If I Could Turn Back Time (24 page)

“What made you come over tonight?” I asked, reaching for his hand in the darkness.

“I just thought we didn’t get enough time together tonight. Something’s been feeling different. Distant.”

That was undeniable. I didn’t know what to say.

“I was sure you were going to break up with me.”

“Brendan…” What? I did. Once upon a time, I did. Had that fact bled through to him the way my eighteen-year-old thoughts were bleeding through to me? Did we have paths in our lives that were so firm that even deviating from them didn’t erase their shadows?

I resisted that idea. We had free will. At any given time we could change our path. I refused to believe that every change, every act of spontaneity we thought we had engaged in, had actually been planned out for us before we were ever born. What would be the point of life, then? To show we could ride on a roller coaster on its set path? There was no doubt where you’d be at the end of your two minutes on Space Mountain, but I had to believe that life was more fluid than that.

“I didn’t” was all I could say. “Did you want to?” The thought came to me, sudden and unwelcome, that maybe we were so destined to part ways that if one didn’t do it, the other would.

But he said, “No. It’s going to be hard enough with us going to different schools next year.”

I nodded, though he didn’t see me.

We lay there for a long time in the darkness.

“Brendan?”

“Ramie.”

I loved the way he said my name. Wow. Sometimes it really was the simple things. “How do you want to feel in five years?”

He turned to face me. “Huh?”

“You know, kind of where do you think you’ll be, but more
how do you want to feel
?”

“Happy? Happy, I guess.”

His answer fell a little short. Somehow in the haze of sexual bliss and the beautiful night, I had hoped he’d understand the question and have some great answer that told me, definitively, that I had fixed whatever was wrong in my life and could make it back to reality now.

“You guess?”

“Well, yeah. That’s a weird question. I want to feel warm if it’s cold outside, and cool if it’s hot outside, and satisfied if it’s time to eat, and, whatever. Happy.”

I sighed.

He gave a dry laugh. “What was the answer?”

“What?”

“I obviously got it wrong. What was the right answer?”

“There is no right answer.” I felt a little snappish and hoped I’d hidden that in my voice. “Your answer was fine.”

“All right.” His tone was long-suffering.

A few more minutes passed and I began to feel cold. And the grass was making me itch. And I kind of wanted to break up with Brendan. Something inside of me told me that we hadn’t broken up all those years ago just because of a little misunderstanding that could have been avoided by a hair more patience from me, and five more minutes’ time. It was a convenient excuse to hang my hat on, but it wasn’t really
the
issue.

The
issue, it felt at this moment, was that something here just wasn’t right.

I recalled what my father had said just a little while earlier.

It absolutely makes sense to check in and make sure that at
most
times you’re more happy than sad.

At this moment, I wasn’t. But what had I felt like over the past few months? I couldn’t really remember. I had to rely on that voice inside of me, the one I’d been thinking of as
her
. She was me, and she knew best.

I needed to think about this, because at the moment I wasn’t sure which, if any, of these feelings to take the most seriously, so instead I just sat up, brushed myself off, and said, “I need to go in. My parents are going to be up soon.”

He stood up, and reached a hand down for me, to help me up. As soon as I was standing, we both let go.

“Good night,” I said, and leaned in to give him a kiss on the cheek.

He touched my shoulder. “Night.”

“I’m glad you came,” I added, hoping to obscure, if not erase, the weird turn our mood had taken.

“Me too.” He laughed, and I didn’t know whether he was talking about the sex or making the trip over.

Didn’t matter. Either way, I was glad he came.

I just didn’t know if it was going to happen again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The night my father died I was home visiting from college. My mom had taken a trip with her sister to visit an elderly aunt who seemed on the edge.

Nothing unique happened that week, nothing to give me the sense of foreboding I later realized I’d had. Dad had gone about his business as usual: he went to work on time, came home on time, cleaned out the garage, and fixed the long-broken porch door as a surprise for my mom.

But a couple of times I’d heard him up in the wee hours of the morning, walking around. I’d call and ask if he was okay and he would say yes. Another time he took a late shower. I still don’t know why he did; it didn’t seem like something I should ask about later, but it was a detail that afterward wouldn’t fall into place.

One that almost did fall into place was a toothache he had that wouldn’t go away. Dad was not a fan of going to the doctor or dentist, so the fact that his tooth hurt enough to go was telling. Perhaps it was even more telling that they didn’t find anything wrong. No cavity, no abscess, none of the usual suspects. The dentist just told him to get some Sensodyne and not to worry about it.

I’d like to get mad about that, but he couldn’t have known what was going to happen.

So on the night in question, I went down River Road with Tanya to a party at someone’s parents’ giant house. We got bored early on, no one interesting there at all, and decided to go down to one of the old locks and have some wine. We took the remains of a bottle she was able to grab from the kitchen, and drove down one of the side roads to its dirt ending along the Potomac River. It was cold outside, but we had warm coats and the sky and stars and water were all so beautiful they were irresistible.

I think that, up to that point, it was one of the most beautiful nights of my life. We had a really good talk. We laughed about the antics we’d shared since meeting at thirteen, and cried about a few heartbreaks along the way (Brendan being one of them), and we talked about our futures and what we wanted. What we
really
wanted. We even went so far as to write our intentions down on a slip of paper—actually a duplicate check from my wallet—then crumpled them up, say a prayer, and toss them in the water to be carried off to their fruition.

Which, now that I think about it, they did. For the most part.

On the way back, I suggested she come to my house and we sleep over. I had a copy of
Grease
on VHS and we could go down to the rec room and watch it, singing along as loud as we wanted to because my dad, I told her, slept like the dead.

I said that.

We went to her house so she could pick up a few things, and I used the phone to try and call my dad. It was about eleven-thirty
P.M.
and I figured he’d be up watching reruns of
M*A*S*H
, as usual. He didn’t answer, and that was the last time in my life that I would get no answer on the phone from someone who should have been there and not feel a stab of worry. Or full-on dread.

Instead, Tanya and I ate a few Oreos and joked about the old pictures on her fridge, and then I tried him again.

This time when he didn’t answer, I was … not
worried
, but curious. “That’s weird,” I said, wondering uneasily if he was having another late-night shower and what that could possibly mean. Fever? He felt cold so he needed to warm up? I didn’t know.

“I’m sure everything’s fine,” Tanya said. “Look, why don’t I meet you there so I can take my car home in the morning and you won’t have to drive me? I’ll be like twenty minutes or so.”

“Perfect.” I went back out to my car, excited about the fun ahead. I wondered if we had Jiffy Pop. My mind really stuck on that. Jiffy Pop. An absolute necessity for a sleepover.

When I pulled into the driveway, I noticed that the light was flickering weirdly in the window, the way it did in the days before cable when the networks signed off for the night and the screen got fuzzy. Someone I knew used to call that “the ant races.” But why would the ant races be on in this day and age?

I went inside, and the minute I was in the front door, I saw it
was
the ant races. Everything seemed to go quiet. I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t have guessed what, and if pressed to try I wouldn’t have gotten it right, but I crept into the room and saw him.

He’d been on the sofa, sitting up, so he’d fallen over face forward. Later, I’d remember that and realize that it meant he’d had no pain. He hadn’t tried to stand up, it seemed, or go to the phone to call for help. He’d just been watching TV, a movie on the VCR (which had since ended, thus explaining the fuzz), and at some point something had happened and he’d just—gone.

But that wasn’t possible. In my mind, it wasn’t possible. I went behind him, as scared as a kid in a graveyard on Halloween night, and touched his back. “Daddy? Are you all right?”

But no one just fell asleep that way. No one dropped forward like that into a peaceful sleep. I knew it was too late, that he was gone.

I didn’t know what to do.

Anyone, even a five-year-old, would know to go to the phone and call 911, but I dithered for a moment. It felt like an hour. I was afraid to stay in the room with him. My father, whom I loved so much and who had always been the daddy teaching me to ride a bike or slipping me some cash when I was going out, my father, who had been the greatest dad there ever was, was terrifying to me.

I went upstairs to the phone in my room and dialed the three digits, 9-1-1, with trembling fingers. It felt like the phone rang forever, and then they actually put me on hold. What if I’d been reporting an intruder in the house? Would those moments, or minutes, or hours, or whatever they actually were, have meant the difference between life and death for me as well?

That’s what it felt like. Crazy as it sounds, knowing there was a dead body downstairs—no longer my father but “a dead body”—made me feel like a girl in a horror film, vainly trying to hide from the inevitable.

When I was finally able to report the emergency, in an inexplicably hushed voice, I went back downstairs but didn’t go back into that room. One glance told me what I already knew: that his position hadn’t changed. It wasn’t going to. Not under his own power.

So I went out front and sat on the cold cement front step and waited.

It was Tanya who showed up before the emergency crews. In the confusion, I’d forgotten she was coming, but I was so glad to see her. As she came toward the door, her gait slowed, and she asked, “What are you doing out here?”

That’s when I lost it. That’s when the numbness loosened and I burst into tears. “My f-f-father.” I gestured helplessly toward the door, but when she started to go, thinking I was ushering her in, I grabbed her arm. “He’s gone.”

She frowned. “What do you mean, he’s gone? His car is right there! What are you
talking
about?”

I sniffed. The tears felt icy on my face in the cold. “Dead,” I managed. “He’s dead. He’s … in there, but he’s dead. Oh, my god, I have to call my mother!”

Even in the dark I could see Tanya went pale. “Dead?”

I nodded, and then, as if timed perfectly in a play, the fire truck and ambulance and two police cars came screaming onto the street. We both stood there, watching, paralyzed, as they pulled up to the house and men in uniforms got out and came to the door.

The rest of the night is just flashes for me. The impression that the firemen in their boots and gear looked
huge
inside the house, like they were dolls from a different play set from us. The police asking the questions they must ask when a person dies alone: “Do you know when he was last alive?” “Do you know if anyone called or came by?” “Was he having any problems outside the home?”

No. No. No.

No.

We followed the ambulance to the hospital. It went slowly. Lights on, no siren. That’s when I learned that that means the person inside is deceased. There was paperwork to sign, questions unanswered, sadness insurmountable.

I called my mother from the hospital pay phone. Her aunt didn’t have caller ID, so I guess when the phone rang so late at night, she thought it was more than likely a nuisance call, maybe a wrong number. So I had the additional difficulty of making her understand it was me, as I broke into her fog of sleep, before going on to tell her that her husband was dead.

“Are you okay?” I asked idiotically.

“No.” Of course not. Of
course
not. But I just needed her to be Mommy and fix everything.

I needed her to be Mommy and him to be Daddy and I needed to go back to bed and forget this nightmare. If I was quick, if I could wake up quickly and then go back to sleep, I’d forget it all by morning.

But I couldn’t, because it wasn’t a dream, it was my new life. It shot me out of the cannon of childhood, straight into adulthood.

When it was all done and it was time to go, I hesitated, trapped by a strange feeling that I couldn’t leave him behind. Was he already in a drawer somewhere? Were those chilled? They must be. I hated the questions, I hated thinking about that stuff, but I couldn’t stop myself. There was so much that felt unfinished here. No, that felt
wrong
. Like a mistake. But it wasn’t a mistake. Even though I could feel that I was in shock, I could feel there was a shield up in me and that a lot of things were going to hit me later, I didn’t know what to do, except keep breathing and putting one foot in front of the other, and doing what I’d always done. I didn’t know anything else.

This me with no father was someone I’d never been before.

When Tanya and I pulled up to the house, she said, “Do you want to wait here while I go make sure everything’s locked up?”

“Wait here?” I echoed dumbly. “Then what?”

“We’ll go to my house. You can’t sleep here.”