Elsewhere (7 page)

I could come with you," Betty says. She stops her car on the narrow strip of road that runs parallel to the beach. "I haven't seen Olivia in the longest time."

"Mom's old now," says Liz. "She's older than you."

"It's hard to believe. Where does the time go?" Betty sighs. "I've always hated that phrase. It makes it sound like time went on holiday, and is expected back any day now. 'Time flies' is another one I hate. Apparently, time does quite a bit of traveling, though." Betty sighs again. "So, do you want me to come with you?"

Liz would like nothing less than for Betty to accompany her. "I might be a while," Liz says.

"These places. They can be dangerous, doll."

"Why?"

"People get obsessed. It's like a drug."

Liz looks at the red lighthouse, which has a row of brightlylit glass windows at the top. The windows remind Liz of teeth. She can't decide if the lighthouse looks like it's smiling or snarling.

"How do I get inside?" Liz asks.

"Follow the path until you reach the entrance." Betty points out the car window: a wooden boardwalk, gray with water and time, joins the red lighthouse tenuously to the land. "Then take the elevator to the top floor. That's where you'll find the Observation Deck."

Betty takes her wallet out of the glove compartment. She removes five eternims from her change purse and places them in Liz's hand. "These will buy you twentyfive minutes of time. Is that enough?"

Liz thinks, I have no idea what enough time would be. How long does it take to say goodbye to everything and everyone you've ever known? Does it take twentyfive minutes, a little longer than a sitcom without the commercials? Who knows? "Yes, thank you," she says, closing her hand around the coins.

In the elevator, Liz stands next to a willowy blonde in a black shift dress. The woman sobs quiedy, but in a way that is meant to attract attention.

"Are you all right?" Liz asks her.

"No, I most certainly am not." The woman stares at Liz with bloodshot eyes.

"Did you die just recently?"

"I don't know," the woman says, "but I prefer to grieve alone, if you don't mind."

Liz nods. She's sorry she even asked.

A moment later, the woman continues. "I'm in mourning for my life and I'm more unhappy than you can even imagine." The woman puts on a pair of black cat-eye sunglasses. So adorned, she continues to weep for the remainder of the elevator ride.

This Observation Deck, or OD, looks almost exactly like the one on the SS Nile except it is smaller. The room has windows on all sides, lined with a tidy row of binoculars. Liz notes that not everyone who visits the OD is as unhappy as the weeping woman on the elevator.

A plump middle-aged woman with a bad perm sits in a glass box by the elevator. She waves the weeping woman through the turnstile that separates the OD from the elevator. The weeping woman nods curtly and checks her reflection in the attendant's glass box.

"That woman's in love with her own grief," the attendant says, shaking her head. "Some people just love all that drama." She turns to Liz. "You're new, so I'll give you my little spiel. Our hours are seven a.m. to ten p.m., Monday through Friday, ten a.m. to twelve a.m. Saturday, and seven a.m. to seven p.m. Sunday. We're open three hundred sixty-five days a year, including holidays.

One eternim gets you five minutes of time, and you can buy as much time as you want. The price is not negotiable. Whether you want five minutes or five hundred minutes, the rate is the same.

The operation of the binoculars should be like ones you've encountered before. Just press the side button for a different view, turn the eyepieces to adjust focus, and pivot the head as necessary. I'm Esther, by the way."

"Liz."

"You just get here, Liz?" Esther asks.

"How can you tell?"

"You have that shell-shocked, recently arrived look about you. Don't worry, honey. It'll pass, I promise. What'd you die of?"

"Hit by a car. And you?" Liz asks politely.

"Alzheimer's disease, but I guess it was the pneumonia that really did me in," Esther answers.

"What was that like?"

"Can't say I remember," Esther says with a laugh, "and that's probably just as well."

Liz selects Binoculars #15, which faces the land. After all the time on the Nile, Liz has grown tired of water. She sits on the hard metal stool and places an eternim in the slot.

Liz watches her family first. Her parents are sitting across from each other on opposite sides of the dining room table. Her mother looks like she's been awake for days. She smokes a cigarette, even though she'd quit when she became pregnant with Liz. Her father appears to be doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, but he isn't really. He just keeps tracing over the same answer (chauvinism) with his pencil until he's pierced the newspaper all the way through and is writing on the tablecloth. In the living room, Alvy watches cartoons, even though it's a school night and her parents don't allow Liz and her brother to watch television on school nights, no exceptions. The phone rings. Liz's mother jumps to answer it. At that moment, the binoculars'

lenses click closed.

By the time Liz puts a second eternim in the slot, her mother is off the phone. Alvy enters the dining room, wearing a ceramic flowerpot on his head. "I'm a pothead!" he announces proudly.

"Take that off!" her mother screams at Alvy. "Arthur, make your son behave!"

"Alvy, take the pot off your head," Liz's father says in a measured voice.

"But I'm a pothead!" Alvy persists, even though his joke is not at all playing.

"Alvy, I'm warning you." Liz's father is serious now.

"Oh, all right." Alvy removes the pot and leaves the room.

Thirty seconds later, Alvy is back. This time he carries an old wicker Easter basket in his mouth.

"Urmph uf raket ash," says Alvy.

"Now what?" Liz's mother asks.

"Urmph uf rasket ace," Alvy repeats with improved enunciation.

"Alvy, take the basket out of your mouth," Liz's father says. "No one can understand you."

Alvy obeys. "I'm a basket case, get it?"

Alvy is met with blank stares.

"I'm carrying a basket in my mouth, so I'm a basket case "

Liz's father takes the basket with one hand and tousles Alvy's hair with the other. "We all miss Lizzie, but that's really no way to honor your sister."

"Why?" Alvy asks.

"Well, prop comedy has traditionally been viewed as the lowest form of humor, son," Liz's father says in his teaching voice.

"But I'm a basket case," Alvy says plaintively. "Like Mom," he adds.

The lenses click shut before Liz gets to see her mother's reaction. With her next coin, Liz decides to watch someone else. She settles on Zooey.

Zooey is sitting on her bed, talking on the phone. Her eyes are red from crying. "I just can't believe she's gone," Zooey says.

Now this is more like it, Liz thinks. At least someone knows how to mourn properly. Liz can't hear the other side of the conversation but feels sufficiently gratified by Zooey's grief to continue listening.

"I broke up with John. I mean, if he hadn't asked me to the prom, I wouldn't have told Liz to meet me at the mall, and she wouldn't be . . ." Her voice trails off.

"No!" Zooey says adamantly. "I do not want to go!" And then, a moment later in a softer voice, "Besides, I don't even have a dress ..." Zooey twirls the phone cord around her ankle with her foot. "Well, there was this black strapless one ..." The lenses click shut.

Her last two eternims later, Liz is still not sure whether Zooey will or will not go to prom. During that time, Zooey does cry twice. Her tears make Liz happy. (Liz is only a little ashamed that her best friend's tears make her happy.)

At first, Liz feels bad about listening in on her loved ones, but the feeling doesn't last long. She rationalizes that she is really doing this for them. Liz imagines herself as a beautiful, benevolent, generous angel looking down on everyone from . . . from wherever she is.

Leaving the lighthouse that night, Liz realizes that it will take many more eternims to follow the goings on of all her friends and family. (She spent three whole eternims on that small portion of Zooey's phone conversation alone.) If she isn't going to get totally behind, she calculates that she will probably need at least twentyfour eternims a day, or two hours, which amounts to five minutes for every one hour of real life.

"I'm going to need some eternims," Liz announces to Betty during the short drive back to Betty's house, "and I was hoping you would lend them to me."

"Of course. What do you need them for?" Betty replies.

"Well," says Liz, "I want to spend some time at the ODs."

"Liz, do you really think that's a good idea?" Betty looks at Liz with concern, which Liz finds annoying. "Maybe it would be a better use of your time to think about an avocation?"

Liz has prepared herself for Betty's response and is ready with a convincing counterargument.

"The thing is, Betty, since I died so abruptly, I think it would help if I could, like, make peace with the people on Earth. I promise, it won't be forever." Liz feels corny saying "make peace," but she knows adults respond to that sort of thing.

Betty nods. And then she nods some more. The nodding seems to help Betty weigh what Liz said. "Whatever time you need, you should take," Betty says finally. In addition, Betty agrees, as Liz knew she would, to provide Liz with the money.

Properly funded with twentyfour eternims a day, Liz establishes a routine. The OD is close enough to Betty's house that Liz can walk there. She arrives every morning when it opens and stays every night until it closes.

Liz continues wearing the pajamas she wore on the SS Nile. She still hates them, but she doesn't want anything new. She sleeps in the pajamas as well, removing them only twice a week for Betty to wash.

Liz usually spreads out her two hours of OD time over the whole day, but sometimes she splurges and uses a couple eternims at a time. If something particularly interesting is happening, Liz spends all her eternims at once.

A typical day follows: fifteen minutes watching her parents and her brother in the morning (three eternims), forty-five minutes at school with her friends and her classes (nine eternims), a half hour with Zooey after school (six eternims), and the remaining half hour (six eternims) at her discretion.

Liz particularly likes when someone mentions her at school. At first, her classmates seem to speak of her quite frequently, but as time progresses (and not much time at that), the mentions become fewer and fewer. Only Edward, Liz's ex-boyfriend, and Zooey still speak of her with any regularity. Zooey and Edward weren't friends when Liz was alive; Zooey had even encouraged Liz to end the relationship. Liz feels gratified by the pair's sudden closeness.

Liz knows her family still thinks about her, but they rarely speak of her. She wishes they would talk about her more often. Her mother regularly sleeps in Liz's bed. Sometimes she wears Liz's clothes, too, even though they are tight on her. Liz's father, an anthropology professor at Tufts University, takes a leave of absence from the college. He starts watching talk shows all day and all night. He justifies his rampant talk-show watching by telling Liz's mother he is researching a book about why people like talk shows. Despite ample evidence that no one is amused, Alvy continues trying to entertain the family with his unique brand of rebus-style prop humor. Liz watches him enact "coming out of the closet," "shooting fish in a barrel," and "watching time stand still." She particularly enjoys the "melonhead" routine, a variation on the original "pothead" one, which involves a gutted cantaloupe and Alvy without pants.

Once, Liz watches her parents having sex, which she finds both disgusting and fascinating. Her mother cries at the end. Her father turns on the television to catch the last half hour of Montel.

The whole routine costs Liz less than one eternim.

Watching her parents, Liz thinks that she'll probably never have sex now. She'll probably spend the next fifteen years alone.

In between watching five-minute segments of the old world, Liz sometimes plays with the stitches over her ear. She can't bring herself to ask Betty where to go to have the stitches removed. She likes knowing they're there.

Liz is at the OD so often, she becomes familiar with the regulars.

There are the old ladies who knit, taking a casual peek in the binoculars every hour or so.

There are the frantic young mothers with their seemingly endless supplies of coins. The mothers remind Liz of slot-machine players she had once seen on a summer vacation to Atlantic City.

There are the businessmen who shout directions at the binoculars as if anyone back on Earth could hear them anyway. Liz is reminded of her father watching a football game and the silly way he would yell at the television.

There is a young man (still older than Liz) who comes once a week, on Thursday nights. Even though he comes at night, he always wears dark sunglasses. And he always sits at the same pair of binoculars, #17. He carries a leather pouch with precisely twelve eternims in it. On each visit the man stays one hour, no longer, and then leaves.

One night Liz decides to talk to him. "Who are you here to see?" she asks.

"Excuse me?" The young man turns around, startled.

"I see you here every week and I just wondered who you were here to see," Liz says.

The man nods. "My wife," he says after a moment.

"Aren't you too young to have a wife?" she asks.

"I wasn't always this young." He smiles sadly.

"Lucky you," she says, as she watches the man walk away. "See you next Thursday," she whispers too softly for him to hear.

As Liz is now spending all day, every day, at the OD, she becomes aware of just how uncomfortable the binoculars' metal stools are. On her way out one evening, she asks the attendant, Esther, about them.

"Well, Liz," Esther tells her, "when chairs are uncomfortable, it's usually a sign you've been sitting in them too long."