by Anthology
I looked out the window and saw women in cotton dresses hanging laundry, men in white shirts mowing lawns, kids on one-speed bikes with little tinkling bells and metal baskets. There was at least one big, gas-guzzling automobile in every driveway.
It was 1950s suburbia, even worse than I remembered it. I had walked straight into an episode of Leave It to Beaver. I shook my head in disbelief; Toni’s time machine had actually worked.
I heard a crash, coming from the kitchen. I ran back, pausing in the kitchen doorway. The back door was open. I looked around the room. There was no one there. Nothing seemed to be missing. I took a couple of cautious steps onto the linoleum floor. Then a couple more. Everything seemed okay; the door probably wasn’t properly closed in the first place, and a gust of wind had blown it open. It wouldn’t be that unusual back in the ’50s; we never used to lock the doors when I was a kid. I crossed the room and pulled the door shut. I realized I’d been holding my breath, and let it out.
There was a sudden high-pitched sound, and I nearly jumped a mile. I swung around, clutching my chest and cursing myself for being such an idiot. It was only the telephone. The phone was mounted on the kitchen wall behind me, big and white, with an old-fashioned dial. I walked towards it, then decided to let the answering machine pick it up. I listened to it ringing and ringing, until it finally struck me they didn’t have answering machines in the 1950s. I lifted the receiver. “Hello?”
“Joanna, what kept you so long? I was just about to hang up.”
I knew that voice! “Toni? Oh thank God. How did you find me? How did you know what number to call?”
There was a long pause. “Joanna, are you all right?”
“I’m stuck inside a forty-year-old copy of Better Homes and Gardens, and you’re asking me if I’m all right?”
“Joanna, you sound a little strange. Is Bob there?”
“Bob? Who the hell is Bob?”
“You’re having one of your little turns again, aren’t you? Now do me favour. I want you to sit down, or, better yet, why don’t you lie down? Take some good deep breaths, and try to relax.” I could not believe the way she was talking to me, in this slow, soothing murmur, like I was some kind of nutcase. She might as well have been saying, “Now put that gun down, Joanna.”
“You said you were going to send me two minutes forward, not forty years back! I don’t want to lie down and relax. I want to get out of here! And what do you mean, ‘turns’ ? I do not have ‘turns’ !”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay? Just try and stay calm; I’m on my way.” There was a click.
“Wait a minute, Toni! Toni?” There was no one there; she’d hung up. I leaned against the wall, rubbing my throbbing temples. Nothing made sense. If I was really in the 1950s, and I’d left Toni back in the ’90s, then how could she phone me?
I heard a door open and slam shut, then a man’s voice: “Honey, I’m home!”
I didn’t know what to do. One half of me said I should walk right up to the man, introduce myself and calmly explain what I was doing in his house. The other half said I should hide. I heard footsteps, moving towards me. Heavy footsteps.
I decided to hide.
I tiptoed backwards into the pantry, pulling the door closed behind me, trying hard not to breathe. I turned around and saw a second metal egg. I raised a hand to my mouth and bit it to keep myself from screaming. Where had that other egg come from? I bent down to examine it. Like mine, the digital display must have been broken; it still said 1994. But this egg was nearly twice as big, and looked a lot more comfortable. It even had a padded lining.
So that was how Toni found me; she’d followed me back into time. She’d had a second egg the whole time, and she’d obviously saved the better one for herself, the selfish bitch. But if she was here, in the same house, then why did she have to phone me?
And where was she now?
I heard the man’s voice again: “Joanna, sweetheart! Jo-aaann-a!” Who was this guy and how did he know my name? “Joanna!”
The voice was louder, he was getting closer. I heard footsteps moving across the kitchen floor. They stopped in front of the pantry door. I watched the doorknob turn. I tensed, unsure what to do.
“Who’s there?” I said.
The voice sounded relieved. “Oh there you are! Didn’t you hear me?” The door opened and I saw a middle-aged man with his mouth hanging open. “Oh my God, Joanna! What have you done?”
“Huh?”
“Your hair! What have you done to your hair? It’s . . . it’s purple!”
I couldn’t believe it; this guy catches an intruder cowering in a closet, and his only reaction is to comment on her hair colour? And my hair isn’t purple, by the way. The tint I use is called Flickering Flame, and the packet describes it as a deep burgundy red. The guy was so busy gawking at my hair, he didn’t even notice the pair of metal ovals sitting in the middle of his pantry floor. I stepped out into the kitchen, pulling the pantry door closed behind me.
“You . . . you look positively indecent,” the man went on, following me across the kitchen. “Look at you! Hair sticking up all over the place, like you haven’t combed it in a week!” I positioned myself with my back to what I assumed was the cutlery drawer; I wanted to be within reach of something I could use as a weapon, just in case. “You look like some kind of a . . . a . . . a hussy! No wife of mine is going around looking like a hussy.”
Wife? I thought, this man thinks I’m his wife?
“And where did you get those awful clothes? You look like some kind of a greasy mechanic!”
I was ready to punch the guy. First my hair, and now my clothes. There was nothing wrong with my clothes. I was wearing black designer jeans—strategically ripped at the knees—that cost me nearly five hundred dollars, and an understated, plain black T-shirt that was a bargain at $57.99.
Hussy? I thought. Greasy mechanic? What kind of bigoted moron uses words like that, and more important, what kind of moron mistakes a complete stranger for his wife? The man looked normal enough—almost too normal. Forty-something, thinning hair, brown tinged with grey, bit of a paunch, dressed like he just came home from an office.
“What if the neighbours saw you looking like that? And what about Katie?”
Katie. That rang a bell. “Ah,” I said, remembering what the woman who looked like my mother had told me, “Katie’s just a kid, isn’t she?”
The man sighed and shook his head. “You’re having hot flushes again, aren’t you?” He touched my forehead as if he was checking for a fever. I slid my hand into the drawer behind me, grabbed hold of something I hoped was a knife, and waited to see what he would do next. But all he did was bend slightly forward, and stare open-mouthed at my feet. “You’re wearing tennis shoes.”
“Tennis shoes? I’ll have you know these are Nikes!”
“Nikes?” he repeated, obviously confused. “But I thought you must be wearing heels . . .” His eyes moved upwards along my body, finally stopping at my eyes. “Joanna, I don’t understand what’s going on.” Neither do I, I felt like saying, but I didn’t get the chance because he carried straight on without a pause. “How could you possibly be taller?”
“Taller than who?”
“Than you were when I left you this morning. And you’re thinner, too.”
“Ha! Don’t I wish.” I took my hand out of the drawer. The guy didn’t seem violent, just confused. And standing as close to him as I was, something about the guy was awfully familiar. I thought, I know him. If I could just see past the bald patch and the beer gut, and concentrate on the voice and the eyes, I knew it would come back to me. Then it hit me.
“Bobby!” I said, “Bobby Callahan! You took me to my senior prom.”
His eyes went very wide. “Yes, dear,” he said cautiously, “why are you bringing that up now?”
“I didn’t recognize you at first; it’s been a long time. It’s gotta be twenty-five years. No, closer to thirty. God, Bobby, I can’t believe it! So w
hat are you doing with yourself these days?” I reached out to shake his hand.
Bobby went ever so pale. “Joanna, darling. I think you should lie down.”
A few minutes later, I was leaning against a stack of frilly pillows, embroidered with sayings like “I Love Mom” and “Home Is Where The Heart Is”, on one of a pair of narrow twin beds, separated by a twee little night table with two separate lamps and two individual wind-up alarm clocks, listening to Bobby clatter around in the kitchen below. He obviously wasn’t used to cooking. My sudden appearance in the pantry apparently hadn’t surprised him at all, but the fact that I hadn’t made dinner seemed a shock beyond belief.
There was a loud crash, an “Ouch!” and a “Dammit!”, then footsteps moving back up the stairs. Bobby poked his head into the bedroom and said he was driving down to the Chinese. The last thing he told me was that I should try and get some sleep.
I jumped up the minute I heard the downstairs door close; I had no intention of hanging around until he came back. Then the wardrobe doors flew wide open, and a hand shoved me back onto the mattress.
For the second time in less than ten minutes, I found myself staring open-mouthed at someone with my face. This one was even dressed the same as me: the same jeans, same T-shirt, same Nike sneakers. She had the same blunt haircut, the same shade of Flickering Flame. “Snap!” she said.
I raised my head and took a long, careful look at her. I noticed two slight differences between us: she had a blue canvas shoulder-bag draped across her arm, and a bad case of sunburn. The sunburn looked painful; the skin on her nose was peeling.
“Who are you?” I said. “Is this your house?”
“Let me address your second question first. If this was my house, do you really think I would be hiding in the wardrobe? And as to your first: who do you think I am? I know it’s a little difficult, so I’ll give you a clue. Who do I look like?”
“Like me?”
“Bingo!” she said, “You got it in one.” She flopped down on the other bed, stretching her arms high over her head. “God, my back is killing me!”
I swung my legs around and sat up, facing the other bed.
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re saying that you’re me?”
She rolled onto her side, propping her head up with one arm. “That’s one way of putting it. Though as far as I’m concerned, it’s you that’s me, not me that’s you. A subtle distinction, I admit, but a significant one. To me, at least.” There was something slightly different about her voice, too. It was a little deeper than mine, and a little harsher, as if she wanted to scream but was struggling to control herself. I guess the fact I didn’t understand a word she was saying showed on my face, because she gave me a look of pure disgust. “Don’t tell me you don’t get it! Look, I’m an alternate you from a parallel universe, capiche?”
I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. “A parallel universe?” I said. “Then how the hell did you get here?”
She got up and started looking through the various jars and bottles on the dresser. She opened one of the jars and spread some cream on her face. “How do you think I got here? The same way as you: inside that damn machine of Toni’s. She made one in my universe as well, you know. A slightly better one, if you don’t mind me saying so; I’ve seen yours down in the pantry, and it does look a bit poor.”
I got up and stood by the window, watching wives in cotton dresses calling children and husbands in for dinner, and I knew this wasn’t my universe, either. “So this is what the universe would have been like if I’d married Bobby Callahan.”
“Oh get real!” the other Joanna said, disgusted. “Cultural and scientific stagnation is the basis of this type of universe, not who married Bobby Callahan.”
“I don’t understand how I got here. Toni’s machine was supposed to send me forward in time, not sideways through space.”
“That wasn’t the machine’s fault; it was that woman!”
“Woman? What woman?”
Her hands tightened into fists and her eyes became narrow slits. “The bitch that set the timer on Toni’s machine to go backwards. Don’t you see? As long you only move forward, you remain in the same universe. But if you try to go backwards, even by a fraction of a second, you end up in a parallel world. They tell me this is to stop you murdering your grandmother so you were never born. Anyway, she set the timer backwards on purpose to get me out of the way, so she could take over my life in my universe.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because she told me! I met her. I talked to her; she’s living in my studio, and I tell you she’s ruined it. Cleared out all my stuff, and covered every available space with pictures of flowers and kittens. Disgusting!”
I sank down onto the nearest bed. “What did she look like?”
“Like me with grey hair and a perm, dressed in my mother’s clothes. She’s an alternate me from one of these oppressive suburban worlds and now she’s living it up in mine, spending my money, using my name and reputation to exhibit her nauseating little pictures at all the best galleries.”
Suddenly it all made sense. The woman in my studio, talking about a switch. “I’ve met her, too. She slammed the capsule door down on my head and the next thing I knew I was here.”
“Isn’t that always the way?” said the other Joanna, nodding in sympathy.
“But I still don’t understand. I mean, how did she get there in the first place?”
“I have a theory about that,” said the other Joanna. “I think one of us—meaning one in a world where Toni has invented a time machine—pushed the wrong button and went back by accident, maybe by only a couple of seconds. She ended up in a world like this one, and came face to face with her parallel self, a housewife who always dreamed of being an artist but never did anything about it. The Joanna like us explained who she was and how she got there. The parallel Joanna saw her chance at wealth and fame and stole the machine, leaving the other one stranded. Maybe this happened more than once, and one of these parallel Joannas ended up in your world and one in mine.”
“Well, Toni will know what to do when she gets here.”
“Toni? Here?”
“Yeah, she phoned just a little while ago. She said she was on her way over.”
“Oh, you mean the Toni that lives here. You can forget about any help from that direction. Not the right sort of Toni.”
“The right sort?”
“I’ve met most of the Tonis you get in this sort of world. Sometimes she’s a widow with a grown-up son—usually in the army—sometimes she’s a librarian, and if you’re really lucky, she might be a high school science teacher.”
“You’ve been in other worlds like this one?”
“Sure. I’ve been in loads of ’em. I always arrive on the same date: 29 April, 1994, and the same time: just after 6 P.M. Because that’s when the first switch took place—in one of this infinite number of universes. And eventually, I’m going to be there when that first switch is about to happen, and I’m going to stop it before it does, and then none of this will ever have happened.”
“How will you stop it happening?”
She smiled, patting the canvas bag that still hung from her shoulder. “I have my methods.”
So she was going to make everything all right again. I should have been thrilled, but I couldn’t help feeling resentful; I didn’t like being made to feel stupid. Maybe I hadn’t grasped all the nuances of quantum theory, and instantly figured out what was going on and how to fix it, but I was still a famous artist, and very rich. Didn’t that count for anything anymore?
“I’m having an affair with a twenty-two year-old male model,” I said, leaning back on the bed. “We might even do a TV commercial together; they want him to play a gorgeous young man at an exhibition opening, and me to play myself. Then he picks up a bottle of . . .”
“Shut up!” she said.
“Ooh, hit a sore point, have I? In my world, I’m often seen with much you
nger men.”
“Will you be quiet? There’s somebody coming.” She moved to one side of the window, flattening herself against the wall.
“Who is it?” I whispered, sitting up.
She raised a finger to her mouth to signal silence. I got up and headed for the window.
“Get back!” she hissed, then mouthed the words, “It’s her.”
I flattened myself against the wall on the other side of the window from her, and peered cautiously around the frame. A woman was walking towards the house, struggling with several large shopping bags. She had my face. I looked across to the other Joanna, and saw her reach inside her canvas bag and take out a gun. She reached in again, and took out a silencer.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
She ignored me, raising the gun and taking aim at a defenceless woman. I couldn’t stand by and let this happen; I picked up one of those twee little table lamps, and broke it over her head. The gun went off, missing the woman, but sending a bullet tearing through one of her shopping bags, spilling groceries all over the pavement. The Joanna that married her high school sweetheart stopped in her tracks, staring at the shredded bag. “Move!” I shouted. “She’ll kill you!”
Unfortunately, the lamp didn’t knock my other self out; it just made her mad. She swung around, blood streaming from several cuts on her scalp, and pointed the gun right at me. “You stupid bitch! I fucking had her!”
“You were going to kill her!”
“I’ll kill every one of them, until I get the right one. And no one’s going to stop me.”
I swung my right leg back and around, kicking the gun from her hand just as it went off a second time, sending chunks of plaster flying from the wall beside her. I’d taken a course in jiujitsu about fifteen years earlier, and this was the first time I’d ever used it. Of course she’d taken it, too, and two seconds later I was being thrown head first over her shoulder. I landed on the bedroom floor with a thud, and looked up to see my other self with a gun once more pointed at my head. She was smiling. “It isn’t murder, you know. It’s more like suicide by proxy.”