He’d take them fishing out on Sheepshead Bay, and he almost enjoyed this lost world, a safer world, before graffiti, before crack, before the world changed.
But there was one thing he had promised himself that he’d never do. James had told him that it would be wrong. Perhaps dangerous. Will figured he was just trying to spare his feelings.
Will couldn’t keep that promise.
So as soon as he had a license and a car, he started watching.
Becca, in college at Russell Sage.
Sometimes he’d drive up and watch her on the streets of Troy, New York, walking with her friends, laughing, years before she would meet him. .
And sometimes she’d stop and look in his direction.
He’d slide down in the car seat, hoping that the sun’s glare on the windshield would hide him. Hide the man watching her.
Then she’d move on.
And he watched himself.
A young man. Carousing through the sixties. So full of life that he couldn’t relate to that person at all.
That’s not me, he thought. That’s someone else. But he was wrong.
And when he came back to his small studio apartment in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, only a block from the elevated subway, he’d sit in the dark and think about the life he’d lost.
He got older. Middle age took a firm hold, and he was fifty.
Will and Becca got married . . .
And he was amazed that all the details were the same.
As if nothing had changed.
But he knew it had. He knew it, because this Will still saw his old school friends. He went to reunions where Kiff was still a crazy man, and Tim Hanna was doing pretty well in real estate — no great shakes, but not bad. Whalen and Narrio both moved to California, but they flew back for the occasional reunion.
I changed it all, Will thought. Things were different.
And his apartment grew to be filled with the history of these people’s lives . . . photographs that he took secretly . . . the articles from local newspapers, while the seventies unrolled like an old, badly scripted movie.
Then one night, drunk, sick with the pain that never went away, he pulled all the pictures down and threw his collection into a big box, intending to throw it into the garbage.
Which he never did.
Instead he put everything in a closet.
Knowing that he’d have to stop this shadow life, watching the others, the real people, live their lives that he had given them.
He stopped spying on Becca and Will. Feeling too sick every lime he did it.
He stopped.
3.
But when the first baby was born —
When Sharon was born —
Will went to the hospital and he walked up to the giant window that showed the parents and the relatives a sea of squirming babies, all of them identical.
He had to tilt his head to read the card.
Sharon Dunnigan.
He put his hands against the glass.
That’s my baby, he thought.
His lips pressed against the glass.
My little girl.
And he sobbed against the glass, heaving, looking at the tightly swaddled infant asleep.
And he was there for Beth too.
Now he couldn’t stop.
He went to their school plays, seeing them again, rows behind their parents, and he felt crazy, loonish.
Once he thought about visiting Joshua James. Because — all the time — he felt this need to talk with someone, anyone, about what had happened. Someone who would understand, who could say, “You did good, Will Dunnigan.”
He went so far as to go to the Fordham campus.
A place that the other Will would never have to visit now. And sometimes, after a lot of drinking, Will hoped that maybe, if he went to see him, Dr. James would know him, that somehow he’d have this memory of what he and Will had done.
But that was impossible. Absurd.
When I changed everything, it changed for James too.
And so he never went to visit James.
And his days passed.
Until he was an old man.
4.
He turned sixty-eight.
And though he still worked, the new owner of the food store, a bright-eyed Latino named Hector, just had him operate the cash register.
Hector forgave Will when the register turned up a few bucks. short. Will had trouble reading some of the prices, and the bodega didn’t have a scanner.
Hector asked Will why he didn’t retire. Why not live on Social Security, use Medicare?
Will smiled. He explained that he couldn’t do that.
He didn’t tell Hector that — as far as the government was concerned — he didn’t exist.
Hector still paid him in cash and food.
It wasn’t so bad, even if Will felt tired and empty.
He was alone now, most of the time. The people he had known in the neighborhood were gone, or dead. Many of them moved out to the suburbs, the sticks, before the neighborhood “changed.”
Others went to live with children, grown, with their own families.
Will hadn’t seen them — hadn’t seen his family — in years. It was harder to make the trip up to Westchester. His driving wasn’t so great.
And somehow, he was always left shaking afterward. Shaking like a leaf.
He took medicine. For his heart.
He still had his box of pictures and clippings, sitting in a closet. That was important to him.
And he still watched baseball.
Though it had been boring knowing who was going to win the World Series each year. And how many times had he been tempted to place a bet with the local bookie?
Too many times.
But that seemed all wrong.
I’ve been given a gift, he thought.
Life for those I love.
To bet on the things that I know . . . that would be all wrong.
But today . . . today was a special day.
Today there was an important baseball game and he didn’t know who won.
It was the last play-off game. The Mets vs. the Giants.
Because today . . .
It was the day he left.
Twenty-seven years, he thought. Such a long time. To end up back where you started from.
Twenty-seven years.
And nothing would happen tonight. There was no slasher, no demonic ripper.
Had there ever been?
And the other Will would watch the ball game with Becca curled up on the couch with him. He’d have a few beers. Eat some popcorn, and see whether the Mets pulled it off.
And I’ll watch too, thought Will. I’ll watch, and I’ll think about them, and — finally — I’ll taste some time that I haven’t lived through before.
His apartment was cold when he got to it. The landlord didn’t recognize the chilly winds of fall. There would be no heat for a while. So Will — as soon as he went in — turned on the gas stove and left the oven door open. It was a smelly heat, stinky with the gas smell. But it kept him warm.
He opened a can of hash. Maybe I’ll fry an egg and put it on top, he thought.
Why not celebrate?
And though he tried to watch his beer intake, he had a six-pack of Bud Light cooling.
I’m going to enjoy this game tonight, he thought.
It’s a special night!
And he almost believed that.
5.
He fell asleep before the game ended.
And he woke up in his apartment with the TV yammering at him. An old movie, a World War II film. He saw Van Johnson, Ronald Reagan. It looked colorized.
A half-empty beer can was wedged in the pillows.
He looked at the clock on his cheap Korean VCR that didn’t work anymore.
1:13.
He rubbed his chin.
I missed my game, he thought. I still don’t know who won the game, now, isn’t that something? Isn’t tha
t a pisser? Isn’t that — ?
1:14.
He looked at the digital readout as if it were a beacon into another world, another time.
He tried to tell himself: It’s nothing. I’m about to pass the time I left. It’s nothing at all.
No big occasion.
It’s not New Year’s.
What’s the big deal? What is the damn deal
Just moving from one minute to the next.
His legs hurt.
They often did now, some kind of circulation problem, the young doctor told him. You need more exercise. You need to walk around.
Around here? Will laughed. At night?
Right. Sure. That would be a good way to end my life. Sure …
He tried to push himself off the chair. He pushed against it.
He grunted. His body didn’t seem to want to move.
He reached for the arms of his easy chair. Reached out —
To pull himself up.
He saw the clock.
1:15.
6.
And someone touched him.
He still saw his small apartment, the cluttered kitchen tabIe, the TV flickering, the old war movie —
And then he didn’t.
Instead, he saw who was tugging at his sleeve.
Pulling at it. Standing there in her bare feet, her nightgown with purple flowers — her favorite — touching the floor.
It was Beth.
“Daddy, what are you doing? What are you doing down here?”
This is not real, Will thought. It’s another one of them cursed dreams, teasing me all the time, driving me half crazy when I wake up.
A sweet, lost dream.
But the Beth ghost tugged harder.
“Dad-dee!”
The TV was on. The same movie.
Will looked around.
At his house.
“Beth,” he said. A whisper. The tiniest sound.
She cocked her head, as if aware that something strange was going on.
“Beth — my baby, my —” he said.
His hands moved to hers. So nervous that it would all disappear.
You can’t touch things in dreams. They just disappear. They just vanish like cotton candy shriveling in your mouth to sweet nothingness.
He covered her hands.
She still looked sleepy and unsure.
Then Beth smiled, a toothless grin. “Daddy, you should be in bed, I wanted a glass of water and you didn’t hear me.”
Will nodded. “Yes, honey. Yes. I — I didn’t hear you.”
And Beth, reassured, pulled at him and Will stood up, easily.
His legs didn’t hurt.
He saw himself in the living room mirror.
He saw who he was.
Who he was now.
And his mind tried to deal with this incredible change, this amazing gift.
And all he could guess, could only dream . . .
When I reached the point that I left, when I finally got to that spot on the circle of time, then it was all over …
My life could be mine again.
My life was mine again.
Beth tugged at him.
“It’s bedtime, Daddy.”
“Yes, honey,” he said. And he followed her.
Knowing that Sharon would be upstairs, her math homework done. And Becca would be asleep on her side of the bed, her steady breathing a guardian against all the bad things that the world might send at him.
Up the stairs, a giant led by a little girl. An image came to mind.
Frankenstein’s monster being led to a little lake by a small girl who knew no fear because she was innocent and full of love.
Up the carpeted stairs until he reached the top.
And, beside her door, Beth turned to him and said, “G’night, Daddy.”
She kissed his hand.
And before she could scurry away, Will crouched down close to her and held her tight, tighter, planting a million kisses in her curly hair.
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