I Have Lost My Way(12)

“We all die,” Hector said, rubbing Mary’s wrists. “It’s the only sure thing in life and the one thing we have in common with everything else on the planet.” He let go of her hand and put it in mine. I could feel her pulse, rabbity and weak.

“I think it’s an honor to be with people as they leave the world,” he told me.

“An honor?”

“An honor,” he replied. “And a calling. You know, I was about your age when I realized I wanted to do this.”

“Really?”

“Maybe not so concretely, but yes. I was with my own grandmother when she was dying. This was back home in Washington Heights, in New York City. She had barely spoken in weeks, but right before she passed, she sat up and came alive, carrying on a two-hour conversation with someone in the room. In Spanish. And I didn’t really speak Spanish, so I knew she wasn’t talking to me.”

“Who was she talking to?”

“Only she knew for sure, but I felt certain it was my grandfather. He’d been dead for twenty years. I never even met him. But at that moment, I knew he was in the room with her, there to escort her to what was next.”

Chills went up my spine.

“I’ve seen this happen more times than I can count,” Hector continued. “The dying speaking to the dead. The dead leading the dying to what’s next.”

“What is next?” I asked.

He smiled. “That I don’t know. And unfortunately, none of us finds out until it’s our turn, and then we’re in no position to report back.”

Two weeks later, Grandma Mary died quietly. If someone came to escort her to what was next, they did so silently.

“It’s just us,” my father said when they took Mary’s body away. Only for the first time it felt less like a promise than a threat.





2





IT’S ALL GOOD



It’s all good, Nathaniel tries to say.

Only he can’t seem to talk. Or move. Or think too clearly. Or see the shadowy person hovering over him, stroking his forehead, asking him to please, please wake up.

The stroking feels nice, though.

Everything else, not so nice.

“Can you hear me?” the voice asks. “Can you move?”

It’s a beautiful voice. Even in his current state he can hear this. If a voice could emit a scent, this one would smell like dates.

Grandma Mary used to buy dried dates. They ate them and spat the pits into the yard, hoping a date tree would grow, but dates grow in the desert, and he lives in the forest.

Lived in the forest.

There’s breath against his neck, whispery and warm. The breath says: “Open your eyes. Wake up.”

“Please,” the breath says.

It’s the please that does it. There’s something so raw, so plaintive in it. How can he not obey?

He opens his eyes. A pair of eyes stare back at him. They are maybe the loveliest eyes he’s ever seen. And the saddest. So sad, they could be his eyes, except they are brown and his eyes—eye—is green.

“What’s your name?” the Stroker whispers into his ear. And that voice. It sends a shiver down his spine, not because it’s beautiful, smelling of dates, but because it’s familiar, and it can’t be familiar because he doesn’t know a soul in . . . where is he? It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know a soul in the world with a voice like that.

“What’s your name?” the voice repeats.

His name. He knows his name. It’s just there, on the highest shelf in the back of the closet. He’s got to reach for it. It’s . . .

“Nathaniel,” the voice says. “Nathaniel Haley. Is that you?”

Yes! That’s him! Nathaniel Haley. How does she know?

“From Washington State.”

Yes! he wants to shout. From a house on the edge of a forest that’s been swallowed up. How does she know?

“And you just arrived here . . . today.”

Yes. Yes. Yes. But how does she know?

“Welcome to New York,” she says. “Pro tip: Don’t leave your wallet in your pocket. Any old person can get it.”

His wallet. He tries to summon it. He sees a billfold. A picture.

“Can you sit up?” the Stroker asks. Nathaniel doesn’t want to sit up, but there are those fingertips, and that voice, calling, Nathaniel, Nathaniel, come back. And that voice, so familiar it’s like an itch, and so beautiful, it’s like a song. He can heave himself up. To see the voice.

For one lovely moment, it’s worth the effort, to be face-to-face with that face. Until . . .

The pain is on a delay, and it catches up with him—it always catches up with you, he knows—and his head is symphonic with it, his stomach undulating with feedback. It undoes him. He is afloat, not of this world. He needs an anchor, and he finds it in the Stroker’s beautiful, sad eyes.

A small rivulet of blood—or two of them, because everything is double—drips down her temple and onto her cheek. It looks like a teardrop, and for a second Nathaniel thinks she is crying for him.

Only Nathaniel knows that can’t be. Tears are not blood-colored, and no one cries for him. Still, he is riveted by the trail the bloody tear tracks down her cheek. It is the prettiest of flowers, the loveliest of scars. He reaches out to touch her cheek. And though everything is tilted and blurry and double, he does not miss, and though she is beautiful and a stranger, she does not recoil.