Or Not to Be (18 page)

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

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

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 i
ndependent, 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?”