All the Ways the World Can End Read online

  Then we were in front of my house and the light was on in the den, which meant that Dad was still awake and alive and I hated to use him or his illness as a way to get close to Oscar, but I needed to say something to keep us both there for a moment longer.

  “Thanks again for getting that chair for my dad.”

  “Sure,” said Oscar. “He’s a really sweet guy. I’m sorry that he’s … that you’re all…”

  I nodded into the silence. “Yeah. It’s okay. I’m just really glad that you got to meet him.”

  “Me too. Me too.”

  We stared out the windshield a few eons more. Then Oscar said, “Oh!”

  He pulled out a piece of paper from his sweatshirt pocket that had been folded so many times it was as small as a quarter. “I started this last week, but it’s not really done. It’s a list. Because you had a list and I thought, I like lists. Which, yeah. I mean, everyone likes lists. But whatever. Don’t read it now. Just when you have a minute. If you want.”

  He handed me the note. On the outside, it said in small block letters, IK BELOOF.

  “In Dutch it means I promise,” he said, yanking at a few curls so they covered his eyes more. “I just thought. I don’t know if you remembered that I made you promise in the lighting booth to stop doing that punching thing to yourself, and you wanted me to promise to stop being a pompous ass.”

  “I didn’t say that, did I?”

  “No, but it was implied,” he said. “And well deserved.”

  “I don’t know about that. But I really appreciate that you beloofed me. Or I beloofed you? That sounds weird.”

  “Yeah.” He laughed. “I like it.”

  I wanted Oscar to lean over and grab me and kiss me and marry me and vow to never leave me. But he didn’t. And I’d already mashed my face into an unwilling partner’s too recently and wrongly. So I settled for a lurchy hug that was more like a collision of my forehead and his shoulder, and then I opened the truck’s door and blurted, “I had a really fun time and I didn’t think I would or I didn’t know what to think but I did and I hope you don’t move away unless you want to in which case goodbye and thank you so much.”

  “Thank you,” he said slowly. “And what if we hung out again soon?”

  “Yes please!” I chirped, closing the door. Then he waited in the idling truck while I went inside my house.

  “Hello?” I whispered. The den light was on, and the TV. But Dad was actually asleep in his rocket-ship bed. So was Mom, on the couch next to him.

  It was both beautiful and horrible to watch them drifting in some other state. There was something distinctly different about how they were breathing. Mom’s inhales and exhales were steady and efficient, like a steam engine. Dad, on the other hand, sucked in air erratically. As if he’d forgotten he needed more air. Then he let it out so slowly while he sank back into his pillow.

  On the TV, a late-night talk-show host was laughing about a wild turkey that walked into a strip club in Indiana and started dancing. True story.

  Also true: everything was ending and beginning at the same time.

  Mysteries of the Universe (and I Like Them That Way)

  by Oscar Birnbaum

  The meaning of life

  Is time an illusion, a dimension, or an invention?

  Gladiator shoes

  How some people are born in Westchester, NY, and some people are born in Katmandu and the kid in Westchester thinks he needs more

  Skunk spray

  Unconditional love—does it really exist?

  That weird explosion in Siberia in 1908 that was maybe a meteor but also could’ve been a UFO

  Grand Unification Theory: Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg—can’t we find a way that they fit together?

  The lure of Justin Bieber

  What exactly is a soul and how does it continue after our bodies die?

  Seriously. Bieber?

  Chapter 22

  WADING

  Usually when we went up to Wahonsett Bay, we stayed with Dad’s sister, Aunt Josie, about twenty minutes away from the beach. She was a few years younger than Dad and single, unless I counted her five shih tzus. She did. She always said “we” when she talked about herself. As in, “We can’t believe you’re not staying with us this time.”

  Mom’s colleague had offered us her cabin right on the water. No one was using it the first week in June and it had a ramp leading down to her dock, so we could bring Dad’s newly rented wheelchair. We’d never gone this early in the season. The water would probably be freezing. It actually wasn’t officially summer yet—at least not by anyone else’s calendar. Emma had taken off the end of her semester, Mom had gotten a leave of absence, and I was bringing two essays and a take-home quiz on this little trip.

  Still, the timing felt right. We really didn’t know if Dad would be here through the whole summer, though no one would say that out loud.

  Usually when we went up to Wahonsett Bay, the car ride took three and a half hours at most. Emma and I loaded up on watermelon-flavored gum and we played celebrity trivia games since the radio was busted in the station wagon. But this time, Emma was at the steering wheel so Mom could nap and we had to make a bunch of stops. Dad kept on saying he needed to stretch, which meant we were pulling over and Mom lifted him out of the front seat like a grocery bag full of eggs. Once he got up, he felt better, but he was so winded that they just sort of huddled on the road’s shoulder. Then Mom rotated his doughnut pillow and put him back in the Jolly Roger for another twenty miles or so.

  (The Batmobile sat in our driveway, collecting bird poop. A month lease was a lot longer than it seemed when Mom first brought it home.)

  Usually when we went up to Wahonsett Bay, all four of us stripped down to our bathing suits before our feet even touched the hot sand. We slogged through the tangles of seaweed and splashed wildly. Then raced out to the floating waterslide by the line of green buoys, teeth chattering, goose bumping, yodeling loud enough for our voices to bounce off the lighthouse down the shoreline.

  “Suits on?” Dad said as we rolled into the gravelly driveway of the strange-looking cabin.

  “Maybe once we’re settled in,” Emma answered.

  We couldn’t pretend this was just another visit to Wahonsett Bay.

  By the time we got in, it was late afternoon. Mom eased Dad from the passenger seat to the wheelchair and zoomed him straight onto the screened-in back porch, facing the water. The house was built on stilts and inside it smelled like firewood and wet dog. Mom, Emma, and I started opening up all the doors and windows. There were bowls of sand dollars and seashells on every shelf and a clock that ticked loudly, marking the time and also the tides. Someone in their family was obviously into surfing because there were three boards propped up in the basement and lots of framed photographs of waves. I was grateful it was all so unfamiliar. I also loved the wooden sign over the screen door that read A DISASTER AT SEA CAN RUIN YOUR WHOLE DAY.

  Dad sat so close to the screen that his nose nearly touched it. He closed his eyes and the rest of his face opened into a huge smile. He looked so relieved. I watched him for a few minutes while I tried to take in big whiffs of saltwater and dune grass. Just past the first sandbar was where I went clamming with Dad when I was ten years old. It was supposed to be just a little stroll, but Dad pointed out all the little bubbles rising up below us and we started digging with our bare hands. It was so rough and exciting; seizing those scratchy shells and feeling the clams burrow inside. Dad went back for a big pot and we stayed out there for hours scavenging. In the end, I couldn’t stomach the idea of boiling them and dipping their meaty insides in melted butter, so Dad helped me toss them back into the water. All we brought home from our expedition was a pot caked in seaweed and two wild sunburns.

  “You want something to drink? How about a cracker? You feel cold? Too hot?” Emma kept tossing questions at Dad while we bustled around the house. It was small and busy, with thick wooden slabs for walls. There was a half-finished jigsa
w puzzle set out on the coffee table, a stack of island maps on the kitchen counter, and lots of shag carpeting that smelled faintly moldy.

  Dad said, “I don’t need a thing, but I am heading out to the dock. Who’s coming with me?”

  Emma and Mom were setting up the daybed for Dad and adding a special contoured mattress pad. Mom said, “Join you in a sec. Lenny, you want to head down? The brake is just over the left wheel.”

  “That’s okay,” said Dad. “I think I can walk.”

  “You don’t need to,” said Emma.

  Dad nodded at me. “Lenny and I got this.” I was honored and terrified at once. I watched carefully as Emma cupped her hands under his armpits like we’d been taught by Frances, the nurse who came to our house once a week.

  “Who’s a rock star?” Emma murmured.

  “I’m a rock star,” Dad answered. She transferred him to me one pit at a time and I couldn’t believe how flimsy his arms were. It felt like I was trying to hold up a marionette with no strings. His feet did a little shuffly dance before finding their place on the ground. I swallowed hard.

  “You ready?” I asked, more for myself than him. Instead of speaking, Dad threaded his arm through mine and I felt his skin, warm and soft. The screen door slammed behind us as we started down the ramp.

  “Maybe I’ll follow you with the chair in case you decide for the way back…” Mom called after us. I didn’t answer and neither did Dad. We were focusing on our feet next to each other. Lifting and stepping. Lifting and stepping. We had no shoes on. Nothing separating our toes from the dock’s planks except a sliver of air as we inched forward.

  It took 238 steps to get to the edge of the dock. We were just three houses away from the beach entrance and the floating slide. I saw a few youngish families there. Tiny bodies zipping down with a splash and sand castles being stomped by a pudgy toddler. One guy with a beard and a loud hairy laugh cracking himself up with stories in between swigs of Pabst. He’s the one who looked up and waved at us.

  “Ahoy!” he called.

  Dad waved back. I knew he couldn’t summon that big a voice so I called, “Thar she blows!”

  Pabstman thought that was hilarious. I was glad we weren’t totally alone anymore. “See? You make friends wherever you go,” said Dad.

  Emma came down to the dock with two glasses of ginger ale and a long, flat pillow. Together we lowered Dad down onto it. I sat next to him.

  Our feet just touched the water; that first moment of skin contact so cold I hiccupped. Dad jolted too, then laughed a little.

  “Gets me every time,” he said. The words “every time” felt purposeful and poetic. I’d been in that salty water each summer for as long as I could remember. I’d peed in that water, cried in that water, learned how to hold my breath and dunk in that water. It was a third of a mile from the edge of the red rocks to the lighthouse, and Dad swam all the way across and back at least once a day. Dad’s strokes were long and deliberate. He never rushed when he was in the water. He scooped out palmfuls of water as he glided through, his mouth opening for air in small, efficient sips. His head, his heart, his arms all moving nimbly in the same direction.

  When I was six, I started trailing behind him in my pink inflatable seahorse. Then I upgraded to an inner tube when I was eight. Just before I turned eleven, I swam the whole way with him. He lifted me over his head and carried me like a trophy down the street all the way to the snack shack, where we got onion rings and push pops to celebrate.

  The water was cool and quiet today. Strands of seaweed branching out like capillaries. Our toes bobbed, white and willowy.

  Mom said, “Emma and I were going to just run down to Westerly’s and get some eggs, salad stuff, you know. Any requests?”

  Dad shook his head, then looked at me so I could do the same. I still had the urge to say, Please don’t leave us alone. This could be his last afternoon on the dock. His last sip of ginger ale. His last breath.

  I let the words dissolve on my tongue without voicing them, though. I didn’t want to ruin the calm we had, at least in this moment.

  “Okay, then,” said Mom. “Don’t stay out past curfew.”

  Dad winked at her, patted my knee, and tipped his head up toward the hazy sun. I heard Mom retreating to the house, then the Jolly Roger pulling out of the driveway.

  “Hey, Madam Osprey got here before us,” Dad said.

  The snack shack had a small platform on its roof and every summer a family of ospreys made a huge nest there. The mama was standing up large and in charge, with her bright white chest puffed out as she sounded her whistley alarm. The kids in the beer-club day care on the beach were playing tag and shrieking. And in the distance, a motorboat skidded and snorted, churning up sea foam. There was so much life and noise all around us that I’d never appreciated before.

  We sat there. Watching, listening. The water lapping at our heels and slowly receding. Leaving our toes out in the breeze.

  “I guess this takes longer than we thought, huh?” Dad said.

  “What does?”

  “Dying.”

  I sucked in my breath so fast. I didn’t dare let it out.

  “You’re going to want to exhale at some point,” said Dad with a little laugh. I didn’t know what to say. It felt so raw and tender sitting here, like we were both covered in new skin.

  “Lenny,” said Dad, “it hurts a lot less when we can go through this together.”

  “Yeah?” I squeaked.

  “Yeah.” He patted my knee again. “Do you want to ask me any questions?” I was panting and chewing my bottom lip so hard. I didn’t know if I could make my way to forming complete sentences.

  “Um, I guess … is there anything you want to do? Or see?”

  “I’m doing it,” he said.

  I nodded, letting a tear fall.

  “How about you?” he asked. “Is there stuff you want to do?”

  “So much. Go to college. Fall in love. Take a kickboxing class. Or maybe pottery. Do some sort of backpacking thing through Israel or India or I guess any place that starts with an I.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Dad.

  “Yeah, but I want to do them with you here.”

  “Well, I’ll be here.” He tapped lightly with one finger just below my clavicle. “Also here.” This time, tapping on my head. “And most of all, here.” Three taps on my nose, because I used to blame him for it being so big.

  “I guess I have a question.” I gulped. “What does it feel like?”

  My father smiled. And swallowed. And breathed. And then he said, “It feels like wading.”

  “Waiting?”

  “Yeah. That too.”

  So we waited. For the osprey to gather all her chicks and the Pabstman to open another can and the sun to start melting into its orange evening gown. We waited, sitting on the edge of the dock. On the edge of whatever was next.

  “I think the tide’s going out,” I said at some point.

  “I think you’re right,” answered Dad. I leaned forward instinctually, as if trying to get it to roll back in.

  Dad put his right palm on top of my left hand. “Don’t worry, Len,” he said. “It’ll come back.”

  All the Ways We’re Just Beginning

  Azuay stubfoot toad (labeled extinct in 2002) just found in Ecuador

  the mayor two towns over announced she used to be a guy

  new species of giant clam identified off Canadian coast

  three “super earths” spotted circling a dwarf star

  humanized yeast

  gravitational wave chirps

  Emma passed her freshman humanities course

  ocean thermal energy conversion

  lab-grown vagina (no joke)

  this new wheel drum they’re trying in South Africa that holds 13 gallons of clean water

  today is here

  tomorrow is pretty likely

  besides that it’s all just

  What.

  If.

&nbs
p; Thank you

  There are so many people to thank.

  Thank you thank you to my brilliant frienditor, Joy Peskin. I truly cannot thank you enough for finding this story with me and bringing it here to today. Thank you to Simon Boughton, Angie Chen, Grace Kendall, and Nicholas Henderson, who make FSG a beautiful place. Thank you to the distinguished Franck Goldberg, Nathaniel, and Madame Ginger. Thank you to my incredible agent, Mollie Glick, along with Joy Fowlkes, Heidi Gall, and all the awesome people at Foundry Media. Thank you to Andrew Arnold for the best cover art in the history of covers or art.

  But wait, there’s more.

  Thank you to all of my inspiring muses: Al Gore, Stephen Hawking, Dr. Samantha Karpel, Dr. Bhuvanesh Singh, Joselin Linder and the Tigers, Molly Lyons, Kimmi Auerbach Berlin, Nicole Bokat, Merideth Finn, Susan Shapiro, V.C. “Boom Boom” Chickering, Susanna Eisenstein, Marvi Lacar, Gabra Zackman, Sara Moss, Martha Barylick, and the great minds of Studio B and Village Coffee.

  Thank you to my mom, Joan Lear Sher, and my dad, Roger Evan Sher, for giving me a song to sing each day and making me believe in what if’s. Thank you to my dear sister, Elisabeth, and brother, Jon, and the cast of Kinesthesia, circa 1990.

  Thank you again and always to my delicious husband, Jason, and our three ridiculously awesome kids—Sonya, Zev, and Samson.

  And to you, dear reader, for going along for this ride.

  Wheeeeeeeee!

  Thank you.

  About the Author

  Abby Sher is a writer and performer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Self, Jane, Elle, and Redbook. She is also the author of Breaking Free: True Stories of Girls Who Escaped Modern Slavery, Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn’t Stop Praying, and Kissing Snowflakes. Abby has written and performed for the Second City in Chicago and the Upright Citizen’s Brigade and Magnet Theater in New York. She lives in New Jersey with her family. You can sign up for email updates here.

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