1.
THERE ARE THOSE WHO WISH TO KNOW, and there are those who don't wish to know. At
first Tem made fun of me in that condescending way of his when I claimed to be among
the
former; when he realized I meant it, he grew anxious, and when he realized I really did mean it,
his anxiety morphed into terror.
"Why?" he demanded tearfully in the middle of the night. "Why why why?"
I couldn't answer. I had no answer.
"This isn't only about you, you know," he scolded. “It affects me too. Hell, maybe it affects me
more than it affects you. I don't want to sit
around for a bunch of decades awaiting the worst day
of my life."
Touched, I reached out to squeeze his hand in the dark. Grudgingly, he squeezed back. I would
have preferred to be like Tem, of course I would have! If only I could have known it was
possible to know and still have been fine with ignorance. But now that the technology had been
mastered, the knowledge was available to every citizen for a nominal fee. Tem stood in the
doorway as I buttoned the blue wool coat he'd given me for, I think, our four-year anniversary a
couple years back.
“I don't want to know where you're going," he said. He glared.
"Fine," I said, matter-of-factly checking my purse for my keys, my eye-drops. "I won't tell you."
"I forbid you to leave this apartment,” he said.
"Oh honey," I sighed. I did feel bad. “That's just not in your character."With a tremor, he fell
away from the doorway to let me pass. He slouched against the wall, arms crossed, staring at me,
his eyes wet and so very dark. Splendid Tem.
After I stepped out, I heard the deadbolt sliding into place.
"So?" Tem said when I unlocked the deadbolt, stepped back inside. He was standing right there
in the hallway, his eyes darker than ever, his slouch more pronounced. I was willing to believe he
hadn't moved in the 127 minutes I'd been gone.
“So," I replied forcefully. I was shaken, I'll admit it, but I refused to shake him with my
shakenness.
"You ...?" He mouthed the question more than spoke it.
I stood there in the bathroom, hunched over the sink, clinging to the sink, staring at my face in
the mirror until it no longer felt like my face. This would develop into a distasteful and
disorienting but addictive habit over the course of the next three and a half months. Aside from
the increasing frequency with which I found myself falling into myself in the bathroom mirror, i
got pretty good at hiding my dread. From Tem, and even at times from myself. We planted
bulbs; we bought a cooler for summer picnics. I pretended and pretended; it felt nice to pretend.
Yet when Tem asked, on April 10, what I'd planned for this year's getaway, the veil fell away
Given the circumstance, I had of course-neglected to make any plans for the 17th. The dread
rushed outward from my gut until my entire body was hot and cold. Panicking, I looked across
the table at Tem, who was gazing at me openly, hopefully, boyishly, the way he'd looked at me
for almost four decades. Tem and I-we've been so lucky in love.
-Tem," I choked.
"You okay?" he said.
And then he realized.
“Damn it, Ellie!" he yelled. "Why'd you have to--!"
I still didn't know, just as I hadn't known way back then. (Why she need it to Knews)
I quietly quit my job, handed in the paperwork, and Tem took the week off, and we spent every
minute together and invited the blissfully ignorant kids out for brunch (I clutched the baby,
forced her to stay in my lap even as she tried to wiggle and whine her way out, until eventually I
had to hand her over to her mother, a chunk of my heart squirming away from me). Everything I
saw-a gas station, a tree, a flagpole-I thought how it would go on existing, just the same. Tem
and I made love more than we'd had in the previous twelve months combined. What can I say,
what did we do? We held hands under the covers. We made fettuccine alfredo and, cleaning the
kitchen, listened to our favorite radio show. I dried the dishes with a green dishcloth, warm and
damp.
3.
On the morning of April 17, 2043, I was half-amazed to open my eyes to the light. Six hours and
four minutes into the day, and I was alive. Petrified, scared to move even a muscle, I wondered
how death would come for me. I supposed I'd been hoping it would come mercifully, in the soft
sleep of early morning. I turned to Tem, who wasn't in bed beside me.
"Tem!" I screamed. He was in the doorway before I'd reached the “m,” his face stricken.
"Tem," I said plaintively, joyously. He looked so good to me, standing there holding two coffee
mugs, his ancient baby-blue robe.
"I thought you were dying!" he exclaimed.
-- Are you sure?" I said. My voice sounded too loud, too hard. In that moment I found myself, my
insistence on knowing, profoundly annoying. I despised myself as part of Tem surely despised
me then. Suddenly it seemed quite likely that I'd made a catastrophic errof. The kind of error that
could ruin the rest of my life. Tem nodded, gazed evenly at me. I became wildly scared; I who'd
so boldly sought knowledge now did not even dare give voice to a date.
Tem nodded again, controlled, miserable. It was my responsibility to inform him.
“April 17-"I began.
But Tem shrieked before I could finish. "Stop!" he cried, shoving his fingers into his ears, his
calmness vanished. “Stop stop stop stop! Never mind! I don't want to know! Don't! Don't don't
don't!"
"OKAY!" I screamed, loud enough that he could hear it through his fingers. It was lonely-ever
so lonely--to hold this knowledge alone. April 17, 2043: a tattoo inside my brain. But it was as it
should be. It was the choice I had made. Tem wished to be spared, and spare him I would.
2.
It was an okay lifespan. Not enough---is it ever enough?-but enough to have a life; enough to
work a job, to raise children, perhaps to meet a grandchild or two. Certainly abbreviated, though;
shorter than average; too short, yes, but not tragically short. And so in many ways I could live a
life like any other. Like Tem's. I could go blithely along, indulging my petty concerns, lacking
perspective, frequently forgetting I wasn't immortal. Yet it would be a lie if I said a single day
passed without me thinking about April 17, 2043.
In those early years, I'd sink into a black mood come mid-April. I'd lie in bed for a couple of
days, clinging to the sheets, my heart a big swollen wound. Tem would bring me cereal, tea. But
after the kids were born I had no time for such self-indulgence, and I began to mark April 17 in
smaller, kinder ways. Would buy myself a tiny gift, a bar of dark chocolate or a clutch of
daffodils. As time went on, I permitted myself slightly more elaborate gestures-a new dress, an
afternoon champagne at some hushed bar. I always felt extravagant on April 17: I'd leave a tip of
twenty-five percent, hand out a five-dollar bill to any vagrant who happened to cross my
path. You can't take it with you and all that.
Tem tried hard to forget what he'd heard, but every time April 17 came around again, I could
feel his awareness of it, a slight buzz in the way he looked at me, tenderness and fury rolled up in
one. "Oh," he'd say, staring hard at the daffodils (their stems already weakening) as I stepped
through the door. "That." I'd make a reservation for us at a fancy restaurant; I'd schedule a
weekend getaway. Luxuries we spent the whole rest of the year carefully avoiding. Meanwhile,
my birthday languished unnoticed in July,
Tem would sigh and pack his overnight case. We sat drinking coffee in rocking chairs on the
front porch of a bed-and-breakfast on a hill in the chill of early spring. Tem was generous to me;
it was his least favorite day of the year, but he managed to pretend; we'd stroll. We'd eat ice
cream. The silly little band-aids.
1.
Helen Phillips
THERE ARE THOSE WHO WISH TO KNOW, and there are those who don't wish to know. At
first Tem made fun of me in that condescending way of his when I claimed to be among the
former; when he realized I meant it, he grew anxious, and when he realized I really did mean it,
his anxiety morphed into terror.
“Why?” he demanded tearfully in the middle of the night. “Why why why?”
I couldn't answer. I had no answer.
"This isn't only about you, you know," he scolded. “It affects me too. Hell, maybe it affects me
more than it affects you. I don't want to sit around for a bunch of decades awaiting the worst day
of my life.”
Touched, I reached out to squeeze his hand in the dark. Grudgingly, he squeezed back. I would
have preferred to be like Tem, of course I would have! If only I could have known it was
possible to know and still have been fine with ignorance. But now that the technology had been
mastered, the knowledge was available to every citizen for a nominal fee. Tem stood in the
doorway as I buttoned the blue wool coat he'd given me for, I think, our four-year anniversary a
couple years back.
“I don't want to know where you're going," he said. He glared.
“Fine," I said, matter-of-factly checking my purse for my keys, my eye-drops. “I won't tell you.”
"I forbid you to leave this apartment,” he said.
“Oh honey,” I sighed. I did feel bad. “That's just not in your character. "With a tremor, he fell
away
from the doorway to let me pass. He slouched against the wall, arms crossed, staring at me,
his eyes wet and so very dark. Splendid Tem.
After I stepped out, I heard the deadbolt sliding into place.
“So?” Tem said when I unlocked the deadbolt, stepped back inside. He was standing right there
in the hallway, his eyes darker than ever, his slouch more pronounced. I was willing to believe he
hadn't moved in the 127 minutes I'd been gone.
“So," I replied forcefully. I was shaken, I'll admit it, but I refused to shake him with my
shakenness.
"You ...?” He mouthed the question more than spoke it.
What if there had been an error? Remembering back to that humble machine, that thin scrap of
paper, the cold buttons of the keypad, I indulged in the fantasy I'd avoided over the years. It
suddenly seemed possible that I'd punched my social in wrong, one digit off. Or that there had
been some kind of bureaucratic mistake, some malfunction deep within the machine. Or perhaps
I'd mixed up the digits—April 13, 2047. If I lived beyond April 17, 2043, where would the new
boundaries of my life lie?
Shakily, I washed Tem's toothbrush in steaming hot water from the faucet; it wouldn't be me
lingering in the aisle of the drugstore, considering the potential replacements, the colors. We
stood there staring at each other in the bathroom mirror. This time I didn't fall into my own
reflection-Tem, I was looking at Tem, that's what I was doing.
Why had it never occurred to me that it might be something that would kill Tem too?
In all of these years, truly, I had never once entertained that possibility. But it could be a
meteorite, a bomb, an earthquake, a fire. I unlocked my eyes from Tem's reflection and grabbed
the real Tem. I clung to him like I was clinging to a cliff, and he clung right back.
I counted ten tense seconds. The pulse in his neck.
“Should we?" I said.
“What?” Tem said quickly, almost hopefully, as though I was about to propose a solution.
“I don't know," I said. “Go to bed? It's way past our bedtime."
“Bedtime!" Tem said as though I was hilarious, though he didn't manage a laugh.
11:54pm on April 17, 2043. We are both alive and well. Yet I mustn't get ahead of myself. There
are still six minutes remaining.
THE END
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