“Ask you a question, man?”
“Certainly.”
“How much time do I have before I’m fake-smiling in a box?”
“That is a question best put to your mother, Quincy.”
“No one wants to give me any answers.”
“You are free to ask anything.”
“Yeah?” I say, glaring at him across the seat. “Would you bring your son back to life and not tell him?”
Mr. Oklahoma frowns. “That is not . . . I am uncertain, were I in her shoes, the path I would choose. But I understand why your mother chose the approach she did. It is not my place to say what is right or wrong, but . . . I do not think she was wrong. Her motivations were pure, her intention was to protect you, and I am not sure you can ask more from a person.”
“And everyone knows . . . what happened to me?”
“If by everyone, you mean your mom, Jamal, Whit, and our staff at the Center.”
“What about the doctors at the hospital? The nurses? The cleaning crew?”
Mr. Oklahoma shakes his head. “After we obtained permission to move your body, we transported you to our facility. No one outside of the people I mentioned knows about your reanimation.”
“But why me? Why did you choose to bring me back?”
“The question you need to ask, Quincy, is why not you? You left this world a hero. You displayed courage where most would hesitate. There are plenty of adults who would not have made that sacrifice.”
I laugh. “You know I wasn’t trying to die, right?”
“I am aware of that fact, yes.” He smiles. “But it does not change the narrative. You deserve more than what we can give, Quincy.”
We ride in silence. I rest my elbow against the window. It occurs to me that I’m not sure where he’s taking me. I guess I’d assumed home, but.
“You can’t bring people who died a long time ago back, right?”
He shakes his head, flicks on the turn signal. “Correct. The level of decomposition renders it impossible.”
“Most of your customers, they’re rich, right?”
He bristles. “Our clients hail from all walks. Some of them have money, but that is not a requirement. Four of our ten reanimations were actually . . .”
“Charity cases. Like me. What’s even the point? Why bring anyone back at all?”
“When Dr. Iverson first conceived of this work, Quincy . . .” He slows the car, pulls in front of a parked van, parks. “We want the Center to be a place where people find comfort. Solace. We are a long way from curing death permanently, but one day soon, grief will be no more. Death will be the last thing to die. Imagine your grandkids never having to die at all. Never experiencing that kind of loss.”
I laugh before he appreciates his mistake.
“I was not . . . I did not mean to . . . I am sorry, Quincy.”
“Hey, so I won’t have grandkids or even . . . kids. Who cares, right?” I shrug. “I mean, there’s no guarantee I would’ve had them even if . . . it’s not a big deal.” Except the truth is the thought never occurred to me until now. That I won’t be able to have kids, raise a family. My mom will never be someone’s grandma. Which makes me sad because she’s so good with kids. And the way she spoils me, I can only imagine how she’d be with my kids.
Mr. Oklahoma removes his glasses, wipes them with a cloth from his pocket. “We want the Center globalized. To be places that people can afford, places where no one’s sad or in pain. Where every face inside that building is joyous and hopeful and happy. Picture this: a Center on every corner in every city.”
“You want to be the crappy burger place of healthcare?”
He laughs again, this time he doesn’t stop himself. “You are a funny young man, Quincy.”
“Man, if I had an extra hour of reanimation for every time I heard that.”
III.
I’m not sure if it’s because he feels partly responsible or guilty, or because driving a dead kid around makes him feel especially sad, but when we’re only two blocks away from my house, Mr. Oklahoma pulls the car over.
“Quincy, I will allow one more question. No limits.”
“And I can ask anything?”
Mr. Oklahoma nods.
“Seriously, good people die every second of every day. Why did you choose me?”
Mr. O launches into some long monologue about how the eventuality all men must face is death.
“Thanks for all of that really heavy old-man . . . philosophy. But I meant why did you bring me back? Like personally?”
“Oh.” Mr. Oklahoma leans back in his seat. Adjusts his glasses. “Put your seat belt back on.”
“Huh? What for?”
“I promised I would answer your question. This is how that happens.”
We drive for forty minutes in near silence.
Which honestly, I prefer. The chance to sort my thoughts. To sit with my feelings.
When the car finally slows, we’re turning onto a long winding drive. We pass through some sort of force field of orange lights and come to a stop at the top of the hill.
“You could’ve just said you don’t know,” I tell Mr. Oklahoma.
He laughs. “Your videos do not do your humor justice, Quincy.” He steps out of the car. “Follow me. Quickly now.”
I have no idea where we are, only that it appears—from the outside—to have once been a factory. No clue what they made here. Or what they make here now.
I follow Mr. Oklahoma through a series of long corridors, the walls stark white with bright white lights whose source I can’t track.
Each time we come to a massive door, Mr. Oklahoma presses his hand to its center—each finger pad illuminating a brilliant blue, the faintest chirp—and then within seconds the door sliding open.
We finally stop at a door unlike all the others. Mr. Oklahoma puts his hand on the knob, then turns around to me, brings his finger to his lips. Be quiet.
I copy his gesture.
He turns the knob.
IV.
This space is not like the rest of the facility. It is warm, inviting. There are wooden floors and elaborately woven rugs. Art adorns every wall. The air is woodsy.
We’re in a massive apartment.
“Who lives here?” I ask, my eyes struggling to absorb so many details.
“The boss.”
“He’s not going to be upset we’re in his place so late at night?”
“I think not. These days he does not sleep much.”
Mr. Oklahoma removes his shoes and I follow suit. We move through the large open floor plan, hidden motion-detection lighting illuminating our path.
“There is one question you have never asked, Quincy. At least not out loud.”
“What’s that?”
“Why did you jump into the water?”
“Jamal said I thought I saw someone out there. A girl. But she wasn’t real. She was only in my head.”
“So, you believe you died for nothing?”
I shrug. “I mean, I died trying to do what I thought was right. That’s not nothing.”
Mr. Oklahoma taps the door in front of us and the top half of it melts away into sudden transparency. I want to reach my hand out to touch it. Is this real? Has the top half actually disintegrated, or is it just clear? I settle on the latter because that would be a lot of replacement doors otherwise.
He motions for me to come closer. To look through the door window.
It’s a bedroom.
A child’s room.
And in the twin daybed a little girl sleeps.
“Who is that?”
“The girl you saved,” he answers, still staring into the room. “My daughter.”
V.
Everything clicks into place.
Why the Center wanted to bring me back.
Who Mr. Oklahoma really is.
“So, wait, you . . . you own all this? This is your lab?”
Mr. Oklahoma nods faintly. “I am the Center’s primary propr
ietor, yes. There are a few others that sit on a small board with me. No one should decide matters of life and death alone.”
I nod. “So, you’re some rich guy who wants to save the world?”
“The truth is, this began as a selfish project, Quincy. Nearly twenty years ago now. I lost someone who meant the world to me. And for a while it broke me.”
“But you pulled out of it.”
“I did.” Mr. Oklahoma clears his throat. “Because as much as that death took away from me, it also gave me purpose. I’m happy to say now, the work we’re doing, it’s no longer just about me. About my pain.”
“I guess sometimes it takes great loss to generate great gains.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Mr. Oklahoma says quietly.
But there was still one question. “Why was she out there alone? In the water? In the middle of the night?”
“One of our scientists is renting a house along the lake, a few doors down from where the party you attended occurred. Our daughters are close. In age and in interests. The work I do, it requires certain sacrifices. One being that we are in constant motion. Since she was born, we’ve lived in twenty-one cities. These readjustments are challenging for the adults I work with, let alone our children. Even still, I was not going to let her go to the sleepover that night. She hates thunderstorms. Always has. But . . . she told me she wanted to be brave. Convinced me this would not be like all the other times, where she would grow so frightened she called me to come pick her up. This time would be different, she told me. And I wanted that for her. For her to conquer her fears. I was proud she wanted to try. So I let her go.” Mr. Oklahoma sighs, rubs his temples.
“At some point during the sleepover the girls decided they would sneak out onto the beach. Pretending to be mermaids. You saw her. Swam to her. Propelled her forward, and she washed onto the shore, unconscious but alive. Her friend had run back home for help, to get her father. She told me she was frozen with fear. That had you not come to her rescue, she would have . . .” He removes his glasses. Discreetly dabs around his eyes.
“I didn’t imagine the whole thing. She’s real.”
Mr. Oklahoma nods. “Thanks to you, she is very much so.”
“Sheesh. Talk about sensory overload. I may need you to hook me back up to the life machine, animate me a few more hours to process all this.”
He laughs.
“And no one else knows about this?”
“No one outside of these walls, no. And now, you.”
“What’s her name? If it’s okay to ask.”
“Amarí Lillian.”
“That’s what I was gonna guess.”
“You may be surprised to learn she has assigned you, her hero, a proper nickname.”
I wag my head in disbelief. “No way! What is it?”
“Poseidon, Quincy. She calls you Poseidon.”
VI.
We pull into my driveway, but Mr. Oklahoma doesn’t turn off the engine.
“If you would like me to go with . . . to speak with your mother, I . . .”
“Nah, I’ll take it from here.” I smile, stepping out of the car. “But I owe you a thank-you.”
“A thank-you?”
“Yeah, your slow-ass driving gave me lots of time to think.”
Squinting in the headlight glare, I tap the hood, dig into my pocket for my house key as I turn for the front door.
Only the door’s already open.
Mom standing in its frame, her hands on either side like she’s holding up the house. Her face like I’m seeing it through a sadness filter. She looks older since I saw her this morning. “Baby,” she says. “I’m so, so . . .”
But I quickly close the gap between us. “No, I’m sorry. Everyone saying I’m selfless, but I should’ve been thinking about you. About leaving you alone. I’m sorry, Mama. I’m so . . . I shoulda . . .”
I bury my head in her neck. “Shhhh,” she whispers. “I’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. Everything will work . . .”
And I know she wants to say: . . . out the way it’s supposed to.
But instead she leaves the ending wide open.
VII.
“Q,” Mom says to me. We’re sitting on her bed. I’m on the side where Dad used to sleep. Sometimes I forget that my parents gave me the larger bedroom. Even before I hit my first growth spurt. We wanted you to have the room with the most sunlight, they’d said. Sometimes I forget I have the kind of parents that worry about their kid’s vitamin D levels. The kind of parents that are quick to sacrifice in ways big and small.
I shake my head. “Don’t say it,” I tell her. “We’re not gonna cry. We’re gonna be happy, okay?”
“Okay,” Mom says. I wipe her face. I think, what if this is the last time I ever see this face? What if this is the last time we look each other in the eyes? “But I just want you to know that—”
“Mom. Please.”
“I’m so sorry, baby.”
“I know, Mom,” I say. “But I don’t want you to be. Not for this. Not for me. I did what I thought was right. What you would’ve wanted someone to do for me. And did it cost something? Yeah. It cost a lot. But . . . if I saw that little girl flailing in that water right now, knowing that if I dived in it would all happen this exact same way, I gotta dive in that water. I gotta.”
“You could’ve called for help. You could’ve went for help.”
I study Mom’s face. What if this is the last time we’re ever this close? What if the next time she kisses me, she’s leaning down into my forever box? That’s what we call caskets. Forever boxes. Casket sounds too sad. The word casket sounds like it belongs in a casket.
“They wouldn’t have gotten there in time. She would’ve . . . she’d be . . . and how could I live with that?”
“I should’ve raised you to be selfish,” Mom says, her voice full of holes. “Who’s gonna tell me my latest meat-loaf experiment is my best creation yet, huh?”
“We both know your meat loaf is terrible,” I say, smiling. “Maybe the meat-loaf experiments should die with me.”
She slaps my chest. “Who’s gonna take the remote from my hand when I fall asleep watching TV on the couch?”
“You can set the TV timer.”
“Who’s gonna do the dishes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday?”
“That’s what the dishwasher’s for.”
“But it takes so long.”
I laugh. “Because you insist on washing the dishes before you put them in the washer.”
She shoots me a look, tosses one of her eighty thousand decorative pillows at me. Seriously, should there ever be a Great Pillow Shortage, Mom’s bed could singlehandedly solve the crisis in seconds.
“I don’t trust that dishwasher to clean them,” she says.
“So why even use it?”
“Because it’s like a second wash. Like the assurance wash.”
We both laugh. “Mom, I have a confession. I don’t wash the dishes first.”
She slaps my chest again. “Quincy! You’ve been lying to me?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t say lying. I rinse them. Sort of.”
“I can’t believe my only child would let me eat on dirty dishes all this time.”
“Only Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.”
“Who’s gonna tell me I’m the best mom ever?”
“How many times do you think I tell you that now?”
“Well, every birthday, for sure. Yours and mine . . . certain holidays too. And then the random just because times. Let’s see, I’d say you average about ten a year.”
I do the math. “Okay, so ten a year with the average life expectancy, I still owe you at least sixty best mom evers.”
“So, see, you can’t go. And that’s just something silly. Think about . . . think about all of the other things that you’re supposed to do. You’ve still got too much to do. All your dreams, baby. Why did you get in that water?” She pulls me into another tight hug. “You should’ve just turned away.”
&nb
sp; “You don’t mean that.”
“But I do! I do mean it!”
“No you don’t,” I tell her, kissing the top of her head. “It’s okay to be angry at me. It’s okay to be angry at this.”
“I’m not angry. I’m furious. I’m sad. I’m confused. I’m hurt. I’m weak. I’m . . .”
“It’s okay, Mom.”
“Nothing is okay. Okay is a lie.”
“You know what’s not a lie?”
She doesn’t answer, shaking her head no against my chest.
“That you’re the best mom ever. Now I owe you fifty-nine.”
“Quincy.”
“You’re the best mom ever. You’re the best mom ever. Fifty-seven.”
“Quincy.”
“You are the best mom this world has ever seen. You are the epitome of moms. You are the zenith of momhood. Top-shelf mom-mery only. You are what God intended when he created the first mom. I could not have asked for a better mom. That’s gotta count for like ten, right?”
“Why are you like this?”
“That’s the easiest question you’ve asked all day. You.”
VIII.
And later, when we’ve finally stopped laughing and crying, Mom sits at the kitchen table while I hunt for snacks in the cabinets and pantry. Who knew finding out that you’re dead works up such an appetite?
I drop all of my goodies—chips, cookies, a six pack of soda—in front of Mom and she shakes her head. “Quincy, please, tell me you’re really not going to eat all this junk?”
“Nope,” I say. “I’m not.”
“Good,” she says.
“Because you’re gonna help me.”
“Quincy, this stuff is terrible for you. Do you wanna d—” She catches herself and stops.
I shrug. “Do I wanna die of a sugar- and sodium-induced brain rush? I mean, what do I have to lose, right?”
She shakes her head. “Don’t talk like that.”
“Like the truth?”
She crosses her arms, looks away, but not before I see the sadness in her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she says, her eyes still trained on the other side of the kitchen. “I’m supposed to protect you.”
I walk over to her. “You did,” I say to her. “And you are.”
She looks up at me and I smile. “But now you gotta do me a favor.”
Her face switches to skepticism. “What favor?”
Early Departures Page 20
