Time After Time

by Tamara Ireland Stone

  “Do your parents know?” she asks.

  “I was twelve when they, sort of, found out by accident.”

  Now Maggie’s hands are trembling. She looks at me. “Do they know you’re here right now?”

  I shake my head. “They knew I was here last spring, but they don’t know I came back. Brooke does, but my parents…” I trail off, but Maggie looks at me like she’s waiting for me to continue. I shake my head again. “They wouldn’t understand this.”

  Maggie leans forward. The color seems to have returned to her cheeks. “Where do they think you are right now?”

  “Rock climbing and camping with my friend Sam.”

  “Sam?”

  “Yeah, Sam.”

  “So you’re not…in…two thousand twelve San Francisco right now?”

  “No, when I leave I’m gone. I disappear from there and come here. This time, I’ve been gone since Friday night.” I rest my arms on the table, and tell her how it works. She listens intently but doesn’t ask any more questions. “If I wanted to, I could return to San Francisco right now and arrive back on Friday, just five minutes after I left. And even though I’d been gone for two days, my parents would never even know it. But then they’d be doing those two days all over again and that seems like a pretty horrible thing to do to them. So I just, you know…say I’m camping.”

  Maggie looks confused. “Yeah, I guess that’s probably best then.” She takes another sip of her water. “Or you could…tell them you’re coming here?”

  I laugh. “I don’t think that would go over so well.” I push my plate to the middle of the table. “Mom wants a normal seventeen-year-old kid who skateboards and takes tests and applies to college, and doesn’t rock climb in Thailand or travel to see his grandmother back in nineteen ninety-five whenever he wants to.”

  That finally gets a smile. “And your dad?”

  “Dad wants me to do more with my ‘gift,’ as he calls it. He thinks I’m special and that I should be righting wrongs, fixing things, being heroic or something.” I pick up my glass and swirl the water inside, thinking about the fire back in San Francisco and what Anna and I did in Paris and how, over the last few days, I’ve been starting to think he could be right. “I don’t know. Until recently, I’ve pretty much used this thing I can do for my own benefit.” I don’t tell her that it’s also been for hers. She doesn’t need to know what Brooke and I will do for her years from now, when the Alzheimer’s sets in and starts taking control of her mind and her life.

  Maggie looks more relaxed now. She shifts in her chair and reaches for the glass of water. “That sounds like your dad.”

  “Really?”

  She nods. “He’s always been a bit intense. Far more so than your mom is.” Maggie looks past me, over my shoulder, and when I turn my head to follow her gaze, I see that she’s staring at the stained glass image that hangs in her kitchen window above the sink—the one my mom made when she was a kid. “But he’s a good man, I think. She definitely loves him.” She looks back at me again, and leans in closer. “And you…my goodness. I was only there for a short time, but from what I could tell, their whole world revolves around you and your sister.”

  “That might be true now, but everything will change once she discovers that she doesn’t have a normal kid who keeps her busy with Little League games or school plays.” I stop short of telling Maggie what I’m really thinking. Her daughter’s stuck with me, a freak show who sneaks around behind her back and lies to her, all to keep doing the one thing she so desperately wants him to stop.

  Maggie lets out a sigh and shakes her head. “I bet she thinks you’re pretty remarkable.” I have no idea how to respond to that, and it’s quiet for a long time. Finally, she looks at me wearing a huge smile as she reaches across the table. She covers my hand with hers. “I’ll go back after all. I’ll see what I can do. Now that I know who you are, maybe I can use my trips to San Francisco to help your mom understand you a little bit better.”

  My stomach sinks as I think about the photo of the three of us at the zoo, and how Maggie would never have come that weekend if Anna hadn’t told her to. I don’t know what happened before that visit, but I know what happened afterward—Maggie never came back.

  “I’m afraid you can’t do that,” I say. She doesn’t seem to grasp Anna’s involvement in the whole thing and I don’t want to ruin the one memory she has by telling her that it never should have happened. “You came to visit us once, and that was it.”

  “Once?” She pulls her hand away from mine, and I watch her face fall as the information sinks in. She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t need to. Her expression says everything. That can’t be possible.

  I feel compelled to tell her everything, but I can’t. And now I have to choose my words wisely and use them sparingly, because the more she knows about the future, the greater the risk of her inadvertently changing it. Who knows what could happen if she does.

  “The two of you didn’t speak for a long time. I don’t know why, my mom never talks about it, but Brooke and I never knew you.” I trip on the last two words and immediately wish I could pull them back in, but it’s too late. Maggie heard me. Knew. Past tense.

  She stares at me like she wants to ask the question but doesn’t know how to voice it or if she should. I answer it silently. You died without knowing us.

  I remember those weeks far too vividly. I’d never seen Mom cry before, but the day she found out that her mother had passed away—all alone in this great big house—she became hysterical. Brooke and I didn’t know what to do, so we hid in her room, wrapped in each other’s arms and crying together without really understanding why. The next day, Mom and Dad got on a plane, but they couldn’t afford to bring Brooke and me along. Besides, they’d said, we were too young for funerals. I was eight. I didn’t know what I could do back then; if I had, things might have been different.

  Maggie looks away from me and her gaze wanders around the room before it settles on the table. “Are we both that hardheaded?” she asks herself, and I hear the disbelief in her voice. She slowly raises her head and looks at me. “But now that I know, I can change it. I can be the one who makes the effort, makes it better. Right?”

  I press my lips tightly together and shake my head. “You can’t change it, Maggie. You weren’t part of our lives the first time, so you can’t be part of them now. Who knows what might happen if you were?”

  She gives me a stubborn stare, like she’s considering doing it anyway.

  “You have to promise me you won’t go back there again.”

  She takes a deep breath and her eyes lock on mine. “I don’t know if I can make that promise, Bennett.”

  I don’t have a choice but to give her an ultimatum. “Then I’ll go back in time, right after you came into my room tonight. That Bennett—the one who’s thirty minutes younger than me—will disapper the instant I come back, and I’ll take his place. I’ll come downstairs, and you and I will have a nice chat and eat this delicious dinner. And then I’ll get up from the table, help you with the dishes, and this whole conversation we’re having right now,” I gesture back and forth between the two of us, “will never happen.”

  She rests her elbows on the table and buries her face in her hands. The two of us sit like that for a long time, Maggie thinking about the future and me feeling horrible and helpless because we’re all stuck with it.

  “Fine,” she says, her voice cracking. “I won’t go back.” Suddenly she sits back in her chair and crosses her arms. “You said earlier that it hurt when you traveled. What did you mean by that?” I’m surprised by the question but grateful for the subject change.

  “It doesn’t hurt when I travel to another destination—like when I come here from home—but when I return, I get hit with these terrible migraines and I’m completely dehydrated. I drink coffee because the caffeine helps the headache and I down a bunch of water for the dehydration, and after a half hour or so, it goes away.”

  �
��So did you have a headache when you returned earlier…from wherever you went?”

  I shake my head no. “I really only get the major side effects when I…leave the timeline, if you will. Earlier, I just went upstairs, counted to ten, and came back. I used to get a little headache when I returned after doing those short hops, too, but that doesn’t happen so much anymore.”

  Maggie nods and it looks like she’s following me. But then she leans in closer and her forehead wrinkles up with confusion and concern. “I don’t understand. If it hurts, why do you do it?”

  At first, I think about all the places I’ve been—all the things I never would have seen and experiences I never would have had if I’d let twenty or thirty minutes of pain stop me from traveling. But then I look at her, and I don’t think that’s what she means. I think she wants to know why I come back here.

  My eyes scan Maggie’s kitchen until they stop on that same stained glass oranament my mom made. I think of the photos of my family that line the walls of the living room and the hallways, and how happy we all look. I remember how I opened the front door last Friday, stepped inside, and felt this invisible weight lift from my shoulders.

  “I feel at home here,” I say. I watch Maggie’s eyes well up.

  The phone rings and she stands, leaving me alone at the table, and I’m relieved to have a few seconds to catch my breath. After she answers it, she glances over at me. “Yes, he’s right here.”

  She returns to the table and hands me the cordless phone.

  “Hello?” I say.

  “It’s me.” The second I hear Anna’s voice my whole body seems to relax.

  “Hey, you.” I can hear her smiling on the other end of the line.

  “It’s nice to talk to you on the phone,” she whispers. “I don’t think I ever have.”

  “How do I sound?”

  It’s quiet for a second or two, and then she says, “Close.”

  I smile but don’t say anything.

  “So,” she says. “Emma and I are going to a movie. We thought you and Justin might want to come along?”

  I look over at Maggie and find her buzzing around, gathering up pots, filling the sink with hot water. “Hold on,” I say before I cover the receiver with my hand. “Do you mind if I go to the movies?”

  “Of course not.” Even though we were in the middle of a pretty big discussion here, Maggie looks like she means it.

  I return to Anna. “Sure. What’s the movie?” I ask. Not that it matters.

  “Emma wants to go to some sneak preview of Empire Records,” she says. “I haven’t even heard of it. Have you?”

  The words “cult classic” start to leave my mouth but I stop them. “Yeah,” I say instead. “I hear it’s good.”

  “Great. We’ll pick you up in twenty.”

  I press the end call button and return the phone to its home on the wall. When I reach for my plate to clear it from the table, Maggie swats my hand away. “Stop it. I’ve got the dishes. You go have fun.”

  “You sure?” I ask. Her hands still look a little shaky.

  “Positive.” She turns her back on me and continues collecting the rest of the dishes in the sink. She turns the water on, and I’m about to leave the room, when I hear it stop. “Bennett?”

  I look back as she wipes her hand on a dish towel.

  Then she crosses the room and surprises me when she pulls me into a hug. “Thank you. I’m glad you told me,” she says. I close my eyes as I wrap my arms around her. She feels small in my arms, and when she rubs my back, I squeeze her even tighter. I’ve spent all these years sneaking around, helping her secretly and always from a distance, and I’m filled with relief that I don’t have to do that anymore. She knows who I am. And it suddenly hits me that I’m hugging my grandmother for the first time. I squeeze her even tighter and she does the same.

  “I’m glad I get to know you now,” she says.

  I choke out the words “Me too.”

  She takes a deep breath and gives me a hard pat on the back. “Okay, scoot. You have a date.” Then she takes two steps away from me and stops. “Bennett?” The tone of her voice is careful and questioning, the wrinkles on her forehead more pronounced as she asks, “How long has Anna known?”

  I close my eyes, thinking back to the day I stood in Anna’s kitchen and showed her what I could do. Then I let my memory take me back even further, to the day she handed me that letter in the park.

  I open my eyes, feeling this overwhelming sense of relief as a smile slowly spreads across my face. “Anna’s known from the beginning.”

  Anna and I spend most of Sunday hanging out in my room, listening to music and talking about the next time I’ll be back: three weeks from now. Homecoming. Anna tells me that I’ll finally get to see her in the dress she bought for the auction party last May and reminds me to get here in time to pick up a tux.

  The room is getting darker, and when I glance over at the clock and tell her I should be getting back, I feel a pit form deep in my gut. It’s followed by a rush of guilt for feeling that way about my own home.

  “I have something for you.” Anna says as she crosses the room and flips on the light. She pulls something out of her bag and hides it behind her back. “Pick a hand.”

  I point to her right side and she opens her hand, shows me it’s empty, and pulls it behind her back again. She must switch hands, because when I point to her left side and she opens her other hand, it’s empty too. She looks up at me with a mischievous grin, so, on impulse, I grab her wrists and kiss her while she twists in my arms, laughing and trying to keep whatever she has behind her back out of my grasp.

  “Fine!” she says, cracking up as she squirms away and holds me at arm’s length. “Here.” She hands me a three-by-five-inch album with geometric designs and the word PHOTOS in block letters across the front.

  I turn it over in my hands and Anna gives me a proud grin as she opens the cover for me. The first picture is the two of us, standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Her arms are wrapped tight around my waist, the inky black Parisian sky in the background, and we’re beaming at the camera like there’s no place in the world either one of us would rather be.

  I flip page after page, looking at the photos we took as we walked around Paris that night and the following day. Me standing in front of the Fontaine du Cirque. Anna in front of the wrought iron gates that led to the park, holding a baguette like a baseball bat. Me at the base of The Thinker, mimicking the pose. Her on the bridge, standing next to our lock. God, was that only yesterday? I look through the pictures, feeling grateful for a talent that allows me to take her to Paris at the drop of a hat. I feel equally grateful that it allows me to buy a whole extra day with her.

  “This is incredible,” I say as I flip through the plastic pages.

  And then I get to the last one. It’s not from our Paris trip yesterday, but I remember the night we took it in vivid detail. She’d just come back from La Paz. We were sprawled out on her rug in her bedroom and she held her arm high in the air, balancing her brand-new camera in one hand. She’d planted a kiss on my cheek as the shutter snapped. I study the expression on my face. I look happy.

  “I love it.” I stare at the picture, and then look over at her again. I think I’m supposed to tell her how nice it will be to have something to look at when I’m home and missing her, because I’m pretty sure that’s what she wants to hear right now, but the truth is, when I’m seventeen years away from her and wishing I weren’t, subjecting myself to these photos will be the last thing I’ll want to do. Still, I’ll probably do it anyway.

  “See.” She taps on the cover of the book. “And now you have something to show your family.” Her smile looks sweet and hopeful, but it’s her words that snap me back to reality. “I figured since I’ll never be able to go home with you and meet them, at least you could show them these pictures.” She lets out a laugh. “You know, so they don’t think I’m a figment of your imagination or anything.” My stomach knots u
p into a tight fist.

  She waits for my reply, and when nothing comes she continues talking.

  “I made a photo album for myself, too, but of course I have to keep mine hidden from my parents. I’ve convinced them that the pins in my map are just wishful thinking, but I’m not sure how I’d explain photos of you and me on the top of the Eiffel Tower.”

  I look down at the pictures in my hands, thinking back on our weekend. Talking with her under a canopy of trees during Emma’s birthday party. The look of anticipation on her face when I took her hands in mine and told her to close her eyes, and the sheer awe I saw when she opened them. Falling asleep with her in Paris. Waking up to her in Paris.

  I shove the photo album into my backpack, avoiding her eyes. “Good idea.” I wonder if she hears the guilt in my voice. I wish she hadn’t brought this up now, when I’m minutes away from leaving and I won’t see her again for three more weeks. “Speaking of my parents, I’d better get going.” I zip my pack closed and feed my arms through the straps, and Anna looks down at the carpet.

  I step closer to her and rub her arms. “Are you going to be okay?”

  She nods without looking at me. I take her chin and tip her head up. “Go downstairs and talk to Maggie.” Anna closes her eyes, presses her lips tightly together, and nods.

  I muster a valiant smile, but inside, I’m thinking how I’d give anything to stay here another day, another week…another three months. This whole being strong for someone else thing is a lot harder than I expected it to be. I can tell she’s trying to keep it together for my sake as well. “I’ll be back before you know it,” I say, and clench my jaw the minute the words leave my mouth.

  “I know.” She takes a gulp of air and lets it out in a sigh. “That was the most incredible weekend.” She buries her face in my chest and wraps her arms around me. We stand like that for a long time, listening to the music in the background, trying to ignore the inevitable.