by Helen Fisher
“I need to be more reck,” Jeanie said. He voice sounded slow and slurred.
“What’s reck?” I said, my voice also blurring at the edges; my mouth felt gummy and made a clicking sound when I spoke.
“I don’t know,” said Jeanie, “I’m wondering if it’s the opposite of reckless?”
“Oh, right. Yeah, if something can be reckless, then something can be full of reck,” I said, pondering this word that was new to me and, for all I knew, didn’t exist. “Anyway, Jeanie, you need to be more careful. You need to look after yourself, you have responsibilities. You shouldn’t be climbing trees.”
Jeanie tutted, and neither of us spoke for a long time. “I want Faye to climb trees,” she said. And I felt the same about my own children, but my fear of being up here, being hurt, not being able to get back home because I’d fallen out of a bloody tree or something was skewing my thoughts.
“Opposite of ruthless is ruth, did you know that?” she said.
“I never thought about that before,” I said.
We lay there, mostly in silence. Every now and then one of us said, “Reck,” emphasizing the satisfying end of the word.
After what seemed like a long time, during which I somehow settled comfortably into the tree, I turned to Jeanie. “What did that fortune-teller say that makes you think I’m a sign?”
“That a woman would crash into our lives,” she said, and smiled, turning to face me. “And that’s just what you did when you came into our lives the first time. You stopped Faye being hit by that car.”
I sluggishly thought of how I’d been flung through the atmosphere, a high-speed roller-coaster ride, with no belt (and no bloody roller coaster), and how I had crashed under the Christmas tree, and crashed into the shed a little earlier that evening.
I didn’t say anything for a long time; then I said, “You don’t think I was just a person who happened to be in the right place at the right time?”
“Nope,” she said, popping the p sound at the end of the word. “I know you think the fortune-telling thing is stupid—I could tell by the look on your face earlier—but I’ve always had the feeling that I won’t make old bones, Faye. Do you know what I mean by that?”
My mouth was drier than ever and I found it hard to swallow, as if my body had forgotten what to do. I gazed at my sweet mother for a moment longer, then up into the sky, knowing with utter certainty that she only had about a year or so left to live. I nodded in reply to her question. Heat sprang to the backs of my eyes, and I let a tear roll, unseen. If a friend told me she thought she would die young, I would try to convince her otherwise. But I knew my mother was right.
She paused and struck another match. The flame burst into life as though it were frightened it would never get the chance to be a light in the world, so much so that it almost instantly put itself out again. My mother cupped the flame and allowed it to glimmer, bringing the stubby end of the short joint to her lips and inhaling to bring it back to life.
“Why do you think you won’t make old bones?” I asked, wondering about her premonition that I knew to be correct.
“I don’t know, I just feel like I’m not long for this world. My parents died young, and I suppose I feel like I’m a part of that pattern. I can’t imagine being older, I mean I really, really can’t picture it, it’s like it’s not there for me. Not written. And every year I get these terrible coughs, I’m sure it’ll kill me one day.”
“Go to a doctor, get it checked out, stop smoking,” I said, with urgency.
She shook her head. “No doctors. In my experience, doctors kill you quicker, and I don’t do this very often,” she said, holding up the stumpy bit of the joint. “What I’m really interested in is looking for something that makes me feel like Faye will be okay no matter what happens to me. I want to know that without me she’ll be loved, be happy, live well. I always felt like it would be a good idea to surround myself with good people who could help, be a safety net for her. But somehow, that hasn’t happened. The people in my life who I’ve trusted are nice, but hardly sensible, hardly the sort who would be good for looking after a child. Faye’s never been christened, but I wish she had been, because she ought to have godparents. I’ve failed there. You’re the kind of person I would have picked, the kind of person who could bridge what I won’t be able to provide for my daughter. You’re like someone I already know well.”
“We’ve only met twice,” I said, not meaning it, and I spoke so quietly I could barely hear myself, but Jeanie did.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “There are people you’ve known your whole life and you don’t know them, can’t connect, everything is superficial. And then there’s people like you and me. Instant connection. Time and frequency are not relevant with matters like this.”
“How did you get so wise?” I said.
I heard the smile in her voice. “Thought you said I was reckless?” I didn’t say anything. She paused, as she thought about it. “Self-preservation, I guess, a lot of reading, the kind of advice and teaching you come across at festivals.”
The breeze picked up then; goose bumps feathered across my arms and legs, and I wanted to get down.
“I’ve been thinking about you since the first time you came into my life,” said Jeanie. “There’s something about you, something so strong and so familiar that I can’t ignore it. I just know that we’ll be friends, and I know you might feel uncomfortable because we’re only two meetings away from being complete strangers. But I have been dying to ask you, and promised myself that the next time you appeared in my life I would do just that. And then I worried you might think it’s all a bit soon, but nevertheless I promised myself that I would ask you to help me, no matter what.”
“What is it?” I said.
“If anything happens to me, I want you to look after Faye, be her godmother.”
“What?” I said. “Jeanie, you hardly know me, you should pick someone you’ve known longer.”
“But we have nobody, her and me, no family, no reliable friends. I can tell you’re the right kind of person. Look at the way you were about coming up here: the kind of person who looks before she leaps, but then climbs up anyway. Me—I’m different—but we come from the same basic place, I think. You have children, you must be able to understand where I’m coming from. And we’ll get to know each other better in time, so I’m just putting it out there now, knowing that I’m right about you—so if I die, will you take her?”
I felt dizzy and sick. “Can we get down from here?” I said. “I’m cold.”
She reached out and put a hand over mine. “I bet you’re a better mum than I am,” she said, and I gasped, felt the sorrow rise up in me, louder and more intense, like the sound of those leaves higher up the tree.
“I’m only asking you to be a godparent,” she went on. “Most of the people I could ask—and there aren’t many—would say yes without thinking. You, on the other hand, are actually taking it seriously. It’s just another thing that makes me think you’re the one. You’re very…” She paused and smiled wide. “Reck.”
* * *
AS WE CLIMBED down the ladder my thoughts turned in a slow-moving whirlpool; I was living testimony that Jeanie’s daughter would be okay. It was within my power to give her something better than a promise: proof that Faye would be okay. If only I could tell her who I was. But in doing that, I would be confirming what my mother already feared to be true: that she would die, and not live to watch me grow up. I knew that telling her the incredible story that we would meet again all these years down the line, via a time-traveling box, would be no compensation for knowing that she had only a year left to live, if she believed me at all.
Part of me worried that Jeanie could so readily farm out her daughter—me—to a virtual stranger, but I couldn’t help feeling flattered that she’d picked me, and I couldn’t help thinking that Jeanie was completely right: I was the perfect person to look after little Faye, I was totally trustworthy, I was me. Jeanie�
�s instincts were spot-on. But what I didn’t like was that while I knew that, she didn’t.
Her naïveté unnerved me. Then I thought about how she’d been passed from foster home to foster home, a child handed from one virtual stranger to another as she grew up, and, she’d implied, not a very pleasant experience. Maybe she was well placed to identify the most appropriate caregiver, based on her gut. Maybe she was like a child in an ice-cream shop who says I want that one to the first thing she likes the look of.
And in the end, what did it really matter? Despite the fact that my mother would die, in spite of everything, I was okay, I was happy, and I was loved. I couldn’t promise my mother what she wanted from me. But perhaps I could tell her something to put her mind at ease.
This would have to be a conversation for the following day. I was overwhelmed. There is only so much the body and mind can take, and I had reached my limit. As I floated from the cool garden into the kitchen, there was a swirling sensation in my head and the room started to turn too. I swayed to the side, and the desire to sleep was so intense that I could taste it like sweet wool in my mouth. My mother held my hand, and I don’t remember getting up the stairs, but that’s where she took me. I have a faded memory in which I sat at the end of little Faye’s bed. Jeanie picked little Faye up and carried her—still sound asleep—into her own bedroom, so that I could have little Faye’s bed. I have a hazy recollection of lying down and thinking how the bed was still warm from where my younger self had lain until a few moments before; my body covering that space and creating a larger space of warmth. I think my mother returned to me—having deposited little Faye into her own bigger bed—to pull the checked eiderdown over me. And I do remember thinking that my mother was putting me to bed twice: my six-year-old self and my thirty-six-year-old self. I don’t remember falling asleep, because I didn’t chase it. Sleep was there waiting for me, with its soft jaws wide open. They silently shut and swallowed me whole.
Little Faye sat like a pixie, cross-legged at the end of my bed, her head tipped to one side by a lopsided smile. She was wearing a school uniform with white patterned socks up to her knees; her messy brown hair was pulled back into a plait, stray tendrils curling round her face. I sat up and winced; I was aching all over.
“Thank you for your bed,” I said.
“Mi casa es su casa,” she said, smiling back at me.
“My house is your house?” I said, and she nodded. “Well, that is very kind of you.” And extremely accurate, I thought. Her house was indeed my house.
“You going to school?” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
I communicated with little Faye with the careful small talk I used with all children. I don’t know if I should have been conversing differently, considering that I was talking to myself. Whether it was me or not, I could only do what I always do when talking to children, which was to make her feel comfortable in my company. I didn’t want to interrogate myself as a child, because no matter the circumstances, I was still only a child.
“Do you remember me?” I asked.
“Of course!” she said, “You grabbed me when that car nearly hit me.”
“That’s right, I did. Are you completely fine now?”
“I was completely fine, even at the time. It was you who got hurt. Are you completely fine?”
“Actually, I injured myself again.” I pointed to my scratches.
“Looks like it hurts a lot,” she said.
“It doesn’t.”
“Will you have scars?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Have you got any scars?”
“Uh, I’ve got a very small one on my hip, from chicken pox.”
“Me too!” She pulled the waistband of her skirt down a little, to show me.
“Oh, so you have,” I said. “Yeah, mine’s a little bit like that. And I’ve got a scar on my knee from roller-skating.”
“Show me,” said Faye.
I pulled the cover off, and showed her the barely visible line below my knee, and the little round marks where I had fallen on stones when I was about twelve years old. “It’s not easy to see,” I said, peering at it closely myself.
“Will you still be here when I get home from school?”
“I’m not sure…” I started to say, and then my mother appeared in the doorway with a cup of tea.
“You’re welcome to stay, as you know,” she said, coming over and putting the mug on the bedside table. “But won’t your family miss you?”
“They’ve gone away for a few days, to visit my husband’s parents,” I said.
“Well then, that’s worked out well—that is, if you do want to stay.”
I looked at Faye and shrugged. “It looks like I will definitely be here after school then.”
She clapped her hands and jumped off the bed, shouting, “See you later!” with barely a glance back at me.
Jeanie touched my shoulder. “I’m going to walk Faye to school. I’ll get you some breakfast when I get back,” she said, and winked.
How I wished I could take those winks back home with me.
* * *
WHILE THEY WERE out of the house, I went to the shed. I knew it would take my mother about twenty minutes to get back, and I wanted to check the box and see if I needed to make any repairs. Better to do it now, in case it was dark again when I left. I needed to make sure I could get home and guard against any damage when I came back next time.
Next time: the 1970s, my regular destination. What about your past? How often would you travel there, given the chance? Often? Never? And when you got there, would you think about staying forever?
I had a proper look at the box. It was getting battered, but then the only connection I seemed to need to make with the box was getting in it. I didn’t think the box itself had to stay sturdy for the journey, I didn’t need to worry about the bottom dropping out while I was in between the past and the present. It was more like a portal. A door. And it didn’t matter if a door was hanging off its hinges, as long as you could get through it, right? What’s more, as I inspected the box, I understood that it must be a portal at both ends. I’d already noticed that the box in the past was newer than the one I’d found in my loft, and I had no doubt that there was an older version of this box sitting on my mattress at home right now, which meant things could exist at two different places in time. Plus, I knew that two of the same thing could exist at the same time, like me and little me. That was as far as my logical brain went before giving up. I stopped thinking about how it all worked; after all, I didn’t need to know how the computer worked in order to use it.
But what would happen if someone threw the box away, or destroyed it? What would happen to me if the 1970s box was destroyed, but I still got in it at the other end? I didn’t like to think where I could end up or what might happen to me. I pushed those thoughts away, before they ruined everything.
Even though I’d worked out that it didn’t really need it, I felt happier taping up the side that had torn away, just in case the box worked better intact, and also because it was a precious item and deserved some respect. There was a roll of packing tape in the shed, and I did a quick repair job, then padded back to the house for a wash.
* * *
THE BATHROOM WAS painfully familiar. The tiny things I would never have brought to mind were the most distinct. The countertop next to the sink had a chip in it where I’d dropped a paperweight on it once, and there was a Captain Caveman sticker on the mirror that I must have put there. After a quick scrub at the sink, I borrowed my mother’s face cream (roses) and her mascara. I was a bit nervous about handling the will-you-look-after-Faye-if-something-happens-to-me conversation, which I just knew she’d bring up again. I didn’t want to lie to her. I could just say yes, knowing that I would end up with Em and Henry and that would all work out okay. Then again, it seemed like a big thing to lie about. And she was my mother, after all. Maybe I could simply promise that I would ensure, one way or anothe
r, that little Faye would be fine. That I would keep tabs on her. Strictly speaking, that was the truth, self-preservation and all that. But somehow I didn’t think that would satisfy my mother. She wanted a solid promise, no tricks, no relying on wordplay; not technically lying would not count. And anyway, why add even more lies to what was already going on?
I still toyed with the idea of coming clean to my mother, telling her who I was; there was a possibility that she of all people might believe me, by virtue of her personality. But what if she didn’t? It was all very well thinking that because she was a spiritual person and a bit of a hippie, with a penchant for signs and a connection with me she couldn’t really account for, she would just take her time-traveling future-grown-up-daughter at her word. But I didn’t think she would. If she believed me, then I would be telling her she didn’t have long to live, and I didn’t want to do that. And the other thing was, when all this stuff was being talked about last night, we were both stoned, especially her. Maybe when she got home, all of that would have been forgotten, and we could have a nice, simple day together.
* * *
IT FELT LIKE madness, sitting in the kitchen, waiting for her. This quiet moment, the clock ticking, the sun casting a bright beam across the floor; this moment in which I did nothing other than wait, this felt the craziest. I had to repeat a mantra to myself—yes, you are really here—otherwise I might have started trying to convince myself I was in a hospital ward somewhere, in a coma, having a vivid dream. I was conscious of my heart beating, of the random need to scratch my leg; I touched my arm softly, felt the material so vividly under my fingertips: this time in the past was as real as the rest of my life. And what if it hadn’t been? If it wasn’t real, then what would I do differently? Nothing. It was like worrying; it really made no difference to the outcome.