Of Another Kind Altogether —PART 9 of 9 (CONCLUSION)

The next time Marilyn Mayer saw Missy was 68 years later, when the girl she knew at 18 was now 86. Marilyn, herself, was 90. They had each had long and complex lives, including five professions, three husbands, and four children between them. Strangely enough, it happened that both were sitting across from each other on a commuter train. It was late in the evening and they had the car to themselves.

The octogenarian and nonagenarian were strangers, but as the miles rolled under them, each letting stop after stop go unanswered, there began a slow appreciation of mutual recognition. Missy was no longer the skittish, superstitious girl afraid of her own shadow; and Marilyn was no longer obscessed by her ability to look above life itself and see a bigger picture. They had each moved on. Such was life.

When they each were sure who the other was, Missy spoke first.

“I see you’re still stalking me,” she said. Marilyn only smiled. “The last time I saw you—and I forgot your name—”

“Marilyn Mayer,” Marilyn said.

“And me, Missy,” Missy replied.

“I remember you, Missy.”

“The last time I saw you you had crashed my death vigil when I had meningitis.”

“I know. That didn’t go well, so I didn’t return to you again.”

“You stopped stalking me,” Missy laughed.

“I suppose I did.”

“I almost died that day in the hospital. The doctors said it was a miracle I didn’t.”

“But you did, Missy. You died.”

“I think you’re mistaken because here I am, still going strong at the other end of my life. ”

“Because it’s a different life. Look at this train, Missy. Lots of stops. Whether we get off or don’t establishes how the rest of our lives will go. And everyone else is boarding or getting off at these stops, too. And they’re trying to beat us to the exit or holding open the door for us; or taking the last seat that makes us miss the train altogether. And we meet strangers and they become friends. Some friends disembark and we never see them again. We wonder how their stops are for them.

But the thing is this: whatever you decide at this stop or that point or that choice, your old life is dead and you move on.” She chuckled to herself. “Even when you’re dead for real…you still move on. That time you almost died of Rheumatic fever, you really did. That time you almost were electrocuted but wasn’t because the circuit breaker tripped…it didn’t, and you were.”

“Oh, my,” Missy sighed. “Now I remember why I didn’t like you.”

Marilyn got out of her seat and walked over toward Missy. She sat next to her.

“Listen, I’ve had a few false stops myself, on this very train, Missy. Saw myself off, but lived on for more of the journey. You see, this life is bigger than we can understand. I realized that when I died at childbirth with my son. Did you ever meet him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Many people in my life did. It was part of the baggage of knowing me. He was beautiful, my son—all potential, all possibilities. And the he was observed at his birth. Observation, perspective...they have a way of finalizing things for the likes of people like us.”

“Where’s your stop?” Missy asked.

“Up ahead, somewhere soon.”

“I know where I’m heading. Where are you going, Mrs. Mayer?”

“Miss Mayer.”

“Sorry. Where to, then, for you?”

“The same stop as you, Missy.”

“How many more stops are we going to pass before we get there?”

“No more, Missy. This is the end of the line.”

“For both of us?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I’ve had a pretty good run, then. Eighty-six years, y’know.”

“I do know; it’s 90 for me. Y’know, we’re frail creatures. Life’s just too busy to avoid all the accidents, illnesses, trauma from others—both good and bad people—or because of our own stupid mistakes. Life is a gift that keeps on giving, though, even when we end one but continue it on another track, never looking back; as if nothing had happened. The switches can get tricky, and we’re not the only ones switching ‘em, but we all end up getting off when we should.”

“At the end of the line…” Missy mused.

“Yes,” Marilyn agreed, “at the end of the line.”

“No matter how many times we die?”

“No natter how many times, Missy. We all get to die a beautiful death, in our old age, and no one’s cheated of that.”

“Is that God’s way?”

“I’ve never been religious, but there’s something behind it. And it’s something wonderful. I mean, I don’t think it’s just physics.”

“I guess not, Miss Mayer. There’s no romance in that, is there?

“No, Missy, there isn’t.”

Marilyn reached up to pull a signal cord and the train slowed. When the car came to a stop, she and Missy smiled at each other, arose, and stepped out of the exit door.

They were holding hands like sisters would.

As they were exiting the seats reversed to face the direction from which the train had come; it was with considerable mechanical clatter, to signal the train's reversal of direction. Several pale, angular persons, imbued with potential, politely waited for Marilyn and Missy to pass before they attempted to board themselves.

In a hospital room at the old St. Luke’s Hospital, Missy’s children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren began to cry, because she was gone. Her oldest daughter led the family in the rosary. After the last decade, he said, “She had a beautiful life, she did.”

“And a beautiful death, too,” added her youngest grandson.

“We should all be so lucky to live as long as she did and die this way,” said her oldest son.

“Amen,” said a pale, angular man in the corner no one had noticed until now. He ignored their surprise over his presence, but instead listened.

He heard the tires of Annabel Turnbull screech; he heard the alarm clock Stephen didn’t to get him up for school. He heard Angus Turnbull’s joint dislodge and the droning of a mosquito that Missy hadn’t in her boyfriend’s convertible. The ever burgeoning universe of causes and effects summated for him in a mycelial tangle that heaped up to unimaginable heights.

The splitting of dimensions is noisy, since something’s broken every time a life ends; but a new one created by fortuity or from other possibilities invading the timeline is pushed into being by the noise from what used to be. The pale, angular unborn child of Marilyn Mayer held his ears, because the new universes inflating into existence did so with a bang. Big ones. It was a roar. Somewhere at B-flat, 57 octaves down. But just as a glare can blind someone trying to choose a fork in the road, the noise of choice deafens all of us to what might have been, because it was, even if we never knew it.

_________________

So ends this series of quantum fiction. But the others continue on, somewhere, sometime, somehow.