The Lost Time Accidents (46 page)

*   *   *

On May 10, 1970—the same day, as chance and fate and Providence would have it, as the Tolliver Sisters’ last supper—the bell rang just as Ursula was pulling a tray of
Topfenstrudel
out of the oven. Orson was in the kitchen as well, staring at the back of his wife’s head with his mouth hanging open. He’d just received some unexpected news.

The bell rang again.

“Ursula—”

“The bell, Orson.”

He passed a hand over his face. “Probably somebody’s at the door.”

“That seems likely.”

He crossed the parlor weavingly, his cerebellum buzzing, and yanked the front door open without looking who it was. A man and a woman and a teenager stood on the stoop: all three were wearing Western-style pearl-button shirts and immaculate blue jeans and sneakers. They’d have made a nice family, of a certain sort, if the teenager hadn’t been chewing on an unlit meerschaum pipe.
The same pipe that I smoke
, Orson thought, feeling his scalp start to prickle.

“Can I help you?”

“You already
have
,” said the woman. “So much more than you know.”

“Mr. Orson Card Tolliver?” said the teenager gravely.

“Of
course
it’s him,” the man mumbled.

“Mr. Orson Card Tolliver?”

Orson nodded. “What is this?”

“
This
,” the teenager said, “is a momentous occasion. Could we, uh, impinge on you briefly?”

If Orson hadn’t been reeling from what his wife had just told him, he might have been slightly quicker on his feet. His callers were past him by the time he’d recovered, inside the house already, waiting respectfully at the entrance to the parlor. He could think of no response, at that point, but to ask them if they’d like a cup of coffee. The adults hesitated, looking curiously startled; the teenager said he’d like one very much. He seemed in a position of authority over the others, who spoke—when they dared speak at all—in timid, obseqious chirps.

Ursula, unflappable as always, brought out coffee and strudel, which everyone agreed was very tasty. The woman said something too quietly to hear—to Ursula, apparently—and Ursula asked her to repeat it.

“This coffee,” said the woman.

“Do you like it? It’s Venezuelan.”

“I’ve had this coffee before.” Her eyes fluttered closed. “This coffee exactly.”

“Yes, you have,” said the teenager. “And you’ll have it
again
.” He gave Orson a wink. “Am I right, Mr. Tolliver?”

“She’ll have it again right now,” Ursula said, refilling her cup.

Orson shot his wife a look of mute appeal, which she ignored.

*   *   *

We now reach the point in this history, Mrs. Haven, when I begin to feel us rushing toward each other. We’re still far apart, you and I—very nearly a decade, and five hundred miles—but our trajectories are starting to converge. The inevitability of it makes my mouth go dry.

*   *   *

The teenager was called Haven, the man’s name was Johnson, and the woman was referred to as “Miss M.” No first names were mentioned. They obviously belonged to a cult of some kind, though they passed out no literature; there was an odd air of leisure about them, or at least about Haven, as though they’d come to town to see the sights. My father decided they were trying to convert him, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses who rang the doorbell once a year, and he felt more at ease right away. It always relaxed him to talk to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. What they wanted was so easy to refuse.

“You’ve been expecting us for some time, I imagine,” Haven said.

“I’ll admit something to you,” said Orson. “I haven’t.”

“Ah!” said Haven, smiling good-naturedly, as if to show that he could take a joke. “So you deny that you have access to the future?”

“More strudel, Mr. Haven?” said Ursula, taking his plate.

“Thank you kindly, Mrs. Tolliver.” Haven dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “Perhaps the time has come to state our business.”

Orson raised his eyebrows. Ursula focused her attention on the strudel. Haven radiated courtesy and calm.

“The Codex, Miss M., if you please.”

“The Codex,” the young woman echoed. A book was produced from a briefcase and set on the table.

“Ach, du Scheisse,”
said Ursula under her breath.

“Since well before the three of us met,” Haven said, “my two, uh, colleagues and I have been fellow travelers. Like a great many other Americans, Mr. Tolliver, we’ve read your book and been affected by it.” He nodded to himself. “I say ‘affected,’ but a better descriptor might be ‘altered,’ or even ‘transformed.’”

“Reconfigured,” Johnson suggested. The woman mouthed a word that looked like
reborn
to Orson. His scalp started prickling again.

“We were affected by your book, Mr. Tolliver, as I’ve said. We intuited that it contained, uh, mysteries. We
intuited
this, and felt altered even by this as-yet-inchoate knowledge. But it wasn’t until the publication of the paperback edition, with its supplementary
directives
, that the way became clear.”

“Directives?” said Orson, shifting uneasily on the couch.

Haven opened the Codex to a crisply dog-eared page. “‘Science can offer you what no religion can,’” he read aloud. “‘Science does more than simply recount bygone miracles for credulous ears; science shows us its miracles, then
explains
them for us, and even, occasionally, brings new miracles about. Trust in science, dear reader—in
empirical
science—and you will live the existence that countless religions have promised: you will never walk alone. You will be part of a continuum of intelligence and rational thought that began with the first question man ever asked.’” He paused a moment. “Did you write those words, sir?”

“I may have,” Orson stammered, trying to dodge his wife’s triumphant stare. “But I think you kids—well, I think you might be placing undue emphasis—”

Haven waited, politely, for Orson to finish. When it became clear nothing more was forthcoming, he turned the page and kept reading.

“‘Science in the twentieth century—physics especially—has moved from the study of what we can see and judge with our five senses to things too vast and/or infinitesimal to perceive. This, in turn, has ushered in the most fascinating phase of scientific exploration in human history, one that challenges our commitment to science as never before. Common sense—on which we have always relied as our first defense against superstition—is no longer adequate. In fact, to see the world as the great minds of physics now see it, we, the scientific faithful, must be prepared to put our common sense aside.’”

“Now, right there,” Orson protested. “Right there, you see? You’ve got to be careful, you know, not to read too much into that. I’m not saying we should do away with common sense
altogether
, obviously.”

Haven squinted at him. “Obviously.”

“All right, then,” Orson muttered. “I just wanted to get that on the record.”

Johnson—who was taking down the conversation in what looked to be some form of shorthand—gave a squeak of assent. Haven picked up where he’d left off.

“‘Science hasn’t yet vanquished religion—not fully—but it will surely do so, given time. One day, perhaps very soon, a
system
will be developed: a system of applied philosophy (philosophy in the classic sense, meaning a passion for knowledge) that will distill the accomplishments of all human inquiry into the elixir that religion has repeatedly promised, but never achieved. If you must live by belief, in other words, believe in
Science
.’”

“I get it,” Orson said roughly (though he was enjoying the performance more than he was willing to let on). “You like the book. You agree with the afterword. No law against that, in this country at least. You’re all enlightened souls.” He glanced involuntarily at Ursula. “What I want to know is, what did you come to see
me
for? What’s your agenda, Mr. Haven? What have you got up your sleeve?”

“We mean to structure our lives according to the Codex’s principles,” Haven said. “To serve mankind as an example, by living an ethical, rational life.”

“It would be hard for me to argue with that, wouldn’t it?” Orson said, giving a tight little laugh. “That would mean disagreeing with myself!”

“We also plan to reestablish the antediluvian fraternal order of Philadelphia on a coral atoll off the coast of Hawaii,” the woman said. “We plan to live out all of our manifold iterations there, synchronously, so that we may finally experience death.”

“Tut, Miss Menügayan!” Haven said smoothly. “Let’s not burden our host with specifics.”

The silence that followed was highly subjective in nature. For Haven it was a tranquil intermezzo; for his colleagues, to judge by appearances, it was a breathless pause; for Ursula it was a span of blank bewilderment; for Orson it was the nightmarish silence of fate.

“How old are you?” he asked abruptly.

Haven smiled and ran a thumb across his downy upper lip. “In this iteration,” he said, “I’ve just turned twenty-six.”

“No offense, son, but you look about twelve.”

“I age at a reduced rate, Mr. Tolliver. I keep my metabolism at a minimum. I also try to keep out of the sun.”

Orson came to his senses and got to his feet. “I’m sorry, kids. What you say is certainly very stimulating, but I can’t join your society at the present time. Now if you’ll pardon—”

“Join us?” Haven said, breaking into a grin. The others were already laughing. “
Join
us, Mr. Tolliver? There’s no need for that. You’re the spiritual head of our entire movement.”

*   *   *

Orson stood in a kind of Greco-Roman squat for a while after his callers had left, replaying the conversation in his head; then he drifted back into the parlor and stared into space like a mongoloid, which was still an acceptable term at the start of the seventies. He reached for his meerschaum—he’d started smoking it the year before, as a publication day gift to himself—but set it down as soon as Haven came to mind. Gradually, grudgingly, the image of his personal evangelist withdrew, replaced by the recollection of what his wife had told him in the kitchen.

He glanced across the parlor at Ursula. She was sitting in his father’s old overstuffed chair, her posture characteristically perfect, her face a dappled field of light and shadow. He felt suddenly faint.

“I’m thinking about what you told me,” he said in a circumspect voice. “There’s a trick to understanding it, I’m sure. But right now it’s making me feel kind of funny.”

Ursula sighed. “There’s no trick to it, Orson.”

“There
is
a trick,” he said. “There’s got to be.” He studied her face. “It doesn’t seem to bother you at all.”

“I think it’s a wonderful thing to have happened.”

He shook his head slowly.

“Look here, Orson. You should have told me if this was a thing you were against—and you ought to have taken precautions. Enzie told me you were in favor of this, and I took her at her word.”

“That’s bullshit. You’ve never taken anybody at their word in your whole life.”

“Softly now, please.” Her English had gone subtly pidgin, the way it often did when she was angry. “Genny and I talked about this via telephone, and I did this with Enzie as well. I can’t believe one of them didn’t say so to you. Or maybe this is something you forgot.”

Orson took hold of the bridge of his nose and pinched it fiercely. “Something I
forgot
?”

“Every idiot knows how to keep this from happening. You never once used a—”

“Hold it right there, Ursula. What have my sisters got to do with this? Was this something they
planned
?”

Ursula said nothing for a time. “You must know that I care about you, Orson.”

“Answer the goddamn question.”

“Your sisters have their reasons, always, for the little plans they make. I’m learning this myself. Why do you think they brought me to this place?”

Orson hesitated. “Because of school,” he said finally, though he knew, as he said it, that Enzie had cut all ties with the university years before. “Because of Enzie’s work, I mean. Out of a common interest in science.”

“I thought so, too,” Ursula said softly. “But I’ve revised my understanding.”

Orson said nothing for the time it took his dizziness to pass. She waited patiently for him to speak.

“There’s no escaping this family,” he murmured at last. “I thought that there was—I was
sure
that there was—the first time I left.” He looked at her. “I’ve learned my lesson now.”

“It’s about time, Mr. Tolliver.” She smiled. “Our due date is November seventeenth.”

XXI

“
Good” or “bad” entrances
, Kubler writes,
are more than matters of position in a sequence. Every birth can be imagined as set into play on two distinct wheels of fortune: one governing the allotment of its temperament, the other ruling its entrance into the sequence. When a specific temperament interlocks with a favorable position, the fortunate individual can extract from the situation a wealth of previously unimagined consequences.

This achievement may be denied to other persons, as well as to the same person at a different time.

Though by no means the religious type, Ursula accepted her pregnancy (after due deliberation) as the will of the powers that be. My father’s take was somewhat more complex. For a long list of reasons, Orson had decided not to have children, not ever, and he was certain—as certain as he could be, without recalling a specific conversation—that Ursula had tacitly agreed. Among his reasons were: Ursula’s unfinished doctorate, global overpopulation, the small but persistent possibility of a thermonuclear strike by the Soviet Union, loss of sleep, crib death, his own questionable suitability for fatherhood, shit-sodden diapers, the educational crisis, the Vietnam War and childbirth-related changes to the morphology of the uterine wall. Ursula’s mother had once told her that time accelerated wildly for a mother once her baby was born; this idea had made her shiver, she’d once confessed to her husband, with a kind of voluptuous horror. Parenthood struck them both, Orson had always assumed, as an investment with a dubious return. What sane person could disagree with that?