If I Could Turn Back Time (7 page)

Somewhere along the way I’d stopped wanting to be the happy homemaker and had made a new decision to be strong in the workforce. I was proud of how I’d succeeded and there had been a lot of rewards along the way, but there had been some niggling doubts along that path as well. Lisa’s news wasn’t just a huge bolt from the blue for me, it was the icing on the top of a tall, precarious birthday cake I’d been assembling for thirty-eight years now.

If I had the chance, if I could turn back time and have the chance, would I do anything differently?

That was the question, obviously. That was the only question that made sense in this situation, no matter what
this situation
actually was. I was here for some reason, so if this was a fork in the road, and I had the chance to go a different direction, should I?

Did I
really
have the chance now?

It was a heady thought. I went to the bed, sat down, and picked up the phone receiver. Because that’s what eighteen-year-old me would have been doing, she would have been talking on the phone to Brendan. And didn’t it make sense for me to do what eighteen-year-old me would have been doing?

I still knew the number, having dialed it so many times.

So I picked up the phone and dialed.

It didn’t go through. There were three tones, then a recording telling me to “check the number and dial again.”

I’d forgotten that back in the day we didn’t need to include the area code.

I lifted the receiver again and started to dial. Then stopped. What was I actually going to say? What did thirty-eight-year-old me have to say to an eighteen-year-old guy?

Hey, kid, like cougars?

He’d think of the animal.

And he’d probably say yes because he really
did
like animals. He probably even actively liked cougars.

Brendan and I had been together on and off for two years, but in senior year we really started to get closer. I think the deep-known realization we both had that we were going to go our separate ways for college made us cling even harder to one another.

Then—oh, it made me sad just to think about it—then, as I’d thrown away the stuff of my childhood and packed up my stuff to go to college, I’d thrown him out, along with most of my pictures and souvenirs of junior high and high school dances and anything else that made me feel like a baby instead of the grown-up I’d really wanted to be. I’d thrown away the only tangible evidence I’d ever have of this life I’d grown out of.

I regretted
that
. Profoundly.

Not just Brendan, though ending things with him in such a harsh, abrupt manner was something I had come to regret more and more as I got older, more successful, and emptier. I’d been so determined to yank on my Big Girl Panties that I had thrown out all the stuff of childhood. Including my last days of it.

Including people.

That’s not a commentary on the life I eventually chose, because my life had been happy for the most part, but I definitely see that I lost my grip on the life I’d
had
at the time, a life I’d never be able to get back.

Except, well, now …

I picked up the phone and, without letting myself stop to think anymore, dialed his number.

CHAPTER SIX

Funny, the feeling of the squishy numbers, the sound of them, which mobile phones tried to emulate but, I realized now, missed the real mark on. If you pressed the 7, 8, and 9 together, then the 4, 5, and 6 together, then the 1, 2, and 3 together, and so on, you could play
Mary Had a Little Lamb
. You couldn’t do that with a cell phone.

Naturally, I did take a moment to do that. I also called the old weather number, which was 936- and whatever other digits you cared to add; then the time number, which was 844- and whatever other digits you wanted to press. Small things, but even hearing those old recorded voices—“At the tone, the time will be…” and “This is the Bell Atlantic weather service with today’s forecast…”—gave me a kick.

Done with my games, I finally dialed Brendan’s number, and held the phone to my ear. While it rang, I distracted my nerves by wondering why we’d ever decided tiny little flat phones, which obeyed the commands of your cheek and hung up on callers minutes before you realized you were talking to no one, were better than the old technology.

He picked up on the third ring, just as I was calculating that in two more rings it would have gone to the machine, which he probably didn’t have yet. “Hello?” No caller ID, no familiar greeting, no way to gauge mood.

“Hey,” I said, like I was trying my voice for the first time. That’s what I would have said then, so that’s what I said now.

“Hey.” His tone gave me a complete picture of him, smiling and relaxing his shoulders, maybe leaning against the kitchen doorframe, since the phone was tethered to the wall. No question at all who he was talking to. “You just about ready?”

Ready? Ready for what?

“What, uh…” I searched for a sufficiently generic question to prompt him with. “What did you have in mind?”

He gave a laugh. “Come on, Raim, we’re supposed to leave in like ten minutes and you’re
always
late. Hop to it. Get your ass in gear, I’ll be there in fifteen.”

“But—”

“Get moving!” He hung up.

Well, shit, what was I supposed to do now?

Plans, plans, plans, what plans did we have around my birthday, right before school ended? I just couldn’t remember. There were so many things going on at that time, graduation parties and so on.

I went out into the hall and down the stairs. “Mom?”

No answer.

I started down the stairwell and called again, my voice echoing in a way I would never have guessed would register yet another memory for me. “Mom!”

“What?” She was in the kitchen.

I went the rest of the way down, another six steps. That old green carpet was still on the stairs! Only now did I realize this was the first time I’d left my room since I’d been back, and somehow I hadn’t even thought to tour the house.

I touched the textured wallpaper behind the banister. Getting rid of it had been a good idea; it was tacky only a few years after it was “in,” yet it had lived a long obsolete life on the wall anyway. But at this moment I was glad to see it again. How many Christmases had I come down these stairs in the semidark of six
A.M.
, waiting while Dad got the Super 8 movie camera (and eventually camcorder) ready? I would inevitably be sent back up a few steps to start over when he forgot to put the light on … which he did pretty consistently.

I could almost feel the anticipation of Christmas, Easter, the first snow of winter, all of the wonderful things I came down this stairway to find. I found myself smiling as the anticipation rose, unbidden, in my chest, even though I was headed for none of that. What
would
I see? What forgotten corners of life were about to bloom before me in full
Wizard of Oz
Technicolor?

I got to the bottom step and put my bare foot on the cold slate floor of the front hall. It was always cold, I remembered suddenly. No matter the season. I loved that in summer; running in, wet from the sprinkler, squinting against the absence of sun, and slipping carefully across the cool floor to go to the kitchen and get a snack. Pop-Tarts from the cupboard, Jeno’s Pizza Rolls from the freezer, kiwifruit in the fridge, Mom got it all. Even Carnation Instant Breakfast, which I’d shake up every morning in a Tupperware cup with milk and drink with it still bubbly on top.

How had I not realized how
easy
I’d had it then?

Why had I always been in such a hurry to grow up?

Maybe now I had my chance to get at least a small snippet of those carefree times back. Maybe not Santa Claus; I was still on top of things enough to know that was a myth. But some of the last days of a teenage summer?

I could really use that now.

“So, Mom?” I went into the kitchen and smiled at the bright, sunny, familiar haven. I went straight to the cereal closet. Lucky Charms. “Yes!” I couldn’t help a private little fist pump. I mean, honestly, who doesn’t love sugary, colorful breakfast cereal? Especially when they have the metabolism to process it?

“What’s that?” my mom asked.

“I’m starving suddenly.” I passed her and went to the closet to take out one of the little Corelle bowls she’d had for decades. White with that seventies gold/wheat-colored border. It was horrible, but it had been horrible since before the time I could tell, so to me it just felt even more like home. “I’m totally in the mood for this.”

“Junk food,” she muttered and shook her head, returning to the task of peeling hard-boiled eggs at the sink. “Apart from adding a few calories to your bony frame, it has no nutritional value.”

Totally right. I would
never
have this in my place now. I’d have organic pineapple and banana—neither of which would last longer than like two days—and organic oatmeal that tasted like paper, extra-protein almond milk, and unsweetened Kashi. Which made me realize, all the more, how much I missed the simple pleasure of Lucky Charms. It wasn’t broccoli, but it wasn’t
quite
candy canes either. I got the milk out. “Hey, you’re the one who bought it!”

“It was supposed to be a
dessert
, remember?” That was the rule in our house. Those sweet cereals were
only
an after-dinner treat. Never allowed as the one-and-only breakfast food, because Mom knew—as anyone does now—a bowlful of sugar would not lead to good memory and mental sharpness, but a sugar coma about the time I’d have gotten to school. And of course I knew this because of the number of times I’d crept downstairs and had “dessert” for breakfast.

I remembered eating it for breakfast before school, while watching
General Hospital
after school, and more often than I should have, taking a bowl up with me at bedtime, which was gross because I always forgot to bring it down for a few days, and since I didn’t drink the milk after eating the cereal (that always seemed a weird practice to me, drinking crumb-filled milk), it tended to become a nasty science experiment. “Anyway, I was wondering about tonight—”

The phone rang and she pushed the faucet control down with her forearm. “Hold on, I’m expecting a call from Mr. Henckle.”

That was a blast from the past. Mr. Henckle was her sewing machine repair guy. She went to the family room to answer it, wiping her hands on her apron along the way.

“And I’m still wondering…” I said to myself, then listened as her voice went from the cheerful singsongy greeting to a sudden tense undertone.

“Yes,” I heard her say. “Yes, I understand. It’s fine. I’ll be right there.”

Every muscle in my body tightened. Over the years I had gotten enough bad news on the phone to hate the sound of it ringing, even though over the years the sound of a telephone ringing had gone from the actual banging bell sound of the phones in my childhood home to strains of Beethoven or Jack Johnson or whatever the holder wanted to tell the world about their psychology every time someone rang them.

She came back in, looking a little rattled.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, setting my spoon down. Three magically delicious marshmallows floated off it into the milk.

“It’s your father.”

I almost threw up right then and there. Seriously, my throat went tight suddenly, and I felt whatever I couldn’t recall putting into my stomach threatening to come up. Was it time? Had it happened again? Had my coming back made it happen sooner than it was supposed to? Tears sprang to my eyes and burned like acid.

“Is he okay?” Stupid question. She hadn’t come in looking like that to report that he’d had a nice lunch.
Just one dirty martini, nothing to worry about.
“What happened?” I said, almost expecting to hear that he’d had a cerebral hemorrhage while he was out somewhere, and no one had been there, so we’d never know if he could have been saved.

I knew that wasn’t how it happened, but still I could picture it in horrible graphic color.

No one was there.

He died alone.

No one should die alone.

But that didn’t have anything to do with today. His death came to him at home, like a ghost in the night, and took him without warning, without accusation or the chance for penance.

My fists were clenched, my nails digging into the soft flesh of my palm. “What happened?” I asked, harder and more urgently than the situation called for. I didn’t need to make things worse by freaking out before she said anything. “What happened?” I asked again, trying to make my voice gentler.

Mom drew in a breath. “He was in a car accident.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

The words
car accident
had long since stopped meaning
fender bender
to me. No one talked about little bumps, so I was instantly on alert, bracing myself for the worst news. Which was ironic, since I’d already gotten the worst news about my father and processed it and grieved, yet here I was again, about to relive it all, one way or another.

“It was on the American Legion Bridge,” my mother said, sounding more hassled than upset. How was that possible? He could have died! “Someone cut him off and he overcompensated. He said the Chevy is totaled.”

He said
. So he was okay, he was the one who called. This wasn’t a case of his number being up around now, one way or another. No wonder she was so calm. I took a deep breath and let it out in a long, shaking stream. “Wait, so he was in an accident but he’s okay.”

“He’s not going to
die
or anything, but he said his arm got hit pretty hard.” She was hurrying about, collecting her purse, her keys. She stopped in front of the hall mirror to check her reflection, a reflex, I’m sure, as she did it literally every time she went out the door. “I have to get there.”

This was coming back to me. The car accident on the bridge. So minor in retrospect that it hadn’t really registered in my memory. He’d had a dislocated shoulder and had wrenched his back, but when it first happened his shoulder had hurt so badly that he hadn’t even realized about his back, which slowed his recovery.