The Bellbottom Incident

by Neve Maslakovic

  The someone was my mother, Missy Donovan, before she became one half of Mr. and Mrs. Olsen. She was in a group of five or six students who seemed to be using the cafeteria as a shortcut; having streamed in through one door, they were immediately heading for the other. Mom’s blonde hair had been blow-dried into a big and puffy feathered look, a la Farrah Fawcett. Her cheeks were plump and smooth, and there was a spring in her step I hadn’t seen in a long time. A moment later she was gone, the far door of the cafeteria having closed behind the group.

  “Julia?” Abigail asked. “Something wrong?”

  “Hmm? Nothing. Just saw…a familiar person. Not Sally,” I said quickly, before Abigail could get her hopes up.

  I went back to eating, but not before I did a quick mental calculation, counting back from my day of birth, April 1 of 1977. My mother had five months to go in her pregnancy. Did that mean she was aware of it already? It wasn’t anything I had personal experience with. If she knew, was she being responsible and all that? No. She’d had a cigarette in one hand and had taken a leisurely puff on it as she walked, before passing it on to another student. Maybe they didn’t know that kind of stuff was bad in the seventies? The campus ban on smoking was a good twenty years away. I had never seen her smoke—she must have given it up after I was born.

  I also couldn’t help but notice that the person she’d passed the cigarette to was not Dad but some other student, a tall, broad-shouldered guy with dark hair. Granted, I’d only gotten a quick glimpse of his back, but Dad was more of an average height, blond, and had a different line to his shoulders.

  There was something else. Seeing my mother, I had felt odd, shaky, as if I had instantly come down with a bad bout of the flu and it had narrowed my breathing passages. The feeling—so brief I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just my imagination—passed as quickly as it had come on.

  Abigail and I stayed behind as the cafeteria slowly emptied and the kitchen staff cleaned up. Dr. Little, who couldn’t function any longer without sleep, had headed to Xave’s room in St. Olaf’s Hall, having taken one of the two-way radios. Xave was going to leave for the dorm Halloween party with Gabe after letting Dr. Little into the room.

  Abigail and I slipped into the women’s restroom as soon as the janitor had finished up inside. We waited in silence until all sounds of activity died down and the lights in the building turned off one by one. The rally outside had lasted a good while, but even the most strident Carter supporters had other places to be on a weekend night.

  “Let’s prop open a side door so Sabina can come back in,” Abigail suggested, her face shadowy above her cell phone, which we were using as a flashlight.

  We peered out of the restroom and slipped into the hallway when we determined the coast was clear.

  Looking for an object to prop open the cafeteria doors with, I spotted a magazine someone had left behind on one of the green tables. I rolled it up—it was Mad, with some kind of Star Trek spoof, the Star Trek Musical, on the cover. “Oh, that’s a collectible. We should bring it back with us,” Abigail suggested. I cracked open the back cafeteria door and stuck the magazine into the small space. Cold, fragrant autumn air wafted in, mixing with the smell of cleaning chemicals, which had lingered after the janitor and the kitchen-cleaning crew left for the day.

  There was nothing to do but head back to the restroom and wait. “Guess it’s all right to turn on the lights now,” Abigail said. “I don’t want to completely drain my phone battery.”

  The couches were in the front of the restroom, set in an L-shape and offset from the plumbing part by a wall. Abigail took the smaller couch, a two-seater, while I took the other. We made ourselves as comfortable as possible, our heads pointed toward the bend of the L. I offered Abigail our blanket, the one Nate had sent with us, but she shook her head and curled up under her coat.

  I folded the blanket into a pillow and lay on my back, staring up at the tiled ceiling. We had decided to leave the overhead light on, a small beacon to Sabina under the door. The tiles were a creamy white and there were sixteen of them, with lights set into four middle ones. As tired as I was, I was too wired to sleep and I suspected the same was true of Abigail. I heard her give a little sigh, but it was a sound of dissatisfaction, not of sleepiness.

  “Julia?” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you really think someone did let Sabina into the lab? Watched as she wrote the note, helped her into the basket?”

  Having had time to think about it, I’d decided that it was unlikely. I said as much and explained my reasoning. “No one who belonged there and knew the door code would have made the mistake of misinterpreting the date. He or she would have known that STEWie was set for 1976, not the first century.”

  “True. Unless they didn’t care where Sabina was jumping to, just as long as she jumped somewhere.” Abigail was silent for a moment, then said, “I’m not saying it was him, but Dr. Mooney did seem a little odd about the whole thing back in the lab, didn’t he?”

  She had said it in a quiet voice, as if mortified to be voicing suspicions about her beloved professor.

  He had sounded odd, but we now had an explanation as to why. “I’m pretty sure it was because he remembered meeting us in 1976 but didn’t want to say so for whatever reason. I believe him, though; I can’t imagine he gave her the code. Maybe Kamal or Jacob or one of the other students did it without realizing how she’d use the information.” I decided that it might be good to talk about other matters to get our mind off Sabina, so I asked, “How’s your thesis going, Abigail? You said you’ve been working on a new chapter?”

  Her thesis topic was Marie-Anne Lavoisier, wife and lab partner of the eighteenth-century chemist Antoine Lavoisier and a chemist in her own right—she of the apparatus sketching.

  Abigail propped herself up on one elbow to face me. “The thesis? Slow, I guess. I’ve been writing Chapter 4, but I’m not happy with the first three and want to redo them. I’m thinking of overhauling my outline and choosing an entirely new approach to presenting the work…My defense is scheduled for early in the spring and I have all the historical data I need, so I’m done with my STEWie runs. Which is good, I guess.”

  “But you’re not sure how to weave the results into a solid thesis?”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “You wish you’d chosen a different topic?” This was pretty much guaranteed with all grad students at some point in their career, sometimes even long after they’d graduated and left school.

  She laughed outright at that and said, “Well, yes. A topic more hands-on, perhaps, not involving people. Now I sound like Dr. Little. No, the real problem is that when I finish the thesis and graduate, my funding will stop.”

  And there it was. It was a simple statement that spoke to a far larger story, again a familiar one. Abigail supported herself with a research assistantship from Dr. Baumgartner. Since there just aren’t enough postdoc and junior professor spots to support all graduating PhDs, most leave for teaching or research jobs at other schools or institutions after graduation or, more likely, enter the corporate workforce. It’s a problem every grad student faces as his or her graduation date nears—what to do next?—and more than one student dealing with this conundrum had been known to drop by my office for a sympathetic ear, a cookie, and a list of alumni for networking. In general, the students tended to want to stay in academia, since that was all they had ever known. But it wasn’t realistic, not for all of them. I wanted Abigail to be one of the ones who could stay, if that was what she really wanted to do.

  “Has Dr. B said anything about a postdoc for you?” I asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “But you do want to continue on?”

  “Well, wouldn’t you? I’ve been lucky enough to get to use STEWie for my research. The prospect of working anywhere else, where I might not be able to time-travel, seems so—I don’t know—boring? Even if the salary is larger and the health benefits better. But now that I’m responsible
for supporting Sabina, maybe I do need those things. A steady job with a good salary and benefits, I mean. I didn’t used to worry about such material goals, but now…Plus I don’t want her to have to move or change high schools.”

  So it wasn’t just the money that worried her. A career in academia entailed relocation from position to position as funding necessitated, at least until the holy grail of tenure was achieved. Thornberg had a five-year high school, grades eight through twelve, giving Sabina plenty of time to get acclimated before having to move on. Or that had been the plan, at least.

  I sat up on the couch. “You know you can always count on me, don’t you? Nate feels the same way—we’re Sabina’s honorary aunt and uncle. And Helen and Xavier might as well be her grandparents, they dote on her so much. Kamal, too; he’s like an older brother.”

  Kamal Ahmad was Dr. Mooney’s senior grad student and one of Sabina’s biggest fans.

  “Thanks, Julia. It’s going to be all right, you know. I have a feeling we’ll get her back safe and sound. We can figure everything else out later.” Nestling back into her coat, she asked, “So who did you see? Or is it whom? During dinner, I mean.”

  “It’s whom. And I saw my mother.”

  “Wow, your mom. I mean, I never knew my parents, so I have nothing to compare to, but I can imagine that it had to have been weird and strange.”

  “It was. Do you hear that?”

  Muffled voices were audible outside, the sound drifting under the closed restroom door. We rose to check, but it turned out to be nothing more than already-inebriated Halloween partiers crossing the plaza. We heard the faint chime of the midnight hour on the campus tower not long after.

  “So it was strange to see your mother,” Abigail prompted me once we were back on the couches, like two patients undergoing simultaneous psychotherapy.

  “I got an odd vibe, like History was clearing its throat, reminding me that I can’t stay here much longer. Just wanted to mention it in case I suddenly have to run out.” Dr. Little had told me that if History decided to send me home, I’d feel a sudden tightening in my chest, as if the air was getting thin in all directions but the one leading to STEWie’s basket. It had felt like that for just the briefest of moments, then it stopped.

  “It could just be a reaction to seeing your mother when she was young,” Abigail suggested half jokingly.

  “Not only young, but younger than I am now.”

  “So…?”

  “Hmm, what?” I was lying on my back again, looking up at the creamy white ceiling.

  “There’s something else that’s bothering you about your mother, right?”

  “Well, there’s…a personal matter I was hoping to look into. My brown eyes and hair, if you must know.”

  At this, Abigail pushed herself back up on one elbow and looked over at me. “Why, what’s wrong with your hair and eyes?”

  “Nothing, other than the fact that my parents are both blond and blue-eyed, as befitting their Norwegian roots.”

  She raised an eyebrow in my direction. “You know you can change your hair color, right? I do it every other week practically. As to eye color—I’m far from an expert, but I don’t think two blue-eyed parents always equals a blue-eyed child, just usually.”

  “I like the brown. I just don’t like the potential implications.”

  “Is that why you volunteered for Dr. Little’s study?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I saw the form you filled out. It was in the recycling bin. So are you wondering if you’re adopted? Did you ever ask your parents about it?”

  I took a moment before replying. My parents had driven up to see me after our return from Pompeii, obviously thrilled to hear that I was alive and well. After a somewhat harried morning spent ensuring I had enough instant coffee in the cupboard and clean guest sheets, I’d heard them open the garage door, for which they still had the code. I went outside to greet them and gave them both hugs. They were looking a little older—I had not seen them in eight months by the calendar—but they looked tan and healthy enough.

  “We never did think you were dead, Jules,” my mother said at once. “Kept expecting you to come back every day…and you finally did.”

  “It sounds as if you had quite an adventure. Where is the Roman girl?” This from Dad as they followed me inside. “I want to ask her about gladiator fights—what they were like and if there was betting and stuff. You didn’t get to see one, did you? Maybe get video of it?” He gave me another hearty hug around the shoulders.

  I explained that Sabina was not there to greet them, as Abigail had taken her to the mall to buy her clothing and other necessities—Sabina had arrived in the twenty-first century with only her dog and the clothes on her back, so she needed everything: tops, pants, dresses, shoes, undergarments, pajamas. It was a long list. I expected that they would be gone the whole afternoon.

  Mom elbowed Dad—“You can ask her about gladiator fights later”—and pushed a potted plant into my hands. Had I been gone so long they’d forgotten about my tendency to kill all flora in my care?

  “It’s not for you,” my mother reassured me. “We thought Sabina might like a present from Florida. It’s a lemon tree that she can grow in her room. We also got her a pair of sunglasses and a beach towel for when you visit. I would have gotten a bathing suit, but I didn’t know her size, so I left it for—”

  I held up a hand. “Slow down, Mom, there’s plenty of time to buy her presents for birthdays and such.” I set the tiny lemon tree on the kitchen table and offered them pop from the fridge. “Sabina and Abigail should be back for dinner, and you’ll both get to meet them then.”

  Dad’s eyes lit up. “Dinner? Should we go to Ingrid’s for lingonberry pancakes?”

  They didn’t have lingonberry pancakes in Fort Myers.

  Mom elbowed him again. “It could be that Julia is cooking for us. Are you, darling?” she asked a little apprehensively.

  “The possibility never crossed my mind. Ingrid’s it is.”

  My Pompeii adventure had left me pensive, perhaps even obsessed with the big mysteries of life—time, history, death—and personal ones as well. The question had been burning on my tongue for their whole visit, but how was I supposed to broach the subject of genetics, hair color, and paternity over lingonberry pancakes?

  I answered Abigail truthfully. “I did try to work it into the conversation once, but they didn’t seem to notice. And asking outright felt too much like I didn’t trust them. When I was younger, I researched it a bit and found an answer I liked—that eye and hair color follow complex patterns of inheritance, and hidden traits can sometimes skip a generation or two. So you’re right: blond parents can have a brunette, brown-eyed child…but it’s very rare. I decided I was that rare case and that there had to be a dark-eyed, dark-haired ancestor deep in the family tree. Then I got the opportunity to time-travel.”

  “I’ve heard about this phenomenon from other people, how it’s easier to broach a subject with just about anyone on the planet than with your own parents. To me it seems like it would be easier just to ask, but what do I know? I’ve never had that particular relationship. Did she have a pregnancy belly?”

  “What, my mother, you mean? In the cafeteria?”

  “It’s what you need to know, right? It would settle the question of whether or not you were adopted. Or was it too early in the pregnancy?”

  “I couldn’t tell either way. She had a coat on. And, well, she was a bit chubbier than she is in the present.”

  “If we get a chance, we can spy a bit on your parents after we find Sabina. Your birthday is on April 1, so let’s see…” She counted nine months back on her fingers. “July of this year would be the time to look and see what they were up to. That was what you were hoping to do when you volunteered for Dr. Little’s study, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what I was hoping to do,” I answered honestly. “Have you—forgive me for asking this—have you ever wanted to
use STEWie to find out who your own parents are?”

  “Of course. Who wouldn’t? All I was told is that something in their life circumstances prohibited them from raising me. Growing up and moving from foster family to foster family, I always pictured them—and I know this is silly—as secret agents. Their line of work involved too much danger and international travel for them to take care of a kid…As I said, I know it’s silly, but I still imagine them keeping an eye on me from afar. As to using STEWie to find out—even if it were allowed, I’m pretty sure reality would not live up to my imagined scenario.”

  It was a strange conversation to be having in the pitch-dark of the restroom. (We had turned the light off after deciding that Sabina might be spooked by it rather than enticed.) I thought again of my own parents, who called every weekend to see how I was doing, and all my personal problems suddenly felt so very small. I had just gotten a postcard (my parents were the only people I knew who still sent them) telling me they were on a Key West cruise with some of their charges and were planning on driving up for a visit before winter set in.

  Abigail cleared her throat. “I suppose everybody must have something personal they’d wish to check on or bear witness to or whatever.”

  “Except for Dr. Little.” We chuckled again at that, but in the back of my mind I wondered if the young professor was as uninterested as he seemed. You never know with people.

  Apparently Abigail had had the same thought. “Did you notice the strange thing about his study?”

  “What strange thing?”

  “He wants to zero in on his personal cutoff date in History, compare the results with volunteers with similar birth dates, and look for a pattern.”

  “Right. So what’s strange about it? It sounds like a legitimate research topic.”

  “His methodology for himself differs from what he’s doing with his volunteers. For his own runs, he started in September 1976 and intends to use STEWie to edge closer to his birth date in April.”

  “And…?”