Chap. 4: Conversions (Max)

I woke up dead on the morning of October 15. I don’t remember the year. I don’t remember who was president. I knew I was dead because when I sat up and moved to look out the window my body didn’t make a dent in the bed. I had no weight to bend the edge of the saggy bed or to press down on the shag carpet at my feet. I looked back over my shoulder to see if my wife noticed. She didn’t budge. Lately she’d been sleeping hard in the mornings. Not even something like this could move her.

But there was something else.

When I looked back, I saw myself lying there. My body, that is. Or that was. Just lying on the bed, eyes closed, looking pale and still.

You would think I panicked about the situation. I didn’t. I stood and turned to look down on myself for a moment.

It’s strange to step outside yourself and see what others see when they look at you. I was very small and thin. I thought at first that I was looking at my father as I last saw him, small and pale on white pillows, greasy salt-and-pepper hair plastered against his forehead.

I didn’t look like anything.

You can see why I was glad to walk away from that.

Nothing prepares you for being dead. You go to church and they tell you about bodies and souls, and how you’ll be judged the second your soul splits from the body. But that just isn’t true. There I was, sitting on the edge of my bed with October sun pouring through the window, making everything painfully yellow and white in my room. Total silence in the house, too. No voice calling to me, beckoning me by name.

No Jesus.

No judgment.

No wheat and chaff or sheep and goats. Just unbearable brightness all around me and my deflated body on the bed.

Carina didn’t feel my stare as I willed her to wake up and look.

There were sparkling flecks of dust floating through the air and I didn’t know what to do. Like I said, nothing prepares you for being dead. I decided to put on my clothes and get out on the street. I thought, if something’s going to happen, it will be out there on the sidewalk. Not in my house, which never belonged to me anyway.

I couldn’t feel my legs when I stood, but I felt no panic as I walked down the hallway. I passed the kids’ rooms and it seemed like a good idea to take one last look at them before going. I knew I wasn’t coming back. It didn’t bother me at all. There were no tears to fall because I guess I didn’t really have a body anymore. I don’t know, exactly. I hadn’t figured it out yet.

Matty was face down on his bed, butt in the air. He looked different to me now, too, now that I was standing outside my own life. He was so thin and pale and I thought what bad luck it was for him that I was dead. Boys don’t recover so quick from a father’s death. I couldn’t do anything for him.

I noticed Matty’s skin most of all. Very white, almost transparent. I could see the skin on his neck just under his jawbone fluttering steadily and I thought I could feel the blood traveling in his veins. I could feel the difference between us growing, his weak, little life now stronger than mine.

The girls were wrapped around each other under their blanket. Beautiful Marianne. Smart Marianne. Her dark, curly hair flowing around her on the pillow behind her head. Panic set in then. I wanted to stay for Marianne. It wouldn’t matter if I stayed because she didn’t need me, but I wanted to anyway.

I couldn’t look at Chiara, who was nothing more than a silent lump under the blanket next to Marianne. I didn’t want to see her. There was nothing I could do for her now or ever.

My hands seemed to be vanishing from the fingertips down. The cuticles were bright half moons smiling at the nothingness of those fingertips, which I had loved so much. They were my point of vanity, Carina said. Clean nails no matter how hard the work, a sign of dignity that I didn’t have.

It was time to go.

Mamma was in the kitchen. She’s always awake, so that didn’t seem surprising. She peeked around the corner and looked right at me as I came down the stairs. She was drying a pan that she’d used to cook her breakfast. She stopped mid wipe and watched me walk to the doorway. I put on my windbreaker and walked out the door.

My heart--wherever it was--did not skip a beat.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The light on the street overwhelmed my eyes. I don’t understand why it hurt because I couldn’t feel anything else. I must have had new senses, something that didn’t need the rest of my body to think and feel. I’d read that in a book from Uncle Alex’s library, a textbook on how to ascend. It seemed important that I should remember more of it now.

I kept walking toward the baseball field and up to the corner of Gravesend. I didn’t see anything unusual and didn’t know what to do next. I couldn’t feel my feet in my shoes, not even the ties that usually bore down into my skin like dull drills.

I lost track of where I was for a minute. I thought I saw the church on the corner, but it couldn’t have been. The church was in the other direction. I thought I heard the train, but the train wasn’t there on my street. I thought I might be standing on Avenue U, in front of a line of stores, staring at the displays. Then it seemed to be a tree-lined street somewhere I had never been, a dog barking in the distance, a boy I’d never seen staring up at me with rage on his face.

I couldn’t feel my hands at all.

I could sense the air melting around me, like chalk colors melting off the sidewalk in the summer heat. Then I was standing on the corner of Gravesend, looking into the face of my friend, Mike. His mouth was moving but my ears didn’t work right away.

“Hey, Max,” he said, “You decided to come anyway. Good choice!” He slapped me on the back and the other men with him grinned at me and said “Hey, Max!” They seemed glad to see me but wondered where all my stuff was. There were two work trucks idling near the curb.

“Come on, you assholes!” Mike called. “We’ve got to rock n’ roll! We won’t get to the land of sunshine before next week if we don’t leave. NOW.”

Mike pushed me into the truck. Some other guy I’d never met squeezed in beside me. He was gray-skinned and thin in places and looked like light would pass right through him. He had sores on the edges of his lips.

Mike got in the driver’s seat and put the truck in gear.

My journey to another life began.