Before You Go Read online

“Are you sure these are mine?” you ask. You point out specific strands. “I don’t think I did that. Or that. And I can’t believe I ever said that.”

  “Whose else would they be?”

  “But I don’t remember them.”

  Jollis nods sympathetically. “You will.”

  Satisfied that the memories are flowing smoothly, Jollis raises his clipboard and begins flipping through pages. Each page contains the same preprinted checklist—tiny lettering compressed into tight columns—but with a different name at the top. Beside each line item is a small checkbox. Though Jollis turns the pages quickly, you notice that a great many of the boxes have been marked—typically with an X or a check, but often with an exclamation point, or a smiley face, or some less evident notation. Finally, Jollis comes to a clean, unmarked page. Your name is at the top.

  “Ah,” he says. “Here we are.” He grips his pencil and begins to examine the body, his look of admiration replaced by one of keen appraisal. He skillfully narrows his attention to focus first on one feature, then another. You realize Jollis is not blind to the details at all. If, for example, the body is in remarkably pristine condition, he notices.

  “It’s in remarkably pristine condition,” he says.

  “Thank you,” you respond proudly. “I took excellent care of it, at least up until—well, you know.”

  “Did you?” Jollis peers at you quizzically. “How do you mean?”

  “Well,” you say, “exercise, for starters. I did just about everything, at one time or another. Running, biking, yoga—you name it.”

  Jollis carries on his inspection, occasionally looking over at you to show that he’s listening. Although he is almost halfway down the body, he has yet to mark a single item on his checklist. You find this puzzling. Surely, you deserve some checks. Maybe he’s not seeing what you’re seeing after all.

  “Then there was my diet,” you tell him. “Pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan. No alcohol. No tobacco. I went gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, caffeine-free, soy-free, fat-free, carb-free. Virtually food-free.”

  Jollis nods vaguely in your direction. His examination of the body is nearly finished now, but still no check marks. You grow nervous. Your voice speeds up.

  “And I was very careful with it,” you say. “Stayed out of the sun. Never swam after eating. Always wore a helmet. Flossed . . .”

  Jollis straightens. With one last glance at the soles of the feet, he moves back. He lowers his pencil. Coincidentally or not, the incandescent stream of memories slows to a trickle, then stops.

  “That’s it?” you ask.

  He nods.

  “But you didn’t check anything on the list.”

  “Yes,” says Jollis, a bit uncomfortably. “That is a bit unusual, but nothing you should worry about. It’s not a report card. I’m not here to keep score or anything.”

  “But what’s on it?” you ask. “What are you tallying up?”

  “Scars,” he says.

  “You mean from injuries? Like if I’d stuck my hand in a blender or something?”

  “Well, yes, and much more besides. The list includes every way in which a vessel can be marked by usage. Cuts and scrapes, certainly. But also wounded pride, tarnished reputation, guilty conscience—everything from broken bone to broken heart.”

  “You can see the scar from a broken heart?”

  “Sure,” says Jollis. “We’ve had cases where the heart was ripped out entirely.”

  You look back at the body. It really is marvelous. You wonder why you never noticed. “And I have no scars whatsoever?”

  Jollis double-checks his list. “Apparently not,” he says. “I admit that it’s rare. But, as I said, the body is in remarkably pristine condition.”

  “But that’s good, right?”

  Jollis looks at you softly. “Keep in mind,” he says, “the list is solely for our internal research. It’s not a scorecard. There is no grade.” He pauses, wrestling with something. “Still, it’s remarkable how often the most rewarding journeys are evidenced by the most check marks. A statistically significant correlation. Of course, a broken bone may result from a purely tragic accident—a traveler is hit by a car while standing at her mailbox, say. But more often it comes about from some daring push—she is scaling a mountain, for example, or riding a bicycle too fast down a hill, and she falls.”

  “And the other scars?” you ask, though you already know.

  “The same,” says Jollis. “A broken heart, for example, could be the tragic result of a lifetime of mistreatment. Statistically, though, it’s more likely to occur when a traveler loves something so utterly that it shatters him a little—or a lot—when he loses it.”

  “So you get check marks for pain?”

  “Not for pain. For striving.”

  You stare at your former body. What had a moment before seemed immaculate to you now feels sterile, and the pride you felt in defending yourself from life turns to regret for failing to embrace it. It is too unscathed, this body, too unused. Only one thing mars its perfection. It’s your last hope, and you grasp at it.

  “What about that final piece?” you ask. “At the end.” After all, you think, the body did die. You killed it yourself.

  “No,” says Jollis gently. “I’m sorry.”

  “But why not?” you ask. That’s a scar, you think. You deserve a check mark for that, if nothing else.

  “You get marks for striving to live your life, not striving to leave it.”

  Your dread swells into full despair. Despite Jollis’s proclamations—that there are no grades, no report cards—you discover that you want check marks now. Desperately. Even just one. One scar to prove your life. Without your body you are incapable of tears, but you want to cry, and you find it ironic that you spent your life telling yourself not to. The rest of you begins to unravel, dissipating until it threatens to disappear entirely.

  Jollis’s look softens even further. “Tell you what,” he says. “I’ll go ahead and give you a half check for that last part.”

  “Really?”

  “I shouldn’t,” he says. “Technically, it will throw off our research, but it won’t be more than a rounding error. Happy to do it.”

  You feel saved, as if Jollis has pulled you back from the edge of the abyss. “Thank you, Jollis.”

  “It’s fine,” he says. “Honestly, I don’t see what the fuss is about. As I said, it’s not a report card, and I’m not here to judge. Check mark, no check mark. It doesn’t matter now.”

  Elliot

  (1982)

  I love to sleep. It is one of my favorite things. That I can’t actually verify this—that, by definition, I cannot be conscious of my unconsciousness—doesn’t dissuade me from my belief. Some things can be taken only on faith. Besides, I have evidence, circumstantial though it may be.

  Exhibit A, I hate getting up in the morning. Hate it. I’ve yet to see a dawn I wouldn’t rather turn my back on, head deep in the pillow, blankets pulled high. Even more so in winter. To save money, my parents keep the thermostat low, relying on a kerosene space heater in the kitchen. When most of me is nestled under the covers, the sharp chill on my nose and cheeks is actually enjoyable. But the prospect of facing it in nothing but my tighty-whities? That’s just grim.

  Exhibit B, I am an Olympic-caliber napper—or would be, if napping were an Olympic event. I can nap anywhere and for any length of time, from the five-minute catnap on the bus to school (I call it the Blink), to the early-evening snooze that can last until the following morning (the Deep Out). My favorite is the traditional siesta. Many an afternoon finds me on the couch, eyelids drawn and breath shallow, gone from this world if only for a brief time.

  Upon our return from vacation, I increase my self-prescribed dosage of slumber. Connecticut is still buried in winter. The front yard is white and deep and cold, making it clear that I won’t be practicing baseball with my father any time soon. The weather seems to encourage everyone to burrow even further into their own perso
nal dens. Not that my family is one for games or shared philosophy in any event—our primary group activity is television. There is otherwise little to do but homework and reading, which can only fill so many hours. My mother abides my idleness for about a week, until her sense of duty kicks in.

  “You sleep too much,” she says. It’s Sunday morning and she’s woken me up—indirectly yet purposely—by her rustling as she opens the curtains and straightens up my room. It occurs to me that this may be the perfect word to describe my mother. A rustler. She rustles through life. I am sure that her criticism is well-intentioned, but how does she know how much sleep I need? Lions in Africa are unconscious for more than eighty percent of their lives. As far as I know, no one chides them for it, or rustles them awake when they’re sound asleep on a Sunday morning.

  “Lions sleep twenty hours a day,” I say.

  “Well, you’re not a lion,” she says. I should have seen this response coming—the blunt assertion of reality that is inarguable yet also somehow misses the point—but I’ve just woken up and am still groggy.

  “I was having a dream,” I tell her. This is not unusual, and I suppose could constitute Exhibit C in the case for my love of sleep. I have wonderful, linear, storylike dreams—the kinds of dreams you don’t want to wake up from. This one was a good one, too, though I don’t get into it with my mom. In the dream, we were all at the breakfast table—me and my family, also the shade and the other monsters. My mother was pouring the shade a cup of coffee and chatting with it about the weather. I was telling a joke, and everybody laughed, my father most of all. In fact, he couldn’t stop, his face getting redder and his eyes tearing up until, finally, a Cheerio popped right out of his nose and into the shade’s coffee.

  “You can’t spend your life dreaming,” says my mom.

  “When else am I going to get the chance?” I ask.

  “Never mind,” she says, not one for long arguments or shaped logic. She opens the last of the curtains.

  The day is cold and gray and not made for baseball. Anticipating a time when my father and I will be able to play outside, I decide to start practicing in the only way available. I grab my mitt, rummage a tennis ball out of the hallway closet, and head down to the basement. Long, naked fluorescent bulbs shine down from a ceiling that would seem low if I weren’t ten years old and somewhat small for my age. The floor and walls are of unfinished cement, perfect for my purpose. I push aside cardboard boxes, old lawn chairs, and other debris to clear a narrow lane from one end of the basement to the other. On the far wall I draw a rectangle in white chalk, hoping it approximates the strike zone of a typical twelve-year-old. Then I start to pitch.

  The house is quiet in winter. The basement is dead silent but for the rhythmic thud and pop of the tennis ball as it rebounds against the cement wall and back to my glove. I find it soothing, enjoying it so much that I’m immediately concerned when, on the third day of my practice, I hear my father coming down the steps. I’m certain he’ll tell me to stop, that the noise is driving him and my mom crazy. Instead, to my surprise, he presents me with a rubber ball the size and shape of a baseball, complete with raised grooves to imitate the lacing. Better than a tennis ball, he says. More like the real thing. I ask him about my form and mechanics, hoping he’ll share some tips with me. He watches a few pitches, then nods.

  “Looks good to me,” he says, before heading back upstairs. There is a small, empty silence after he leaves, and I can’t help thinking that more words might have filled it, but I shrug it off and turn back to the wall.

  Days pass. Maybe weeks. I’m not sure, but by the time winter begins to recede, I can put that rubber ball anywhere I want in that strike zone. I am so anxious to play catch with my father that, at the first hint of thaw, I grab a shovel and set out to clear the lawn of snow. This is harder than it sounds. Shovels are made for scraping over asphalt, not clawing at the earth. Even after I’ve broken through the hard upper crust of ice, the front edge of the shovel keeps catching on the grass. It takes me all afternoon to clear a single strip that is just long and wide enough for two people to have a proper catch. When my arms begin to shake from exhaustion, I concede that it will have to be enough, and am vindicated when the sun comes out the next day, drying the strip of grass until it seems a touch of spring in the frozen heart of winter.

  By the time my father gets home I’m already outside, mitt and baseball at the ready. Before he is even out of the car, I am chatting away about what I want to show him, and the questions I have for him—like, what’s a two-seamer, and how do you throw a curveball, and how quickly can he lose his briefcase and find his glove. He withdraws into the house, then emerges again a few minutes later. He has indeed left his briefcase inside, but instead of his glove he’s carrying a long, flat cardboard box. It’s the pitchback. We never did set it up before the cold arrived. My father takes it out of the box and has it assembled in short order—a taut vertical net inside a metal frame.

  “Look at that, would you?” he says. “Give it a try.”

  There is that small silence again. My father seems quite impressed with the pitchback, though he’s already moving back toward the front steps. He doesn’t seem to understand that I asked him to play catch with me, not set up some contraption so that I could be here without him, by myself. I turn toward the pitchback and throw, but my heart’s not in it, and the toss is feeble, nothing like the flamethrowers I was hurling in the basement. Still, the ball strikes the center of the net and springs back to me like it’s on a string, and that seems good enough for my father.

  “Even better than the basement wall,” he says, before disappearing into the house.

  The door barely closes before it opens again, spitting out Dean. He bounds into the long strip of grass. He has his glove on, and opens it toward me expectantly.

  “My turn,” he says.

  “I haven’t even used it yet. And I was the one who shoveled all the snow.”

  “Fine. How much longer are you going to be?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Do you want to have a catch?”

  “A catch? Why? This thing is so cool! If you don’t want to use it—”

  “No,” I cut him off. “I’m using it.” My face burns. I feel the urge to either cry or punch Dean in the face or both. Instead, I once again turn toward the pitchback. I heave the ball with all of the might my body has managed to garner in its ten years. But I’ve lost all focus now, and I miss badly. The ball sails over the top and across the yard before burying itself in the snow. Dean laughs all the way back into the house.

  “Nice pitch, ace!” he calls over his shoulder.

  So, for the rest of the winter and into spring, it’s me and the pitchback, with the basement wall occasionally pinch-hitting during heavy rainstorms. Unlike the wall, the pitchback allows you to work on your catching as well as your throwing. If you throw the ball toward the top of the netting, it comes back as a grounder, and if you throw toward the bottom, it comes back as a pop-up. This is how Dean uses it. He plays shortstop for his team, so he cares more about hitting and fielding than pitching. But I stay focused on the center, where a cord is weaved through the netting in the shape of a rectangle. This is my strike zone, and I pound the corners with pitch after pitch until I could do it blindfolded.

  It is not a matter of determination. I am not out to prove my prowess to my father—or to Dean, for that matter. Rather, despite an initial sense of bitterness toward the pitchback as a poor substitute for flesh and blood, I eventually become as enthralled with it as I was with the basement wall, my spirit eased by the melodic flow of the repeated toss and return. Dean likes to say that sport is combat. He says that for thousands of years people have killed each other in war, and that we’ve evolved to need this conflict. Sport, he says, is a modern, bloodless substitute. This is big thinking for Dean, and he may even be right, but as the days and weeks go by, and my pitching becomes more and more fluid, I begin to think of sport not as combat but as dance—the beau
ty of the body in motion, where the mind quiets to the point of vanishing.

  My solitary training ends when little league season begins. I tell my new coach about my pitching, but as a rookie I’m relegated to the outfield. It is not until halfway through the season, when our scheduled pitcher is home sick, that I have a chance to test my skills. We are facing my brother’s team. Though this somehow feels right to me, I’m nervous. Terrified, really. With my parents watching from the stands, I accidentally hit the first two batters before I’m finally able to control my pitches. I project myself back onto that strip of grass in winter. Behind home plate, the catcher becomes the pitchback. His mitt moves from one corner of the strike zone to another, and I don’t miss.

  My brother leads off the second inning. I know he doesn’t like pitches high and away, so that’s where I throw them. He watches one go by for a strike, then another. I can see him getting anxious. When he crowds the plate to reach for the next one, I throw it down and in instead. He swings awkwardly and misses. Strike three. He bangs his bat on the plate and barks at the umpire before stomping back to the dugout, staring me down the entire way.

  Our little drama repeats itself in the fourth inning, the only variation being the location of the three strikes and the even deeper scowl Dean gives me as he stomps back to the bench. He doesn’t come to the plate again until the final inning, with two outs and a man on second. I’ve pitched well, and we’re up by a run, yet my brother can tie the game if he gets a hit. He strides from the dugout, all swagger and bravado, but as he digs into the batter’s box I see that his face is flushed, and he avoids my eye.

  The first pitch is low and away, and Dean flails wildly at it. Strike one. His composure has crumbled, and his normally athletic swing has broken down into an angry hack. He curses loudly enough for our parents to hear. The second strike sails by. Dean steps out of the batter’s box to collect his thoughts. When he finally looks at me, the mask of his anger has cracked, and the fear shows through.

  I understand. He’s one of the twelve-year-olds, in his final year of little league. Striking out to your little brother, especially when the game is on the line, would be humiliating. I think about the two of us catching leaves together, and how I let him win, and that joyful look on his face. I realize that I can let him win now, too. I can throw a pitch down the middle and he’ll hit it, and tie the game, and smile that happy smile of his. But to let him win at leaf-catching required only that I lie about my tally of leaves, not that I purposely fail to catch them. Now, I’d have to fail on purpose—abandon all my winter practice, all the long hours with that goddamn pitchback and that goddamn basement wall. I’d have to tell my body not to do its best, not to be itself. And I can’t bring myself to do that. I decide to pitch the way I know how. If my brother can hit a fastball on the outside corner, I’ll be the first to congratulate him. If not—well, he can go suck it.