The Time Traveler's Almanac (176 page)

“I wouldn’t believe it,” he says.

And I agree: he wouldn’t believe it. Not at first. But those wormy little bits of doubt would burrow in and affect every single thing he does from this moment on.

“Really?” I say. “Are you the kind of person who would lie to yourself in an attempt to destroy who you are now? Trying to destroy every bit of hope that you possess?”

His flush grows deeper. Of course he isn’t. He lies to himself – we all do – but he lies to himself about how great he is, how few flaws he has. When Lizbet started following him around, I brought him into my office and asked him not to pay attention to her.

It leads her on,
I say.

I don’t think it does,
he says.
She knows I’m not interested.

He knew he wasn’t interested. Poor Lizbet had no idea at all.

I can see her outside now, hovering in the hallway, waiting for him, wanting to know what his letter said. She’s holding her red envelope in one hand, the other lost in the pocket of her baggy skirt. She looks prettier than usual, as if she’s dressed up for this day, maybe for the inevitable party.

Every year, some idiot plans a Red Letter Day party even though the school – the culture – recommends against it. Every year, the kids who get good letters go. And the other kids beg off, or go for a short time, and lie about what they received.

Lizbet probably wants to know if he’s going to go.

I wonder what he’ll say to her.

“Maybe you wouldn’t send a letter if the truth hurt too much,” Esteban says.

And so it begins, the doubts, the fears.

“Or,” I say, “if your successes are beyond your wild imaginings. Why let yourself expect that? Everything you do might freeze you, might lead you to wonder if you’re going to screw that up.”

They’re all looking at me again.

“Believe me,” I say. “I’ve thought of every single possibility, and they’re all wrong.”

The door to my office opens and I curse silently. I want them to concentrate on what I just said, not on someone barging in on us.

I turn.

Lizbet has come in. She looks like she’s on edge, but then she’s always on edge around J.J.

“I want to talk to you, J.J.” Her voice shakes.

“Not now,” he says. “In a minute.”

“
Now
,” she says. I’ve never heard this tone from her. Strong and scary at the same time.

“Lizbet,” J.J. says, and it’s clear he’s tired, he’s overwhelmed, he’s had enough of this day, this event, this girl, this school – he’s not built to cope with something he considers a failure. “I’m busy.”

“You’re not going to marry me,” she says.

“Of course not,” he snaps – and that’s when I know it. Why all four of us don’t get letters, why I didn’t get a letter, even though I’m two weeks shy from my fiftieth birthday and fully intend to send something to my poor past self.

Lizbet holds her envelope in one hand, and a small plastic automatic in the other. An illegal gun, one that no one should be able to get – not a student, not an adult. No one.

“Get down!” I shout as I launch myself toward Lizbet.

She’s already firing, but not at me. At J.J. who hasn’t gotten down.

But Esteban deliberately drops and Carla – Carla’s half a step behind me, launching herself as well.

Together we tackle Lizbet, and I pry the pistol from her hands. Carla and I hold her as people come running from all directions, some adults, some kids holding letters.

Everyone gathers. We have no handcuffs, but someone finds rope. Someone else has contacted emergency services, using the emergency link that we all have, that we all should have used, that I should have used, that I probably had used in another life, in another universe, one in which I didn’t write a letter. I probably contacted emergency services and said something placating to Lizbet, and she probably shot all four of us, instead of poor J.J.

J.J., who is motionless on the floor, his blood slowly pooling around him. The football coach is trying to stop the bleeding and someone I don’t recognize is helping and there’s nothing I can do, not at the moment, they’re doing it all while we wait for emergency services.

The security guard ties up Lizbet and sets the gun on the desk and we all stare at it, and Annie Sanderson, the English teacher, says to the guard, “You’re supposed to check everyone, today of all days. That’s why we hired you.”

And the principal admonishes her, tiredly, and she shuts up. Because we know that sometimes Red Letter Day causes this, that’s why it’s held in school, to stop family annihilations and shootings of best friends and employers. Schools, we’re told, can control weaponry and violence, even though they can’t, and someone, somewhere, will use this as a reason to repeal Red Letter Day, but all those people who got good letters or letters warning them about their horrible drunken mistake will prevent any change, and everyone – the pundits, the politicians, the parents – will say that’s good.

Except J.J.’s parents, who have no idea their son had no future. When did he lose it? The day he met Lizbet? The day he didn’t listen to me about how crazy she was? A few moments ago, when he didn’t dive for the floor?

I will never know.

But I do something I would never normally do. I grab Lizbet’s envelope, and I open it.

The handwriting is spidery, shaky.

Give it up. J.J. doesn’t love you. He’ll never love you. Just walk away and pretend that he doesn’t exist. Live a better life than I have. Throw the gun away.

Throw the gun away.

She did this before, just like I thought.

And I wonder: was the letter different this time? And if it was, how different?
Throw the gun away.
Is that line new or old? Has she ignored this sentence before?

My brain hurts. My head hurts.

My heart hurts.

I was angry at J.J. just a few moments ago, and now he’s dead.

He’s dead and I’m not.

Carla isn’t either.

Neither is Esteban.

I touch them both and motion them close. Carla seems calmer, but Esteban is blank – shock, I think. A spray of blood covers the left side of his face and shirt.

I show them the letter, even though I’m not supposed to.

“Maybe this is why we never got our letters,” I say. “Maybe today is different than it was before. We survived, after all.”

I don’t know if they understand. I’m not sure I care if they understand.

I’m not even sure if I understand.

I sit in my office and watch the emergency services people flow in, declare J.J. dead, take Lizbet away, set the rest of us aside for interrogation. I hand someone – one of the police officers – Lizbet’s red envelope, but I don’t tell him we looked.

I have a hunch he knows we did.

The events wash past me, and I think that maybe this is my last Red Letter Day at Barack Obama High School, even if I survive the next two weeks and turn fifty.

And I find myself wondering, as I sit on my desk waiting to make my statement, whether I’ll write my own red letter after all.

What can I say that I’ll listen to? Words are so very easy to misunderstand. Or misread.

I suspect Lizbet only read the first few lines. Her brain shut off long before she got to
Walk away
and
Throw away the gun.

Maybe she didn’t write that the first time. Or maybe she’s been writing it, hopelessly, to herself in a continual loop, lifetime after lifetime after lifetime.

I don’t know.

I’ll never know.

None of us will know.

That’s what makes Red Letter Day such a joke. Is it the letter that keeps us on the straight and narrow? Or the lack of a letter that gives us our edge?

Do I write a letter, warning myself to make sure Lizbet gets help when I meet her? Or do I tell myself to go to the draft no matter what? Will that prevent this afternoon?

I don’t know.

I’ll never know.

Maybe Father Broussard was right; maybe God designed us to be ignorant of the future. Maybe He wants us to move forward in time, unaware of what’s ahead, so that we follow our instincts, make our first, best – and only – choice.

Maybe.

Or maybe the letters mean nothing at all. Maybe all this focus on a single day and a single note from a future self is as meaningless as this year’s celebration of the Fourth of July. Just a day like any other, only we add a ceremony and call it important.

I don’t know.

I’ll never know.

Not if I live two more weeks or two more years.

Either way, J.J. will still be dead and Lizbet will be alive, and my future – whatever it is – will be the mystery it always was.

The mystery it should be.

The mystery it will always be.

DOMINE

Rjurik Davidson

Rjurik Davidson has written short stories, essays, reviews, and screenplays, and has been short-listed for and won a number of awards. Davidson’s collection
The Library of Forgotten Books
was published in 2010 by PS Publishing. His novel
Unwrapped Sky
will be published in early 2014. His script
The Uncertainty Principle
(cowritten with Ben Chessell) is currently in development with Lailaps films and Neon Park films. “Domine” was first published in
Aurealis
in 2007.

I’m off the monorail and through streets littered with cigarette packets and strips of last month’s posters, peeled from the yellow and grey chipped walls. The air smells of rubbish and urine. A breeze would only blow the odour away for a moment; I’m in the City.

Genie and I moved into the place temporarily, with the hope of shifting farther out a few months later, where there might be a park for Max to play in, neighbours to help out, a house with a separate dining room and kitchen. Genie remained after I moved out, so every now and then I’m back in the old neighbourhood, with light rain misting through the little inner-city streets, trying not to look past the pavement in front of me in case I see one of the real things that happen here.

A shuttle slashes the sky overhead, taking someone rich to meet other rich people somewhere else. They don’t bother with travelling by land – easier to skip over the city like a stone over water. The deep red of the shuttle’s burners gives the illusion of warmth.

“Hey Mister, hey!”

One of the boys; there are a million around here.

“Hey Mister,
bliss, bliss?
”

I shake my head and keep my eyes on the stained pavement. No need to encourage them.

“Hey Mister, you come back.”

I’m there, at the old five-storey yellow apartment building. Bars on every window, so people don’t get in and others don’t throw themselves out. It’s a fair balance.

The city is still all stairs and four, five, six-storey buildings. Everything new or important happens out in the Towers, little islands of commerce in the suburbs, where things are clean and fresh and everyone’s teeth are white and gleaming and the girls in all the shops remind you of your hopes when you were young.

I’m into the stairwell and up. Three sets of stairs, four doors along the walkway. I knock.

I hear scrabbling from behind the door and wait for a while, noticing that my hands seem wrinkled. I am only thirty-eight but I’m getting old.

“Don’t you ever call?” I can see one side of Genie’s face through the partly opened door, her lank, colourless hair falling across her forehead. She has that look of exhaustion as usual, as if the world has worn her out and everything now is an effort.

“Hi Genie.”

“Look, it’s not a good time.”

“I brought something for Max.”

The door opens and I’m inside. The place is tiny: one bedroom, a one-room lounge and kitchen, a bathroom and toilet.

“He doesn’t even know who you are.” Genie starts picking up odd bits and pieces of junk from the lounge room floor: some socks, a fluffy toy bird, opened envelopes with their contents still inside. She always starts cleaning when I arrive. Max is playing by a water-filled bucket in the corner. The smell of something rotten floats from the bin in the kitchen.

“Hey, Maxy,” I say, and my one-year-old son looks up at me, his face round with splotchy, rosy cheeks, and his mouth open. A line of dribble runs from his mouth to his chest.

I walk over to him and squat next to him. “Hey Maxy.” Should I reach out to him? I’m not sure. It’s hard with children: they’re strange things. He looks at me and I’m scared he’ll start crying. At the moment he’s just frowning.

“So what did you bring him?”

I have no present so I change the subject. “Dany’s coming back you know.” I say. “Really soon. August thirtieth.”

“I know the date, Marek, but I don’t care. It’s too late for me to care,” Genie says. “You should concentrate on your own stuff. Think about Max for once.”

“But what am I going to do?” I reach forward and touch Max on the arm. But he senses my tension and tries to pull away, still frowning at me as if I’m an impostor.

A key rattles in the door and a big brawny man, his body too big for his legs, wanders in. He wears baggy khaki work-shorts and a blue singlet over a too-tanned body.

“I told you this was a bad time,” Genie says to me. “Oh well, this is Rick. Rick, this is Marek.”

“Oh, hi,” Rick says and walks over to Genie, gives her a kiss, walks over to Max, ruffles his thin blonde hair.

I’m out of the door and on the landing, but Genie follows me. “I love him,” she says, “and he treats me well. Better than you ever did.”

“Yeah,” I say, still walking, my teeth clenched like a vice.

“What did you come back for?” Her voice is suddenly shrill. “Did you come back to fuck me?”

Another shuttle burns overhead, and I wonder where it’s going. The Towers no doubt.

“Come back and visit Max, though,” she says suddenly, hopefully, “He needs his father. You of all people should know that.”

*   *   *

Later that evening I’m in the small unit I can afford, out in the vast expanse of houses and apartments that encircle the Towers. The suburbs are like a sea surrounding a chain of islands, running all the way to the City. It’s a nothing space, each section interchangeable with another. The view from a shuttle would be of one infinitely repeating series of buildings and roads. It’s how I like it. You can get lost here; you can feel hidden and safe. It allows me to write my music in peace, away from all the demands of the world: partners and children and work. Still, I don’t compose much. All my creativity gets drained by the soundscapes I’m forced to design for the Towers. All my originality is sucked away into those.