Time Flying (21 page)

I flipped the notebook closed and glanced up at Amanda, who regarded me curiously. I smiled at her. She had been so patient. In her position, would I have stayed so quiet, following her, waiting for the time she picked to let me know what the hell was going on?

“What, are we going to buy this place?” Amanda asked, an ironic smile on her face.

I doubted I would be so calm about this kind of thing, and the trust implied made me love her all the more.

“No, I need to show you something inside” I answered with a smile of my own.

My wife's puzzled expression returned to her face.

“Let's take a walk,” I said. “I’ve got a story to tell you,” I continued, turning and taking the porch steps down to the sidewalk. “Actually, I have two, and we need to find a pay phone.”

We walked down Parke Street toward the Belton Post Office at a pace which allowed us to talk and as she listened, not saying a word, I told Amanda the story of my lives.

90 minutes later, I stood under the tree in the front yard of the house my father grew up in, my hand on the thick, rough bark, tracing the contours down the trunk. A beautiful tree, planted almost 60 years ago, it now rose above the street, sidewalk and house in the prime of its life. I had seen this same tree, unchanged, 15 years in the future, and as I gazed upward into its branches six feet above me, I reflected that for this tree, time passed at a much slower pace. I would change in many different ways over the next 15 years, but to this tree, those years would be almost nothing. We occupy the same earth, use the same elements to live, but experience time in a much different way.

While examining the tree, and enjoying the beautiful afternoon, every few seconds, I'd throw a glance toward Amanda, looking for any kind of hint about how she was processing the story I had told her. She sat on the top step leading up to the porch, her arms wrapped around her knees, head turned to the right, away from me. This was how Amanda processed things she didn't understand, withdrawing from everything and concentrating all her mental energy on solving the problem her. Though I'd never witnessed her wrestling with something this enormous, I'd been through the process before.Trying to get her to leave her isolation and communicate at best got no result, at worst brought down her wrath. I had learned patience, dealing with these silences. They were a pretty rare occurrence, but not so rare I hadn't learned to recognize them in the early stages.

Two-thirds of the way through my story, I had called the real estate agent from a pay phone in front of the Post Office, and he said he'd meet us at the house in about 90 minutes. We sat on a bench for the next 45 minutes or so, and I finished my narrative. While I spun out this story that I worried would lead Amanda to believe she married and produced children with a lunatic, I realized, much like when I poured out my heart to her at the pizza restaurant in 1976 and several times since then, I felt like two people, the “me” living this life, telling this tale, and the “me’ watching the show, criticizing the performance and thought processes as they happened. 

Sometimes, a part of my intelligence wondered if perhaps one of these me entities represented  the one living this life before the guy from 2007 barged in and took over like an older brother. Would this transformation have split me into two people? If so, which “Me” told Amanda the story?

Or, did my time travel create two separate Rich Girrards, both a melding of memories, intelligences and knowings of the two original people. Somehow, this idea seemed more likely. And so, if through all this, my consciousness divided into these separate psychological components which seemed to work pretty well in concert, could my experience be a much more common, more human experience? Is it possible the separate people we all think we are is the truth, because we all travel in time and inhabit many, or even all of the separate, discrete versions of ourselves? Maybe the uniqueness of my experience was not that I traveled in time, but that I was aware I had done so? Perhaps Rich Girrard isn’t as  special as I thought? Believe it or not, waiting under the tree in Belton, Indiana, my wife silent, deciding how to deal with this massive and unwelcome blow to her sense of the world, not being special would be a gift from God.

We had walked back to the house in silence, to wait for the real estate agent. I told Amanda I wanted to get into the house and prove to her the story I told her is the truth. My Grandfather's letter would be in a beam in the basement of the house. Liz had shown me the beam and from where their son had removed the letter and gold coin. He had made a neat job of cutting a small compartment out of the wood and shaving the block down so it fit snugly back into the hole. In order not to weaken the beams, my Grandfather had cut the compartment out right above a post in the middle of the basement, and put two small steel posts in to further strengthen the support. The letter and coin’s hiding place  would be easy to find if you knew where to look. 

My plan was to tour the house with the real estate agent, discuss buying my father's boyhood home, and unlocking a back door before we left. We would then return later in the afternoon, retrieve the letter and Amanda could see what set me on this path. Sure, my plan constituted unlawful trespass, but I believed circumstances warranted my breaking the law, in this case. How I would explain our presence to the police if we got caught, I had no idea, but I had to try. I thought the letter would prove to Amanda I wasn't crazy. The course my life had taken differed enough from my first, that  I wouldn't be back here in 2007, unless I decided I wanted to come back. With the letter in my possession, there wouldn’t be anything for Annie and Liz to find, so their role in the story would be finished, at least in this timeline.

I looked over at Amanda, and this time watched as she wiped tears from her face. I walked over to her, and as her eyes slowly made their way up to mine, instead of anguish in those eyes, they were filled with anger.

“All this time, you've been carrying this around with you, not telling me,” she said, a statement, rather than a question.

Spreading my arms in appeal, I replied with  “How was I supposed to tell you? There were a LOT of times I didn’t know what was real!” Whether defense mechanism or serious belief, I couldn't tell, but I would sometimes go entire years believing THIS life was real, the other one a figment of my imagination. I think the solid acceptance of  both of my realities being real was only about five years old.

“So, this other wife, who is she? Do I know her? Do you see her? Does she know all this?” Amanda demanded. Then, a slightly hysterical laugh erupted from her and she said, “I can't even believe I'm thinking this is real.
Jesus Christ
.” I began  to realize telling her was a huge mistake, because when Amanda got this angry (for her to swear or said, “Jesus Christ” was “outside her normal behavior envelope” as Pat would say) as a reaction to pain, to her being hurt. What amazed both of us, was that she seemed to be accepting the time travel as real, her first thought not questioning my sanity. My fidelity was in doubt, but not my sanity. 

“No, I've never seen her,” I said, but then stopped. “Well, once, in college, but I DIDN'T EVEN TALK TO HER.”

“Really,” Amanda said, another declaration, without a trace of a question mark in her tone.

“She went to University of Iowa,” I explained. “We went there for a game and I looked her up in the student directory. A couple of the other guys and I walked around campus until we found her dorm. We were walking up to the front door, and she and some friends walked out. I saw her. That was it. I swear.”

I didn't tell Amanda WHY I never tried again to contact Molly, though. The truth is, the pain was simply too much. I was with two of my Purdue teammates and when she came out of the front door of the building, my heart leapt to my throat, but she walked by, not even noticing me. The rawness of the emotions of five years apart from her overwhelmed me. This thing had been a fun little episode I assumed to be a kind of lucid dream, and I had been able to block out the reality of all I’d lost when I found myself back in 1976. Seeing the 18 year old Molly, my wife before we ever met, and realizing without considerable effort and luck she would never even know my name, brought 2007 back in a huge, destructive rush.

In the game that night, I turned the ball over 6 times, didn’t score, and fouled out. As I walked past Coach Schaus after the fifth foul, early in the second half, he didn't even acknowledge me as I found my seat at the end of the bench. Luckily, we won, no thanks to me. The Coach and I never spoke about my performance, because by the time practice resumed the next week, I decided the time traveling was all a dream, a fantasy, something I cooked up for some strange, psychological reason. I focused on 1980, and tried everything I could to forget about Molly. I never played so badly again.

I didn't tell Amanda about any of this, nor did I tell her I made the decision, on the way back home, to leave Purdue, transfer, redshirt a year and then play my last year in college for Iowa. I decided I would do whatever was necessary to be near Molly, even if transferring meant being a walk-on and riding the bench all season, since Iowa probably wouldn't waste a scholarship on a one season player. None of that mattered though, because getting close to Molly, marrying her again and somehow resuming our life in this timeline was going to be my one and only goal.

I thought all of this through, and was in the process of figuring out how break up with Amanda, when a realization swept over me. There would be no Samantha in a life with Molly in this timeline. Sure, they could be a child or children, but no Samantha. Somehow, I knew any child we had wouldn't be the daughter I knew. I realized if I made a life here in this timeline with Molly, but not Samantha, the burden I alone would have to bear would be terrible, and it would be a burden I wouldn’t be able to live with. Alone in my apartment near campus, silently railing against the universe for the first time since returning to my own past, I cursed whoever or whatever had done this to me. I decided all of my “knowledge” of the future to be nothing but bullshit, I never traveled back from 2007, and I was the person I appeared to be to everyone around me. There weren't two Rich Girrards, only one, and it was
me. 

My first period of denial began.

I would never tell Amanda I had decided not to keep traveling this path and intended to try and reconnect with the life I'd had in 2007. Making that confession now would be devastating to her. I also didn't tell her any of this because though I'd been totally honest about never talking to Molly, saying I hadn’t seen her wasn’t completely true.

Amanda had seen her, too, but I couldn’t tell her about it, not because she would be jealous, but because this disclosure would throw my credibility and sanity back into considerable doubt.

On the front step of the house, Amanda looked away, shaking her head, the tears gone, but the anger had not even begun to abate. She stood up, and without saying anything, started walking toward the car.

“What?” I asked. “The Real Estate agent will be here in a few minutes,” I said.

Without responding, Amanda crossed the street and got into the front passenger seat of the car, clearly leaving me to tour the house alone. I considered my options on the front lawn of the house my father grew up in, as a white Ford Explorer pulled into the driveway. 

The real estate agent had arrived.

He got out of the truck, a short, round, balding man in his 50s. Friendly looking, in a short-sleeved checked shirt with a tie knotted loosely enough to allow his top button to stay open. He held out his hand, introducing himself as John Wheldon, but informing me everyone called him “Jack”. In his hand he held nothing but keys, no briefcase, no folder. Not even a sheet of paper. I could tell from the phone number he worked out of Terre Haute, half an hour's drive away, and I felt a little guilty for bringing him all the way out here for this.

“So, Mr Girrard, what brings you to Belton?” Jack asked, glancing at my car, my wife visible in the front seat clearly not interested in the proceedings here.

“Call me Rich,” I replied, glancing back at the house. “Well, my father grew up in this house, and I thought I might want to get it back in the family,” I lied.

The real estate agent nodded, his eyebrows raised, but not smiling. He still seemed friendly, but didn't appear to be buying this. “To live here?” he asked. “Or investment?” He smiled a little ironic smile, at the thought of someone buying property in Belton, expecting its value to rise.

I smiled an ironic smile of my own, glancing at my wife in the car across the street. “That's exactly what my wife wants to know,” I said, seeing a possible path through Jack's doubt. “To be honest,” I said, lowering my voice to sound conspiratorial, “it's a kind of nostalgia thing. My family's scattered all over the country, and my job keeps me away for long periods of time. I've just been thinking about reacquiring roots.”

“What do you do for a living, Rich?” Jack asked.

“I’m a Naval Officer,” I answered. “Aviator. I'm a Bombardier/Navigator in A-6 Intruders.”  

Jack's eyes went a little wide. “No KIDDING! Wow!” He said excitedly. I smiled and nodded, a little ashamed to be using my status as a commissioned officer in the Navy to cover bullshitting this gentleman.

“I was in the Corps,” Jack said eagerly, meaning he'd been a Marine. “Korea.” Then laughing, he added “You guys saved my ass a couple times!”

The A-6 first saw combat in the Korean conflict, most often serving up ground support for guys like Jack, ground pounding Marines besieged by attacking North Koreans and Chinese. By 1990, the Intruder was nearing the end of its service life, and we were all aware the coming struggle would probably be the last for our birds. Jack's reservations about my motivations for viewing the house had evaporated as our common culture, though separated by several decades of time, made him trust me implicitly. This made me even more ashamed of my actions, and I began running through the inventory of our liquid assets, thinking I might have to actually buy this house so I could sleep at night. Glancing over at the car in which Amanda sat, still immobile, the thought that I might need a place to live ran through my mind, too.