Or Not to Be (19 page)

I smiled. Well, I tried to smile. It
probably looked more like I was in some abdominal pain. I gathered myself,
shook off her spell, and charged ahead with my prepared speech.

“I’m going to take the MCAT next Tuesday,
so I won’t be at recitation. Then on Wednesday afternoon, the first draft of my
dissertation is due to Dr. Hornsby. It doesn’t need to be perfect, just
presentable, and the data and graphs have to be clear and all. Anyway, it’ll be
a hectic week, and if I survive it I plan to celebrate.” I paused, out of
breath.

Anna’s dark eyes studied me, the uninvited
enigma on her porch. “Oh. So. Um, do you want my problem set rewritten on white
paper, then?”

I needed to get to the point before I lost
my nerve. “Anna, listen. I’ve been watching you in class. You are very
intelligent, and I like the way you help explain things, even to the guys who
hate girls telling them anything. You are a very take-charge person.”

I paused. She waited with her head tipped
to the left and her eyebrows scrunched together.

“I wondered if you had time next Friday to
celebrate the end of the week with me. That is, if I actually survive.”

Her mouth fell open. I held my breath for
the rejection that was sure to ensue.

“You’re asking me
out
?”

I looked down at my Converse high-tops, thinking what she
must be thinking: I was way out of my league with this girl. My next thought
was
What the hell?
I met her unbelieving wide eyes, nodded once, and said, “Yeah.”

Anna shook her head and put her hands on
her hips and said, “Can you do that? I mean, you’re my teacher.”

“I think I can,” I said. “I just did. I’ve
wanted to for a couple months.” She didn’t answer. Her intent stare somehow
hindered my muscular function. My brain threatened a shutdown as well. My mouth
still worked, so I continued to plead my case. “I’m not really your teacher.
I’m just the teaching assistant. Dr. Hornsby is the teacher of record. He
establishes grades and writes the tests. Do you see the difference?”

“That’s not the only difference,” she
laughed. “He’s old and bald and fat, and I would never go out with him.”

I held my breath
and asked, “Will you go out with
me
?”

Her smile and reply of “Yes” were a blur
because my heart was beating so hard I was sure she could hear it.

Anna wasn’t the first girl I dated. I was
pretty old when I met her. I was about to turn twenty-five. But no girl had
ever flung such an instantaneous, magnetic attraction on me before. We dated
for the next two months. Then we both graduated. I earned my Ph.D. and she
earned her master’s. She intended to move north and pursue her doctorate, but I
messed all that up when I asked her to come with me when I started medical
school. My happiness at her acceptance paled in comparison to the fury her
mother expressed at our plans.

Now, I finally
understand her mother’s pain. I took Anna away from her, and now Anna is gone
from me. Gone. She’s really gone.

Anna.

30

The day before my birthday
in the year we met, April first, was our first date.
It was unseasonably warm. The first tempting day of spring had continued into a
clear sky on a night made for watching stars. The cool air was so clean and
crisp you could cup it in your hands and gulp it down. A perfect night for a
first date.

I planned our date as meticulously as the
circuitry of a motherboard. We were going to dinner at a steakhouse and then to
a movie on campus. The film club was showing old Abbott and Costello movies for
free from eight until midnight. If I was lucky, Anna might agree to a walk
through the campus after the movie. In the dark. Who knew what might happen?

I rang her doorbell at six-thirty that
night, right on time and in a haze of déjà vu. My week had been hectic and painful,
as expected, but when I awoke that morning and found myself still alive, my
anticipation of time with Anna made me giddy. A giddy graduate student is not a
pretty sight, so I stayed home alone most of the day getting ready.

Obviously, Anna had spent part of her day
getting ready, too. When she opened the door and shined her smile on me, my
gaze fell on her newly cut and permed hair. I had loved her long, shiny,
straight hair. It hung down her back and was one of the first things I’d
noticed about her. That cape of silk was gone. All gone. I was so shocked that
I couldn’t help it—the first thing I said was, “Your hair.”

Her fingers brushed a wavy strand. She
smiled, chin down, head tipped, and looked up expectantly with those big eyes
and said, “What?”

She anticipated compliments and praise.
Instead, I said, “I liked it better the other way.”

Well, the silence was deafening. Her rage
was palpable. Her face clouded up, and she shut the door in my face.

Things were not
going
well.

I stood on her porch for a full ten
minutes trying to work up the courage to talk to her again. I knocked timidly,
three staccato taps, and waited. I was afraid when the door didn’t open for
quite a few minutes. When it finally opened, just a crack, I heard Anna say,
“What?”

“Do you, um, think we could get going now?
If we don’t get to the steakhouse by seven they’ll cancel our reservation, or
else we might be late to Abbott and Costello. I hate to be late for movies. You
know how it is. The lights are out and you have to find your way in the dark to
some seats and climb over people who weren’t late who’re trying to see the
screen.” I stopped for breath.

From behind the door I heard, “What?” and
realized this was the third time she’d asked the same question, and it was the
only word she’d said to me so far on our first date. See, I still expected a
first date and was still hopeful about the walk in the dark at the end of it.
Only, this “What?” was louder than the others and sounded even madder.

I charged ahead. “You might want a sweater.
It’s supposed to get cooler later.” I leaned my forehead against the door and
started to worry.

Then I heard laughter, so I started to
hope.

After two hundred long seconds, which I
watched tick by on my sturdy Timex, Anna came out with a sweater and her new
curly hair. She didn’t speak to me. She just walked to my car with me trotting
behind like a puppy. I was afraid to look at her, but I think she was smiling.

At dinner she started to make some
intermittent eye contact, which made her silence louder. I had trouble with my
salad with her watching me eat the large hunks of lettuce. She noticed my
unease and intensified her stare. Slicing my steak was troubling—I was all
elbows. She finally spoke to me when the waiter offered dessert.

“Eddie Wixim, I decided to come with you
to get a free steak dinner. Now, I want chocolate cake. But I don’t want to go
with you to Abbott and Costello in the middle of campus where everyone can see
us. This is our first and last date, and I don’t want people thinking there’s
something going on here. Got that?” The waiter beamed at her, pen poised over
his pad, and waited to see how I would get out of this mess.

My heart was pounding. What could I do? I
asked the only person who knew. “Anna, what can I do to make you stop hating
me?”

“I don’t hate you.” That was encouraging.
I glanced at the waiter, trying to will him away, but he just raised his
eyebrows higher and held his ground.

“Well, then, how do you feel about me?”

She pinned me with
her glare and said, “I have never been insulted in the first five seconds of a
date before. That makes you a special, unforgettable date. And, I haven’t been
on many dates. That also makes you special and unforgettable. But even if I
have to live the rest of my life alone, no dates,
forever
, I will never be so desperate that I will have to be
with a guy who is mean to me. Got that?” The waiter snorted.

Now I got it. She thought I was mean to her. I was just in
shock because she messed up her hair so bad. But I still found her irresistible,
so I said, “I’m sorry I was mean. I didn’t mean it.
Please
go to the movie with me?”

I was hyperventilating a little, and my
anxiety
seemed
to give Anna some smug pleasure because she smiled when she said, “I think you
are begging me.” She gave her head full of new curls a shake of disbelief. The
waiter nodded. He was getting on my nerves.

“You bet. I am. Really I am. This cannot
be the last time I see you.” What would I do if I blew this?

“Why not?”

She was waiting. Waiting for some perfect
thing I could say that would fix everything.

“Because.”

That wasn’t my best work, but Anna
laughed.

“Convincing argument, Wixim. Is that all
you’ve got?”

“It’s a very loaded ‘because.’ Because I—.
Because you—”

I stalled and cleared my throat.

“Because I’m already crazy about you, and
I would be even if you shaved your head. Got that?” I reached across the table
and took her hand. And she let me. I smiled at her, and she smiled back. And I
knew. I just knew. We were going to make it.

“Chocolate cake for two,” I said to the waiter, who nodded
curtly before walking away.

31

I proposed to my wife
without asking. It wasn’t planned. It just turned out
that way. Actually, I had no plan, but I felt more confident that day in the
drive-thru than ever before. I knew, for certain, that Anna would choose me.
And I was right. Without even asking, she knew what I wanted, what the ring
meant, and she didn’t surprise me—she just accepted me the way I was, the way
we were. At the beginning of our marriage, I could predict her every move. Now
that Anna is dead, though, I ache with worry about the choices she’ll make. At
the end of our marriage, all of our insights about one another had vaporized.
And so I have no inkling, now, of whether Anna will choose me again.

A lousy ending shouldn’t follow such a
perfect beginning.

We were married in August, less than eight
months after we met. With so little time to plan, we decided to have a small
wedding. It was outside on a grassy, sunny hill on campus. One of the
philosophy professors was a justice of the peace and agreed to perform the
ceremony. Anna found a dress at an antique shop, and I rented a tuxedo because,
according to the mothers, that’s what you’re supposed to do. Somebody ordered
the tent and food. A friend from the lab played guitar in the corner. It was
supposed to be a simple and easy ceremony, perfectly suited to us. I should
have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

When Anna’s mom lost it at the rehearsal
dinner and announced that she did not approve of our marriage and would say so
during the ceremony, Anna fell apart. With my Anna in pieces, I feared I might
lose her. I decided to reason with her mom.

“Mrs. McElveen?” I said when I called her
on the phone late on the night before the wedding.

“Who is this? Are you trying to sell me
something? Because I don’t want any.” Slam. She hung up.

I called back.

When she answered, I rushed in with, “Mrs.
McElveen, this is Ed. I really want to talk to you about tomorrow. Please don’t
hang up.”

“Oh, Lord. Ed, listen to me, there is
nothing you can say to change my mind. You want to marry my Anna. You have her
brainwashed into thinking she wants to marry you. She is out of her mind and is
giving up all her dreams and goals for you. I don’t see any way it is possible
for you to make her happy when marrying you means giving up so much of who she
is. Therefore, you must see why I cannot endorse this union!”

“Oh.” This was the clever rebuttal from my
end of the line.

“It absolutely infuriates me that you’re
going to win this battle and your brilliant response to my side of the argument
is ‘Oh’.” On that note, she hung up on me. Again.

I didn’t sleep at all that night.

At the ceremony the next day, I was
exhausted. And starving. I’d cleaned out my fridge and whole apartment in my
frenzy to prepare for our move and our life together after our honeymoon. There
was absolutely nothing to eat. For breakfast I contemplated a half-dried jar of
mustard with a spoon, gave up, and drank the dregs of the old milk. The
ceremony was at eleven in the morning. I wouldn’t be fed until the afternoon.