Or Not to Be (31 page)

“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

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

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

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.”