Or Not to Be (4 page)

Bethany sticks out
her tongue and holds it and says, “Athole,” and Joey loses himself in giggles.
Eddie hears the sound from the other room, and we both think at the same
instant:
My children are
laughing?

Now, I have left them all. It was not my
intention, and I am infinitely pissed. Given a second chance at that choice,
now I would have stayed home on Friday, November eleventh. I would’ve tried
harder to stay on the same team as Eddie to keep us from falling apart.

As I watch my children, I feel like they
are holding my heart.

Death really hurts.

5

On the dead side
, once again I have lost all control of my position in
both space and time. I feel a twinge of the guilty relief that colored the end
of my life. This much has not changed—it is still too painful for me to be in
my own home. I’m grateful for another flashback.

I watch younger me, again, back in my old
college apartment. I had no idea I was so cute in my good old days, even when
sleep-deprived, unshowered, and free of makeup. Back on that rainy Saturday
morning, more than two decades ago, my life was fresh when Eddie first stepped
into my path. It was the time of the beginning of us.

After Mr. Wixim, I mean Ed, left my
apartment, consumption of too much raw blueberry muffin batter had turned out
to be a bad idea. I took a giant slug of Pepto straight from the bottle, and
fell into a coma on my couch under the flannel blanket to sleep away the
afternoon. I awoke hours later with my toothbrush wedged into the back of my thigh
and in severe need of coffee to clear the fuzz lining the inside of my
forehead. I shivered and then hopped barefoot on the kitchen tile and watched
each drip of my coffee as it gushed into the pot until my frozen feet demanded
action. I pulled the pot away and shoved a cup under the drip. Snuggled back
under my blanket, my feet thawed as I sipped from the warm mug and ate a muffin
from the top down.

The caffeine in my bloodstream crashed
into my fogged head, and I remembered my visitor. After about four lucid
seconds, I leaped off the couch in panic, sloshing brown liquid and blue crumbs
onto the floor. I couldn’t go on a date with Ed Wixim. I’d never been on a real
date before. I didn’t attract men; I scared them off. There were many I liked
who were cute or smart or both, but they were always petrified of me, and I did
not find that deer-in-the-headlights look particularly attractive.

But this Wixim guy was brave. He came to my door.
Unarmed
. What nerve. What
spine. I called my sister at her college three states away to agonize.

“Michelle, I need help,” I said, instead
of hello.

“Yeah. I’ve been telling you that for
years, girl.” My sister always had my back.

“Shut up, jerk, and listen. A guy asked me
out.”

“What?” She nearly blew my ear off.

“Don’t sound so surprised. I’m not that
ugly.”

“No, Anna, you’re not that ugly. You’re
scary like a grizzly bear. I might be the only human on the planet not afraid
of you.”

“Huh. You
are
afraid of me.”

“A little,” she admitted. “So, what’s he
look like?”

“Gorgeous. Tall. Older.”

“How much?”

“Two or three years, I think. He’s
finishing his Ph.D. this spring.”

“Good. Good. Mom will love him ’cause he’s
smart. That’ll help her not hate him so much ’cause he’s cute.”

“Do not tell Mom.”

“I know. Don’t worry. You said you needed
help?”

“I guess just tell me what to do. What to
wear? How to act?”

Michelle snorted. “What’s the goal here?
Do you want to marry this guy or just use him to learn how to kiss? I need to
see the prize.”

“Those are my only choices?” She stumped
me. I didn’t have a goal beyond remembering to breathe during the date. I’d
only been on two dates before, both set up by friends, both awkward as hell.
I’d never been asked out directly by the guy before. “What was your goal with
Danny?”

A grunt. My sister made many noises. Soon
she’d probably start whistling. She finally answered, “Honestly? I just didn’t
want to get pregnant.”

She was light years ahead of me. My sister
could handle men. “Well, I don’t think I’ll have that concern. It’s just one
date. But what should I wear?”

“Do you like him?”

“I don’t know. I’m a little nervous.”

“Good. That means you do. So then it
matters how you look. You should shower, Anna. And wear mascara and blush. And
earrings. Then just concentrate on the kissing lessons. If he doesn’t kiss you,
you fail, and don’t come crying to me.”

“Slow down, will you?” I demanded.

“Are you writing this down?”

“Of course. Okay, keep going.”

Michelle sighed before continuing. “Wear a
cute skirt or dress. Sandals or heels. Shave those legs! And do something with
that hair, will you?”

“Okay, okay, I’ll work on it.”

“First dates suck, Anna, but I’m sure
you’ll be fine. Call me when it’s over.”

“I wish you were here with me.”

“Yeah, me too. Maybe we’ll live next door
someday when we both have real jobs.”

“I wish.”

“Love you, Anna.” And she whistled a line
from “The Rose” as she hung up.

| | | |

Friday
, the day I agreed to go on a date with Ed Wixim, came
way too fast. I tried to do everything Michelle said. I even remembered to
shave my legs, and I got my hair cut and permed for the first time in my life.
But I was nervous when Eddie knocked on my door, right on time. The only thing
I felt confident about was my new look. My haircut made me look so much older
and mature. I loved it. Something unexpected happened to me during that week. I
admitted to myself that I wanted this guy to like me. I would do my best to
make him the second person in the world not afraid of me.

I opened the door and tried a new tactic.
I smiled at him instead of emitting my normal growl. It didn’t work. His face
fell, and he said, “Your hair.”

That reminded me that I at least looked
pretty. I touched my hair and said, “What?” in that impish tone, just like
those goofy girls who wait for compliments from guys. I hated myself for a
minute. Until Eddie spoke. Then I hated him instead.

He said, “I liked it better the other
way.”

The hell with him. I changed my mind. I
wanted him to fear me. I slammed the door and stomped in circles in my tiny
apartment like a caged bull. I puffed like Ursula with indignation as I
imagined the pain I could crash down upon this idiot man who had the nerve to
knock on my door and insult me.

But Eddie didn’t leave. He kept knocking
on my door and asking me to come out. He even suggested a sweater in case I got
cold, which popped my Ursula shield and made me like him again. Drats. I didn’t
know the social protocol for this—being insulted and yet still being expected
to go on the date. My stomach, the bottomless pit, answered for me when he
mentioned being late to the steakhouse. I grabbed a sweater, kicked myself in
the head, and went on the damn date.

And it wasn’t that bad. He was more
nervous than I was, which made me think that maybe he liked me. This hot guy
liked me. That’d never happened before. And he wasn’t just gorgeous—he was
funny and not very much afraid of me. I thought I might use that to my
advantage for a while. This could get interesting. Maybe Michelle was right. I
might use this guy to try out the kissing thing.

The date lasted forever, and, hours later,
Eddie somehow got me pinned under his giant arm and trapped on a bench in the
rose garden. From this captive position, I considered my situation.

The cold stone of the bench met the hot
backs of my thighs and did what every cold object does when it encounters a
warmer one—kinetic energy was neatly transferred by elastic collisions between
the frenetic particles to their sedater neighbors. The smell of the flowers,
produced by vaporous bulky molecules colliding with receptors in my nose, made
the air literally heavy on my cool skin. Those smelly molecules were an order
of magnitude heavier than the nitrogen and oxygen in the cool air.

The light from a lamppost illuminated only half of Eddie’s
face, leaving the other half hidden in black shadows. Though I knew the missing
half of his face wasn’t actually gone, I entertained myself with imagining “
what isn’t seen does not exist,
” a fun mind
game I almost mentioned out loud and would have if only my brain could have
made my lips function. But Eddie’s large hand on my waist had somehow alerted a
colony of my eager neurons to start a chain reaction that made me lightheaded.
And then, by a series of moves not under my control, perhaps only understood by
males of the species, Eddie managed to get his lips close to my paralyzed ones.

Really close. Closer than any lips had
ever been to the molecules of me. His molecules exerted an inexplicable force
that mine found irresistible.

For a full minute, I held my breath. For
sixty seconds, maybe more, I existed in an idiotic state of self-denial from
completely free, available, and fresh oxygen. I like oxygen. It’s one of my
favorite elements. Its absence was not helping with my lightheaded situation.

And then he did it. Eddie Wixim, my
teacher
, touched his lips to
mine, and for the first time in my life I wasn’t thinking with my brain.

| | | |

In June
, mere months after our first kiss, he went and did
it: Eddie proposed in the drive-thru line at McDonald’s on a Tuesday in June.
He paid for our Big Macs, and while we waited, he sucked hard on the straw of
his chocolate shake and asked me to get a cassette tape out of the glove box. I
opened the box and saw nothing like a cassette tape. A top layer of papers and
wrappers and newspapers peeled away to reveal a baseball, a wad of napkins, one
red and one green tube sock, a comb, a dozen pencils, and even more entropy
below.

“Eddie? What the heck? It’s a disaster in
here.”

“Just dig in there. I know the Doobie
Brothers are in the back somewhere.”

I dug my hand in because I trusted him,
this competent, sweet, intelligent man who liked me in spite of me, or maybe
because of me. I never understood that part. My hand felt around for the sharp
corners of a cassette case and just came up with more sticky wrappers, which I
tossed in handfuls over my shoulder into his back seat. The McDonald’s chick
handed Eddie a huge greasy, salt-encrusted bag. He dragged out french fries,
two at a time, and shoved them the long way down his throat. I don’t even think
he chewed

“Hey,” I said, “don’t eat mine.” He always
ate my fries.

“I won’t,” he lied.

I was still up to my elbows in male
disorganization. It was making me twitch. “There’s no cassette in here, Eddie.”

“Anna, come on. This is easy. Just reach
in the back.”

That’s when my fingers landed on the
square velvet box. I pulled it out and was about to toss it over my shoulder
with the other crap when Eddie’s hand caught my wrist. He said, “Oh, yeah, I
forgot about that. It’s for you. See if you like it.” So nonchalantly, the man
ate a few more of my fries.

I looked down at the blue box and suddenly
understood that there was a ring inside. Holy shit.

Unable to breathe, I choked out, “What are
you thinking?”

“That I want you to come with me,” he
managed to say around a mouthful.

“Why?” It came out in a whisper. I
couldn’t pull in a full breath.

“Because I don’t want to go without you. I can’t go without
you.” I’d been dreading the time when he would leave me when he started medical
school. I’d never even considered going with him. I was headed to frigid
upstate New York for my own doctoral program in the fall.

Eddie put the bag of fries on the dashboard and turned to
me. He took the little box from my clenched claw and popped it open. He looked
from the box to my eyes and said, “Oh, look Anna. It’s pretty. Just like you.”
He pulled the ring out and wiggled it in the midday sun to make it catch the
light.

I was mesmerized by the sparkle of the
tiny diamond. Graduate students are poor. It’s a requirement.

I could barely breathe, but I heard myself ask, “You want
me to come with you? Wait. You mean you want me to
marry
you?”

“Yes, Anna, I do.” He leaned to me and
touched my lips with his salty ones.