by Jack Beal
I think of Dad. How I never got to know him. How I never got to say goodbye. The same goes for Mom. Even Grandmom left before I could realize what was happening. Before I could put coins on her eyes and send her down the Pecos River, they wrapped her up like a birthday gift and hid her down in the dirt.
I wonder if any of this would have happened if they hadn’t died. If I hadn’t been left on my own.
Misty-eyed, I trundle across the mattress. The place next to mine is still warm. I sit up straight. Somebody’s here with me! For the first time in years, I’m not alone!
“Hello?” I call out.
Nothing.
My bare feet smack across the hardwood floors as I race through the house with newfound dexterity. Downstairs, the curve-top door leading outside is hanging agape. Throwing it fully open, I step onto the veranda and scan the front yard. A chartreuse-hued lawn butts up against a stone-laid driveway. Two matching trashcans sit on either side of an open two-car garage. Inside it, a Datsun painted in the same electric green as the pair of budgie smugglers I’m still squeezed into.
Hands cusping my crotch modestly, I hurry back inside. After smacking the door shut, I take a look around. I’m sure not in Alabama anymore. Two twin couches piled with pillows line the den’s adjacent walls. Between them sits a wicker basket filled with a few weeks of TV guides, some crossword puzzles and a silver remote control. On the other side of the room a pair of leather reclining chairs bookend a ring-stained coffee table. A thick, paneled tube TV sits inside a massive entertainment center. So does a record player, a VCR, and a few shelves stacked with scratched-up record albums and scribbly-labeled VHS tapes.
I zigzag along the ground floor. Next to the den is a study that’s been left in quite a state. A stout mahogany desk and matching wooden chair hide beneath a mess of papers. An army of sticky notes cling atop a metal filing cabinet whose drawers hang open, exposing a jumble of folders and workbooks with colorful spines. And then there are the books. Crunched onto shelves. Stacked on windowsills in teetering rows. Stuffed into cubbyholes.
All this clutter making me anxious, I zip from the study and across the hall. Behind the door is a powder room with pink flowered wallpaper. Bar soaps shaped like sea shells sit in a dish on the sink beside plushy towels in the same pink shade. The toilet paper smells faintly of roses.
At the end of the corridor is a spacious kitchen with access to the back yard. The patio sliding door’s blinds are tilted up, obstructing the view, but letting rays of soft golden light seep in. The pantry is stuffed with dry goods and when I yank open the magnet-covered refrigerator door, it’s packed to the brim. If I hadn’t been sure after the fragrant TP, now its undeniable. A woman lives here.
Something about breakfasting in my underwear bugs me, but my stomach is nagging like I haven’t eaten in years. Go figure. After gobbling some deli-meats and cheese and guzzling a bottle of orange juice, I head upstairs.
Instead of a shower, there’s a sleek square bathtub that sends jets of gurgling water out on command. After switching on the faucet, I peel off the hot-green bathing suit and shoot it directly into the wastebasket.
Pouring some bubble bath into the tub, I climb in. The water is too hot, but as I sink down, my body adapts. Scouring at the dirt, I begin to relax. It’s as if the scalding water knows how to wash my cares away, too. Breathing in the rose-scented bath, I smile. I’m already halfway through this mess. And now I’ve got an ally.
As the stress continues to strip away, I reflect on my situation. My mission is to uncover the tablet’s secret. Only I don’t know where the tablet is. But it’s okay. I still have the symbols.
Not the symbols, the signs, a nagging thought inside corrects. Follow the signs and finish the equation.
Same difference. Dunking below the surface, streams of water flow into my ears, over my eyes, and up my nostrils. I try to get up, but I can’t. Holding me under, the water grows murky. Squelchy images surge up to meet me like pieces of the equation. Epsilons blend with exponents, null sets with infinity symbols, and numerals blink between Roman and Hebrew.
My lungs stick. I can’t breathe. Let me out! The symbols churn faster and faster. Until suddenly, they vanish. The vision is replaced with a new one. It’s me. Towel tied around my waist, I wade through a sea of clutter, up to a mahogany desk. I stand up on a wooden chair, and reach out for a thick, black book.
When the vision fizzles out and reality sets in, a swirl of sopping feathers eddies around me. Tickling my skin, they spin around my limbs, gradually prying away the water’s hold. Clutching to the porcelain rim, I vault from the tub. The faucet is emptying by the bucketful, spilling bathwater and feathers onto the tiles. I wrench the cross handles closed before knotting a towel around my waist and rushing downstairs.
The study’s ceiling is spritzing like an irrigation system. Below, papers and books totter along the shallow lake that’s replaced the plushy carpet.
Mimicking the me from my vision, I wade through the clutter, climb up onto the chair, and yank down the book with the thick black spine. It’s a textbook entitled “Origins of Mathematics.” The words “Property of Downey Middle School, Downey California,” are stamped in black ink across the text block.
I fold back the book’s front cover and read. Hazel Flynn. Room 131.
The textbook belongs to my wife. She’s a teacher.
Lugging my discovery out to the den, I plop down into a heap of pillows. Then I flip back to the book’s glossary and skim through the “S” section. Foregoing the symbols, I turn to the signs. Only, they’re not quite what I was expecting.
“Sine –(Trigonometry): The sine sin is the ratio, or balance, of the opposite…”
The realization hits me like a tractor trailer. I can’t believe it. All this time I’ve only been focusing on half of the equation! In looking for the signs, I’ve neglected the sines! The opposites. That’s what that rasping voice tried telling me. The feathers are symbols, but they’re also sines. They’re messages from the other side! To balance the equation, I need both.
It’s like the incantations that broke me from the void. Real and unreal. Light and darkness. Life and death. Both are needed, both are necessary: the signs and their opposite counterparts.
I stop abruptly. Something’s fishy. Yesterday I could hardly put two and two together, and today I’m cracking codes like a real Alan Turing. This shouldn’t be possible. But since it is, I’ve got an idea.
Grabbing a pen from inside a crossword puzzle book, I rip a few blank pages from the end of the textbook. The Opposites, I label at the top of the sheet. Then I draw a timeline from 1947 to 2019 using six-year increments. Once I’ve finished, I repeat the whole thing backward. At the end, each year corresponds with another. 1947 goes with 2019, 1953 with 2013, and so forth and so on. If I’m right, the clues given won’t reflect the day the feather falls, but date sitting opposite it. I check the chart. 1989 lines up with 1977. It makes sense why nobody payed any mind to the flaming transporter offshore: because it wasn’t actually happening. It had already happened twelve years before!
I fill in the chart from the two ends, working inward. In the middle is a date without a match. Today.
I scratch my head, considering the possibility.
Unless… A tingle of excitement shoots through my chest. What if, instead of bringing advice from the past or warnings for the future, today’s feathers provide insight to what’s happening right now?
Two snow-white feathers flutter down in unison landing on either side of the 1983 scrawled at the center of the timeline.
That explains how I’ve suddenly become so smart. It’s giving me all the answers.
Two more feathers descend. This time, they’re icy blue. Pausing in midai
r, they bend together until they’ve formed the likeness of a flower. Once accomplished, they glide to the floor.
The garden! I don’t remember having seen one out front, so it must be out back. I head down the hallway and into the kitchen, but before I reach the back door, something makes me stop in my tracks.
A pale blue blossom lifts solemnly from the center of a tall, fluted vase. Vividly hued plumerias, carnations and tuberoses spill out around it, but I don’t care. The feathers showed me the blue one.
I reach for it, but it won’t come loose. Upon closer inspection, I see what’s wrong. The bright colored blooms have been woven together like one of those lush, flower necklaces. Their stems are tied tightly to the blue one, like anchors.
I yank at the chain vigorously, until the citadel of blossoms reduces to pieces on the kitchen table. But no feather drops.
Picking the bloom up by the stem, I examine it in the light. There’s nothing special about the outside of the flower. Maybe what’s important lies on the inside.
As I yank out one of the curved blue petals, an old schoolyard rhyme drifts into my mind. “She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me…” I continue plucking until the last petal has fallen. She loves me not.
Peering down, I search for the secrets once concealed beneath those rings of blue petals. But no answers are in sight. All that’s left is the flower’s barren, hole-spattered heart. The beauty is gone. And it’s all my fault.
A pummeling on the front door sends me exploding down the hallway. Hazel’s going to be pissed at me for ruining her bouquet. Searching for an excuse, I unbolt the door.
“Sorry for getting you out of the shower.” The mailman shrugs down at the envelope. “But I saw your car in the garage, so I figured you were here. This letter can only be issued with a John Hancock.”
Handing me a clipboard, he shows me where to sign before ripping out one of the copies and passing it to me.
“Thanks,” I grumble, taking my mail and slamming the door.
The square envelope has a subtle opal sheen, like a wedding invitation. I take it with me upstairs, exchanging the sopping towel for a new one before plopping on the bed. I’ll go to the florist and grab a bunch of roses for Hazel before she gets back, I decide, sliding my finger into the corner and tugging open the flap.
As I remove the creased sheets, I’m met with a perfume I’ve smelled before. Then I unfold the pages penned in a familiar stamp-like hand and begin reading.
Dear Robert,
By the time you get this letter, I will already be long gone. But then as you’ve always said, what is time, anyway? The day I met you was the day that my world stood still. I’ll never forget the moment our eyes met for the first time. I knew I’d never love anybody else. That was the first time life proved me wrong. And so did time, which managed to fly by at such a rate even you wouldn’t comprehend. When we chose to start a family, my heart doubled. I learned to love stronger than I’d ever imagined possible. But you were always the first to say nothing can last forever, and in the matter of an instant, my heart shattered into so many pieces I fear I’ll be searching for them until the end of time.
But time doesn’t wait for any of us to pick up the pieces. The world keeps turning, and so must we. As I watched you leave me time and time again, I was forced to bide my time. Sometimes for a week. Sometimes a month or longer. You told me to be strong. You said I was your oxygen, but every time you went away, I was the one who couldn’t breathe.
As time went by, I stayed the same. But every time you came back, you were different. I didn’t want to believe it, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and the more I waited the more I knew our days were numbered.
Now, as I plan to leave this room for the very last time, I can’t help but wish I could turn back the hands of time! But we both know you alone are capable of that…
If your promise stands true, then return it to me. I’ll be waiting at the place our world began.
Goodbye, Robert.
Hazel
My mouth grows dry. Probably because all the liquid in my body’s streaming up and out of my eyes. Ripping myself from the bed, I race to the closet. One side is full, the other empty. The same goes for the drawers.
I’m not sure why my heart’s up in my throat, but it’s strangling me softly. When we chose to start a family, she said. Two doors sit at the end of the hallway. One, closed, the other, hanging ajar. I push the half-closed open. Primary colors coat the walls. Glow-in-the-dark stars stick to the ceiling. The bed is unmade and the closet, empty.
No. Don’t tell me it’s too late. Trembling, I approach the second door and push. But it doesn’t give. I pound on the wood before taking to kicking. When the door splinters open, I peer inside. Pastel paper clothes the walls. There’s no bed, or any furniture for that matter. Only a framed oil painting of a pale, blue blossom.
Collapsing onto my knees, I clutch the letter that severed my heart in two. But the human heart isn’t symmetrical. And when it breaks in half, one side is left wanting.
Cradling my head in my hands, I rock myself like a child. When the nausea sets in, I don’t fight it. My body drifts limply into the void. Each loop taking me further from the pain. Each coil taking me farther from the present. Each helix taking me further into the past.
Into the past.
Back to a time when she was still mine.
“Hope is a waking dream.”
~Aristotle
THIRTEEN
DREAMS AND ILLUSIONS
1977, 36 YEARS OLD
Beneath an azure sky, a sandy, palm-lined lane unfolds at my feet. The salt-air is opaque like a screen, obliging the sun to stab through before it can spill its golden bars onto the trees. The sun has tiptoed so high that the shadows it casts on the white pavilion walls are disproportionately long. As I traipse down the path, everything is silent. Then again, it’s always silent inside the void.
My feet pitter-patter mutely along the empty stretch extending to a tremendous dome-roofed building. A wave of panic, or excitement—I’m not sure—washes over me as I scale its limestone staircase and slip through its arch-shaped doorway. Inside, a maze of rooms slides in and out of place without a sound. The air smells stringently of iodine. Or is it gunpowder? It’s hard to tell.
Nose pinched, I push on. Unsure of which way to go, I trip through the tangle of alleyways until a soft sliver of light lures me off-track. Drifting like a phantom, I trace the eerie glow through the warped corridors until I reach its source. A solid metal door looms before me, the sliver of light projecting from a teeny window at its crest. I lunge for the handle, but before I can touch it, the floor jerks, carrying me afield. Each successive attempt ends the same.
Until I remember the signs are not always the same as the symbols. Turning my back on the glowing beam, I shadow the darkness. As the convolution of halls slump away, I plod down the only passage left. When I get to the door, I stop and listen.
A metallic pulsing throbs hurriedly behind it like a heartbeat. As if to sync up, mine hammers faster. Forgoing the handle, I poise on my toes and peer through the glass.
A pair of hanging hinged lamps shine so bright they leave the rest of the room bleared in backlight. Squinting, I make out a group of silhouettes. One turns toward me: a faceless form fixing me with huge, gaping eyes as dark as the void.
I open my eyes. The world around me mirrors the one I’ve just deserted: black, quiet, and cold. Tossing myself on my back, I let out a long, heavy sigh.
I’m tired, but it’s not the physical kind. The further I advance, the farther I get. Sure, I’ve learned some, but I can’t knock the feeling I’ve lost more. Now that I’ve crossed the halfway
mark, I don’t have time to waste.
While the clock’s hands are both pointing near eight, not a single shard of light escapes through the Venetian blinds. The smell of gunpowder clings to the quilt tucked beneath my chin. Trembling, I hoist myself up. The comforter bulges up next to me.
Hazel!
Folding the cover back gingerly, I peek down. But the lump I mistook for my wife is only a cluster of extra pillows. Where is she?
Deserting the bed, I grab the navy robe from where it’s been slung over a desk chair and wrap it around my nude body.
Past the bathroom sits a kitchen melding into the living room. All of them are empty. I’m alone.
After serving myself a cup of stale coffee, I slump onto the loveseat. A TV guide informs me the date is somewhere between January 16th and 22nd. The year, 1977. At least I know my calculations were right. But I still need a plan.
Picking up the phone, I study the sticker glued to its base. Then I dial *69. It works.
“Hey, you!” a woman’s voice answers.
“Where are you?” I croak.
The husky voice on the other end of the phone giggles. “You should know! You called my work line!”
Oh yeah! Cell phones don’t exist yet. “Are you coming back?”
“I told you I had to run in for a few minutes. Is it important?”
Important is an understatement. “Yes,” I voice tautly.
“Fine. I’ll be back in a few.”
The connection cuts without a goodbye. A thick glob blocks my airwaves, making it hard to swallow. Releasing the switchhook, I dial a new number.
“Hello, 911. Is this an emergency?”
“No. Maybe,” I flounder. “I’m calling to report an explosion.”
“An explosion? What kind of explosion?” She sounds worried.
“A transporter filled with oil.”