Liz nods. Aldous holds out a silver frame with a picture of a lovely Japanese lady about Aldous's age. "This is my Rowena," he says proudly.
"She's very elegant," Liz says.
"She is, isn't she? We died on the same day in a plane crash."
"That's awful."
"No," Aldous says, "we were actually very, very lucky."
"For the longest time, I didn't even realize that I was dead," Liz confides in Aldous. "Is that normal?"
"Sure," Aldous reassures her, "people take all different amounts of time to acclimate. Some people reach Elsewhere, and they still think it's a dream. I knew a man who was here fifty years and went all the way back to Earth without catching on." Aldous shrugs. "Depends on how a person died, how old they were it's lots of factors, and it's all part of the process. It can be particularly difficult for young people to realize they have passed," Aldous says.
"Why is that?"
"Young people tend to think they're immortal. Many of them can't conceive of themselves as dead, Elizabeth."
Aldous proceeds to go through all the things Liz would have to do in the next several months.
Dying seems to entail a great deal more work than Liz initially thought. In a way, dying isn't that different from school.
"Do you have any initial thoughts about an avocation?" Aldous asks.
Liz shrugs. "Not really. I didn't have a job on Earth because I was still in school."
"Oh no, no, no," Aldous says. "An avocation is not a job. A job has to do with prestige! Money! An avocation is something a person does to make his or her soul complete."
Liz rolls her eyes.
"I see by your expression you don't believe me," Aldous says. "It appears I've got a cynic on my hands."
Liz shrugs. Who wouldn't be cynical in her situation?
"Is there anything you particularly loved on Earth?"
Liz shrugs again. On Earth, she was good at math, science, and swimming (she had even gotten her scuba certification last summer), but she didn't exactly love any of those activities.
"Anything, anything at all?"
"Animals. Maybe something with animals or dogs," Liz says finally, thinking of her prized pug, Lucy, back on Earth.
"Marvelous!" crows Aldous. "I'm sure I could find you something fabulous to do with dogs!"
"I'll have to think about it," Liz says. "It's a lot to take in."
Aldous asks Liz a bit about her life on Earth. To Liz, her old life has already begun to seem like a story she is telling about someone else entirely. Once upon a time, a girl named Elizabeth lived in Medford, Massachusetts.
"Were you happy?" asks Aldous.
Liz thinks about Aldous's question. "Why do you want to know?"
"Don't worry. It's not a test. It's just something I like to ask all my advisees."
In truth, she hadn't put much thought into whether she was happy before. She supposes that since she never thought about it, she must have been happy. People who are happy don't really need to ask themselves if they are happy or not, do they? They just are happy, she thinks.
"I suppose I must have been happy," Liz says. And as soon as she says it, she knows it's true.
One silly little errant teardrop runs out of the corner of her eye. Liz quickly brushes it away. A second tear follows, and then a third, and it isn't long before she finds she is crying.
"Oh dear me, oh dear me!" exclaims Aldous. "I'm sorry if my question upset you." He excavates a box of tissues from underneath one of the towers of paperwork. He considers handing her one tissue and then decides on the entire box.
Liz looks at the tissue box, which is decorated with drawings of snowmen engaged in various holiday activities. One of the snowmen is happily placing a smiling rack of gingerbread men in an oven. Baking gingerbread men, or any cooking for that matter, is probably close to suicide for a snowman, Liz thinks. Why would a snowman voluntarily engage in an activity that would in all likelihood melt him? Can snowmen even eat? Liz glares at the box.
Aldous pulls out a tissue and holds it up to Liz's nose as if she were five years old. "Blow," he orders her.
Liz obeys. "I seem to cry a lot lately."
"Perfectly natural."
Liz had been happy. How remarkable, she thinks. The whole time she had been on Earth she hadn't considered herself a particularly happy person. Like many people her age, she had been moody and miserable for what she now sees as totally foolish reasons: she had not been the most popular person in school, she didn't have a boyfriend, her brother could be annoying, and she had freckles. In many ways, she had felt that she had been waiting for all the good things to happen: living alone, going to college, driving a car. Now Liz finally sees the truth. She had been happy. Happy, happy, happy. Her parents had loved her; her best friend had been the most sympathetic, wonderful girl in the world; school had been easy; her brother hadn't been all that bad; her pug had liked to sleep next to her in bed; and, yes, she had even been considered pretty. Until a week ago, Liz realizes, her life had been entirely without obstacle. It had been a happy, simple existence, and now it was over.
"Are you all right?" Aldous asks, his voice filled with concern.
Liz nods, even though she does not feel all right. "I miss my dog, Lucy." She wonders whose bed Lucy is sharing now.
Aldous smiles. "Luckily, dog lives are much shorter than human lives. You may get to see her again someday."
Aldous clears his throat. "I meant to mention this before. People who die as young as you, that is to say, sixteen and under, can be sent back to Earth early."
"What do you mean?" asks Liz.
"Young people sometimes find the process of adjusting to life in Elsewhere quite difficult and their acclimations ultimately fail. So, if you choose, you can go back to Earth early. As long as you declare your intentions within your first year of residence. It's called the Sneaker Clause."
"Would I go back to my old life?"
Aldous laughs. "Oh no, no, no! You would start all over again as a baby. Of course, you might run into people you used to know, but they wouldn't know you, and in all likelihood, you wouldn't recognize them."
"Is there any way I could go back to my old life?"
Aldous looks at Liz sternly. "Now I must warn you, Elizabeth. There is no way you can or should go back to your old life. Your old life is over, and you can never go back. You may hear of a place called the Well "
"What's the Well?" Liz interrupts him.
"It's strictly forbidden," says Aldous. "Now about the Sneaker Clause "
"Why is it forbidden?"
Aldous shakes his head. "It just is. Now, about the Sneaker Clause "
"I don't think that's for me," Liz interrupts. As much as she misses Earth, she realizes that what she misses about Earth is all the people she knows there. Without them, going back seems pointless. Not to mention, she doesn't want to be a baby just yet.
Aldous nods. "Of course, you still have a year to decide."
"I understand." Liz pauses. "Um, Aldous, can I ask you one more question?"
"You want to know where God is in all of this, am I right?" Aldous asks.
Liz is genuinely surprised. Aldous had read her mind. "How did you know I was going to ask that?"
"Let's just say I've been doing this awhile." Aldous takes off his tortoiseshell glasses and cleans them on his pants. "God's there in the same way He, She, or It was before to you. Nothing has changed."
How could Aldous say that? Liz wonders. For her, everything is changed.
"I think you'll find," Aldous continues, "that dying is just an other part of living, Elizabeth. In time, you may even come to see your death as a birth. Just think of it as Elizabeth Hall: The Sequel.'''' Aldous replaces his glasses and looks at his watch. "Good lord!" Aldous exclaims.
"Would you look at the time? We have to get you over to the Department of Last Words, or Sarah's going to have my head."
Last Words
At the Department of Last Words, Liz is met by
an efficient woman who reminds Liz of a camp counselor. "Hello, Ms. Hall," the woman says. "I'm Sarah Miles, and I just need to confirm what your last words were."
"I'm not sure I remember. For the longest time, I didn't even know I was dead," Liz apologizes.
"Oh, that's all right. It's just a formality really," says Sarah. She consults a musty encyclopediasized book. "Right, it says here your last words, or I should say last word, was 'um.' "
Liz waits for Sarah to finish speaking. In fact, she is quite interested to know what her last words were. Would they be profound? Sad? Pathetic? Heartrending? Illuminating? Angry? Horrified?
After several moments of silence, Liz realizes Sarah is staring at her. "So," says Liz.
"So," replies Sarah, "was it 'um'?"
"Was it um what?" Liz asks.
"I meant, was your last word 'um'?"
"You're saying the last thing I ever said was 'um'?"
"That's what it says in the book, and the book's never wrong." Sarah pats the tome affectionately.
"God, I can't believe how crappy that is." Liz shakes her head.
"Oh, it's not that bad." Sarah smiles. "I've definitely heard worse."
"I just wish I'd said something more . . ." Liz pauses. "Something more, um ..." Her voice trails off.
"Right." Sarah sympathizes for exactly three seconds. "So, I just need you to sign off on this."
"If you already know what I said, why do you need me to sign off on them?" Liz is still steaming that the last thing she would ever say on Earth was "um."
"I don't know. It's just how things are done here."
Liz sighs. "Where do I sign?"
As Liz is leaving, she reflects on her last words. If your last words are somehow meant to encapsulate your entire existence, Liz finds um strangely appropriate. Um means nothing. Um is what you say while you're thinking of what you'll really say. Um suggests someone interrupted before they'd begun. Um is a fifteen-year-old girl who gets hit by a taxicab in front of a mall on the way to help pick out a prom dress for a prom she isn't even going to, for God's sake. Um. Liz shakes her head, vowing to omit um and all equally meaningless words (uh, like, huh, sorta, kinda, oh, hey, maybe) from her vocabulary.
Back in the lobby of the Office of Acclimation, Liz is happy to spot a familiar face. "Thandi!"
Thandi turns around, smiling broadly at Liz. "You just do your last words, too?"
Liz nods. "Apparently, all I said was 'um,' although I was too screwed up to remember anyway.
How were yours?"
"Well" Thandi hesitates "I can't really repeat them."
"Come on," Liz prods, "I just told you mine, and they were totally lame."
"Oh, all right, if you really want to know. The gist was 'Jesus Christ, Slim, I think I've been shot in the head!' Only I said the f-word a couple times, too. And then I died."
Liz laughs a little. "At least you were descriptive and accurate."
Thandi shakes her head. "I wish I hadn't cursed, though. I wasn't raised that way, and now it's on my permanent record."
"Cut yourself some slack, Thandi. I mean, you'd just been shot in the head. I think, under the circumstances, it's okay you said 'fu ' "
Thandi interrupts her. "Don't you go saying it now!"
At that moment, Aldous Ghent bounds into the lobby. "Oh dear, I hope I'm not interrupting," he says, "but I need to speak to Elizabeth for a moment."
"No," says Thandi, "I was just leaving." She whispers to Liz, "I'm really glad to see you. I was so worried you would stay on that boat forever."
Liz just shakes her head and changes the subject. "Where are you staying now?"
"I live with my cousin Shelly I think I mentioned her before."
"Is she" Liz pauses- "better now?"
Thandi smiles. "She is, and thanks for asking. You should come visit. I told Shelly all about you.
Come whenever. She's not much older than us, so she's cool with having people over."
"I'll try," Liz says.
"Well, I hope you'll do better than that," says Thandi as she leaves.
"Pretty hair," says Aldous, watching Thandi walk away.
"Yes," Liz agrees.
"Well, Elizabeth, I've just had the most fantastic idea," says Aldous. "You mentioned before that you might like to work with animals?"
"Yes."
"A position has just opened up, and as soon as I saw it, I thought of you. 'Why, Aldous,' I said to myself, 'this is positively providential!' So will you do it?" Aldous stands there beaming at Liz.
"Um, what is it?" There was that word again.
"Oh yes, of course! Leave it to me to put the horse before the cart. Or rather, the cart before the horse. The horse is supposed to go before the cart, I believe. I have limited experience with both horses and carts. Oh yes, the position! The position's in the Division of Domestic Animals of the Department of Acclimation."
"What's that?" asks Liz.
"It's kind of like what I do actually," says Aldous Ghent, "only it's with people's passed pets. I'm quite sure you'd be perfect for it."
"Um," Liz says. Why can't I stop saying wm? she thinks. "Um, it sounds interesting."
"By the way, you do speak Canine, don't you?"
"Canine?" asks Liz. "What's Canine?"
"Canine is the language of dogs. Dear me, you don't mean to say that they still aren't teaching it in Earth schools?" Aldous seems truly horrified at the possibility.
Liz shakes her head.
"A pity," says Aldous, "as Canine is one of our most beautiful languages. Did you know that there are over three hundred words for love in Canine?"
Liz thinks of her sweet Lucy back on Earth. "I believe it," Liz says.
"It has always seemed a weakness of an Earth education that children are only taught to communicate with their own species, don't you think?" asks Aldous.
"Since I don't speak, uh, Canine, does that mean I couldn't work at the Department of. . . What did you call it again?"
"Department of Acclimation, Division of Domestic Animals. And not necessarily. How fast do you pick up foreign languages, Elizabeth?"
"Pretty fast," Liz lies. Spanish was her worst subject in school.
"Are you sure?" Aldous cocks his head thoughtfully at Liz.
"Yes, and if it matters, I even wanted to be a veterinarian when I was on Earth."
"A marvelous profession, but unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, we don't need those here.
Time and rest are the only healers. One of the many benefits of living in a reverse-aging culture.
Elsewhere doesn't have doctors, either. Although we do have nurses for animals and humans both, and of course our share of psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals. Even when the body is well, you still find that the mind . . . Well, the mind has a mind of its own." AJdous laughs. "But I digress.
"So, the position? It's perfect, right?" He beams at Liz.
At first, Liz thought the job sounded like something she might enjoy, but now she isn't so sure.
What is the point of learning a whole new job (not to mention a whole new language) when she'd just be going back to Earth in fifteen years anyway? "I'm just not sure," Liz says finally.
"Not sure? But a moment ago, you seemed so "
Liz interrupts. "It sounds cool, but..." She clears her throat. "I just think I need to take some time to myself first. I'm still sort of getting used to the idea of being dead."
Aldous nods. "Perfectly natural," he says, and nods again. Liz can see his nods are meant to conceal his disappointment.
"I don't have to decide today, do I?" Liz asks.
"No," Aldous says. "No, you don't have to decide today. We'll talk again next week. Of course, the position may be filled by then."
"I understand," she says.
"I must caution you, Elizabeth. The longer you wait to start your new life, the harder it may become."
"My new life? What new life?" Liz's voice is suddenly hard, her
eyes cold.
"Why, this one," says Aldous, "this new life."
Liz laughs. "That's just words, isn't it? You can call it life, but it's really just death."
"If this isn't life, then what is it?" Aldous asks.
"My life is on Earth. My life is not here," Liz says. "My life is with my parents and my friends. My life is over."
"No, Elizabeth, you are completely, absolutely, totally wrong."
"I'm dead," she says. "I'M DEAD!" she yells.
"Dead," Aldous says, "is little more than a state of mind. Many people on Earth spend their whole lives dead, but you're probably too young to understand what I mean."
Yes, Liz thinks, exactly my point. She hears a clock strike five. "I have to go. My grandmother's waiting for me."
Watching Liz run off, Aldous calls after her, "Promise you'll think about the position!"
Liz doesn't answer. She finds Betty's car parked in front of the Registry. Liz opens the door and gets in. Before Betty can say a single word, Liz asks, "Would it be okay if we went to one of the Observation Decks?"
"Oh, Liz, it's your first real night here. Wouldn't you prefer to do something else? We can do whatever you want."
"What I'd really like to do is see Mom and Dad and Alvy. And my best friend, Zooey. And some other people, too. Is that okay?"
Betty sighs. "Are you sure, doll?"
"I really, really want to go."
"All right," Betty says finally, "there's one near the house."
Sightseeing
I could come with you," Betty says. She stops her car on the narrow strip of road that runs parallel to the beach. "I haven't seen Olivia in the longest time."
"Mom's old now," says Liz. "She's older than you."
"It's hard to believe. Where does the time go?" Betty sighs. "I've always hated that phrase. It makes it sound like time went on holiday, and is expected back any day now. 'Time flies' is another one I hate. Apparently, time does quite a bit of traveling, though." Betty sighs again. "So, do you want me to come with you?"
Liz would like nothing less than for Betty to accompany her. "I might be a while," Liz says.
"These places. They can be dangerous, doll."
"Why?"