Authors: Laura Lanni
Or Not to Be
The characters and events in this book are fictional.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not
intended by the author.
OR NOT TO BE. Copyright © 2014 Laura
Lanni. All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976,
the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book
without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of
the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from this
book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be
obtained by contacting the author at
[email protected]
.Thank you for your support of the
author’s rights.
Published by LMNO Press, P.O. Box 544,
Chapin, SC 29036
Library of Congress
Control Number:
2014917181
ISBN 978-0-9907757-1-3 (e-book)
Cover design and image by Kate Lanni
For every soul,
Living or dead,
Separated from loved ones,
Forever listening.
I would be delighted if there were a life after death,
especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others,
if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.
Carl Sagan
Flashback: Asked Out by My Teacher
Wandering and Guidance After Death
Another Lesson and a Palindrome
Approaching the End: Memory Leaks
Another Birthday-Deathday, Another
Guide
Wonder Wander: The Big and the Deep
Anna
1
Morning
At the beginning
of the last day of my marriage, I didn’t notice
anything different. There were no signs or warnings, no flashing lights. The
day began as bad and sad as the five dozen before it. I’d learned to live under
that crushing dread in the same way the receptors in my nose disregarded the
persnickety molecules of a bad smell. Gradually the daily battles that colored
my marriage wore me down and I became numb, almost oblivious.
When I walked into the kitchen on that
morning, my final November eleventh, I went straight to my five-year-old, Joey,
and smacked a kiss onto his fluffy head. The boy needed a bath. I took the cup
of coffee that my husband and ex-best friend, Eddie, was offering. He looked
guilty. Nothing new there. Avoiding eye contact was the man’s newest form of
torturing me.
I’d just swallowed my first daily hit of
caffeine when Joey looked up at me and revealed the chocolate crumbs around his
mouth. Then he surprised me with this stunt. “Ooh, Mommy. I don’t feel too good
today. I need to stay home. Bellyache. Ooh.” My boy who loved going to school
leaned to me for a hug. I let him wrap his dirty hands around the silk sleeve
of my blouse. I tried to catch Eddie’s eye, but his gaze crept between the
cereal bowls and onto the floor.
A gush of
tears and snot rose up and threatened to dissolve my crystalline wall of
defense. Crying was ineffective in our current battles. It wouldn’t get me the
hug I needed. He’d just shake his head and walk away, leaving me in my own
entropic mess. If I could hold it all in, I’d earn ten good minutes of crying
alone in the car after I dropped Joey at kindergarten.
I wrapped
one arm around Joey’s bony shoulders and got a firm grip on his chin with my
free hand. We were nose to nose when I said, “Show me those teeth.”
My sweet boy giggled, threw his head back,
and revealed Oreo chunks between his baby teeth.
“Joey, come on, now. How’d you get
chocolate for breakfast?”
My little boy’s green eyes grew huge when
he realized he was in trouble. He looked to his father for support, but Eddie
turned away from him. I resisted the urge to hurl my coffee at the back of my
husband’s head for abandoning our son.
“Joe. We all know why you have a
bellyache. You can’t stay home from school today.”
I jabbed my finger at Eddie, the true
perpetrator of this breakfast fiasco, demanding he meet my eyes and acknowledge
me. “You gave him cookies for breakfast?” I flung these words at him like
knives, and when he finally looked up his guilty eyes gave him away. He didn’t
even defend himself.
At 7:30 we all left the house to start our
days. I helped Joey with his seat belt. It was hard with gloves on and tears in
my eyes, but crying was so common for me that I lived in a blurry haze. I
tossed my heavy school bag into the front seat and realized with the saddest
heart that I was relieved to be leaving my own house.
Sunglasses on. Key in ignition. Escape.
“Honey?”
This was Eddie. He was leaning his head in
the passenger window of my car, closer to me than he’d been since August.
“Anna, how about a day off today? You and
me and Joey. Let’s all play hooky.”
Was he kidding me?
After so many weeks of treating me to the grim profile
of his face, grunting answers to my questions, walking away—now he wanted to
spend a day together.
My mind and heart were
firing on all cylinders, blocking whatever the hell he was saying. When he shut
up, I said,
“You’re calling me
honey
now? Where’d that come from?”
I pulled on my
seat belt, put the car in gear, checked my mirrors, and turned back to him.
“I’m going to work.” Glad the sunglasses blocked my wet eyes yet fully aware
that this man knew my crying face by my crumpled chin, I blew out a giant sigh
and said, “See you tonight,
honey
,” and I backed out of our
garage.
2
Asked Out by My Teacher
If I’d stayed
home this morning, Eddie and I would still be
together. Maybe. But every day of your life you can play that game, and it’s
always futile—that hindsight crap. You do what you do. Make choices in the
moment and live, or die, with them. One chance, one choice, and everything
flows from that point. The other paths don’t even count. They are only
imaginary.
If I’d stayed home, if I’d made myself
talk to Eddie and hash out our problems, actually meet them head on, we might
still have split up. It was coming, I’m sure of that, but I’m not sure it would
have been any more pleasant than death. So many ifs. If I hadn’t taken that
crippling elective Particle Physics course twenty years ago when Eddie was the
teaching assistant for my class, if I hadn’t been such a math geek, if I’d
tried out for cheerleading, if I had a normal mother, I’d never have met Eddie
in the first place. See what I mean? Live with your choices.
Here are my facts, the products of these
choices: I love my small family fiercely—my husband, sister, and two kids. I’m
an accomplished and proud geek. My marriage disintegrated, unraveled so quickly
that I couldn’t distinguish the loose thread from the knotted weave, because my
husband mysteriously became unreachable, untouchable, and alien to me. He left
me helpless, weak.
I remember also feeling helpless when
Eddie and I met half a lifetime ago, but that flavor of helplessness was
delicious. He crashed, uninvited, into my orbit and showed me that my life
wasn’t only mine to live but was under the influence of forces beyond my
control. I was twenty-two and finishing my master’s degree in engineering at my
half-life. I remember that self-assured, arrogant girl and still marvel that
she, a fresher version of me, managed to win over a guy on the order of Eddie
Wixim.
He asked me out at the end of a killer
week. I was a wee bit delirious. I’d taken three exams and written two long lab
reports that, on top of typing through two long nights, required a dozen extra
hours in the lab. My strategy for survival had worked. I’d traded sleep time
for study time and abandoned all personal hygiene time in favor of an extra
twenty minutes of sleep in the stupid mornings.
In the hug of the long-anticipated
Saturday, I hadn’t intended to leave my bed, but I got hungry so I was making
myself a batch of blueberry muffins. Mentally and physically exhausted, I
couldn’t remember the last time I’d touched soap or even toothpaste. I got my
toothbrush from the bathroom and, to be efficient, brushed my teeth while I
stirred the muffin batter. That’s when the doorbell rang. Great. I threw down
the wooden spoon, spat in the kitchen sink, and yanked open the door.
And there he stood. Mr. Wixim, in the
flesh. The only good-looking instructor on campus. The guy that all the idiot
girls talked about. At my door. I tossed my toothbrush onto the couch, out of
his sight.
Smooth, Anna.
All the undergrad girls were after Mr.
Wixim. I didn’t quite understand all of the hoopla. Sure, he had good hair,
thick and dark. Sure, he had some massive shoulders, but he always hid them
under ragged flannel shirts. He was so serious all the time, but I had seen him
smile once, laughing silently, shoulders shaking, at his own dark joke during
recitation, and I did think he was cute. I did. But I’d never admit that.
Especially to the girly girls with their eyeliner and nail polish and hair that
they brushed every single day whether it needed brushing or not.