Elsewhere (16 page)

On the morning of Liz's Release, she wakes at four o'clock. All launches take place at sunrise when the tide exposes the River, and she arrives about fifteen minutes early.

A team of launch nurses prepares the babies to be Released into the River. Liz's nurse is named Dolly.

"My," says Dolly when she sees Liz, "we don't often get big girls like you."

"I'm a Sneaker," Liz replies.

"Yeah, Joleen normally handles the Sneakers, but she's on vacation. Sneaker or not, you have to take off all your clothes, and then I'll swaddle you up."

"Can't I at least leave on my underwear?" Liz asks.

"Sorry, everyone's got to wear their birthday suit back to Earth," Dolly says. "I know it's probably a little embarrassing at your age, but that's how it works. Most of the babies don't know the difference. Besides, no one'll know you're naked under the swaddling clothes anyway." Dolly hands Liz a paper gown. "You can wear this in the meantime."

Naked but for the gown, Liz lies down on a table with wheels like a hospital gurney. The launch nurse begins to wrap Liz in white linen bandages. She starts with Liz's feet, bandaging Liz's legs together, and works her way up to Liz's head. When she reaches the middle, she removes Liz's paper gown and begins to bind Liz's arms to her sides.

"Why do you have to bind the arms?" Liz asks.

"Oh, it helps the current pull you to Earth if you're more streamlined, and it also keeps the babies warm," Dolly answers.

Dolly leaves Liz's face open, but the rest of Liz's body is tightly bound. Liz looks like a mummy.

She feels terrible wrapped up this way, and she can barely breathe.

Dolly rolls Liz over to the edge of the beach. She lowers her into the water. Liz feels the cool water saturate her bandages.

"What happens to the swaddling clothes when I get to Earth?"

"Don't worry. The cloth will have mostly deteriorated by then, and the River washes away what's left," says Dolly. "When the sun starts to rise over the horizon, you'll be able to see the River. I'll give you a push, and the current will carry you all the way to Earth. I am told the journey feels like a week, but you'll probably lose track of time much before then."

Liz nods. She can make out the beginnings of a reddish light just over the horizon. It will be soon.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question?" Dolly asks Liz.

Liz shakes her head, and it practically causes her whole body to shake because of the tight cloth.

"What makes a person want to go back to Earth early?" Dolly asks.

"What do you mean?" Liz replies.

"I mean, it's all life, isn't it? Why are you in such a rush to get back?"

At that moment, the sun appears in the sky. The ocean splits in two, and the River is revealed.

"Sunrise," says Dolly. "Time to go. Well, have a good trip!" Dolly gives Liz a push down the River.

Curtis Jest cannot sleep. He tosses and turns in his wooden cot. Finally, he gives up on sleeping and gets out of bed.

Curtis hitches a ride across town to Liz's house. He knows Liz is living with her grandmother. He decides that he must inform this woman about Liz's decision, even if it means breaking Liz's confidence. For the first time in ages, he laments losing his rock star status. (Rock stars always have fast cars.)

At 6:15 a.m., he rings Betty's doorbell.

"Hello, I'm looking for Lizzie's grandmother," Curtis says. He stares at Betty. "Good Lord, you wouldn't be her, would you?"

"Yes, I'm Elizabeth's grandmother. And you are?"

"I'm " Curtis begins. For a moment, he completely forgets his name and his whole reason for coming. Instead, he considers what color you would call Betty's eyes. Gray-blue, he decides.

Gray-blue like a foggy morning, like the water in a stone fountain, like the moon or maybe the stars. Betty with the gray-blue eyes. That might make a good song "Yes?" Betty interrupts his reverie.

Curtis clears his throat, lowers his voice, stands up straighter, and resumes speaking. "I am Curtis Sinclair Jest, formerly of the band Machine. I am a trusted confidant of Elizabeth's, which is why I come to you at this hour. I must tell you something very urgent about Lizzie."

"What about Liz?" Owen asks, walking up behind Curtis from the driveway. "I need to talk to her right now."

Curtis says, "Lizzie is in trouble, Betty. We'll need your car."

Betty takes a deep breath. "What's happened? What's happened to Elizabeth?" She gives up trying to disguise the terror in her voice. "I want to know what's happened to my granddaughter!"

she yells.

Curtis takes Betty's hand. "She's headed back to Earth, and we've got to stop her."

"You can't mean she's sneaking?" Owen asks.

Curtis nods.

"But it's already dawn!" Betty exclaims.

The three look up at the jaundiced sky, which grows brighter with every second.

"My car's faster," Owen says, running back down the driveway.

"God help us," Betty whispers before following him.

As she is pulled faster and faster toward Earth, Liz begins to think of Elsewhere and of all the people she's met there. She thinks of how those people might feel when they discover she has taken her leave without even telling them.

She thinks of Thandi.

She thinks of Betty.

She thinks of Sadie.

She thinks of Paco, of Jen, of all the dogs . . .

And she thinks of Owen.

But mainly she thinks of herself. Continuing down the River will mean, for all practical purposes, the end of Liz. And when she looks at it that way, she suddenly wonders if she hasn't made a colossal mistake.

And then she wonders if it's too late to correct it.

Because it wouldn't be for Owen or for any of them that she would return to Elsewhere. With or without Owen, almost fifteen years was a long time. Almost fifteen years was a gift. Anything could happen here in Elsewhere, the place where Liz's life had supposedly ended.

If I interrupt this life, I will never know how my life was supposed to turn out. A life is a good story, Liz realizes, even a crazy, backward life like hers. To cling to her old forward life was pointless.

She would never have her old forward life. This backward life was her forward life when she really thought about it. It isn't her time, and her desire to know how the story will end is too strong.

And besides, Liz thinks, what's the rush?

In the water, the swaddling fabric is stiff like plaster. Liz rocks back and forth trying to rip it. The motion does not free her, but it does turn her 180 degrees until she is facing into the current. All around her, babies float by.

The waves smack her exposed face. Salt stings her eyes. Water gets into her lungs. Liz feels her legs beginning to sink.

She leans her neck forward and tries to tear at the swaddling clothes with her teeth. After much effort, she succeeds in ripping the tiniest of holes, which allows her to rotate her shoulder over and over again. It hurts like hell, but she finally frees her left biceps, then her left forearm, then her hand. She reaches her hand above the surface of the water.

She struggles to pull herself out of the water with her free hand, but it's too late. Too much water has filled her lungs.

She sinks. It's a long way to the ocean floor. It gets darker and darker. Liz hits the bottom with a thud. A cloud of sand and other debris forms around her. And then she passes out.

When Liz wakes the next morning, she cannot move and she wonders if she is dead. But then she realizes she can open her eyes and her heart is beating, albeit very slowly. It occurs to Liz that she might be trapped at the bottom of the ocean forever. Neither dead nor alive. A ghost.

"Look, man, I'm sorry, but it's too late," Curtis says to Owen. "She's gone."

"I just don't believe Liz would do something like this," Owen replies, shaking his head. "It just doesn't seem like her at all."

Betty shakes her head, too. "I can't believe it either." She sighs. "She was very depressed for a while when she first got here. I thought she was over it, but I guess she wasn't after all."

"I'm going after her in my boat," Owen says.

"She's gone. The launch nurse confirmed it. There's nothing we can do now." Betty shoots Curtis a dirty look, and he looks away.

"I'm going after her in my boat," Owen repeats.

"But " Betty says.

"She might have changed her mind. And if she did, she might need our help," Owen says.

"I'll come with you," Curtis and Betty say at the same time.

For two days and two nights, they search all along the coasts of Elsewhere in Owen's little boat for any trace of Liz. She is nowhere to be found. On the second night, Owen tells Curtis and Betty to go home. "I can do this myself," he says.

"There's no point, Owen. I hate to say it, but she's gone. She's really, really gone. You should go home, too," Betty says.

Owen shakes his head. "No, I'm just going to give it one more day."

With heavy hearts, Betty and Curtis agree to return home.

"Do you think we should have stayed with him?" Curtis asks Betty in her kitchen back at the house.

Betty sighs. "I think he's trying to make peace. I think he wanted to be by himself."

Curtis nods. "I'm sorry I didn't come to you on Saturday night. We quarreled about it, and she swore me to secrecy."

"It's not your fault. I should have known something was wrong. I only wish she had come to me."

At that moment, Curtis spies a note tacked to the fridge with Betty's name on it. "Look Betty, I think she may have left a note."

Betty runs across the room and tears the note off the fridge. "Why in the world didn't I see it before?"

Curtis looks out the window to give Betty some privacy while she reads. Less than a minute later, she slumps into a chair. "It doesn't say why! It doesn't say anything actually," she says tearfully.

"You spoke to her last. Why do you think she did it?"

"I'm not entirely sure," he says after a moment. "I think she felt she couldn't have a normal life here. She wanted to be an adult. She wanted to fall in love."

"She could have fallen in love here!" Betty protests. "I thought she already had."

"I think that was part of the problem," Curtis says delicately.

"But she could have fallen in love again! It could have been Owen or it could have been with someone entirely new."

"I think she felt the conditions here were not likely to result in a lasting love," Curtis explains.

Betty embraces Curtis. He gently sniffs her hair, which he thinks smells like a combination of roses and saltwater.

"Then again," Curtis says softly, "the conditions are rarely very good anywhere, but love still happens all the time."

Liz realizes she will never be able to heal enough to swim back to the top. She will age backward just enough to keep alive and breathing, but unless someone finds her, she is for all practical purposes dead. Really dead, this time.

And yet she isn't dead either. Being dead would almost be preferable. She remembers a story Owen once told her of a man who had drowned on the way to the Well. No one found him for thirty years and when they finally located him, he was a baby, ready to go back to Earth.

If no one knows you're alive, no one you love, you may as well be dead, Liz thinks.

Liz stares above her, for there is nothing else to do at the bottom of the ocean.

On the second night Liz is underwater, two mermaids, a redhead and a blonde, swim by. They stop to look at Liz.

"Are you a mermaid?" the redhead asks Liz.

Liz cannot speak, because her larynx reflexively closed when she began to drown. She blinks her eyes twice.

"I don't think she is," the blond mermaid says. "See, it's a stupid thing who cannot even talk."

"And she has very small breasts," the redhead adds, laughing.

"I think it's a slug," the blonde says.

"Oh, don't say that," the redhead replies. "I think you've hurt its feelings. Look, it's crying."

"I don't care if it is. It's terribly dull. Let's go," the blonde says. And the two mermaids swim happily away.

Mermaids (nasty, vain beasts) are one of the many creatures that live at the bottom of the ocean, in the land between Elsewhere and Earth.

On her third day underwater, Liz is woken by a strange sound. The sound could be a distant foghorn, or a low-pitched bell, or maybe even an engine. She opens her eyes. A familiar glint of silver flashes in the distance. Liz squints a little. It's a gondola! And then she sees that the gondola is etched onto a silver moon, and the moon is connected to a silver chain. And the sound is very like ticking. Liz's heart beats wildly. It's my old pocket watch, she thinks. Someone's fixed it, and if I can only reach up my arm, I can get it back.

And so she summons all her strength.

And so she lifts her one free hand.

But the watch is farther away than she first thought.

And so she summons a little more strength.

And so she peels away the swaddling clothes until her other hand is free.

And so she beats her arms.

But she can't swim without her feet.

And so she peels away more of the cloth until she is naked as the day she was born.

And so she is naked.

But, at last, her arms and her legs are free.

And so she begins to swim.

Liz swims and swims and swims and swims, always keeping the silver moon in sight. And the gondola grows larger and larger. And the rest of the watch seems to disappear. And Liz finally reaches the surface, gasping for air, gasping for life.

And when her eyes finally adjust to the daylight, the gondola is nowhere to be found. Instead, she sees a familiar white tugboat.

"Liz!" Owen yells. "Are you all right?"

Liz can't speak. Her lungs are too filled with water, and she is freezing. Owen notices that her lips are blue.

He pulls her onto the boat and covers her with a blanket.

Liz coughs for the longest time, trying to expel the water from her lungs.

"Are you okay?" Owen asks.

"I seem to have lost my clothes," Liz croaks, her voice scratchy and sore.

"I noticed."

"And I almost died," Liz says. "Again," she adds.

"I'm sorry."

"And I'm totally pissed off at you," Liz says.

"I'm sorry for that, too. I hope you'll forgive me someday."

"We'll see," she says.

"Shall I take you home now?"

Liz nods.

Exhausted, she lies down on the deck. The sun feels warm on her face. She thinks it is pleasant to be on a boat that is bound for home. She begins to feel better immediately.

"I might like to learn how to drive a boat," Liz says when they are almost back.

"I could teach you, if you want," Owen says. "It's a lot like driving a car."

"Who taught you to drive boats?" Liz asks.

"My grandfather. He was a ship captain here and back on Earth. He just retired."

"You never mentioned you had a grandfather."

"Well, he's about six years old now "

"Wait, he wasn't the captain of the SS Nile, was he?"

"Yes. The Captain. Exactly," Owen answers.

"That's the boat I was on! I met him the first day I got here!" Liz says.

"Small world," Owen replies.