Or Not to Be (29 page)

They return home and dump the huge bag of
candy out on the kitchen floor. Joey proceeds to roll around in it, but a lady
scoops him up. “All right, Frodo-number-one, pick one piece and then off to
bed. School tomorrow.”

“Aw, Mom, I’m not tired. I got all this
candy, and I’ll even share it with ya if I can have more than one piece.” He
tries to bargain with this woman, his mother. That makes her my wife. I need to
pay closer attention.

She isn’t too hard on the eyes for an old
chick. Not someone I’d look twice at now, but, hey, I’m twenty. She’s old—got
to be in her forties. I noticed that she didn’t give Eddie anything when he
came home. No hug, no hello. She didn’t even glance at him. Don’t they like
each other at all? This is horrible. Joey starts whining and arguing with his
mom.

“Just one, Joey. Don’t argue with me, or
one becomes zero. Got that?”

Joey snatches up a peanut butter cup and
runs off to his room.

Eddie attempts conversation. “Lots of
chocolate, Anna. See?”

“Yeah. Great. Not a Smartie in the pile.”
She’s on her knees sorting through the candy.

“Joey won’t miss it if you have some,” he
suggests awkwardly.

She doesn’t look at him. She just barks at
him. “I’m bringing it all to school. My students will eat it.”

“You’ve been running so much. You
shouldn’t worry about a little chocolate.”

“Don’t be mean to me, Eddie. I am not
fat.”

Did he call her fat? Was he mean? Wasn’t
he just offering candy? Old Eddie and I, both, don’t understand his wife.

The old guy walks out of the room,
dejected and clearly dismissed by our wife. The man is pathetic. This future
wife of mine ignores me and fights with my son. Future me is a pushover and a
loser. How did I get so lucky?

| | | |

“
Lizzie! I’m
done
watching them. You really expect me to go back for that? My future
family life is a mess.” I am disturbed by what I would become. “Am I ever
happy?”

Lizzie manages to sound like my therapist
when she answers, “Ed, you made choices in your life that made you content.
Happiness is a fleeting emotion. We know we are happy when we are laughing or
hugging someone. Most other times of the day the living spend negative energy
on things like road rage and petty arguments. You’ll have a good life with
Anna. You will love your family. You just keep picking snapshots of that life
that don’t portray it accurately.”

I’m stumped. “Can you pick a good day for
me to see?” I need to see something positive.

“I’ll try.”

| | | |

Here is Anna
in line at a bookstore. She’s holding a pile of
books. When it’s her turn, the guy at the register says, “May I see your
discount card?”

Anna says, “I forgot to bring it.”

He says, “What’s your last name?”

“Muckenfuss.”
Muckenfuss? Does this crazy woman not know her own
name?

“Hmm ...” He types it into his computer.
Cool computer. At least in the future I might enjoy the technology even if I
can’t relate to the people.

While he’s nose deep in his computer, Anna
says, “Never mind. It’s probably under my daughter’s name.”

She starts digging in her purse like a
squirrel for a nut and doesn’t seem to hear him when he asks, “Emily? Is it
Emily?” She ignores him so he raises his voice, “Ma’am, is your daughter
Emily?”

I thought the daughter’s name was Bethany.
Is there another one?

“Yeah, no, it’s a bit confusing,” Lizzie
says. “Just watch, and maybe you’ll figure it out.”

Anna stops digging through the messiest
purse I’ve ever seen. Her mouth hangs open, which I don’t find attractive, and
she looks like she’s panicking, like she might bolt.

The cashier tells her, “You can use your
daughter’s card. Is her name Emily Muckenfuss?”

No! That’s impossible. Even if we do end
up with a daughter named Emily, how could she be called Muckenfuss?

But Anna answers, “Yes. That’s her.” She
is a bit pale. I think she’s going to puke.

“Wait, Lizzie! Just hold on a minute. This
woman is a freak of nature. Why did you think showing me a glimpse of her in a
bookstore was a good idea?”

“Sorry,” she says. “See, Anna loves to
read. She’s extremely bright—certainly your intellectual match, which will be
really hard for you to find. I thought you’d like to know that you will find
one. Maybe there’s a better time in a bookstore I can show you. Hold on a sec.”

Then we see Anna in a different bookstore.
Again she holds a pile of books. None of them look familiar to me. Looks more
like a pile of chick lit. Ugh. Did this woman ever use her brain?

When she gets to the register, the
cashier, once again, asks for her membership card. I’m waiting for the “I
forgot it” line again, when she surprises me with, “I don’t have one.”

He asks if she wants one, and she counters
with, “Are they free?” Perfect. She is cheap on top of all her other lovely
qualities.

She smiles when the guy says, “Not for
most people, but it would be essentially free for you today.”

This gets frugal Anna’s attention.

After he patiently explains about a ten
percent discount, she asks, “Do I have to use my real name?” Is she serious?

The guy says, “You can be whomever you
want.” What is with the future world? Identity theft? Erectile dysfunction? Be
whomever you want? I don’t get it.

Anna looks gleeful when she announces, “I
am Martha Washington, and I would like to buy a free membership card.”
Muckenfuss? Martha Washington?

She gives her address as the White House.
What a fruitcake.

I’ve had enough of Lizzie as my guide.
“Halt! Please, no more! This is not working at all. I don’t want to go back to
that woman!” I’m the one panicking now.

“Sorry, again. Maybe I should abandon the
bookstore theme. How about I show you Anna when she was younger?”

“No,” I insist. “I don’t want to see
more.”

“Come on, Eddie, I’ll hit on a good one
eventually.”

“Do not call me
Eddie. That’s
him
. You just showed me two
dumpers in a row. One more and that’s your third strike. Then you’re out. Got
that?”

“Sure. You just reminded me of something.
Hold on tight, we’re gonna whiz back sorta fast here.”

Then Lizzie says, “Here we are. You were a
lot younger. This is your first date with Anna. See if this helps at all.”

So I watch.

A young Eddie and very pretty Anna are having dinner. The
waiter has just delivered the dessert menu when Anna says, “I decided to come
with you to get a free steak dinner. Now I’m ready for chocolate cake. But I
don’t want to go to Abbott and Costello in the middle of campus where everyone
can see us. This is our first and last date, and I don’t want people thinking
there’s something going on here. Got that
?”

This girl is a beast! Why does she hate
poor Eddie?

By coincidence, my younger self asks,
“Anna, what can I do to make you stop hating me?”

So I was right: she did hate me.

“I don’t hate you,” she says. What? So
maybe I was wrong then and now? Will I be wrong again when this happens in my
future?

“Well, then, how do you feel about me?”
This Eddie guy is asking for some punishment.

Anna looks him
square in the eye and says, “I have never been insulted in the first five
seconds of a date before.”

Eddie insulted
her? How? Why?

“That makes you a
special, unforgettable date. And I haven’t been on many dates.”

I could see why!

“That also makes
you special and unforgettable. But even if I have to live the rest of my life
alone, no dates,
forever
, I will never be so desperate
that I have to be with a guy who is mean to me. Got that?” She looks like she’s
about to cry.

Eddie says, “I’m sorry I was mean. I
didn’t mean it. Please go to the movie with me?”

Anna smiles a wicked smile—which makes her
look pretty hot—and says, “I think you are begging me.”

“You bet. I am. Really I am. This cannot
be the last time I see you.” Eddie, the loser, is a head case.

“Why not?” She is teasing him!

Apparently he’d been mean in some way that
gives Anna the upper hand. She thinks she has a right to be furious and to
string him along in a nasty way. Eddie better come up with something good if he
wants to see this witch again. But why would he want to? He should just cut
loose right now and run.

He does look desperate, and he’s thinking
hard, really working. It’s incredible, but I find myself starting to root for him
a little. Come on, guy, and give her something good. Make her like you. Argue
your case. Stand up for yourself. Be a man!

“Because.”

That’s it?

But Anna smiles!

Later, they walk hand in hand down a path
lined with roses. Sickeningly romantic. Not my style. Eddie wears a stupid
little smirk on his face when he suggests they sit down on a bench.

As Anna sits down, she says, “Do you bring
all your first dates here?”

“No,” answers Eddie, the loser nerd.

“Just the ones with awful hair so you
don’t have to be seen in public?”

What was this about awful hair? Anna’s
hair looked pretty good to me.

“Actually, it has nothing to do with their
hair,” he mutters.

Then Ed-the-
man
says, “I just bring
the ones I want to kiss.”

Bam!

“Really?” Anna’s smile is suspicious. She
doesn’t buy it. “How many times have you been here?”

I find myself rooting for Eddie again.
Don’t blow it, man. Think about this one. There is only one correct answer.
It’ll make or break you.

“Never before tonight.”

Bingo!

If he messes this up, I’ll kill the guy.

With one awkward arm around her shoulders,
he pulls her to him. He lowers his face so close to hers I hope neither of them
had onions on their steak. He touches her hair and says, “I love your hair.”

Enough with the hair, Eddie.

She laughs and says, “Just kiss me
already.”

And he does.

| | | |

“
Aw, that
turned out sweet
, don’t you think, Ed?” Lizzie asks me.

“It wasn’t as bad as the others,” I admit.
Maybe there’s hope.

Finally, Lizzie, my Rebound guide, leaves
me alone.

47

I like being alone
in space. It’s peaceful.

I take stock of my situation. I’m still
dead. Still about to turn twenty. I’ve experienced some mind and time travels
and seen some future details of my life. All of it feels like cheating, like
knowing the ending of a good book. I always hated that. I’m going back. I know
Lizzie’s right. I’ve seen enough to be certain, but I’m still curious, and
though I was keen to get away from her, I’m pursuing Lizzie again because I
still have questions.

It seems that just the mention of going
back is exerting some strong force on me, on my antimatter—I’m traveling at
light speed now, no doubt about that—and on my thought processes. I need Lizzie
to help me apply whatever amounts to brakes out here on the dead side so I can
slow down.

Then Lizzie’s voice says, “You don’t need
me for that. You have complete control of the speed of your return. Just get
back in there. The living are waiting for you.”

That didn’t feel quite true to me. In the
life I left behind, I was not exactly surrounded by crowds of friends and
family. I spent most of my time studying. I lived as a loner, but I was good at
it. So there were not many people anxiously awaiting my return. I could
feasibly stay dead.

Lizzie’s annoying voice breaks in with,
“That’s one of the main reasons you need me. Since you slipped through
unexpectedly, and you are one of those souls who would love to be dead—would
enjoy the death experience, have no fear of it, even understand it—you require
a nudge to remind you to return.”

“How is that any different from when
Grampa pushed me back when I was six?”

She sighs. “You know, for a smart guy, you
really kill me.”

“You’re already dead.”

“Ha. Ha.”

“And so am I. If you make the decision for
me, you’re as bad as Grampa,” I insist.