Catch and Release

Without a Body

What’s going on?

I’m in my own house minding my own business, and he motions me over. That Manny, whatever his name is, but one thing I’m sure of is it’s not Manny. And that Eva of his, her name’s not Eva.

Is she even his mother? She’s old enough to be his mother, but the way they act, the way they look at each other, you’d think they were something else. Let me put it this way, it’s not something I want to say.

He calls me over, this Manny, like you’d signal for a waitress. In here, he says. Something you should see, he says. Stand here, he says. And there’s this plastic sheet spread on the carpet, like the painters put down.

I ask him what’s this, what’s it doing here. Just wait a minute, he says, and he takes this thing out of his pocket, and I’m starting to ask him what it is, and he’s saying something, who knows what, and he reaches out with the thing and before I can move he touches my neck with it, and the next thing I know I’m up in the air.

Will somebody please tell me what is going on?

I am up in the air. I am floating. One minute I’ve got both feet on the floor and the next minute I’m up at the ceiling, and...

Oh.

I’m both places. I’m up here, but I’m down there, too. Lying down, on this plastic sheet on the floor. That’s my body down there, but up here is — what?

Me. Me, myself. Irene Silverman, the same person, no different, but without a body. It’s down there. I’m up here.

It. I.

What am I, dead?

I must be dead. I don’t know what he touched me with, but it was like sticking your finger in a light socket. It gave me such a shock that it shocked me right out of my body. Like being struck by lightning, and I’m dead, and there’s my body down there.

No, wait a minute. I’m not dead. I’m out of my body, I’m here and it’s there, but it’s still alive. I could go back into my body and sit up and walk and talk.

When I’m ready.

“What are you waiting for?”

It’s her, the mother.

“Go ahead, honey. Finish what you started.”

He kneels down next to me.

“The gloves, honey.”

He puts on a pair of clear plastic gloves. Everybody wears them lately. Nurses, doctors. The girl who cleans your teeth. The clerk in the food market. In the market it’s a sanitary thing, but the others are afraid of AIDS.

So what’s with the gloves? I’m an eighty-two year old woman, does he think I’ve got AIDS?

Oh.

His hands are on my throat.

It looks so small, my body.

I was always short, but a person shrinks. You get used to being short, and then you get shorter.

Some system. What genius thought it up?

I guess I’m dead now. I feel the same way, floating up above everything, as I did before he strangled me. But my body was alive then, and he choked me, and the life went out of me like a cork coming out of a bottle. But not champagne, it didn’t pop. It just came out.

So where’s the white light? Where’s the long tunnel with the white light at the end of it? Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?

You die and there’s this tunnel and this white light, and every dead person who ever loved you is waiting to welcome you. And so on. People come back and tell about it. It was beautiful, they say, and I wanted to stay, they say, but it wasn’t my time.

Very nice, I used to think, but personally I’d rather go to Paris.

But did somebody just make that up? If I’m dead, what happened to the tunnel? Where the hell is the light?

Maybe that only happens if you die and come back. Maybe when you die for keeps, that’s it. Lights out, end of story.

So what am I doing here?

All wrapped up.

They wrap me in the plastic sheet, stuff me in garbage bags, seal me in with duct tape. What am I, meat for the freezer?

“No body,” she’s saying. “No DNA, nothing. No trace evidence. She’ll disappear and they’ll never even know what happened to her. And if they suspect, so what?”

I’m watching while they put me in a big duffle bag and carry me out to their car. There’s another sheet of clear plastic lining the trunk, and they lay the duffle bag on top of it. The trunk lid’s electric, you don’t have to slam it. You close it gently and it shuts itself the rest of the way automatically.

They get in the car, and it pulls away, and I’m floating in the air watching them drive off with my body. And the next thing I know they’re getting out of the car at the edge of a field. The trunk’s open and he’s carrying the duffle bag.

There’s a hole in the earth. They dug the grave ahead of time. I was walking around, having my breakfast, reading the paper, and all along there was a hole in the earth, waiting for me.

The duffle bag goes in the hole. And the plastic sheet from the trunk of the car. And the gloves he wore.

The grave’s filled in now. “She’s gone forever,” she says. “They’ll never find her.”

They never do.

Time is different when you’re dead. You’re someplace and then you’re not.

I’m around when they get arrested. And then I’m all over the place. People are talking about me — my friends, people from the neighborhood — and I’m there.

But I don’t really care what they say. I stop listening, and I’m somewhere else.

I’m at the trial. Powerful circumstantial evidence, the prosecutor says. He reads her notebook, and it’s all there. Everything they did, so they could steal my house. Who kills a person so they can steal her house?

Nothing but circumstantial evidence, the defense says. How can you convict without a body? How can you know for certain that a crime has been committed?

But I have a body. Listen to me. If I could talk to you I could tell you where to look. If I could take your hand I could lead you there.

Guilty, the verdict comes, guilty of everything. Oh, she can’t believe it. How could they convict her? There’s no body, there’s no DNA, so how on earth could they convict her?

Over a hundred years for each of them. I’m here, floating, seeing, hearing, and the sentence comes and the gavel comes down and they take them away in handcuffs.

It feels like I’ve been holding my breath all this time. That’s ridiculous, I don’t have lungs to hold a breath with, but that’s how it feels. And now I let it out, this breath that I haven’t been holding.

And now? They’re done, they’ll be in prison as long as they live, but what about me? Am I stuck with these two forever?

Oh.

Oh, there’s the tunnel. It’s like a whirlpool, an eddy, but not down. Through, it goes through. And there’s the white light they all talked about, and it’s so bright. I never saw anything so bright. It should hurt your eyes, but it doesn’t.

It’s beautiful. And, oh my God, look who’s here...

I have to say it was worth the wait.