovered the lump in my stomach. I’d taken a long shower, slathered my limbs with lotion, and draped myself in a short silk robe. I went to our bedroom, where Tom was lying on the bed. A book was propped on his stomach and he was staring blankly at the wall opposite the bed. He didn’t see me at first, so I stood in the doorway, admiring the perfect slope of his nose, the flat plane of his torso, and the way his long lashes stood out in the lamplight. How incredibly lucky I am, I thought. As familiar as my husband was, the very sight of him still made my skin prickle with pleasure. And I told myself, as I had so many other times, that God had given me him to right the loss of my mother.

  On this particular evening, I’d crawled next to him and curled up in the crook of his arm. I ran my foot up and down his leg. As I was about to reach into his boxer shorts, he kissed the top of my head. “Love you, Libby,” he said. Then he picked up his book and began to read again.

  Yet again, I used my optimism eraser
to rub out all signs of doubt that night. I shouldn’t be offended. So he wasn’t in the mood at that particular moment. So what? He was a great husband, and when we did have sex, it was pretty good. I couldn’t expect perfection, now could I?

  “No, I don’t feel bad for him,” I told Paul. “Frankly, I wish that it had been him diagnosed with cancer. I wish he’d died.” My voice was rising, and I knew the people next to us were trying not to stare; they probably assumed Paul and I were a couple quarreling. So be it. “Then I could have gone on believing that I had been loved fully and completely. Now I know that he wasn’t capable of loving me all the way, not in the way that I needed.” I sucked in my breath sharply.

  Paul looked at me tenderly. “You’re right. You shouldn’t feel bad for him.”

  “Thank you,” I said quietly. “Maybe one day I’ll get over him. I’d certainly like to. Right now I just wish he’d sign the fricking apartment papers.”

  “Oh, he will,” he said, then took a sip of his wine. “If I have to hire a henchman to hold the pen in his hand and scribble his signature, he’ll sign it.”

  “I like that you didn’t volunteer to do the dirty work yourself.”

  Paul smiled. “It appears your violent streak is genetic.”

  We paid the bill and returned to the hotel. While Paul called Charlie and the boys, I took out my contacts, scrubbed my face, and split Tom’s last sleeping pill in two, half of which I gave to Paul after he hung up the phone.

  He popped the pill in his mouth and swallowed it without water. “Tomorrow,” he said.

  The stiff mattress groaned beneath my weight as I climbed into my bed. “Tomorrow,” I repeated, and pulled a pillow over my head.

  Of course we’d chosen the coldest day in November to visit the cemetery. I woke shivering, and a hot shower, a cup of coffee, and the thick sweater I put on made not a lick of difference. When we got in the car, I turned the heat on high and pointed the hot-air vents at my body.

  “Don’t bother. It’s your nerves,” Paul said from beside me. “I shake like a wet chihuahua when I have to give bad news to a major client.”

  “You, nervous? I don’t believe it.”

  “Sock it away, because you won’t hear me admit it again.”

  “I’m not nervous. Just . . .”

  “Apprehensive,” Paul supplied.

  “That,” I said. That and so many other confusing, unnameable emotions. My teeth were still clanking against one another like cheap china when we pulled into the cemetery. The iron gate and small sign had not changed, nor had the evergreens circling the perimeter. Yet, as I got out of the car, the field of graves before us appeared so much smaller than when I’d last visited.

  Paul reached for my hand, and together we walked down the winding path through the center of the cemetery. I’d always thought of cemeteries as eerie, but on that morning I saw what some part of me already knew when I made my father drive out to my mother’s grave so many times: they were a place of comfort, too. I wasn’t sure why I’d been so set on ending up in an urn, but as we walked through the graveyard that day, I decided I would request that whatever was left of me be buried. Maybe even near my mother.

  My breath caught as we came upon her grave site. Paul released my hand and knelt before the headstone, running his fingers over the etching in the granite.

  I let him be alone for a few minutes, then walked over and sat next to him, cross-legged on the frozen grass in front of the large stone. I closed my eyes and began to speak to my mother in my mind—more like a prayer than an actual conversation, knowing that if she was listening, she would piece together the fragmented bits. I told her everything: about Tom, about Vieques and Milagros and Shiloh, and about my diagnosis. I told her I loved her and wished she were there. Then I opened my eyes and looked at the headstone again.

  CHARLOTTE ROSS—1954–1989—BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER

  Beloved wife and mother: true, yet wretchedly insufficient.

  Sometimes, when I was feeling especially blue, I would imagine what it would have been like if I’d been a different age when my mother died. At ten, I was old enough to understand the terrible thing that had happened to us, but too young to have soaked up so many of the details that I, as an adult, longed to know about her and her life. Now the little I did remember was fading with time. My mother’s hair, for example, was straight and chestnut brown, her eyes the same dark hazel as Paul’s. But what about her laugh? Was it the jingle of loose change I heard in my head, or was that something I’d imagined? Was she as fun loving and unfailingly kind as I recalled, or was that a fairy tale of my own creation? What had she thought of Paul and me? What did she dream for our futures—and her own? I would never know.

  I would never know.

  As that reality again set in, I put my head to the ground and cried for my family and all that we had lost. Beside me, Paul saw my shoulders shaking, took me in his arms, and cried with me, reminding me again that I was not alone.

  That evening, I stared at the drab landscape print hung in our hotel room, thinking about Shiloh. I wanted to call him, to tell him about my day, but I worried that one call would lead to a cascade of correspondence that would make me question whether I should have asked him to come with me to Chicago, or if I should have stayed there and tried to get treatment in Puerto Rico, or—or, or, or. So many possibilities, and not a single one was right. I switched off the lamp and pulled the covers up to my neck.

  Paul was sitting on the other bed, his face lit by the glow of his laptop. “I should have saved the last sleeping pill,” I told him. “Do you have any?”

  “Nope.”

  “Don’t they give you downers with your uppers?”

  He finished typing, then turned to me. “I’m off the junk.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. I haven’t touched a stimulant since a few months before the boys were born.”

  “Hard to believe your energy owes nothing to a pharmacy.”

  “Can’t argue with my God-given gifts.” He shut his laptop, switched off the lamp, and got in bed with me. “Will it help if I lie here?”

  I closed my eyes. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “Libs?” he said after a few minutes. “Remember when we were little?”

  I opened my eyes, even though the hotel’s blackout shades had obscured all light, save the red digits of the alarm clock. “You mean how you used to trick me into doing things?” I said. “Like allowing you to lower me out of a second-story window using nothing but a sheet and your nonexistent manpower?”

  We both laughed as we recalled how shocked my father had been to answer the front door and discover me standing there barefoot in the middle of a February snowstorm, clutching the bruised arm I’d landed on. “As I was going to say,” Paul said, kicking me under the covers, “remember how you hated sleeping alone, so I convinced Dad to get me bunk beds? I think you were sixteen before you slept in your own room again.”

  I grunted. “I was fourteen.”

  “Sure you were. Hey, Libs?”

  “Yeah?”

  He paused. “I should have told you this in Vieques, but Mom said the same thing to me that she said to you. She asked me to take care of you.”

  I blinked. “Really?”

  “Yes. Right around the same time, too.”

  “Do you think she knew she was going to die?”

  “Yes.”

  “Think she was afraid to leave us?”

  “Since I can’t think of anything worse than leaving Toby and Max, I have to believe she was terrified. She knew we had each other, though.” He flipped onto his stomach. After a minute, he added, “I hope she knew we would be okay.”

  I did, too. But as I lay next to my brother, it occurred to me that even more than that, I wished that my mother, like so many stars in the sky, were still in transit. That some part of her, somewhere,
was able to see that Paul and I were still here, making our way.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Paul and I had stopped to get coffee on our way to the airport when Jess called. “Tom won’t do it, Libby,” she said, all panicky. “I tried everything. Michael even found him a cheap sublet so he would feel like he had a place to call his own. But he refuses.” She sucked in, then exhaled loudly; she was probably smoking on her back porch. “Let me tell him about you being sick. I won’t even say ‘cancer’; I swear.”

  “Not a chance, Jess,” I said, recalling Tom’s concern over the cancer center’s calls; he would figure it out immediately. “I really appreciate you trying for me, but this isn’t yours to fix. I’ll figure something out. Just, please—do not tell Tom. Don’t even hint that anything is wrong with me.”

  I hung up and turned to Paul, who was still watching me from his seat near the window. “Sorry, hermano,” I said with a grimace. “Looks like I’m heading back to Chicago today.”

  “If this is about the apartment, I will buy the damn thing from you, okay?”

  “Wow, baller. Who knew you had that kind of cash?”

  He flicked a coffee stirrer at me. It hit my chest and bounced back onto the table. “Who knew you had the kind of cash to change your plane ticket at the last minute yet again? Seriously, Libs. I don’t work this hard just to stick change in the bank. I’ll get you your own little hamlet in the Jersey ’burbs if you don’t want to be in Manhattan. Just come with me, okay? Toby and Max are itching to see you. Come home with me.”

  “I will. I promise,” I said in what I hoped was my most convincing tone of voice. “I have to do one thing first.”

  “Blah blah blah,” Paul said, opening and closing his hand like a puppet. “All I hear is one excuse after another. I understand going to see Mom, but anything else that needs to be done can wait until after the doctor.”

  I shrugged apologetically. “You and I are going to have to agree to disagree on that one.”