Or Not to Be (10 page)

On Thursday, November tenth
, Bethany called my cell phone during the school day.
I had it set to vibrate so I was startled by the buzzing sound, and then every
single one of my students looked up from their tests to watch it wiggle across
my desk.

“Sorry,” I whispered as I hit the red
button for silence.

After class, I listened to Bethany’s
message. “Mom, sorry to call at work.
I know you
’
re busy with
school
,
but I really miss you. College is hard. I haven’t made any friends in the
honors dorm. I don’t know why I let you talk me into living here with all of
these geeks. All they do is study! Heh heh, well, yeah, so do I.

“Anyway, I have two free tickets to the
football game this Saturday. Will you come? I know you and Daddy can’t both
come, but I hoped you could drive up for the day. I feel like a baby asking. I
know Daddy would just say yes and show up, but you’re the one I want. Now I sound
like I’m seven. You know I’m bad at asking for attention. I’m actually glad to
be leaving a message. Okay. Well. Call me back. Love you.”

When I called back, she let it go to her
voice mail. That’s my girl: the queen of avoidance, trained by her own mother.
I left a message. “Hey, Bethany, I’d love to watch football with you this
weekend. Maybe after the game you can come home with me and stay over Saturday
night. Joey and Daddy would love to see you. We can sleep in on Sunday and then
I’ll make you all a big breakfast. Thanks for asking. I miss you and love you.
’Bye, honey.”

Now it is Saturday, November twelfth.
Bethany isn’t at her football game. I’m not there with her. Nobody is where
they’re supposed to be.

Bethany studies
the full calendars in my planner, and then rifles through the empty pages of
the months to come.
I think I
need a planner now.
Despite her tears, she picks up the pen and writes in the days she has
exams and papers due in November.

| | | |

On the morning
of college move-in day last August,
I woke Joey before dawn and carried his dense little body to the van. Bethany
and Eddie were almost finished loading all her clothes and books into the back.
Though it was early, Bethany wore full makeup and had curled the stubby
ponytail of her half-grown-out hair. The makeup contrasting with the ponytail
pulled on my heart. She was trying so hard to be grown up, yet she was still
our little girl. I caught Eddie’s eye.

“After
I fill up the coffee thermos, we’ll be all set,” he said. “Bethany, will you
wait out here with Joey?” He grabbed my hand as he rounded the side of the van
and pulled me back into the house, muttering something about needing help.

In
the kitchen, he turned to me and wrapped me in his arms. I rested my head on
his chest and let him pretend he was holding me when really I was holding him
up. Bethany was her dad’s girl. He would miss her, despite all of what he
called “her drama.”

“She’ll
be fine, Eddie,” I said. “She’s strong and smart. We did a good job with her.”

He
rested his chin on the top of my head and said, “I know. I just can’t imagine
leaving her there. All alone. It feels like we’re taking her into the woods and
leaving her for the wolves.”

“This
is what kids do: they grow up and they leave. We fought so hard to get her to
apply to college, and all those hours you spent with her shadowing you at work,
helping her find her own way to nursing—it’ll all be worth it. She’ll be
stronger for it.”

He
was quiet for a minute and then said, “She’s going to cry.”

“No
way. It takes a lot to make Bethany cry.”

“This
isn’t a lot? You watch. I’m right. It’s going to be a hard day.”

“We’ll
see. Let’s get that coffee and pack up some Pop-Tarts for a treat.” I
unclenched his arms from around me and found some snacks.

At
the end of the day, Eddie was right. After we hugged her and she walked us to
the van, our daughter, the new college freshman, looked stricken. When we got
in the van and closed the doors and Joey suddenly understood what was
happening, he started his hiccup crying and howled, “No, Bethy! Come home with
us!”

That
set her off, and she stood there weeping and looking simply pathetic. Eddie
opened his window and reached to her. She took his hand and said, “Just go,
Daddy. I’m going to cry whether you go now or later. It doesn’t matter. Just
go. I’ll be fine.”

We
pulled away with both of our children in broken pieces, Joey wailing and
Bethany dripping silent tears. Eddie was strong. He laid his big hand on my
thigh and left it there while I joined in and cried all the way home.

Less than a week
after we abandoned our daughter at college, Eddie entered his yearly funk and
deserted me. I lived the last two months of my life without my daughter or my
best friend.

13

Eddie holds
the full glass of milk and spoon while
Joey pours in a pile of chocolate syrup. The bottom inch of the glass turns
brown, and still Eddie doesn’t make him stop squeezing the bottle. Joey eyes
his dad, who is oblivious and staring over Joey’s head out the window.

Still holding the syrup bottle, Joey says,
“Mommy wouldn’t let me have that much chocolate,” and walks away.

Eddie hands the glass and spoon to Bethany
and then trudges to the garage to stare at his rakes and shovels. Bethany
clanks the spoon in slow circles, watching the brown swirls dissolve. In one
gulp, she drinks all of the dark chocolate milk down.

I always let her put in as much syrup as
she wanted.

When she finishes drinking, she wipes away her mustache,
and I see that my daughter, my firstborn, is once again crying.
Mom? Where are you? I miss you.

I know, Bethany. I miss you too. I’m right
here, honey.

She still doesn’t hear me. This is the
most frustrating aspect of death: the absolute isolation from communication
with my family. I am no longer a mom for my children.

“Give her time,” my mother answers out of
nowhere, or perhaps everywhere. “Bethany’s pain shields her ability to detect
your presence.” Our constant friction and head-butting had the same effect when
I lived. I never could breach that towering wall.

Together we watch my daughter wander
through the quiet house. She picks up the fat cat and sits in her dad’s blue
chair to continue her crying.

I can’t watch anymore. I decide it’s time
to find some answers. “I have a lot of questions,” I tell my mother.

“Of course you do. I can answer some of
them, if you like,” she offers. “But most of the answers will come to you on
their own. Relax and absorb. You already know more than you think you do.”

I don’t feel like I know anything yet, but
bouncing ideas off her mind always gave me strength when I was young and she’d
call home from England or Africa or wherever she happened to be that month.
“Let’s start with the very first thing you told me after I died. You said I
could depart. Where will I depart to?”

“It’s not a departure like leaving New
York City on a train, dear. Your departure won’t take you from one place to the
next. You have the power to make the choice to join the fabric of the
universe.”

“What the hell is the fabric of the universe?”

To her credit, Mom doesn’t sound as
exasperated with me in death as she often did in life. “The fabric of the
universe is composed of a complex weave of space, layered with matter,
sprinkled with antimatter, and bound with threads of time.” Her voice,
confident and competent, is familiar and comforting, even
though
I cannot understand what she’s talking about.
“Your consciousness, what is left of what you consider ‘me,’ was a distinct
piece of the antimatter of the cosmos, which, during your life, was combined
with the matter of a special, quite misunderstood region of your brain to
generate the energy that was your life force.”

Misunderstood part of my brain? Though it
was tempting to follow her down this rabbit hole of questions, I had my own
long list of other mysteries to solve. “So if I depart, where will I be?”

It takes a long time to get my answer. In
fact, I think she might be gone. Worlds rotate, galaxies revolve. I wait with
my newfound patience, a trait recently added to my superpowers; I’d never been
accused of being anything like patient before I crossed to the dead side.

Finally, my mother says, “Everywhere.” I
can hear the smile in her voice. It sounds just like when I was little, when
she was always thrilled to do what she called her motherly duty
—
to
reveal the wonders of the world to me.

“How is that possible?” It doesn’t make a
speck of sense to me, and I’m getting a bit irritated.

Mom refuses to let me go. “As antimatter,
we’re particles that act in harmony. We’ve shed the burden of our earthly
matter, that body you claim to miss, and combined with the fabric of the
universe where we become pure cosmic energy. That makes us virtually massless,
so we may travel at light speed. It takes no time to travel this way. No time,
Anna. Imagine it! We are simply everywhere, and we exist in all time.”

“All time? No time?” No wonder she loves the dead side. My
mother understands even more about everything than she did as a brilliant human
during her life. But I still don’t get it. “How can there be no time
?”

“Honey, from the perspective of energy, there is no such
thing as time. Think about it. On the dead side, there is no reality to the
Earth concept of
now
.”
So far, her tone is coaxing, patient, with just the slightest edge of annoyance
creeping in that this might not be crystal clear to her dense daughter. “Surely
you read and tried to comprehend Einstein’s theories?”

When my mother switched to her professor
voice, it meant I had to be on my toes.

“Of course, Professor McElveen, you made
me read it in third grade.” She laughs at my whiff of sarcasm. “Time stops at
light speed. Does that mean I can come back to Earth whenever I need to?”

“You won’t need to come back; you’ll
always be there, and everywhere, at all times, for all of eternity.” Her voice
trails off into the immense silence that permeates the dead side, confident she
has explained all that needs explaining.

I am flabbergasted by the logical
complexity, hypnotized as Mom’s intelligent voice continues, inviting my
understanding. “You know our little planet is a special place. The energy of
life on Earth has been successfully reproduced less than a dozen times in all
of eternity in all of the billions of galaxies. During an immense majority of
the millennia of our planet’s existence, our world was uninhabited by any
energy-life forms at all. After the blink of the lifespan of that energy, life
as we know it will cease on our little rock. But life, that special combination
of matter and antimatter existing in just the perfect conditions of atmosphere,
temperature, and environment, has appeared in other times and places. The trick
is to glimpse life when it happens.”

“Glimpse life when it happens? Come on,
Mom. How can you use words like ‘when’ if there is no such thing as time?”

“Good point. It is all too magnificently
complex to be captured by the language of mere humans.”

“So to recap: when I depart, I will be
everywhere at all time. That’s what you said, right?”

“That’s the raw essence of existing as
pure energy, Anna. The ability to travel at light speed allows a slower passage
of time. Or a stoppage of time. Or even a reversal of time.”

I can roughly comprehend what she’s saying
but need some time alone to dissect and digest it. It’s all very intriguing,
and I am relieved to get some help in this confusing death saga. Still, I need
a break from the science, so I change the subject and ask, “Where’s my dad?”

“Your father chose the Earth version of
heaven.” Her gentle voice indicates Mom is back again and the professor went on
break. “He always loved nature and camping and gardening and having that pack
of dogs with him. All that touchy-feely emotional stuff I couldn’t care less
about. It’s a wonder we lived together for so long. But we are together
whenever I am near Earth, which, as I’ve clearly explained, is always and
never. This speed of light travel stuff is the best.” This is really still my
mom, atoms or no atoms.

“You say I need to
absorb
and answers will come to me, but you know I’m not a
patient person.”

“If you would just relax and try to think,
you’ll remember that you do understand this.” I have exasperated and
disappointed my mother in death just like I always did in life.