Anna in the Afterlife Read Free

mine of stories about their father. She always took Anna by surprise in that sly way she had, when she came up behind her and said, “Do you remember the time?” Anna never remembered Gert’s memories; she was sure her sister made them up. This one was a dirty story. Their father, with all his straining and trying to move his bowels, had terrible hemorrhoids. One night the doctor sent Anna’s mother to the drugstore with a little slip of paper. “My husband is so sick,” she told the druggist. “He can’t stand the pain. The doctor said I have to get this…” and she handed him the scrap of paper.
    â€œOh, you can’t want that!” the druggist said. “You must be mistaken.”
    â€œYes, we have to have it, the doctor said we have to use it tonight!”
    If you use it tonight, you could end up killing him,” the druggist said. The instructions given Anna’s mother by the doctor were to bring home what the druggist gave her, fill it with ice and apply it to her husband’s private parts.
    â€œYou know what it was?” Gert challenged Anna. “It was a condom, Anna! Isn’t that a laugh? She was supposed to put ice in the condom! But the druggist thought it was for…you know what!”
    Very funny, Anna thought now, Gert with her condoms. Anna hadn’t even known the name for those things till a few years ago, from the talk shows talking about condoms all the time and should they be passed out to little children in schools. Even Abram, in all his years of being married to Anna, kept a box of them hidden under his socks and didn’t once say the word to her face.
    Now Gert was stroking the cheek of Anna’s handsome grandson, saying “Smooth, like a baby’s tushy.” Gert with her dirty mind—even at the side of a deathbed.
    Anna’s granddaughter, Bonnie, was holding Anna’s hand and singing to her, a beautiful song about white sands and gray sands. Danny, Janet’s husband, was standing over by the wall, reading the letter pasted up there from the mayor, congratulating Anna on reaching her ninetieth birthday. She noticed no one in the room was actually crying. Her family had no idea how long this death would take—it could test a person’s patience. Anna could see that her breath was coming in short, shallow gasps, with long intervals between. Her chest heaved, and then rested for many seconds. When the hospice nurse came in to check, she whispered to Anna’s family, “She’s having agonal breathing now.”
    Agonal , Anna thought. The last agony .
    But suddenly, Anna had a shock! The stage hands were wheeling in the tunnel, the famous tunnel she’d heard about on Oprah, the tunnel filled with all the people from the past who would be there to guide Anna into the next world. It looked a little like the Holland Tunnel, a long arc of white tiles (quite a few missing), and filled with stinking car exhaust. But it also had a McDonald’s in it, and a replica of P.S. 9, Anna’s elementary school, as well as the Ferris wheel from Coney Island. This was a major production. Anna was surprised anyone would go to so much trouble for her. She saw her first grade teacher wearing a big white feather in her hat (now maybe Anna could make up for an unforgivable grammatical error she had once made when meeting her teacher on the street), and there was her sister Ava carrying an Ebinger’s cake (to make up for all the unkindnesses she’d done Anna).
    That light at the end of the tunnel was too bright—and also in her eyes. But who was that tall figure with the unruly head of hair ambling toward her; who was that sweet-faced man, smiling that loving smile, holding out his hand to Anna? Her husband’s face materialized after all these lost years, his wonderful brow, his blue-green eyes, the smile that took her in and wrapped itself around her. She could feel her heart stopping at