“Wow,” she said. “That was a smart thing.”
“Well, even us goofy bleeding guys have our moments.” That got another laugh from her.
Triumphant in my duty to entertain, I took a small bow and headed into the downstairs bathroom.
Then there’s the question of time itself If the soul is not in space, then is it in time? Does it exist somewhere in that moment where 1.62 x 10-33 separates time and space? If the soul is the true source of our perceptions, then that has to include our perception of time. How else do you explain that so many of our mental processes are time-dependent: planning, hoping, regretting, mourning, anticipating, cha-cha-cha?
The idea of a timeless soul has always troubled me. What meaning do we attach to the soul after death, if the beforeafter relationship that we call time is transcended by souls?
Physicists do not regard time as a sequence of events which simply happen. Instead, all of the past and future are simply there, and time extends in either direction from any given moment in much the same way space stretches away from any given particular place. So the “there” that the physicists refer to, we call the present: a simple point on the four-dimensional sheet of the universe—a dot in the middle of a page.
But the ghost of a dot or a word or a drawing erased from a page can be brought back again.
Palimpsest.
4. Time Was/Helio, It’s Me
I cleaned my cuts, applied Band-Aids, and used small squares of toilet paper until my nose stopped bleeding.
While I was waiting for my nose to get its act together, I sat on the lid of the toilet and opened the paper.
At first I thought that the paper had landed in a small puddle of some kind and the ink had started to bleed through the pages, but it didn’t feel damp at all; in fact it looked, felt, and smelled like a fresh-off-the-press newspaper.
Each page looked to have been printed on twice: one page superimposed on top of each other. The print and photos of one layer were dark enough to be read and seen if you could ignore the lighter but nonetheless quite visible ghost page underneath. This wouldn’t be the first time that the Cedar Hill Ally had experienced trouble with its print run, nor would it be the last. This is a town that likes to think of itself as a city, and despite everything the city government says it wants to do, Big Changes aren’t really in their plans, they just like to make a lot of noise so those of us still living here will feel that Cedar Hill matters in the larger scheme of things. So they talk about updating the printing facilities at the Ally with computerized, state-of-the-art equipment, but it remains, as always, a smalltown paper with small-town paper printing equipment.
I was ready to stuff the whole thing into the recycling bin when something on page 2 (or I should say ghost-page 12) caught my attention.
The 1975 Senior Class of Cedar Hill High School would conduct graduation ceremonies this Thursday at White’s Field, starting at 1:00 p.m.
Not a reunion. Graduation.
My graduating class, in fact.
I angled the paper away from the light to cut down on the glare, flipping through the other pages to make out what I could of the ghost pages beneath.
Every local, national, and international story was dated June 21, 1975.
I turned to the Community Announcements page.
William and Ethel Finney of 190 North Tenth Street would be celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary on the 28th.
Then I looked at the Now Playing page.
The Midland was showing Tommy. The Auditorium was featuring The Other Side of the Mountain. Cinema 4 (then a real phenomenon, one building with four different movie theaters! Can you imagine that?) was showing Dog Day Afternoon, French Connection Hearts of the West, and The Apple Dumpling Gang.
Finally, the Birth Announcements.
The previous day, Mrs. Virginia Gabriel of 182 North Tenth Street had given birth to a daughter, Blair Ann, at 6:15 p.m. A parenthetical aside noted that, although there had been some “unexpected complications,” mother and daughter were doing well and expected to be released sometime in the next forty-eight hours.
Unexpected Complications. Right.
Mom had been forty-nine when she’d given birth to Blair, Dad had just turned fifty-five. They lived only twelve more years, and died within six months of each other. Neither of them had any idea how to deal with a Downs’ Syndrome baby.
I thought about what Mom had said to me during that last visit:
“I knew we were taking an awful chance. I mean, I hadn’t gone through the Change yet—which had me worried something terrible—and now here I was about to have another baby. I heard all these terrible stories about women my age who’d had babies come out in the most terrible state . . . and it scared me, Daniel, right down to the ground.
“I never told your dad about this, and I don’t know why I’m telling you now, but before I do, you’ve got to promise me that you’ll never, ever let on to Blair. You promise? Swear to me, Daniel. Okay, then.
“I knew going into my second month that something was wrong with the baby inside me. Don’t ask me how I knew, I just . . . I just did, that’s all. A woman’s body, it speaks a language to her heart that only she can understand, and my body was telling me that what was inside me wasn’t right somehow. Don’t look at me like that, it wasn’t like some Rosemary’s Baby or Omen thing, I never once thought I was carrying Satan’s bastard son—well, maybe once, but then you came out and looked so sweet . . . that was a joke, stop looking at me that way.
“I .didn’t think that Blair was a monster or anything, I just knew that she wasn’t going to be right. I didn’t think me and your dad could handle it, not at our ages and him with all his nerve problems—who knew his heart was going on him then? So I started thinking about . . . likelihoods.”
Likelihoods. That was the word she used. In 1974, in a middle-class neighborhood (technically lower middle-class) in a sad little Midwestern town like Cedar Hill, a pregnant forty-nine-year-old woman with a husband and son, who helped organize community charity drives and bake sales and played Bridge with her friends every Thursday night, who never talked back to her husband and was raised to believe that a woman’s place was in the home and only in the home, this type of woman, for whom appearances and others’ opinions of her mattered greatly, this type of woman never said, whispered, or even thought the word “abortion.”
But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t come up with a word such as likelihoods and assign it the exact same definition as That Word.
“I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it. I never thought about it being like they scream nowadays—you know, a sin, murder, all of that—I just knew that if me and your dad had this baby, our lives would be changed for the worse. Your dad was trying to figure out if he could retire early, and I knew that if we had this baby, he’d be working right up until the day he died . . . and that’s just what happened.
“Don’t think bad of me, hon? I love Blair, I do . . . but even now I can say that I ever really wanted her. I couldn’t figure out if I should go to a doctor or a priest or maybe go ask one of the girls who were forming those Womens’ Lib clubs at O.S.U. I had no idea how a woman my age back then went about getting that kind of information. You heard all them horror stories about girls who went down to Mexico and got themselves all butchered up and died . . . just terrible.
“So I finally thought to myself, ‘If I’m supposed to have this baby, then have it I will . . . but if I’m not supposed to, then let Fate provide the means.’
“Turned out that Fate was listening to me that day.
“You remember how there used to be that piece of carpeting at the top of the stairs that everybody used to trip on? Lord, it was a miracle you or your father never fell and broke your necks!
“Anyway, one night I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and went out into the hall and just . . . just stood there, wondering what I was going to do. I decided to go down to the kitchen and make a glass of warm Ovaltine, and just as I go
t to the landing, my foot caught in that piece of carpet and I almost fell. If it hadn’t been for me grabbing the railing, I think I would’ve—and you know what a tumble that would have been.
“Then I just sat there on the top step and cried for a minute, because I realized that I’d just thrown away the chance Fate had given me. So I went down and made my Ovaltine, and while I sat there drinking it, I got to thinking . . . maybe I could do it again—you know, get my foot caught and fall. It wasn’t enough of a fall to kill you, but if you were pregnant, it would be enough to make you lose a baby. I know because . . . I never told you this before, but . . . you weren’t our first child. I was pregnant before you, and one day about a month or so into my pregnancy, I was carrying a small basket of laundry downstairs and slipped at the top of the stairs and fell. I miscarried right on the spot.
“So why couldn’t I do it again? I mean, all I suffered that first time was a broken wrist and some cuts and bruises. I decided to do it.
“I went back up and stood there, making sure the carpet was still gonna catch my foot, and then I did a couple of rehearsal trips, you know? Taking a few steps back and then going forward, not looking down to see where I was going. Caught my foot each time.
“I got ready to do it for real, I walked a good ways back down the hall to make sure I had some speed behind me, and just when I got to the edge and felt my foot slip under, I felt this . . . this breeze behind me, like something big had just flown by, or somebody tried reaching out to grab me. At the same time, I saw this little light from the comer of my eye, and I thought, “I just felt the wings of an angel trying to grab me.’ I had just enough time to stick out my arms and stop myself from falling—and I would’ve. I had been given the real sign I asked for. So I went back to bed and said no more about it, and that’s how you came to have Blair for a sister.”
Blair knocked on the bathroom door. “You okay, Danny?”
It was only then I realized I’d been in there for almost half an hour. “Uh, yeah, yeah. I’m okay.”
“I cleaned up.”
“That’s good. Thank you.”
Silence for a moment, then: “I got something for you.” A hint of mischief in her voice. Her mood was back to normal now. I still wondered when the next fit would come.
I folded up the paper and opened the bathroom door. “What is it?”
“I got you a girlfriend.”
I blinked. “Huh?”
Blair nodded. “I found her on the back porch.”
She grabbed my hand and dragged me back into the kitchen.
Sitting at the table, a large, heavy-looking backpack resting by one of her legs, her long black hair as thick and beautiful as I’d remembered it, was Laura Kirwan, the woman who I once thought was the love of my life.
“Hey, stranger,” she said, a hint of Is-he-glad-to-see-me-or-not? in her voice. “Blair let me in.”
“Why the back door?”
She shook her head and laughed, her same deep-throated laugh that had only gotten sexier with age. “Dumbass. Don’t you remember? Everyone used to come in through the back door when we were in high school.”
“Oh.” I am nothing if not a flaming wit.
She looked at Blair, then at me. “It’s good to see you.”
“You, too.”
“I wasn’t so sure you’d want to see me. I mean, what with the way I left.”
I shrugged. “I’m sure you had your reasons.”
I knew that at a moment like this I should be pulling her to her feet and holding her close, hugging her for all I was worth—God, she still made my heart triple its rhythm—but I couldn’t. I suddenly felt like a failure. How many evenings had she and I spent talking over our dreams and hopes? Here we were, twenty-five years later, like two characters from a Harry Chapin song, knowing what we felt but having no idea what to do about it . . .
Palimpsest.
When copying Biblical texts, ancient monks were often forced to erase pictures and words from previously-used sheets of parchment because they lacked sufficient supplies of paper. As the ink from these newly-created pages began to dry, the impressions left on the parchment from what had been there before began to show through. View these pages in their modern-day museum homes and it’s easy to see where the original drawings and text “ghost” through, creating two simultaneous pages on one sheet; past and present merged into one: the former bleeding into the latter, as if living already for the second time.
But is this life, like that of the soul, in time or space?
5. I’ve Been To Paradise (But I’ve Never Been To Me)/ Now I’m Here
It was 1975 the first time I told Laura Kirwan that I loved her.
Ours was one of those oddball relationships that you see manifest in high school. I was the nerd, she was the popular cheerleader/student council/homecoming queen/straight-A student everyone wanted to know. Hell, guys like me could simply revel in her breeze as she passed us in the hall. That was enough; just to know that someone like her existed in our world and we got to see her.
I was never really sure of why she started talking to me before the study hall we had together, I knew only that I felt humbled that she did.
At first it was simply about school and teenager stuff—which teachers we liked, which ones we thought were dweebs, what movies we thought looked good—but then things started getting a bit more serious.
The first time she’d had sex with Paul Lawrence, a star player on the football team and her boyfriend our junior year, it wasn’t exactly consensual. In fact, as she told me about it, we both realized at the same time that it had been rape, pure and simple. But Paul was very popular, as was she, and the Popular People simply didn’t cause any fuss. I told her she should have him arrested and charged, but she was both too humiliated and too scared of how it would affect her social standing in the school to do anything about.
“I’ll just break up with him and warn the other girls away,” she said.
“Yeah, that’ll teach him.” I made no attempt to disguise my disapproval.
She glared at me. “I thought you were my friend.”
“I am.”
“Then would you please not judge me about this? Just . . . just be my friend, okay? Just understand.”
“I’ll try.” .
We sat together in study hall every day after that, and had lunch together at least twice a week. Being around her leant me a certain mystique among her circle: If Laura Kirwan likes this guy, then maybe he’s got something we haven’t noticed before.
Hey, it got me a couple of dates with girls who otherwise wouldn’t have given me a first look, let alone a second one. But that didn’t matter; by our senior year, I was so in love with Laura that I couldn’t imagine the rest of my life being worth squat without her.
But she had cast me in the role of her best friend/surrogate brother, and I hated it, but I’d never tell her that because it would mean an end to our time together.
Like our “study nights” that were really just an excuse to watch movies, listen to records, gossip about the people we knew, and share our hopes for the future with someone who wasn’t going to laugh at our dreams.
Then came the Friday night when she didn’t bring any books or records or magazines over. She came to the back door and knocked—even though she knew it was okay to just come in—and I answered to find her standing there in tears, carrying her favorite backpack, the one I’d gotten her for her birthday last year.
“Laura? What’s wrong—get in here.”
“I c-can’t, Danny. Not tonight. I . . .” She looked like someone who suddenly had the weight of the world dumped on their shoulders and didn’t dare tell anyone for fear it might crush her.
“Laura, what is it?”
She didn’t say anything, only stepped forward, put her arms around my neck, and gave me the longest, sweetest, saddest kiss I’d ever had or ever would receive.
Then she put her head on my shoulder and stood there holding me.
“I have to go away for a while, Danny.”
Listen to how my chest cracked open at those words.
“Tell me what’s wrong!”
“I can’t. I just wanted to stop by and tell you . . . that I . . .” She shook her head and touched my face.
“Please don’t go, Laura,” I said, ashamed of the scared-little-boy tone in my voice. “I don’t want you to leave. You’re my . . . I mean . . . ah, hell! I love you, Laura. I think I’ve loved you since the moment I first saw you.”
“There’s my Danny, sweet, romantic, never judging me.”
“Don’t. Go. Please.” I was crying now and hating myself for showing her just how weak I could be when she needed someone to be strong.
“Promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“Don’t cry for me, okay? Just remember that you were the only guy who . . . who I believed when he told me that he loved me.”
She grabbed her bag and ran off the porch, disappearing around the front of the house. I ran through the kitchen and living room, through the front door, and vaulted down the front steps just in time to see her pull away in. Tanner’s car.
Now, sitting in my kitchen, she smiled at me and said, “Did you keep your promise, Danny?”
“What’re you—?”
“You never cried for me, did you?”
“He was crying today,” said Blair.
Laura looked at her, then me. “Is anything wrong?”
“No, a bad morning, that’s all.”
“Well, what do we do now?”
“Why are you here, Laura?”
Her answer came immediately, with the sure, steady cadence of someone who had practiced what they were going to say so they’d get it right:
“You may find this hard to believe, Danny, but there hasn’t been a day since I left Cedar Hill when I haven’t thought about you and what we could’ve had if I hadn’t been so stupid and full of myself. I was popular, after all, and you weren’t, and I didn’t want to risk my place in the school’s hierarchy by getting romantically involved with you.
Past Imperfect (Jerry eBooks) Page 17