Remember Me (15 page)

Charlie and I met for dinner on Saturday night, again at Devonshire’s. He never changed his demeanor, always the

likable grandfather. I didn’t allow myself to totally relax. I believed what CJ had told me. I should beware and be careful. Based on the precision of the operation that Charlie was running, I had very little doubt that I would be tracked and monitored. I even thought about going to the East coast and repeating the process in the near future. Two identities might be able to keep me one step ahead. In the long run, I doubted it would gain me anything other than having two organizations…maybe even just one very large one, meddling in my life. Charlie said it would take nearly a month for everything to be fully implemented. I should just sit tight and wait.

For better or worse, Peter Warren was here to stay, and the man who was once Andrew Johnson, albeit the old Andrew

Johnson, would be gone. Sitting alone on the Fourth of July night, in nineteen eighty-five, I let the memories of lost love wash over me. I opened the first of many Coors beer cans to come, draining it without mercy. Last year, Amy and I had rented a cabin on a partially secluded lake in Minnesota. At first her kids had seemed excited about going, but then quibbled about the things they were going to miss out on back home. After three days of fishing and swimming in the lake, they suddenly didn’t want to go back home.

That July Fourth was memorable, maybe more so to me

than to anyone else. For me it had signified the complete merg-ing of lives. Both of my children and their husbands had come to spend a couple of days with us. Amy didn’t have to try to be a mother to my girls, they didn’t need mothering. Instead, she became their friend. I watched as the three of them sat around S 108 S

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the picnic table, laughing and sharing stories with each other.

Amy’s littlest would come and sit in Emily’s lap and she would hug him, kiss his head, and then tickle the heck out of him. I knew it wouldn’t be long before she had a child of her own.

She would make a wonderful mother some day.

I remember the look on Amy’s face; it had been brief, but very noticeable to me. What I saw registered there in her eyes was the look of serenity. I felt it too, the peacefulness of a loving family. It was when I understood how much it meant to me to be a father. God had given me another opportunity with Amy and her children. I could not have been any happier or any more satisfied with the direction of my life. It was such a profound feeling, that I had to walk away from the group.

I headed for the bathroom inside the cabin to be alone for a moment or two. I generally had no problem showing my

emotions, but having the tears streaming down my face in the middle of the day for no apparent reason, was more than I was willing to share.

Alone in the bathroom, I had let them come. I took a moment to pray and sincerely thanked God for my children, and for putting such a beautiful woman into my life. When a quiet knock came at the door, I knew who it was. “Come in,” I barely choked out.

Amy entered, took one look at me, and smiled. She could

have made fun of me or panicked that something was desperately wrong; instead she only said, “I love you too!” Like two halves that were once separated, we had finally come together.

Every day the loving bond between us grew stronger, and the burdens of our past melted away. Amy knelt by me and let me fold her into my needing arms. We stayed in a quiet embrace until I regained my composure. Hand in hand we walked together back to the group. Only Emily gave me a knowing smile. She had always shared my compassion and romantic

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side. She mouthed to me, “it’s okay Dad.” She nearly sent me back to the bathroom. Amy pinched me hard and knocked me out of my emotional state.

Back in the future, a future I lived in the past, I tossed my second empty beer can toward the trashcan in the kitchen. It clanked off the side of the trashcan and rolled across the floor, eventually coming to rest by the small apartment stove. I instantly popped the top of the third can. I was angry, and at the moment I was feeling intensely alone. Amy made me a better person, and I needed her now. She was a drug that I was addicted to, and I was going through withdrawals. There wasn’t anything I could do about it, and there was no one to help me through this craziness.

I held the beer can in my hand— ready to down it all in one gulp. I would then move on to the next one until my pain was nothing more than drunken dreams. I raised it to my mouth. I heard Amy’s sweet voice in my head. She was too much a part of me, and she wouldn’t allow me to remember her this way. I could feel her imaginary arms wrapping around me, giving me some phantom comfort. I listened to her whisper in my ear. I felt the anger dissolve and so did her ghostly spirit. I lumbered to the sink and turned the beer can upside down, pouring the contents down the drain. If I was going to survive, I needed to embrace the memories of what once was, and not obliterate them with self-loathing. I ran some warm water from the fau-cet and splashed my face with it. Using the dish towel, I wiped my face dry. I felt better.

I sat down on the ugly, lumpy sofa. It was a couch by day and bed at night. It had an unpleasant smell to it, and I couldn’t wait to leave this self-imposed jail. This apartment reminded me of the first apartment Tami and I lived in. All our furniture had been purchased at thrift shops, or donated to us by our parents. We barely got by some months, eating macaroni S 110 S

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and cheese without saying a word to each other about our situation. Overcoming the obstacles should have been building blocks in the foundation of our marriage; instead they did more to drive a wedge between us. Sometimes it really is as simple as black and white, either you are on the same page together, or you aren’t.

In my personal past; on this weekend, my younger self

and Tami had gone to Chicago. We left Samantha with my

parents. I had received my first significant raise at Heartland Distributors. To me it was a sign of good things to come, an appreciation for all the hard work I’d done. For Tami it was a means for moving out of our dump and getting a better place to live. That weekend was also the weekend Emily had been conceived. Beginning in September, we would be looking for our first house, one with three bedrooms. It was one of the happiest years for me and it was also the closest Tami and I would ever be with each other.

I couldn’t help but wonder what I would tell my younger

self if we ever met face-to-face. “Give it more, even when you don’t think you can. Run away! The woman of your dreams

and the one who really loves you is just a few miles away.” It would be neither, because I wouldn’t ever cross that path. I had this innate feeling, and an understanding of the complications that might arise by my interfering in any way. I became who I was, just like Amy had become whom she was, because of the lives we once lived. I also respected the commitment that we both shared (to our children.) I was always satisfied in knowing my kids had two parents at home. They had parents who would put them first. Amy lived under that same philosophy. It was only circumstances that didn’t let it play out the same way for her. I acknowledged her sense of commitment; but personally, I still thanked God every day for the amazing and wonderful opportunity to be a second, and hopefully, even better father S 111 S

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to her children than I had been to Samantha and Emily.

So now what? It was nineteen eighty-five, not two-thousand and ten. The Amy in this time would be on her summer break from attending college at Iowa State University. I often wondered what the young me and young Amy would have

done if our paths had crossed earlier in life. I silently swore under my breath and promised myself not to put that notion to the test. No matter how much I missed her, needed her, it was the Amy of two thousand and ten that I had fallen in love with.

The Amy in this “here and now” would have no desire for the older man that I am. And I shouldn’t try to impose an earlier fate upon the two of them in this time. I still wondered what might happen if they did somehow happen to meet by chance.

Things were different now. Would I disappear from this time line? The future would have been impacted in such a way that Amy and I might never have purchased the house on the hill?

No house, no wormhole to contend with. I needed to stay on the narrow path until I had proof of any contamination from my existence here.

I climbed the stairs outside of my apartment to the third story. There was one more apartment upstairs, directly over mine. As far as I knew, it was currently empty. The window in the hallway was larger than the rest of the windows. It was an emergency exit if it should ever be needed. Outside, it had a fire escape that extended down to the ground. A ladder attached to the outside wall also rose upward to the roof. This was the direction I took as I climbed out of the window and onto the metal ledge. I slung the blanket over my shoulder and climbed to the top. The roof had a very moderate pitch to it. I stretched the blanket out and lay on my back, hands folded underneath my head. It was nearly nine-thirty and the Fourth of July fireworks would shortly be starting over the Cedar River.

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the top of the roof I’d be able to see the fireworks in the sky.

The wind was in the right direction and I could hear the music coming from the festival downtown along the river. A large cannon boom broke the sound of merriment. It signaled the fireworks would start in five minutes. When they began, they lit up the sky. I let the lightshow and sounds provide a sensory backdrop on my memories. I went back to my Amy and our

last Fourth of July together.

I held her again in my arms and together we watched the

fireworks over the lake. My mind recreated the two of us together, huddled under a blanket as we sat together on a glider on the front porch of the cabin. We gently rocked the glider back and forth. Amy’s kids had made new friends. They had all been invited to go out on the lake in a house boat to view the fireworks. It left Amy and me alone. It was one of those special moments that would never be forgotten. My arm was tightly wrapped around her shoulders, as I pulled her as close to me as I could. Her head rested on my shoulder. I breathed deep the fresh scent of her hair. One of her hands gently rested on the inside of my thigh the other kept the blanket pulled across us. The feeling of being so close with her was anything but a memory. I was right there with her, and so aware of her essence. In this here and now, I closed my eyes and pulled her closer to me.

“God help me Amy, I miss you so much,” I said to her in a sleepy whisper. Succumbing to the memories of her love, I fell asleep and fully into my memories. In my dreams, time gave way, and we held each other once more.

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Money to spend.

November 5th, 1985

Peter Warren is
now officially recognized. I spent the afternoon at a local stock broker’s office. His name was Oliver Kerpectick. He wasn’t anything spectacular, but he was just what I was looking for. After we filled out all the necessary paperwork, I wrote him a check for thirty-six thousand dollars. With the money, I instructed him to buy Microsoft, Dell, and United Health Group in equal allotments. He asked me if I wanted his input in the future on buying or selling equities and bonds. I politely told him, “no,” and let him know I would be making all of my own decisions. He’d been around for a long time and didn’t try to smooze me over with any additional sales talk. I actually respected him for that. We shook hands, and I left his office.

I then headed over to the State First Community Bank

where I opened a checking and savings account for Peter

Warren. The woman in charge of new accounts spent a little extra time looking over my driver’s license and Social Security card, then made a quick call to United First Bank & Trust in Chicago to confirm my account status with them. Per my

instructions on the phone, United First would transfer the remaining five-thousand dollars from my account to State First, and then close the account. The account in Chicago had been set up, along with my new identity to establish some background credibility. I added another ten thousand to the new S 114 S

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account. I split it seventy-percent in savings and thirty-percent in checking. Missy, the new account representative, told me it would take about two weeks for my blank checks to arrive in the mail. Meanwhile, I could use the “fill-in-the-blanks” bank checks in my welcome packet. I smiled a lot, and guess I said all the right things; because when I left the bank, I carried a new toaster out with me.

In October, I had applied for three credit cards and had already been accepted on two of them. The other had denied me for not having had full-time working status for the last eight years. The limits were small. One was for only one thousand, and the other was a more generous five thousand. It was a start. My recent influx of money had come from betting the World Series with CJ. The Kansas City Royals beat the St.

Louis Cardinals four games to three. They won game seven eleven-zip. The series was the first win for an expansion team and would be forever marred by a poor call in game six. The blown call ultimately allowed the Royals to take it to game seven and win the series.

CJ didn’t even pretend to ask about my dreams anymore.

He never came out and said it outright, but based on some of his other comments; I took it that he thought I was marginally psychic. My talk of the dreams was something I used as a cover story. He asked me once what I thought about the current NCAA football season. I did my best to convince him it wouldn’t do any good to try and pick my brain about anything else going on in the sporting world, telling him I would contact him when I had one of my hunches. I could see the dollar signs floating in front of his eyes and then falling to the floor with my comment. He didn’t know that my memory