“Good point. Come this way.”
We walked past an enormous hangar and two neat rows of midnight black, Stealth helicopters parked out front. Long one-story buildings with few windows ran alongside the hangar. They reminded me of barracks. We entered the third one, and I was surprised to see the bustling office inside. The space was divided into cubicles. Men and women in uniform were in meetings, on telephones, and working with computers similar to the one we saw in Weston.
“Man, everything here is just so . . . normal, I guess. I’ve seen some really weird shit since I left New York.”
“You might be seeing more of it, hoss. That virus is spreading pretty quickly. Let’s hope they can administer your cure fast enough.”
“It’s not my cure. Dr. Andrew Trowbridge is the one who discovered it. We lost him outside St. Louis. He was a very brave man.”
“Yes, I’ve been informed.”
We walked down the corridor between cubes, and everyone we passed stared at us. Some whispered to each other, others saluted, but everyone stopped what they were doing.
“They’re saluting you, too, you know.”
“Why me?”
“You’re a hero.”
“A hero? What did I do?”
“You brought us the cure, and through hostile enemy territory at that.”
“Not even. I’m just a guy that didn’t get sick because of dumb luck. My friends who didn’t make it—they’re the real heroes. I wouldn’t be here without them.”
“A lot of people are saying that you and Celeste have saved us. If all our forces weren’t busy fighting those things and rolling out the cure, there’d be a lot of pomp and circumstance to your homecoming.”
“Like you said, the virus is still spreading. All we did was try and save ourselves.”
65.
Neal took me to a cubicle, and we sat in front of a computer. He brought up a list of women in San Diego with the last name Bruyere. My wife was not among them. My heart sank.
“How about the rest of the country? Can you show me that?”
She wasn’t on that list either. I felt sick to my stomach.
“Maybe she changed her name,” Neal suggested.
“Why would she do that?”
“Uh, you died forty years ago. She probably remarried.”
I felt like such a fool. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that she’d remarried. Rationally I knew that forty years had passed, but in my heart, in my thoughts, she was the same woman I kissed goodbye on the day I died.
“My son . . . his name is Colt. Please look him up.”
He spun alphabetically through a new list of names. As soon as he came upon Bruyere, I spotted Colt’s name in the middle of the mix. I leapt up from my chair and tried to point to Colt’s name on the projected image. My finger went right through it.
“That’s him, that’s my son! Right there, Colt Bruyere.”
“Eight Zero Two North Rios Avenue. You know where that is?”
“Of course,” I said. “I knew he’d stay in the neighborhood,” I muttered to myself.
“Would you like to call him?”
“Yes, yes, I mean no. I don’t know. Should I call him?”
“I would, but that’s your call, hoss.”
“I would, it’s just . . . it’s so weird, that’s all. What if he doesn’t believe me?”
Neal shrugged. “You’ve been all over the news.”
“Even weirder.”
“We can take you there, if you’d like.”
“Good idea. It’ll be so much better face to face. Let’s go see if he’s home.”
66.
Neal drove me off the base in a white, solar van with government plates. My hometown had changed so much I hardly recognized it. The buildings were taller and densely packed. Areas that had once been quiet suburbs looked like mini-cities. The traffic was terrible on freeways that crisscrossed in every direction. It looked more like Los Angeles than San Diego. It took us forty-five minutes to get up to Colt’s house on the coast, but it felt like hours. I was so excited to see him, but apprehensive at the same time. I felt guilty for crashing the plane. He knew better than anyone that I shouldn’t have been flying that day. I grieved for his mother. I couldn’t bear the fact that I’d never see my beautiful wife again.
We pulled up in front of the address from the computer and parked against the curb. I remembered the house vividly. It was the quintessential Southern California stucco track home, one of just a few built on the street. It was completed in the late nineties and hadn’t been remodeled. It still felt like a new home to me, even though it had become a cozy, aging relic among a neighborhood of angular, glass-covered marvels.
“I’ll stay out here until you’re done,” Neal said.
“Actually, I could use a little space.”
“And if he isn’t home?”
“That’s okay. I’ll just go for a walk, check out the neighborhood, and stuff.”
“I’ll come back to check on you at sixteen hundred hours. Here’s my number if you need to reach me before then. We can provide a place to stay if you need.” He handed me a plain white business card with the Marine Corps globe and anchor printed prominently on the front.
“Thanks.”
I got out of the car and walked slowly toward the front door. Neal gave me a quick nod as he took off down the street. It felt like Dad had just dropped me off for my first day of school, I was so anxious. I pushed the doorbell, and the chime echoed inside the house. The door opened, and I recognized Colt immediately. My boy was no longer a young man. He was older than me. My heart opened wide, but my timid mouth remained shut.
“It’s you! It’s really you!” he screamed. He grabbed me in a tight hug.
I hugged him back as hard as I could, bawling. The joy of seeing him again was greater than any I’d experienced. We remained there for a moment, locked in the embrace.
“Let me get a look at you,” I said, pulling my head back and putting my hands on his face. “You’re an old man now like your father. Imagine that.”
“You look just like I remember, Dad. You’re like a walking photograph. I can’t believe you’re really here.” He gave me another hug.
“How did you know I was coming?”
“It was all over the news. They kept saying your name and how you’d been frozen in twenty ten and brought back to life in New York. The first time I heard that I just about fell out of my chair. I didn’t know what to believe. There’s been so much misinformation since the war started. It all sounded too good to be true.”
“Now you believe it?”
“Of course. They’re also saying you’re a hero. That you’re a gift from the past who found the vaccine and brought it across the front.”
“That’s the part you shouldn’t believe.”
“Then how’d you get here?”
“There’ll be time for that. I want to talk about you. You stayed in the neighborhood, eh?”
“I did. I love it here. I also wanted to be close to Mom. Here, come inside.”
We walked into the house. It was smartly decorated and cozy inside. It definitely had a woman’s touch. We went into the living room and sat on the couch. There was a picture on the mantle of Colt frolicking in the grass with a petite blonde woman and two angelic little towheaded girls.
“What a beautiful family!”
“I’m a lucky man.”
“That you are. At least until they’re teenagers.”
“I can’t say I’m looking forward to that. This is Molly and that’s Linea.”
“How old are they?”
“Molly is nine now, and Linea is seven.”
“Wow, you two waited a long time to have kids.”
“They’re our little war babies. Actually, a lot of people wait until their mid-forties to have kids now, so we weren’t too late. Candice and I were so focused on our careers that the years just flew by. Then the war started, and our perspective changed. We got pre
gnant right away. She’s a little younger than me, so that helped.”
“When can I meet them?”
“Tonight. They’ll be home around six. We should have dinner.”
“That’d be marvelous, son. Say, you look a little pale. I take it you haven’t been in the water lately?”
“I’m afraid not. Only a couple of times since the war started. It’s really frowned upon.”
“Frowned upon?”
“Ever since we’ve had the Chinese on our front porch. You have to understand, Dad. It’s a different world now. Most every waking hour of every single day is spent defending our country. It’s been a real struggle to keep this half of America free. I miss surfing a lot, but I have to defend my family’s freedom.”
“So you’re a soldier?”
“No, I’m an engineer, but like most people, I dedicate my craft to the cause. Which reminds me, I might need to take a phone call at some point. I work from home, and I’ve been fielding a lot of urgent requests today.”
“Are you serious? You haven’t seen me for forty years, and you’re going to work?”
“The shift from fighting the Chinese to fighting this disease hasn’t been easy. We have a lot of work to do if we’re going to contain it.”
I was proud of his dedication. Still, I felt dejected, but I tried to hide it.
“Dad, you were right in the middle of this outbreak, weren’t you?”
“Ya, I’ve seen some things.”
“I can’t allow it to come here. I’ve heard some horrible things. My little girls can’t see that.”
“Of course. Don’t worry about me. I’ll just, um—listen, before you go anywhere, I have something I want to tell you.”
“Sure, Pop.”
“You can’t imagine how sorry I am for leaving you and Mom like I did. I should have been there for you two. All those years . . . I should have been right here.”
“I’m not going to lie to you, Pop. It was hard. It was really hard on us for a very long time, but eventually we started to enjoy life again. Not as much as if you were with us, but we knew you’d want us to carry on.”
“There are so many things we didn’t get to share. I should’ve been there when my little granddaughters were born, when you graduated, and the surfs. Oh the surfs! I waited forever for you to get big enough to surf with me, to travel with me, and what happened to that? I threw most of our best years together right in the garbage.”
Colt’s eyes grew swollen and moist. I moved next to him and put my arm around him.
“I just want you to know that I’m sorry. That I realize what I’ve done. I wish I could take it all back.”
I noticed Colt’s right hand resting on his leg. The ring and pinky fingers were missing.
“What happened to your hand?”
“I lost them in the plane crash. The doctors couldn’t reattach them. They were too mangled.”
“I never should have flown that plane.”
“Maybe so, but who really knows? What if we’d landed safely, or you didn’t have that heart attack? The plane isn’t what killed you.”
“It’s still my fault.”
“You’re missing the point. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. That was almost forty years ago. Sure, it was a slow, painful process for us in the beginning, but we’ve had a long time to heal.”
“I wish I could accept that.”
“The whole thing must be really fresh for you.”
“It sure is.”
“It isn’t for us, Pop. We lost you so long ago. Sure, I wish I could have spent those years with you. There are so many things I would have loved to share, but that’s the past. Those years are gone. None of that matters now because you’re back. You’re right here with me, and that’s an incredible gift. It’s a miracle.”
“I guess it’ll take some time for me to come to terms with my regret. It hasn’t even been two weeks since they thawed me out. It’s so great seeing you, son. I didn’t know if I was going to make it out here alive, but now that I did—now that I’m sitting here in your living room—I realize everything I’ve missed.”
“You’re going to have to learn how to take the good with the bad. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the last ten years, it’s that.”
“I guess you’re right. If you had been living back east, I never would have found you.”
“That’s the spirit, Pop. And you—you were crazy enough to fly that plane, but you were also crazy enough to get frozen. That’s the only reason you’re here now. How many people get that second chance?”
“Um, nobody. I’m the only one.”
“Exactly. We’re going to embrace this opportunity for what it is. We’ll just have to make up for the time we lost.”
“I never thought about it that way. I just wish I could do the same for your mother. Oh God how I let her down. We were supposed to grow old together. All those anniversaries, birthdays . . . sunsets on the porch—they’re all gone. I should have been there for her, right by her side, but now it’s too late. There’s nothing I can do to make up for it.”
“So they told you about her.”
“Oh, no, no. It’s true isn’t it?”
“What’s true?”
“I’ll never get over her. She was the love of my life. Please tell me she went peacefully.”
“Went? She didn’t go anywhere. She still lives in the house on the cliff.”
“You mean she isn’t . . . dead?”
“No, of course not.”
I leapt up from the couch. “Are you serious? I have to see her. Is she home now?”
“Probably. She’s getting older now so she doesn’t spend a lot of time outside the house.”
“What a relief! I don’t know why, I just—when I didn’t see her name in the database, I assumed the worst.”
“Dad, you didn’t see her in the database because her last name isn’t Bruyere anymore. She remarried.”
“Oh.” My heart sank, as did I, back into the couch.
“Don’t take it hard. She mourned you for a very, very long time. She was incomplete without you. She lived like half a person. That’s literally what everyone said. Eventually, though, life goes on. Even Mom had to move on with her life. She had no other choice.”
“Maybe that was my time, that day in the plane. I should have just died when nature intended.”
“You don’t mean that.”
I did mean it, but I bit my tongue. It wasn’t right for me to show up after all those years only to upset my son.
“You wouldn’t want to deprive Mom of happiness, would you?”
“No, of course not. This is just one of those things that’s hard for me to get used to. Half a lifetime has passed for you since the crash, but for me, nothing has changed. It’s like it was yesterday . . . I’m still stuck in twenty ten.”
“You belong here, Pop. You belong in this world.”
“I hope you’re right. I really do. Let me ask you a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Is she happy now?”
“Yes, she is, but she’ll be a lot happier once she sees you again.”
A phone rang loudly upstairs.
“You need to get that?”
“I probably should. Why don’t you go see Mom?”
“Okay, I will.”
“I’ll head over there as soon as I’m done here.”
67.
I didn’t know why, but I ran all the way to my house. While I waited for the light to turn so I could cross the Coast Highway, people stared and pointed at me from their vehicles. They must have recognized me from the news. As soon as I caught sight of my home, I lost the urge to run. I stopped and tried to catch my breath. The neighbors had gone bananas—gaudy mansions cluttered the street, depriving it of any character.
Like Colt’s dwelling, my house had changed little since I last saw it. It was nice to know that some things had withstood the test of time. I had worked my whole life to buy that house, and
now I was afraid of it, apprehensive of what it held inside. I opened the front gate, walked past the front door, and stood on the edge of the deck overlooking the ocean. Groomed lines from a healthy south swell followed the edge of the reef beneath the house. Colt wasn’t exaggerating about surfing being taboo. There wasn’t a single person in the ocean. Even the lifeguard station was boarded up.
I knocked softly on the door. It was a strange sensation, being an uninvited guest at my own home. An old man answered. He must have been at least eighty years old. I recognized a familiar face buried beneath the wrinkles and liver spots.
“Gary, is that you?”
“Royce! Welcome home! We saw you on the news this morning, and now here you are. Well, aren’t you a bolt from the blue.”
“So you’re the one that’s giving it to my wife?”
“Oh Royce, now . . . take it easy, friend.”
“Just answer the question. Are you or aren’t you?”
“Come on, pal. It’s not like you were off on deployment or something. You’ve been dead for forty years. What did you expect?”
“I expect my friends to keep their hands to themselves.”
“Royce, buddy, I’m sorry. We’re so excited to have you back. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
I heard someone stirring in the background. I leaned in closer and spoke softly, “You know what’s ironic about all this, Gary? When I first woke up, I thought you were playing a prank on me. The weird clothes, funny-looking machines, the mean Chinese doctors . . . I thought you were sticking it to me. Turns out you really are sticking it, just not to me.”
“Look,” he said gruffly. “I’m going to step out and give you two some space.” He grabbed a pair of shoes from inside the doorway, hobbled over to the bench out front, and pulled them on with his shaky, bony hands. “I really am glad to see you, Royce” he said, patting me on the shoulder as he walked past.
“Royce Bruyere, you come inside,” a familiar voice called from inside the house.
I stepped into the entry, and there was my wife, sitting in a chair in the living room just like the last time I saw her. She was tiny. The passing years had robbed her of muscle tone and shrunk her frame. Her wrinkled skin hung loose on her bones. She looked and sounded a lot like her mother, which was shocking, but her spark and infectious smile—immune to the ravages of time—were all her own.
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