Riddle Me
by A.M. Amodeo © 2007
She had been looking out over the water, not over the bow, it was crowded there, but toward the stern of the boat, where there were just a few gulls and the sun glinting on the water like the flashing of knives, no, like weightless fish of light. The water looked soft. Amazing how easy to slip in, to let go of life, and she understood, as the weight of her clothes bore her down, that the struggle was to go on living. This was easy. She held her breath, dropping feet first, the light receding upwards. She left behind betrayal, divorce, debt, anxiety and insomnia. This was easy. She just had to hold her breath until she was too far down to swim back up, and then, even if she tried, even if she lost her nerve, it would be taken care of. She could sleep.
Next, she walked into a passageway that had opened in the side of the world. It was not under water. There was a tall desk, with a person behind it.
He spoke. “As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Each wife had seven sacks, each sack had seven cats, each cat had seven kits. How many were going to St. Ives?”
She said, I know you want me to say one, but it's not one is it? It's never just one. There's no answer, because it's impossible to know which direction they were walking, the seven wives with all that baggage could have been going in the same direction more slowly. Also, technically, it says I met a man with seven wives, but it doesn't say they were there. So you see, there is no way to answer your riddle, old one.
“Do you want to go back or forward?”
“I'm tired of living and I'm tired of making decisions. I don't see why I can't stay right here.”
The old man's eyes grew wide and he dissolved into smoke. There was a loud crash, and Susan found herself standing in his place, with ancient volumes stacked around her, and a large circular rolodex to her left marked “Riddles.” Before her, a bright path approached her desk from the world above. Beyond her desk, a shrouded grey path led to the underworld. It was not long before her first soul came along. A nine year old girl whose mother had died. Susan found she knew these details without having to ask. She saw the mother in the hospital bed, the girl home alone, her father out of his mind with grief unable to console her.
She did not consult the rolodex. “What has four wheels and flies?”
“A garbage truck, but that's not…” “Go back to school and study hard. You will become a teacher and your students will love you. You will have one child of your own, who will have a successful musical career. That's all I can tell you.” Invest in real estate, Susan thought. Open an IRA. Don't let your husband handle the money. The girl turned back along the lit path, and her spirit was light also.
Susan found it difficult to keep track of the days. Many despondent souls passed by every day, each one with a sadder story than most of what you'd hear above. Betrayal, terminal illness, victims of unspeakable crimes. She understood all their languages, heard all their stories.
She had no idea when it was that her ex-husband came along, and she could see immediately that he was suicidal because his new young wife had tried to poison him and take his money. She wanted to say, Told you so, but he didn't seem to recognize her. The light down here wasn't that great, but you'd think he'd recognize his wife of fourteen years. As she looked closely at him, she realized he looked older. Had she been down here longer than she had thought? Four years, his aura revealed, since he had left her.
“Well,” he said. “What now?”
“Tell me your story,” she said, wanting to hear his version.
“What's there to tell? I had a career, a house, a good wife, and I gave it all up for a woman I later found out was poisoning me to get my house and life insurance. I'm a loser, and it's too late to start over and have a good life. I had my shot. I blew it.”
“If you're so convinced, why are you here? This way station is for uncertain suicides who may change their minds. I weigh your true motivation and your chances above. You either continue into the greyness of the lost, ahead there, or I turn you back toward life.”
“What happens in the greyness?”
Susan shrugged. “What happens in life?”
“If I go back, will I still have liver damage?”
“Yes, no more drinking.”
“I'll go back if I can drink.”
“Always a haggler,” Susan muttered. ”I don't make bargains. I don't care if you go back or not.”
“Then why are you the gatekeeper? Why don't you get a life and let people decide for themselves whether to go on or back?”
“Silence, idiot. We're talking about your destiny, not mine. By the way, whatever happened to the wife you abandoned for that trashy bitch?”
“I don't know, we lost touch.” Susan could see that he was lying. Who would lie to the gatekeeper? He knew she had been lost in the Pacific off Catalina. Her body had not been found. Well, that's because I'm still sort of using it, isn't it? She perceived he was afraid that she would hold him responsible for her own death. She perceived that he felt responsible. It was a satisfying moment.
“Hmm,” she said. “Anyway, here's your riddle.” She gave him the one that had sent Cleopatra to her doom.
“I don't know,” he said. “What if I can't answer it?”
“You can't stand there forever. Shit or get off the pot.” She motioned toward the grey path.
“I don't know if I want the grey path. I didn't actually kill myself. It was an accidental overdose.”
“If you know that that degree of self-abuse is deadly, yet you continue to do it, you can't claim it was an accident. In fact, according to my records, on the night in question, your words were something to the effect of, Fuck it, I don't care if I die.”
“But that's not the same as intentionally killing myself,” he argued.
“I had to marry a lawyer,” Susan said.
”What?”
“Nothing. So you're claiming that people who don't care if they die, and then die playing what amounts to a version of Russian roulette are not suicides? I beg to differ. Anyway, why are you arguing. You wanted to die, here you are. Now you want to go back?”
“Well, on my own terms.”
“Right, the liver damage. Booze, coke, diet pills and arsenic will do that to you. Nothing doing. You go back, it's orange juice, straight. Plus, you die in an old age home and nobody ever visits.”
“Do I choose?”
“If you answer the riddle, you choose. If you don't answer, it's up to me. The grey road isn't so bad. Just pretend you're in England.”
“How long do I stay there?”
“Until your karma releases you or until the savior comes. What was your religion?”
“I'm a secular Jew.”
“Tough luck.”
“What? The afterlife is anti-semitic?”
“No, you stay until you memorize the Torah.”
“I went to Hebrew school.”
”Doesn't count.”
“Why'd you give me such a hard riddle? I never even saw an ibis.”
“Yes, you did. You saw them in the nature preserve in the Bahamas where you took your wife for your tenth anniversary.”
”I don't remember.”
”Why the hell not?”
”I was still in love with Susan then. I only had eyes for her. Cleopatra herself could have gone by on a barge full of naked slaves, and I would not have noticed.”
Susan saw, with surprise, that he was telling the truth. So, he had not been cheating before the trashy bitch?
“If you only had eyes for your wife, why'd you leave her?”
”I got middle aged and stupid. I thought I had a chance to be young again. I thought Susan was too accepting of aging. She was happy for us to grow old together.” He winced. “I was afraid to grow old at all. And Veronica was beautiful, and young, and pure, so I thought. Ironic, isn't it? Now I'm prematurely aged. I'm forty-six and I have the body of an eighty-year-old. When I had Susan, I had my health, wealth, career. I had everything. I'm a fool. Do whatever you want with me.” He started to cry.
Susan was in a quandary. She couldn't send him back if he wanted to die. He had to want to live. But she was not under any obligation to make him want to live, either. It was nothing to her either way. She would not benefit from his wandering on the lost road. She would not be reunited with him in the world above, or gain anything from his return. At this point, after all the suffering she'd seen, she had a hard time giving a shit about his self-induced problems.
She decided to show herself to him. She was not sure she was going to forgive him. He had been pretty hard-nosed about the divorce settlement.
She stepped from behind the shadow of the high desk, and said, “Bill, it's me.”
Bill eyes popped open and then his mouth fell open as well. Saliva pooled on his lower lip. She hated that expression. It made him look as if he'd had a stroke.
“Susan? What are you doing here?”
“Is that all you have to say after all the water under the bridge between us, pun damn well intended? What am I doing here? Are you glad to see me?”
“It's not really you. It's a cruel trick, a visual riddle. Somebody's having a good time with my misfortune. This must be hell. Well, I'm not going to be toyed with. I don't care about the world or your stupid unsolvable riddles, whoever you are. I'll take the lost road.”
He marched past her and set out into the mists. Soon he dissolved in the perpetual twilight.
““Well, I didn't expect that.” Susan climbed back up into the high seat. “You took the lost road a long time ago, buddy,” she called after him, into the greyness.
“Next!”
Next to come along were two young people. She had never had two come at once before. Even the young Romeos and Juliets came individually. Their reasons for killing themselves were always different enough, no matter how close they felt their minds were linked.
“Well, what's your story?” She asked the two, a ten-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy.
They stared at her without answering, and Susan knew who they were. The boy put his thumb in his mouth, and the girl spoke.
“We would have been your children.”
Susan suddenly felt as if a great thunderbolt sliced her soul in two, half clutching the world above, half desiring to remain here, joined by the slenderest electric current. She felt love and protectiveness for these children, where before she had felt nothing.
“What's that you're carrying?” She asked the girl. It was a plaque of some kind.
“Nothing,” the girl said.
“You could win it for employee of the year,” the boy said, helpfully. The girl frowned and looked worried, as if a mere plaque could not be inducement enough to return to the world.
Susan looked into the grey mist, but Bill was gone. She considered entering the mist to retrieve him, but none had emerged from there that she had ever seen. Still, she was the gatekeeper. She would emerge. She drew a breath to begin.
“Stop,” the girl said. Susan looked wordlessly at her, and understood.
“He was my only love,” Susan said.
“There's more than one fish in the sea,” the boy said, and the girl whacked his arm. “That was insensitive.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, eyes down, digging his foot toe first in the insubstantial ground. Susan marveled at the little shoe. Did I pick those out? She wondered, and became confused. She had never wanted children, or cared for light-up sneakers.
“Who would want me? Penniless, overweight, critical of everyone and everything. I've actually enjoyed sending people to their doom.” But while she spoke, she was checking the children for any resemblance. The girl, definitely, but the boy had her complexion. She frowned.
“It's not real,” the boy said, and the girl whacked him again.
“It is and it isn't,” the girl said. “They actually send themselves. The riddles don't have much to do with it. It's just a place to stop and think.”
“Why are the two of you here? You haven't killed yourselves, have you?”
“We have not been born,” the girl said. She studied Susan, and elbowed the boy in the ribs.
“We wanted to see you before we go,” the boy said, gesturing with his chin toward the grey road.
The girl gripped his hand. “We can't wait forever.”
“No!”
“But we cannot be born. If you choose to remain here, we must go.” The girl's voice was calculating.
“We could try a different mother,” the boy said, again trying to be helpful. The girl rolled her eyes at him. “We wouldn't look the same,” she said to the boy, frowning severely.
“I don't care,” he said. “She doesn't want us.”
“We wouldn't be together,” the girl said.
The boy distinctly looked as if about to say he didn't care again, but he pressed his lips together and looked away.
Susan fixed her eyes on the girl. The girl met her stare, but wavered, narrowing her eyes. “Come clean,” Susan growled, narrowing her own eyes.
“Okay,” the girl agreed, not pleasantly. “We're not your children. I am you when you were a kid. I can't believe I turned into you. I was never a quitter. You are wrecking my future.”
”It's my future to wreck.”
“I'm ten years old,” the girl said. “I don't deserve to die at the bottom of the ocean and spent eternity behind a desk asking dead people riddles.”
”No, of course not,” Susan said, confused again. “You deserve a long, happy life.” And then what? Susan was confused again.
“Then why are you doing it?”
“But you're me,” Susan's voice was like a creaking in the wind. Memories rushed in and pooled around her. She loved this girl, this confident child who had baked cakes and played with Barbies and been good at math and spelling and volleyball. When had she stopped loving her?
“Who is he?” She asked, gesturing toward the boy.
“Who do you think?” The girl gave her the are-you-dumb look that ten year olds specialize in.
“Tell me his name.”
The girl did not answer.
Susan felt such yearning that her painful heart cracked like an egg, and she slipped away from the desk, away from the dusty volumes, away from the mysterious children. She regretted for an instant not being able to take copies of all those riddles with her, she had never had time to sit and read them, there were always people, more people, but it was too late now, she was sailing over sunlit seas. She closed her eyes and woke swimming as hard as she could. The water was cold, but it warmed nearer the surface.
She swam toward a tiny island she could hardly see, not much more than a weedy sandbar edged by rocks. The current had taken her there.
She reached the rocks, and stood in knee-deep water, panting with painful lungs. On the boat she had pretended to fall from, they were lowering a dinghy and making hand gestures for her to remain where she was. Where had the years gone? What about Bill?
“He will die in four years. You don't have to see him ever again.” It was the girl's voice.
______________________
For the first year that she was back, she did not try to contact Bill. She got an apartment, and a job with a cellular phone company. She had dinner now and then with one of her neighbors, a detective, divorced, but she didn't feel any spark. She took up yoga and lost weight. She inherited some money from an uncle, and thought about opening a boutique. Office work was too dry for her, although she was good at it, and she appreciated the security, after the divorce. A little boutique of her own filled with beautiful things was just what she would enjoy. She planned it during her coffee breaks.
Then, at Christmas, she saw Bill in a department store, with his new woman. The same store they had always shopped in. The woman who would poison him. Susan hid behind a display of trees decorated with toys, because Bill did not like Christmas trees. Little could she have known that the new woman did like Christmas trees, and besotted Bill would follow after. She christened her “Jane” and Bill “Tarzan,” for his apelike leer. As they approached the display, she was forced to crouch behind and say, “ooh ooh,” like Cheetah.
“Oh, honey, I think you set one of the toys off. There must be a toy monkey.”
“It wasn't hooting at me,” Tarzan said in that lascivious voice that always embarrassed Susan. He was probably staring at Jane's chest. Susan hoped there was a toy monkey on the tree. Not that her ex would notice. He was already trying to lead Jane away, like you might lead a poodle. Jane sniffed at every tchotchke before going. Susan straightened her cramped knees with as much dignity as possible once they had gone, and finished her shopping. What had she ever seen in that jerk? Had she chosen him, or had she merely believed they were meant for each other? The things we take for granted. Fourteen years of not asking the right question.
But the idea was in her head, and she called Bill at work one morning a few weeks later, yearning vaguely for some sort of neat ending, and feeling that it was now or never. She might even be able to warn him. She got his secretary. She was put on hold, and then informed that he was not in.
“When will he be back?”
“I don't know.”
Susan understood. What could she say? Tell him no hard feelings? She had plenty of hard feelings.
”Tell him I called.” She didn't leave her number. At the very least, she would ruin his afternoon. He would spend the rest of it obsessing over the reason for her call. That put her in a better frame of mind. She had spent Christmas alone, and New Year's at a yoga party that was 90% women. She skipped home that evening, whistling, and stopped in at the coffee shop for a frozen drink.
A female voice, that she did not at first recognize, said, “Brush your hair.” Susan went to the rest room, brushed, then came back outside and sat down.
A man in a flannel shirt and jeans sat down at the next table and smiled at Susan. Susan smiled back, although he seemed a bit young. I am so out of practice, she was thinking. She found herself looking at the book in his hands.
He followed her gaze, and said, “As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Each wife had seven sacks, each sack had seven cats, each cat had seven kits. How many were going to St. Ives?”
Susan's mouth fell open. She hurried to close it, swallowing saliva. ”I know you want me to say one, but it's not one is it? It's impossible to know which direction they were walking. Seven wives with all that baggage. There is no correct answer.”
“Riddles aren't about answers,” he said, smiling. “They're about play, about the play of the mind in the universe, about living in uncertainty.”
“Play?”
He opened the book and read her another: What goes up, but at the same time goes down, up to the sky and down to the ground?
“What?”
”You aren't even trying to guess.”
“Hm, what goes up, but at the same time goes down? My checking account?” Susan asked.
He laughed. “My name is Martin.”
”What is the answer?”
“A see-saw.”
Martin, on closer inspection, did not seem as young as he had at first. There were lines on his boyish face, and his hair, the same sandy color as Susan's, had more white than hers did.
“Do you have children?” she asked him.
“No, but I work as a school psychologist, so I do have children, in a way. I'm getting my Ph.D.,” he gestured with the riddle book. “I'd like to be in private practice, but you get used to the security of a regular paycheck.”
Susan understood. “My dream is to quit my job and open a boutique,” she said.
“That doesn't sound so risky.”
“Other people's dreams never do.”
Reader, you can guess the end of this story. Recall that time is deceptive in the afterlife. All one, it can seem to move forward or back or pool, like memory, and what we know in the unspoken corners of our hearts is part of everyday reality there. Susan had begun upon the grey road, and she would have taken Martin's happiness with her, as well as her own. Instead, through her experience on the doorstep of the next world, she re-made the connection with her limitless self, and has become the person she always wanted to be
A.M. Amodeo is a writer living in upstate NY. Her work has also appeared in The Beat, Hobart, Chronogram and The Mountain Record. She blogs at Zen of Writing.