What the Dead Can Do, page 7
Donovan dropped his head as he scratched behind his right ear. “Honestly, Tag … maybe I wish you and Amanda were observing the investigation.”
“Why?”
“Or anything else … it doesn’t have to be that.”
Tag started forward again, on a sidewalk he wasn’t sure he’d brought back, and into nothing but the idea of an all-white box. Donovan joined but didn’t extend a hand this time.
Tag’s gut told him he could re-see downtown Seattle if he chose to, not because he could create or envision it himself, but because he believed that maybe Donovan still was.
“You want me to stop observing Ethan,” Tag said. “Say my ‘Final Goodbye.’ ”
“Eventually, yes. That is The Text’s suggestion, but right now, I’d settle on you at least—I don’t know—hitting a Knicks game or dropping in on the Oval Office. Get inventive.”
Their walk thus far had made Tag uneasy about sharing anything important. He’d made the connection to talk about Amanda—about something that could get her in big trouble, maybe.
“If I break from seeing our son, it doesn’t mean Amanda will.”
“I’m sure her mentor is making the same suggestion,” Donovan said.
As if that mattered. Since day one in Second Plane, Amanda questioned The Text, the council’s existence, and her mentor’s advice. Tag’s eager-beaver attitude toward assimilating took them both by surprise. Still, he understood the origin of his new preoccupation: Nicole ignoring an inconsolable Ethan was last-straw stuff, or close to it. When Amanda had told Tag about it, his unease with Nicole had turned personal. Her drinking and drug use unearthed a deep-rooted resentment for his father, a wicked drunk in his own right. He hadn’t lost all hope as Amanda had, but he could no longer vehemently disagree with her. That’s what scared him.
But what could he and Amanda do about that now?
“I’m worried about Amanda … worried she is going to do … something.”
Donovan stopped walking as if the act itself added gravity to his vague concern. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
Tag had heard a rumor about a fate beyond this residency. A place where residents in violation of affecting the living were “even more dead.” That’s how it’d been put.
He’d connected with Donovan to see if that rumor had merit. He didn’t know the man. Not really. For all Tag knew, his mentor could be on the council. He considered Donovan to be trustworthy, but only because he’d taken the man at face value, too. He hadn’t traveled to their previous plane of existence to investigate if Donovan had been who he said he was.
It was the first time Tag realized anyone there could be anyone they chose to be.
In fact, a resident of Second Plane could claim to have been anything they wished to have been. A doctor, a lawyer, a banker, a caring person—there was no heaven or hell. No separation of the bad from the good. Liars and honest people died and arrived. Even with nothing material to gain, the pathologically dishonest ones probably still got off on their deceits.
He’d been eager to do well there—a distraction, sure—but he’d also been naïve.
Donovan hadn’t waited for the specifics that he’d requested. Tag spotted him standing at the edge of a park that ran parallel to what looked like a bay.
“No rush on my end,” Donovan said. He hadn’t shouted and yet his voice sounded so close—as if he was standing in Tag’s head. “Share your concerns when you are ready.”
“She wants to bring Ethan here,” Tag said, soft enough to wonder if he’d only said it to himself. “She misses him. We both do.”
Suddenly Donovan was back at Tag’s side. He appeared almost pleased.
“That’s not something worth worrying about,” he said.
“She’s not going to let this go,” Tag said.
“Of course, she’s grieving, but—”
“Honestly, that’s putting it mildly,” Tag corrected himself. “She’s obsessed.”
“What are you afraid of?” Donovan asked.
“That she’s going to kill our son. I don’t know how—”
Donovan’s laugh was inappropriate for the moment.
From the periphery of their space, a wash of every material that made up their scenery, broken and in pieces, raced toward them. It was accompanied by a thunderous rumble. In the days before, Tag might have let the explosion bowl him over out of habit, but he stopped the infrastructural shrapnel from burying them both simply by thinking it into stillness.
Maybe his face gave his consternation away, or maybe Donovan had seen the chaos and realized he’d crossed a line. Either way, his mentor had stopped laughing.
“I’m sorry, that was insensitive,” Donovan said.
Tag gave no indication to suggest forgiveness.
“There’s simply nothing Amanda could do,” Donovan added as he put his hand on Tag’s shoulder. “It’s pretty cut-and-dried.”
“She’s heard differently,” Tag said, then added: “And you don’t know what she’s capable of.”
“She’s heard gossip, old wives’ tales—mistruths are rampant here. Sometimes I think we’d all be better off if comingling with other residents wasn’t allowed—connections should be made with mentors and relations only, at least for any residents less than a year dead.” Then, Donovan pulled him closer and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Not everyone who resides here is decent. And some of them have unfinished business.”
Donovan let him go, took two big steps back while looking around as if other residents were within earshot, and continued talking in a raised voice, almost like he hoped to be clearly heard by someone other than Tag. Was the council listening? Were they omnipresent?
“If she’s sharing these desires with her mentor, let them work it out—” Donovan interrupted himself by putting a finger to his own lips as if that were required to stop speaking. “That sounds dismissive. Let me try again: just like in the life you knew before, there are things a loved one will only listen to—truly hear—and abide by when a neutral third party suggests them. Give her time, Tag, and you’ll see.” Then he smiled, too wide and too toothy to be reassuring.
Donovan’s semblance began to fade, indicating he was done with this connection, whether Tag wanted it to be over or not. But before he vanished completely, Donovan put forward a reminder:
“You’ve read The Text, so I know you know this already, but please remind Amanda—children who arrive here don’t arrive as children at all.”
THE TEXT | SECTION FIVE
YOUR CHILDREN.
There are no children here, young or otherwise. Offspring that made the journey with you, for any reason, arrived here as adults through a process some residents call Age Acceleration. COOL, RIGHT?
THIS IS NOT A SPACE FOR KIDS. A child’s mind, even into their late teens, struggles with the absence of a setting. YES, your child was “very intelligent,” or “so imaginative” but WE PROMISE, he or she or they would struggle to exist here permanently as a child.
If you are a parent who arrived here with one or more of your progeny, know the adult versions are being mentored JUST LIKE YOU. Anger, grief, despair, and confusion mimics are to be expected. On the other hand, to arrive here without your children is a blessing. Who among us would wish our youth to be deprived of the experience of living? Good, bad, or indifferent.
The mentors of parent-residents who arrived without their child have been coached to mimic empathy for their plight, which may or may not help. HINT: You have to let it. Parent-residents who have left children behind are common, and group connections among parent-residents are available as a means of support. Ending observations of your child quickly is the best way forward.
There is no accurate way to calculate their ETA. If you have left a child behind, TAKE SOLACE—they will arrive eventually too!
Again: There are NO CHILDREN here. It is not a misfortune to have arrived here without your own.
6
TAG
When Rebecca, Amanda’s mentor, arrived to speak with Tag, he quickly learned she’d been born in the 1950s and had died by suicide in the mid-’80s. She’d hanged herself, and tossed that fact into otherwise benign pleasantries as gleefully as if she was sharing a recipe. That detail could have made their conversation awkward, but she spoke fast and bubbly—her whole vibe was the epitome of “I never saw it coming.”
He was glad to hear that her residency had begun without her children, and without her husband, Henry. Neither her kids nor her “one true love” had joined her yet, and though she claimed to have given up tracking the passage of time since her arrival, she said, “Henry is meant to be joining me soon in Second Plane. I’m confident about that.”
Then she ran the conversation right into her concerns about Amanda.
“Tag, I’m sure while living your wife was utterly pleasant …” Rebecca said, letting the start to the subject hang in the air, perhaps to gauge his reaction to where their talk might head. “But when I first met Amanda—which was hardly long enough after her inception here to have read much—she asked when she could see your son. First question, right out of the gate, and her only question,” Rebecca said, raising her eyebrows as if that alone meant bad things.
“Is that so odd for a grieving parent?” Tag asked, and he wondered why he hadn’t done exactly the same. In hindsight, reading The Text before searching for Ethan felt shameful now.
“No, I suppose the question itself wasn’t strange, but the energy about her was. Anyway, I told her we could go immediately, if she was ready, or later if she was not.” She paused a moment to study Tag head to toe. “As I’m sure you already know, there are no restrictions on observations. Go now. Go never. Think where and be there, it’s not hard.”
Tag nodded in agreement.
“But I don’t think your wife is looking for company or step-by-step instructions. She didn’t mean what she was asking. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
His wife had asked to see their son, a routine question in early residency, according to Donovan. Tag understood Rebecca was trying to communicate a deeper meaning, but having just met her, he wasn’t comfortable admitting that he understood exactly what she was getting at.
“She probably hadn’t read The Text,” he said. “You just insinuated as much. I’m sure she meant observe—”
“Oh sure, not many do read it right away,” Rebecca interrupted. “Did you?”
“Pretty much. Front to back.”
“Well, that is indeed admirable. Good for you!”
Hearing that unprovable fact felt good. He hadn’t been seeking gold stars, but something about embracing his new situation in full and then being praised for it gave him the comfort of at least believing he had some type of control over his new existence.
The current state of his and Amanda’s relationship might have been better if, like her, he hadn’t read The Text. If he had shirked the responsibility instead of diving into it so desperate for anything outside of his thinking, he wouldn’t have known anything about the age-acceleration process that children undergo before becoming residents. Maybe then, he’d be fantasizing about having Ethan there with them, as Amanda was.
“She’s really having trouble letting go,” Rebecca said. “My words, not hers.”
“We haven’t been here very long. She just needs more time.”
“That’s true for most,” Rebecca said. It didn’t sound like she believed it to be the case with his wife, but he didn’t move to defend her. “I’ve been doing this a while, Tag. Long enough to know that a small percentage of parents who arrive without their children don’t ever come to terms with leaving.”
“Understandable.”
“Maybe, but not practical,” she said. It came off like a warning.
“No. I suppose not.”
“The worst offenders have one thing in common.”
“And that is?”
“Their child was young. Too new to say goodbye to.”
It might have been his imagination, but it felt like her eyes were sizing him up.
“And if the child had no siblings … well, I can’t speak from experience, but maybe when there are no brothers or sisters left behind for that younger child, the thought of leaving your only son or daughter isn’t something someone can let go of.”
Tag suddenly felt queasy, sick to his stomach that he must not care enough about his son. He found himself trying to gauge his level of despair. Should he be wishing for his son to die an accidental death? Should he be running to any resident who would listen, asking hushed questions about what was and wasn’t possible in Prior Plane, as he knew his wife had been?
“I miss my son, too,” he said. “Terribly.”
“I’ve no doubt that’s true. But you’ve read The Text, and you are doing what’s suggested. You are moving forward, and Amanda …” Her arms went up in lieu of vocalizing her accusation.
“Yes?” Tag said. Calm was a difficult position to hold at this point.
“It’s a hunch, but my hunches have always served me well. Do with this information what you will.”
“You’ve said nothing concrete,” he said in a tone more piercing than he’d meant to and found he had to look away from Rebecca just to stop himself from saying something worse.
“Do I have to?” she asked. He looked back at her. The huge smile she had used to punctuate the question was infuriating. “I get the sense you already know why I’m here, Tag.”
He had never punched anyone while alive. Had it been possible now, he might have.
This was the love of his prior life they were talking about—and still the love of his second life, though no one seemed to refer to residency in that way. But he also knew, better than anyone, what it looked like or felt like when Amanda set a goal and got after it.
If she wanted to bring Ethan to Second Plane, she would do it. And if Rebecca was actually worried about that, then Donovan had been lying to him, and The Text was wrong.
“Residents can’t affect anything in Prior Plane,” he said. “Or are you saying that’s not true?”
“I have no definitive proof any of us can do anything other than observe,” she said.
“So, what are you driving at, Rebecca? Tell me.”
“You might want to lean on her to start taking the suggestions more seriously. Existence here can be pretty miserable for residents who refuse to accept death. I’m not talking about being caught in the previous plane like some ghost that can’t find its way into the light. We are in the light now. I’m sure you’ve already experienced how difficult it is to spend more than a few hours in Prior Plane, am I right?”
The observations he’d made with Amanda had been taxing, ending like a DVD player had detected a scratch large enough to spit out the disc—and he was the disc. You could go back in right away, but what you saw from there on out didn’t make as much sense as it had before.
“Yes. I’ve felt the pull back, I guess I’d call it.”
“Residents are here until they are not—”
“And?” he asked. “For fuck’s sake, say what you’ve come to say.”
Tag didn’t want to be angry at Rebecca, Text or no Text, though, he was pissed.
“I’m sorry,” he dialed back the frustration in his voice, unsure if his façade followed suit. “I guess I don’t understand why you’ve connected with me today.”
“Just look out for her, Tag.”
He shook his head, frustrated. “What’s the worst that can happen? She’s can’t actually affect anything in Prior Plane, right?”
After a brief pause, Rebecca said, “No.” But she left no time for him to feel relieved. She started a shrug but did not finish it. “So says The Text.”
She stayed but offered nothing more, and Tag found it difficult to fill the void. He looked down only to discover he’d stopped projecting anything below the knee. He was startled by the sight but recovered, then said, “Fine, I’ll keep an eye on her. I’ll go with Amanda to Prior Plane more often.” But until Rebecca spoke again, Tag wasn’t sure he’d said what he’d said aloud or if it had been a promise that he’d made to himself in his head.
Rebecca’s tsk finally broke her silence. “Your wife asked for a new mentor,” she said. “She’s seeking an answer to a question no decent resident here will answer—but believe me, there are plenty of foul residents, too. I think you know the question. You know the answer she wants to hear. I’m sure you do. Don’t ask me to repeat it, Tag. Because I won’t.”
THE TEXT | SECTION SIX
WHO YOU WERE, WHO YOU WEREN’T.
While visiting Prior Plane, HEED THIS WARNING: you will observe behaviors from people—even close friends and family—that you hadn’t witnessed while living. After all, YOU ARE NOT THERE. They do not know you are watching, and we can only hope that all you see is dancing. SPOILER ALERT: it won’t be.
“I see dead people,” is a quote from a film. If you hear someone say it, there’s no reason to follow them home.*
Remember who you were around people and who you were when you were alone. Can you honestly say that you were your authentic-self twenty-four-seven? There is a public persona and a private persona, though technological advancements in Prior Plane increasingly seem to be blurring the line between the two concepts.
Be kind. Empathy—not the feeling, but the psychological construct—will serve you well. BEST BET? Don’t visit Prior Plane.
*This section of The Text was added in 1999 and will remain a part of the full version of The Text until the phrase and its origin are dust.
7
EMILY
The not-too-toasted waffle under Emily’s nose remained untouched. The strawberry slices had been cut as thin as she was capable of, and instead of syrup, she’d dusted hers in powdered sugar. It smelled delicious because it was a waffle and waffles often do, but hers had that extra aroma of culinary independence. It was her creation, made in exactly the way she liked, and on her schedule. Even cold, it’d be very satisfying for those reasons.
