Or Not to Be (2 page)

The guy stood on my porch with his lower
lip hanging down, his bottom teeth exposed. Not too impressive. He looked a
little stupid today. The prince turned back into a toad. In my presence.
Figures.

I asked if he’d maybe misplaced my
assignment, and he said no.

He told me to call him Ed instead of Mr.
Wixim. Really?

What the hell was going on?

The alarm dinged on my oven to announce
that the ancient thing was hot enough to bake my muffins. My stomach growled
and reminded me of my urgent need for sugar molecules. I was fairly sure I’d
eaten since my last shower but couldn’t remember exactly what—maybe a box of
Pop-Tarts—or when. Extraneous details were a blur that week. I had to get rid
of this guy so I could address my many issues.

His mouth opened and a stream of words
blew past me. He made no sense. “Anna, listen. I’ve been watching you in class ...”

How creepy.

“... 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.”

Was he going to offer me a job? Did they
need more teaching assistants? I didn’t have a spare minute to consider
something like that.

I realized I was way off base when he
said, “I wondered if you had time on Friday to celebrate the end of the week
with me. That is, if I actually survive.”

Survive what? Holy shit. Did my teacher,
the hot guy, just ask me out?

“You’re asking me out? Can you do that? I
mean, you’re my teacher.”

He was talking again. I really had to pay
attention and focus on his words. But he was talking so damn fast and saying
such ridiculous things; I could not keep up so I focused on his mouth. His
teeth were nice. White and straight.

“I’m not really your teacher. I’m just the
teaching assistant. Professor Hornsby is the teacher of record. He establishes
grades and writes the tests. Do you see the difference?” He tossed his hair out
of his eyes and stared at me. He looked a bit pathetic.

From the depths of my murky mind I
suddenly realized how funny this was. I barked a laugh, the one that usually
scared guys away, and said, “That’s not the only difference! He’s old and bald
and fat, and I would never go out with him.”

And, somehow, in the next three minutes,
through no fault of my own, we made a date. Eddie was grinning like an idiot. I
was shocked. He left. I went back to my muffins and ate half the raw dough with
a spoon while I baked the other half.

So, yeah, though we had a rocky start, Eddie pursued me,
and I, so confused by the entire charade, let him catch me, ignorant of the
future we’d have, the pain that would ooze from our entwined thread of choices.
Our beginning was sweet. Our ending was not.
This man, who changed my life twenty-two years ago,
left me as he found me—helpless.

3

The lights are dimmed
at the elementary school where I dropped off my son this morning. I would’ve
picked him up hours ago; his dad is late.

Buried under his
puffy coat and backpack, Joey’s left knee jiggles—bent, straight, bent—as he
blows frost clouds on the glass door. He draws a sad face on the cold pane,
writes his name under it, and then glances at his teacher, Miss Abby, who
ignores him and stares over his head. She’s annoyed that she drew the short
straw and had to stay late, and too self-absorbed to notice that her student
can sense her anger. The dent of Joey’s eyebrows and the straight line of his
mouth, lips closed tight, are familiar components of his worried face. My son
shouldn’t know how to worry. I hope he didn’t hear his teachers gossiping about
me, those busybodies. He shouldn’t find out like that.

I whisper in his
ear, “Don’t worry, Joey. Daddy’s on the way.” But he doesn’t hear me. When the
bright headlights pull in the parking lot with his dad’s car behind them, Joey
is sweating a little. As soon as the blinding lights blink off, Miss Abby yanks
his hat down over his ears, and she pushes him out the door.

Eddie leans his
forehead on the steering wheel. “Anna, how am I going to do this?”

“Come on, Eddie,
he’s been waiting for hours,” I insist in the nagging voice that annoys my
husband. This is the tone I save especially for him whenever there’s no other
choice and I’m required to speak to him. He’s got that annoyed look right now
as he raises his eyes to the door, focuses on Joey, and doesn’t answer me. My husband
rushes past me without a glance and scoops our boy up in a big hug. He tells
Miss Abby he’s sorry, and she says she’s sorry, and he says it again. He ducks
his head and won’t meet her eyes. Interesting. The man looks guilty even when
he’s not alone with me.

Eddie carries Joey
to the car.
He tosses
Joey’s backpack into the passenger seat and helps him get his seat belt
buckled. It’s hard with gloves on. Harder with tears blurring his eyes. He
turns his head so Joey won’t see him cry.

Joey’s mittened hands pat his dad’s
thinning hair, and he asks the question, “Dad, where’s Mommy?”

“I’m right here, Joe,” I say. He ignores
me.

Eddie meets our son’s eyes. Great. He’s
going to tell Joey in the damn car.

“Don’t you mess this up, Eddie.” I can
hear the blame in my own voice.

Stalling, Eddie wipes his nose with the
back of his glove. “Joey,” he begins and stops. He takes a ragged breath. Come
on, Eddie, get on with it if you’re going to do it in the school parking lot.
He squats down beside the open car door in a slushy puddle and rests his hands
on Joey’s knees. His eyes leak. Joey’s eyes are wide and dry, unblinking,
locked on his dad.

I watch my husband raise his hand to our
son’s shoulder and say, “Mommy died.”

I’m not surprised because death isn’t
something that sneaks up on you. When you’re dead, the universe makes sure you
feel it.

Joey considers this news. He studies his
father’s wet eyes and then asks, “Where is she?”

Eddie leans in to kiss the top of Joey’s
capped head and says, “At the hospital.”

I’m not at the hospital, you fool. I’m
right here.

He gives his head
a hard shake and angrily wipes his eyes. I’m certain Joey has never seen his
dad cry before. In two decades, I’ve never seen it. “Let’s go home and call
your sister, okay?” Joey nods, but he doesn’t look convinced.

Joey’s sister,
Bethany, is a freshman in college, one hundred long miles away. I hope her
bumbling father improves his death announcement skills on his second try. I
don’t approve of his parking lot approach.

When Eddie starts
the car, Joey asks, “Can we go see Mommy? Will she come home tonight?”

“No, Joey. Mom
isn’t coming home.” Eddie repeats the impossible words. “Mommy died.” His eyes
plead with Joey.
Understand this, kid. Don’t make me
keep saying it.

Anna
?

“Did she die like Grammy?”

Anna! Where the hell are you?

Even Eddie doesn’t know I’m here.

“Yes, Joe. She’s
with Grammy now.”

Eddie continues to
leak tears while he drives toward the house where we live. Well, where they
live. I no longer live. Anywhere.

“Don’t cry, Daddy.
We can go to the hospital and get Mommy on the way home.”

Damn it, Eddie,
quit your blubbering and explain this to him. He’s a smart kid. He can
understand if you spell it out.

Eddie stops the car at a red light and
gives his face a rough rub before he turns all the way around in his seat and
meets Joey’s eyes. “She’s gone, honey. Mom can’t come home.”

He considers how much truth to tell our
little boy and weighs the value of a compassionate lie. “When somebody dies,
they don’t come home anymore.”

There’s a loud beep. Eddie is sobbing
again. Joey says, “Light’s green, Dad.”

At home, Eddie gives Joey a peanut butter
sandwich for dinner while he calls my two women: our daughter, Bethany, and my
sister, Michelle. Every time he says I’m dead, it smacks me all over again.
After he tucks Joey in bed, he sits in the blue chair and stares at the black
night out the window. Joey watches him from the stairs for a long time.

| | | |

The
sun peeks under the curtains
the next morning and warms a patch of rug beside
Joey’s bed.
The room smells like Oreos. The only sound
is snoring, and it comes from under the bed. Of course, he’s under there.
Whenever he was sad or scared, I told Joey to go there, and I promised to always
find him and protect him. I can’t even hug him from my fresh post on the dead
side.

I never had time during my life—between
work and cooking and laundry—to do this, so I snuggle down beside him and watch
my boy snooze until he stirs and rubs his sleepy eyes. After a gigantic yawn he
shoves his fingers up his nose and commences what must be his daily ritual of
digging. I remember the day, after years of harassing him about this disgusting
male habit, when my son took a stand. Rather than issuing his blatant daily fib
of promising to never pick his nose again, he said, “But Mommy, if I’m not
supposed to pick out the boogies, why does my finger fit so good?” At five
years of age, the kid had used evolution and his father’s tone, spot on, to
shut down his mother’s nagging.

Now, with those boogie-covered fingers,
Joey reaches into the cookie wrapper and pops one into his mouth. He’s as
stubborn as I ever was. He won’t cry. He’ll wait for me under that bed
indefinitely.

Or until the cookies run out.

He doesn’t know I’m here. I don’t know how
I got here. I’m just dead and wandering, and, somehow, I can hear my little
boy’s thoughts.

Yesterday morning Mommy got mad at
Daddy. She never came home last night. She must be really mad about the Oreos.

But I’m not mad at
you, Joey.

Me and Daddy almost tricked Mom. But
she always figures stuff out, and we got caught.

Joey sneaks his
hand out from under the bed and rubs the soft spot of rug warmed by the morning
sun. After spending the whole night under the bed, he has no plans to emerge
today. His stash of Oreos and Ritz crackers makes him thirsty, and he has to
pee. But he waits. He hears a car on the gravel driveway.

Maybe it’s Mommy.

Bethany fumbles at the back door. Our
daughter, as always, is carrying too much—her giant purse, some groceries, and
our cat, Stink.

I watched her drive home from college last night. Once Joey
was settled in his nest of blankets, I sought Bethany and immediately, by some
inexplicable scramble of space and time, I was riding with her, right beside
her in her car, for two hours on the deserted highway. One hundred and twenty
minutes of watching my daughter hold her breath, clench the wheel. Seventy-two
hundred seconds during which I could not hug her and make her feel better. Just
like so many times during my life, I couldn’t ease my daughter’s pain. Eddie
shouldn’t have let her drive home. He should’ve gone to get her. He shouldn’t
have told Joey about me in the car. So many should’ves. None of them matter.
Toss the should’ves in with the ifs and let them rot.

Bethany tiptoed into our house after midnight. She covered
her dad with an old quilt, slid a flashlight and a half pack of Oreos under the
bed with Joey, and sat awake almost all night. I stayed beside her the best I
could, given my lack of a body. Like everyone else, she didn’t know I was
there. When the sun woke her up this morning, she snuck out of the house and
went to the grocery store. The living need to eat.

Bethany drops the cat in his favorite
chair by the window, and, as she dumps the grocery bag on the table, I can
suddenly hear her.

How many times will this happen? I can
distract myself and push down the ache, but then it hits me all over again.
Fresh. Like a train I forgot I was trying to outrun. The engine carries the
news: your mother is dead. I forget to leap off the tracks. Slam. Pierces me
like flying glass.

My mother is dead.

Oh, honey. I’m right here.

A groan from the lump in the blue chair
pulls Bethany back out of her head. She kisses her dad’s cheek and crawls into
his lap like she did when she was small. He wraps his arms around her, and he
sobs. Bethany lets him cry into her hair. Her eyes are dry. Her mind is closed.
It provides no further glimpse of her thoughts, no more inkling of her pain.