The Infinite Now

by Mindy Tarquini

  For the merchants, the people in the market, the schoolboys playing in the streets.

  My ribcage blossomed with the incomprehensible enormity. My eyes bulged. My sinuses ballooned. My heart swelled with compulsion.

  Examine each path. Explore every possibility. Extrapolate every consequence. Then move to the next.

  The old man’s Big Ben ticked its way to infinity. It dragged me along, prisoner to this new perspective. Until the future expanded past my ability to draw another breath.

  Time snapped, like a cable released from its pulley, screeching me back through the days and hours and minutes, a deep tug that tossed me back into the attic and dragged me to my knees.

  Dizzy. Disoriented. Fixed to the floor. Forearms crossed over my face.

  My chest collapsed. My eyes sank back into my sockets. I had no idea. Never imagined. The future was big. It was so, so big. And not meant for mortals to travel.

  Mamma’s clock had advanced a full half hour, the amount of normal, everyday time I’d passed in the market projection’s strange tangle of possibility. The clock tick-tocked at what sounded like its typical pace. The old man’s Big Ben still slowed, its hands moving in reverse. I grabbed hold of the chair and pulled myself up, my excitement effervescing like seltzer. And gazed on a scene of confusion moving upside-down and cockeyed across the opposite wall.

  People of the market gathered on the sidewalk. Most leaned over, and one pointed, his gesture so strong, I almost heard his silent shout: “Hurry. Hurry.”

  The old man’s clock continued its backward tick. The crowd followed, sliding back to wherever they’d started. The object of their concern, a man motionless on the sidewalk, rose from fingertips to feet in a way that told me when he’d fallen, it had been all at once. He clamped a hand to the lamppost, the other to his chest, features contorted.

  The old man.

  Terror shot down my spine. Panic took the upward path, exploding down my arms, and past my fingertips, outstretched to the projection.

  I checked the time. Five minutes from then. That was how long the old man had.

  Five minutes.

  No. Fiora, no. Reimagine the scene, splice a better ending, overtake the unthinkable outcome. Gather your strength. Don’t let what will happen, happen. Do it now and do it with every part of every piece that is you, Fiora Vicente, Rosina Vicente’s daughter.

  I froze.

  So did the image.

  The old man’s Big Ben stuttered, like it’d been tossed off a track, ticking toward Mamma’s in seconds slower than it ever had in the mending pile. Slower than the moments between when I’d watched Mamma take her last breath and when she let it out. Slower still than Poppa’s final coughing fit.

  Giving me plenty of time to think.

  Should I do this? Could I stop?

  The old man was there, suspended between now and never. This world and the next. And there I teetered, a girl on the edge. Alone. Afraid. Blindsided by my past, blind to my future.

  And as I tilted, so would the world.

  Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

  Tick.

  The seconds accumulated, stalled by my indecision. They pooled at my feet, stumbled down the steps to my attic, shimmied under the old man’s door, tumbled off his landing. They suffused the second floor, and the first, oozed over the stoop, cartwheeled off the curb, extending outward from the curtain, the circle perfect, until their edge arrived at the lamppost. At the exact moment as did the old man.

  The world took a breath.

  A breeze blew past the scene in the projection. Awnings rattled. Men grabbed at their hats, women at their skirts, vendors at their tables.

  Then the breeze stopped.

  Dead.

  The people in the scene waited, looking one to the other. I waited with them, expecting a great gust to come from the opposite direction and scatter all those accumulated seconds.

  None came. The old man’s Big Ben slowed. Mamma’s gathered speed. Until the two tick-tick-ticked in tandem.

  A door closed. The path the world was supposed to take, in which the old man fell to the sidewalk and left his orphaned, immigrant ward to fend for herself, disappeared. Another path opened. Where it would lead, I had no idea.

  The market resumed its activity. The old man swayed, then stopped, hand clamped to the lamppost. He looked about him, as if taking stock, then put a palm to his chest and rubbed at it in a circular motion. He looked up, and I could tell he focused on my window, dark and covered from the street. But from his upside-down perspective along my attic room roof slope, it seemed he saw me, inspected me from a great chasm, eyes squinting, expression damning.

  The wheel had turned.

  Change had come.

  Development

  Eight

  My sleep the night after the old man didn’t die was deep and complete under air which felt bulkier than my blanket. I woke an hour past my usual to the upside-down market flickering across the attic’s ceiling slope, its projection slowed, like movies of the time, each frame exposed in increments longer than they had been the day before. I checked Mamma’s Big Ben, compared it to the old man’s. Five minutes still separated them. Five elongating and interminable minutes.

  I slid out of bed, dressed carelessly, then made my way down the narrow staircase, shirtwaist half-untucked, stockings puddled at my ankles. I shuffled past the table, rubbing at sleep-sand crusted in my eyes. “Don Sebastiano?”

  A half-eaten apple lay beside the newspaper. The stove was warm, the milk cold, the door to the old man’s landing open. I pulled back the curtain’s heavy crochet, but the beam entering from the street side yielded no more than a dull illumination, burdened by cloud cover.

  I took the apple with me and descended the two flights to ground level, my every step landing like two. The street door seemed too heavy, its hinges too slow. I pulled pulled pulled for what felt like minutes, then hours, then stumbled down the stoop, looked this way, then that, half-expecting to see the old man’s disappearing form turn the corner.

  All I saw was a dog worrying at a pile of refuse.

  The market still slumbered. I fought the urge to slumber with it.

  I took a bite of the apple, then spit it out. It tasted mealy, and flat, nothing like the other apple from the batch I’d eaten the day before. I tossed the rest into the gutter and trudged back inside. Etti and Fipo waited outside their door. Fipo piped up. “Did you bring breakfast?”

  “There was plenty of oatmeal in the pot when I left yesterday.”

  “We ate it.”

  Etti showed me his shirt, opened and flapping against his belly. “I lost my buttons.”

  Fipo shook his head. “He didn’t lose them. They ripped off. He was climbing to get to the flour and caught them on the stove. We wanted to make hotcakes.”

  I grabbed Etti, checking him for burns. His shirt was a mess, streaked with grease. “I told you to stay away from the stove. Why can’t you obey?”

  Fipo took my hand off his brother. “You’re not our mother.”

  Mamma used to tell me to count to ten when I thought my temper might get away from me. “Twenty if you’re really upset, Fiora.”

  That morning, I counted to thirty, ticking each down like the seconds on Mamma’s Big Ben, slower than seemed normal. Etti stood on tiptoes and reached his mouth to Fipo’s ear. “What’s she doing?”

  “She’s thinking up an excuse to ignore us.”

  In a crowd of a hundred, even with their faces hidden, Fipo’s criticisms would have marked him as the signora’s son. “Inside.”

  The boys didn’t move.

  “You heard me.” I waved my arms. “Inside. Inside. Now.”

  Etti’s eyes went wide. “Are you making a spell?”

  “You got it, you little smart mouth. Inside, quick, before I cast it.”

  Etti took hold of the door’s knob, turning it this way and that.

  Fipo stood his ground. “There’s no such thing as magic.”

 
Hmmm . . . maybe he was his father’s son also. I turned and continued my way up the stairs. Fipo’s voice followed. “You’re taking terrible care of us.”

  Inside the old man’s apartment, I noticed what I hadn’t before. The old man’s coat hanging on its iron hook by the door.

  Oops.

  I found him on the rooftop, examining his plants. He lifted leaves, bent stems, poked a finger into the soil. He looked over the alley and beyond, slid off his cap, and scratched his head.

  I went to stand beside him. “What are you looking at?”

  “The trees.” He pointed to several blowing in the next block, their tops visible from our vantage. “Now look at the market.”

  All was peaceful.

  “Don’t you see? Look at the papers by the wall. The awnings. Nothing is moving.”

  I pointed down the street. “Those awnings are moving.”

  He licked his finger and held it in the air. “I don’t feel it. How can the wind be down the street, but not here? And this haze.” He peered at the sky. “It should have burned off by now. Look.” He pointed to a shaft of sunlight reflecting off a window several doors down. “Since when does sun shine on one house, and not the next?”

  A nervous feeling tugged at my insides.

  He again looked across the alley. “Those roofs are frosted. The cold came in overnight.” He returned his attention to the plants. “Even with the candles, some of these should be suffering. They look exactly as they did. And here I stand without my sweater. How can it be cold there and warm here?”

  His question hung heavy as the air, growing weightier with my silence. I backed to the door through space so thick I thought it should push my skirt forward.

  The old man halted my retreat. “Fiora, what have you done?”

  My explanations fell, one over the other, my fingers fluttering in an expanding arc to demonstrate how the seconds accumulated, how they rippled outward. “Like I threw a rock into a pond. I had no time. I couldn’t think. I . . .”

  The old man rubbed a palm to his forehead. “I saw you. Yesterday on the street. Like a dream without sleeping, a path I never lived. I was on the ground, my chest tight, but also standing by the lamppost.

  In both places. And neither. Like I had a choice, but no options. For a long, long moment.” The old man turned his remarkable blue-gray gaze on me. “You have to make it go back.”

  My stomach dropped to my ankles. No. No. I couldn’t. “If I do, you’ll die.”

  “I won’t die. I will only pass to someplace different.”

  “I would be alone.”

  “You are not the center of all concern. And you don’t understand. You can’t chain time. All that should be happening will fill the spaces. Here.” He touched his head. “And here.” He touched his chest. “Until it chokes us and everybody caught within.” He ran his thumb along the base of his throat. “Take a breath. Tell me that’s not true.”

  I did as directed, dragging at air that felt thickened with flour. I thought how the pregnant girl must be feeling, the Lattanzis. Thought of entering the curtain world, the enormity, the expansion, the way my chest near exploded. “You fix it,” I said.

  He shook his head. “The curtain is your burden, your action. What results belongs to you. Don’t use the curtain. Put it away. Perhaps your . . .” he waved his hand to indicate everything around us. “Perhaps whatever this is will fade.”

  I thought of how I tried to take the curtain to the guaritrice. “I don’t think I can. The curtain wants to be at that window.”

  “Then you must destroy it.”

  Dismay took hold of my heart and twisted. “No. I can’t. I won’t. That curtain is all I have of my mother.”

  I grabbed my scarf and coat, ducked out the door, down the stairs, and into the street. Afraid. Of the old man. Of myself. Of what I’d set in motion.

  The area directly outside our stoop felt stagnant. Like somebody had trapped it into a big glass bottle. Shoppers wandered past, pace listless, words muffled, their clothing drab. I took one step, then another, my gait leaden.

  Gravity pulled at my shoes. My footfalls plodded. Sweat trickled under my collar. I removed my scarf, unbuttoned my coat. One step.

  Two. Persevering to the place I’d seen the old man fall. I clutched at the lamppost, as the old man had.

  Objects hold memories. Even now, if I concentrate hard enough, I remember them, too. The only memories that lamppost held were of people rushing past and the occasional dog, lifting its leg to relieve itself.

  A newspaper, already discarded, crinkled against the post’s base. Photos of the day’s parade of dead, local soldiers all, headlined the page, along with news of battle victory somewhere, as well as details where to bring peach pits being collected for use in the manufacture of gas masks. The sidebar admonished all to buy their subscriptions to the Liberty Loan, to keep payments up to date, and informed that the incidence of influenza was decreasing, the crisis well in hand. “Stay warm, get plenty of rest, and salt water gargle.”

  I pushed myself south, past one shop, and another. A half block past the lamppost, I stopped.

  Then started.

  Then stopped, my impression that I’d entered a wall of gelatin.

  A woman lumbered by, shoulders stooped. She hesitated at the gelatin, the way one does when faced with a crack in the sidewalk, then moved on, shoulders straightened, step lively, the green trim of her brocade scarf suddenly bright against her coat. A gust ruffled the edge of her hat.

  I shored up my courage, and followed.

  The veil lifted. The day grew sunny, the air fresh. My coat flapped in the breeze. I exhaled all the way, threw out my arms, and scooped in another lungful.

  The temperature also dropped. I tightened my scarf and continued my way, progressing to a different pulse, the everyday rhythm which had already begun to feel foreign.

  On that second day of October, contrary to the newspaper’s assurances, a menace bloomed. A menace which transcended all borders, of race, of gender, of social means. A menace more destructive than any war, more fearsome than any nightmare. A menace which killed with perfect democracy.

  I looked behind me and squinted to where I had been, not yet cognizant of the coming catastrophe.

  The subtlest of shimmers marked a perimeter, a rainbow of iridescent swirls curved along its surface, like a soap bubble. The change I’d conjured in the old man’s attic had a boundary. The events that would happen because of that boundary did not.

  Nine

  It seemed the crepe fabric appeared overnight, announcements of mourning which vied for space amid parade announcements which had not yet been removed. Black for the elderly. White for babies. Mamma used to tell me birth is sometimes too much for a tiny soul and it gives out, overwhelmed by life’s enormity.

  Nobody expected how much appeared for those caught in between. The young and vibrant. Mothers and fathers. Students and laborers. Carpet layers, wallpaper hangers, seamstresses, and shop clerks. Like dried lamb’s blood, deep purple draping those doorways declared, “Stay away. Do not visit. Death lives in this house. Its name is Influenza.”

  Beneath that cloying cloud of despair, my fingers looked as they always had, nimble and able to handle a needle. My arms strong, able to scrub for hours. My legs steady, able to walk miles. Beneath my cotton nightgown, my breasts were high and round, the skin smooth, ready, when I decided the time was right, for a lover’s caress. Yet my heart felt shrouded, tender. And bearing a banner: Do not talk to this girl. Do not notice. Turn away, for misfortune follows her kind.

  Three days after Carlo broke on my horizon, I woke spitting a sprig of verbena from my mouth. I pushed out of bed, brushing bigger clumps off the blanket, my pace slower than the ever more sluggish sun. Bunches were tied to my bedposts. Leaves crumbled across the sheets. I pulled a bundle from Mamma’s curtain, twined within an iron grommet, and shuffled downstairs, an afghan draped across my shoulders. I found the old man reading his newspaper.
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br />   I dropped the verbena on the table. “I’ll be picking this out of the grooves in the floorboards for weeks.”

  The old man turned a page. “I mean it as a protection.”

  “From what? She’s a widow woman, a peddler of remedies. Hang all the verbena you want, twist it into every keyhole within a block of the pharmacy.” I thought of the guaritrice’s tea, so fragrant and friendly. “The only thing you’re protecting me from is herbs.”

  The old man looked up. “You returned to her. After I told you not to.”

  “I returned to the pharmacy. They have a job.” The lie slid off my tongue with ease, like I’d been licking grease.

  The old man’s face went serene and studied, and I had the impression he was more powerful than he appeared, more observant than he let on. Able to see my thoughts, sense my movements, anticipate my mistakes. I needed to watch myself, take him seriously. “Is there espresso?”

  The old man nodded toward the press, still steaming on the counter. I lifted the lid and sniffed. “What’s wrong with it? I don’t smell anything.”

  “The oatmeal is tasteless, too. I think it’s your . . . what should we call it? Your bubble?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” I emptied the coffee into the sink. “You probably didn’t use enough beans. I’ll brew more.” I shoved the verbena into my skirt pocket and set the kettle to boil, using both hands to lift it to the stove—it felt laden with stones—then took a glass off the shelf and turned on the faucet.

  The old man rattled the newspaper. “Wait for the kettle. We’re supposed to boil the water.” He showed me the headline, in a sidebar on page one: WATER PLANT WORKERS OUT SICK. PRECAUTIONS NEEDED.

  Below an attention box reminded us to BEAT THE HUN. KEEP YOUR LIBERTY LOAN SUBSCRIPTION CURRENT.

  Papa’s subscriptions, tucked in with the money I’d given the old man for safekeeping, were already behind. If I kept them up, maybe— maybe—I could borrow against them for typewriting school.