Life and Other Near-Death Experiences

by Camille Pagán

  I pretended to study the menu, but the words blurred together, so when the waitress came to take my order, I blurted out the first thing that registered—a pulled pork sandwich with yucca fries, whatever those were. She left, and I looked around awkwardly. It was not unlike the airport bar. I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I hadn’t even thought to grab a book from the selection I’d packed. After some time, I settled on the water as an appropriate place to stare.

  Maybe a leisure vacation was a bad idea. There would be countless opportunities just like this, during which I had nothing but thoughts of impending doom to occupy me. As I watched a ship depart from a marina not far from the restaurant, I found myself thinking of my mother—at the end, but before things became really bad. She quit her job as an elementary school teacher to concentrate on her health and spend time with us. During those months, she napped a lot and went for chemo; but every day, Paul and I each got at least an hour alone with her. She and Paul often went for walks or headed to the library or comic book store. She and I spent most afternoons baking, even though I rarely saw her take more than a bite of the things we made.

  One summer afternoon—or perhaps it was several, conflated by memory—we stood side by side at the counter making chocolate chip cookies. The sun streamed into our small yellow kitchen. Her hair was long gone, and she had wrapped her head in an ivory scarf; with the light on her face, she looked angelic. “The secret is to put a pinch of salt on top of each cookie before you put them in the oven,” she whispered in my ear. “Remember that, okay, Libby Lou?” I didn’t understand that she was preparing me for life without her. I didn’t want to understand. I thought it would always be like that: her taking us to Chuck E Cheese’s, and falling asleep with us in our beds, and pulling us out of school to drive us across the state to see a park or lakefront beach where she’d played as a child. I couldn’t comprehend that she was stuffing us full of happiness to prepare us for the famine that was to come.

  The waitress must have put my food down in front of me while I wasn’t paying attention, because she startled me by returning to see if it was okay. I glanced down at the untouched plate and stuck a suspiciously pale fry in my mouth.

  “Nothing’s ever tasted so good,” I told her, but of course, I was referring to the cookies.

  Paul called as I was finishing lunch. “Where are you?” he said.

  “What do you mean, where am I? I’m in Chicago,” I said blithely, just as a large bird landed on the veranda banister and let out a ridiculously tropical-sounding caw.

  “Oh, are you?” he said dryly. “Am I also to believe you just purchased a toucan?”

  “Ha, ha. No.” I hadn’t planned on telling him where I was just yet, as I was still feeling vulnerable and was pretty sure that spilling the beans on one thing would prompt me to unwittingly share other secrets, including a particular revelation that started with a c and ended with ancer. In retrospect, I probably should have let Paul’s call go to voice mail, but I didn’t want him to worry, especially after my panicked text message the day before.

  “Come on, Libs. As if your freaky-but-sweet message yesterday wasn’t alarming enough, now you’re going to try to convince me Chicago has been invaded by exotic fowl? You know I can have the tech guys at my firm run a GPS data search on your cell and pinpoint your exact location in four seconds flat.”

  “I hope you’re joking, because that is fricking creepy.”

  “Not as creepy as me being forced to read your mind. Give it up, Libs. Estas en Meh-ee-co?”

  Unlike me, Paul had been smart enough to study Spanish in school, which he mastered in about two months before moving on to Mandarin.

  I exhaled loudly so he would sense my wrath over the transom. “I’m in Vieques.”

  “Is that near Bogota?”

  “Ask your security guys.”

  “Libbers,” he said playfully. “Stop being cranky and throw your beloved brother a bone.”

  “Fetch this, Toto. I’m south of Cuba and east of the Dominican Republic.”

  “Puerto Rico? How the heck did you end up in Puerto Rico? I hope there’s a cabana boy next to you right now.”

  “That was him you heard crowing earlier.”

  “Libs on the loose!” he said with delight. “Vacationing by yourself. I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks. I’m proud of me, too, if only because I managed to royally tick Tom off when I ran into him on the way to the airport.”

  “Oooh, the element of surprise. Brills. How long are you going to be there?”

  “I don’t know,” I responded truthfully.

  “When you do leave, will you please come to New York to see us?” Paul persisted.

  “I will.”

  “Hurrah! You just made my entire week better, which is no small feat, considering the Dow plunged two hundred points last night.”

  It pained me not to tell him that the stock market wasn’t the only thing plunging, but I knew that if I told him about the plane, it would undo years of therapy he’d undergone to deal with his fear of flying. Instead, I said, “I’m here to help.”

  Paul got serious. “Are you hanging in there? Because you know it’s okay if you’re not, right? You don’t have to be perky all the time. This Tom crap is pretty awful.”

  “I’m not perky all the time,” I grumbled.

  “I can hear that, sweetie, and I’m going to take it as a sign of improvement. It’s just that—one sec.” I heard him say something in an official-sounding voice, and only then did I remember that he was in the middle of his workday.

  “Hey, I know you’re busy,” I told Paul when he returned. “We can talk again soon. And next time, I won’t wait so long to call.”

  “You’d better not,” he scolded. “Anyway, what I was trying to say is that I want you to know that I love you, and so do Charlie and Toby and Max. It’s all going to work out okay. I promise.”

  I almost fell right off my rattan chair. If Paul had traded our I-love-you-the-most game for the kitten-and-rainbow routine, I was officially in trouble.

  FIFTEEN

  I didn’t make it to Milagros’s for drinks the first night, but I wandered over to her place the following evening. I found her on the tiled patio behind her house, chatting with an elderly man.

  “I’m sorry,” I said when I spotted them lounging in a pair of chairs. “I didn’t realize you had company.”

  She waved me in. Her patio was lined with potted fruit trees, many of which had colorful orchids hanging from their branches. “It’s my party and everyone’s invited. Libby, this is my cousin Sonny. Sonny, esta es Libby.” She pointed in the direction of the beach house to indicate my provenance, then turned back to me and mock whispered, “Sonny is deaf in both ears.”

  “Milly!” Sonny squawked.

  Milagros whacked him on the back. “Just kidding, Sonny! Libby, can I get you something to drink?”

  “I’m good,” I said, but she was already well across the patio. I sat on a carved wooden bench across from Sonny. “Hi,” I said.

  His face lit up.

  “Do you live near here?” I asked.

  He laughed like I’d just made a sidesplitting joke. I bit my lip: Was he screwing with me?

  “I wasn’t joking,” Milagros said, coming up from behind me. She slipped a drink into my hands and leaned in conspiratorially. “The man can’t hear a thing. If he shows you his dentures, that means he’s just playing along.”

  “Oh.” I glanced at Sonny, who was grinning at me with large ceramic teeth.

  “Eh, Milly,” he said, and began telling a story—or so I imagined, as he was speaking in Spanish. Milagros cackled along with him, occasionally interjecting a sentence or two. I smiled the way humans will when bearing witness to others’ happiness, even though at that moment I was ill with envy. I wanted to live into my seventies or eighties or howev
er old these two were, so I could tell long-winded tales to my cousins (who I technically couldn’t stand, but that was but a minor detail to be hammered out over the next four decades of this alternate life I was wishing for myself). I wanted a chance to be wrinkled and deaf and without a care in the world, confident I had lived fully and completely in the way that only the old can.

  “Libby, you really need to learn español. This is so ridiculous that I couldn’t translate it if I tried,” Milagros told me, wiping tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.

  She was right about Spanish. I’d spent the morning exploring the shore, and as I tossed a pound of seashells into my bag and dug my toes in the sand and snuck glances at what I was certain was a couple doing the dirty in the ocean, I contemplated what, exactly, I would do during the rest of my vacation. (As I have mentioned, I didn’t put much thought into this before hopping on a plane out of Chicago.) By the time I dragged my sunburned butt back to the house, it had become painfully apparent that beachcombing could take up only so much of my time.

  “I was hoping to do just that,” I told Milagros. “Do you know of any Spanish tutors on the island?”

  “Tutors? Tutors?!” she said, and I flushed, wondering if I’d made some unintentional gaffe. She pointed her finger at me. “I can teach you Spanish.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I taught English for forty years.”

  I was already in command of the English language, but judging from Milagros’s enthusiasm, I thought it best not to clarify. “Okay. That would be great.”

  She clapped her hands together with delight. “Bien. We can start whenever you’re ready.”

  I thanked her, then lifted my glass to my lips and took a small sip. I had to will myself not to gag as I swallowed. “What’s in this?” I coughed.

  “Rum, claro.” She chuckled. “If you don’t like it now, you will in an hour.”

  My eyes watered as I took another drink. “Uh-huh.”

  At one point, Sonny drained his cup and walked off without saying good-bye. When it became clear he wasn’t going to return, Milagros looked at me and said, “So, Libby. What are you running from?”

  I frowned. “What makes you think I’m running from something?”

  “Single woman rents a beach house for a full month, with no plans to meet friends or family? I’m no detective, tu sabes, but I’m not stupid either.” She laughed, then leaned back in her chair, waiting for my answer.

  So I told her—mostly. “Well, let’s see. I recently learned that my husband of eight years is attracted to men.”

  “Dios mio,” she cried.

  “Yeah, not great news. I found out less than two weeks ago,” I said, and took another drink of the cocktail, which tasted not unlike lighter fluid.

  Milagros mistook my sipping as a sign of enthusiasm. “Here,” she said, producing a pitcher from beneath her seat. “Have a little more.”

  “I really shouldn’t,” I said as she filled my glass.

  “If ever there was a time, this is it. Now tell me, what happened after you found out?”

  I took another sip. “I quit my job, emptied our home so I can sell it, and booked a ticket here.”

  “Ay, mija, I know about bad husbands,” Milagros said. “Let me tell you about my third, José. I got really sick at work one day. My boss told me to go home because he was worried I was going to infect all my students. I had a fever and could barely walk, but when I called José to see if he could pick me up and drive me home, he didn’t answer. So I took the bus back and dragged myself into the house. When I got to my bedroom, who did I find but that hijo’e puta with my best friend—”

  I gasped.

  “—and her husband, too!” Milagros whooped. “I mean, que pervert! Sorry if that’s your kind of thing,” she added.

  “It isn’t,” I assured her. “What did you do?”

  “With Miguel? Claro, I divorced him,” she said, crossing her arms.

  “Miguel? You mean José?”

  “Miguel, José—what’s the difference? All that’s left of that man is my version of his story. What I’m trying to say, mija, is that eventually the pain goes away. Then one day you think about it and it’s funny. Te prometo.”

  “That’s what everyone says.” I did not volunteer that I no longer had the luxury of waiting around for such a transformation to happen.

  Milagros again topped off my glass and motioned for me to walk with her to the beach. “Don’t worry, it’s safe,” she said as she locked the patio gate behind us.

  We stood in the sand, drinking silently as the sun lowered in the sky, cutting wide swaths of sherbet pink and cornflower blue in its wake.

  Three months ago, Tom, Jess, O’Reilly, and I had celebrated the end of summer by commissioning a charter boat to take us out on Lake Michigan. The evening seemed to stretch forever, until we glanced up and saw that the sun had dropped, almost at once, and was hovering just above the skyline. Within seconds, it was between the jagged teeth of the city’s buildings—then gone before we’d really had a chance to take it in. I was beginning to feel that, like the sun, my life had slipped past when I was turned in the wrong direction.

  “Why Vieques?” Milagros asked after a while.

  “My father told me that my mother loved it here.”

  She nodded, understanding what I had not said. “I lost my mami too early, too. Yours was a smart woman to love this place.”

  I watched as the western waves swallowed the last of the day’s light. I’d barely made it to the island, but I had made it before it was too late. Certainly that meant something. Didn’t it?

  SIXTEEN

  I woke the following morning with an excruciating headache, rum scum coating my tongue, and the urge to do something constructive. I suppose when you’ve already cashed in ten of the estimated hundred and eighty days left of your life, there’s a smidgen of pressure to push through your hangover and make it count.

  I downed a bowl of coconut granola, threw on some sneakers, and applied bug repellent to my skin. Then I hopped in the Jeep and headed for a hiking path I’d read about in one of the tourist booklets lying around the beach house.

  The path was part of a recently formed national park on a section of the old naval grounds, but other than a metal sign designating that it was open to the public until ten p.m., it was almost impossible to differentiate the park from any other overgrown area I’d encountered thus far. I left the Jeep in a lot adjacent to the sign, then ventured over to what appeared to be a dirt trail. As per usual, Paul’s voice whispered in my ear, warning of predators, but I hummed loudly to drown him out. What could be nearer to God than nature? Surely here of all places I would be safe and protected.

  As I stepped over a downed tree, I found myself imagining what life was like for the island’s early inhabitants, before there were roads or vehicles or Quick-Marts for purchasing drinking water that wouldn’t cause a bout of gastroenteritis to be reckoned with over a hole in the ground. As I forged ahead, the path became increasingly unkempt, and branches whipped against my face as spiky vines lashed my limbs. Smelling a meal, swarms of thumb-size mosquitoes deftly maneuvered around my swatting and jammed their stingers into my skin, as though the DEET I had applied were barbecue sauce.

  I wasn’t trying to be a pioneer woman. I didn’t go camping and fishing for fun, nor did I even pretend to enjoy rugged outdoor activities, as my former colleague Corey did because her husband was disturbingly aroused by camouflage-covered mammaries. But I was trying to learn more about why my mother found this lot of sand in the middle of the sea to be so magical, and the verdant parks were part and parcel with the island’s identity. So I pressed on.

  It wasn’t long before the narrow path deposited me at two wider trails, both of which looked well maintained, as though they might even be the handiwork of a landscape architect. I was elated: final
ly, a hike I could manage! I chose the path on the right.

  I’d gone about a quarter mile when I heard a loud rumbling. For a moment I expected to see more wild horses—perhaps a whole herd, I thought as the noise drew nearer.

  Instead, I found myself staring down a very different sort of horsepower as a yellow pickup truck barreled straight at me. A group of kids were yelling out the windows, and as the vehicle approached, I saw that the truck bed, too, was filled with rowdy teens. I stepped to the right, out of the center of the path, but then the truck veered left, directly into my path. Did the driver not see me? Was this some sadistic game of chicken? The only thing I was sure of was that I needed to move. Immediately.

  With seconds to spare, I jumped into the bushes behind me, scratching every square inch of uncovered skin in the process. My pulse whooshed in my ears, and I struggled to breathe. If I hadn’t moved, they would have hit me.

  They would have hit me.

  There was laughter as the truck spun its wheels in the dirt and turned onto another path, disappearing into the trees.

  I remained huddled in the bushes in case the teens wanted to return and finish me off. It seemed appropriate to burst into tears, but I was dry-eyed, which was unusual for a chronic crier like myself. I sat still and stone-faced, not even bothering to fight off the bugs feasting on my flesh.

  Then a bloodcurdling scream shot through the park. It took me a moment to realize that it was my own, and it was about to happen again. As a deep and furious anger I hadn’t even known was in me unleashed itself, I screamed again and again, until my chest burned and I was too hoarse to scream anymore.

  If this had happened even three weeks earlier, I would have been mortified to make such a spectacle—even in the middle of miles of uninhabited vegetation. But now it didn’t matter. I wasn’t sure anything mattered. I had been a good person who had lived an honest if uninspired life; but in case I’d missed the previous two warnings, the universe sent a bright yellow truck to inform me in no uncertain terms that one way or another, I was going to die—and soon.