The Real Michael Swann

by Bryan Reardon

  I knew these things. They appeared on the blank page right below the dismembered finger. The beginnings of what felt like a new existence, not someone else’s life but not my own. More like an empty vessel slowly filling with a trickle of experiences.

  Through the haze, I could see the light. It looked odd, not right somehow. I stopped, staring at it. I willed it to be something else. I tried to see it as warm and yellow. Instead, it was harsh and white.

  “It’s not the sun,” I said.

  Those were the first words I’d spoken since opening my eyes. They came out as if dipped in shards of broken glass, scraping up my throat and cracking my tongue. I stared at the light, down at the light, and nothing made sense.

  My chest shook and my hands tightened into fists. My head throbbed, and I hate saying this, but I cried. It came out like the words, sharp and cutting. My body convulsed as tears fought through the dust and grime on my face.

  But I still moved. I took a step, and then another, as I descended into darkness, chasing the light.

  * * *

  —

  A train. I stood just on the outskirts of the light. It cut through the thick air, illuminating a beam of particles that seemed almost alive in their movement. The light shined out from the front of a subway engine, although I didn’t know what it was at first. A web of jagged cracks radiated out from a large hole in the glass. The smell of gas choked me and I coughed.

  As if in answer, I heard voices. They echoed back up the way I had come.

  “This way. Hurry.”

  “Hello,” I called out, but my voice sounded frail and shallow compared to whoever had spoken. No answer came back. Yet I heard movement, shuffling, scraping sounds that harkened more to a wounded animal than anything else.

  Nothing made sense. I looked around, really looked around, and realized that the train sat below me still. The ground on which I walked seemed to slope down like a ramp. For some reason, I felt frightened. Something inside me screamed, telling me to return to the darkness, to hide from this abominable sight. But the voices sounded again. A little farther away. So I moved.

  My foot caught on something. I stumbled, putting a hand on the wall. Something cut the skin of my palm. When I looked, it was, I think, an exposed iron beam of some kind. It jutted out of the wall. That’s when I saw the opening below me. The floor was gone. Well, not gone, really. A part of it, at least, dropped like an enormous ramp. A white tile slid down and struck something metallic. It shattered into pieces.

  Then, stupidly, I turned my head, looking down to see what had caught my foot. It was a body, I think the engineer from the train. Maybe he had been thrown through the hole in the windshield. How could I be expected to know?

  The picture around me suddenly made sense. I may be wrong, as everything still had a dreamlike feeling to it, but it looked like the ceiling above a subway tunnel had collapsed and a train slammed into the debris.

  I stared at the body for a moment. To be honest, I felt nothing. It was like I was so detached from everything, I had no idea how to feel. Nor did this dawning understanding of what I was seeing have any association for me. I had no memories to draw on, nothing to compare this to. They had been severed, like everything around me. Like that finger.

  Eventually, I moved toward the voices again. When I saw the first person moving, that overwhelming feeling of something, maybe sadness, maybe caution, stopped me again. The tears started up. So did the shaking. I stumbled, almost fell. But this time, someone caught me.

  “We’ve got another one here,” a voice said.

  Hands reached for me, supported me. And the world spun and spun until I closed my eyes again.

  11

  You can sleep in Evan’s room.”

  The words were robotic. Julia moved like someone else: the old Julia, the Julia who existed before she heard what she heard, before she shut off the television, like the Julia who called the shots. She told the boys they needed to get into bed. She watched them, still as stone, as they brushed their teeth. She turned off their light and silently closed the door. And neither of them said a word, even though it was hours before their bedtime. Both Evan and Thomas avoided looking directly at their mother and did what they were asked without hesitation.

  They sensed something, surely. Yet they would never ask. Life hadn’t yet turned on that part of the brain that might need to face the fear they felt. Instead, they would sit in the darkness of their room and feign sleep.

  The second Julia reached the stairs, the tears started. She did not sob, or really even cry. Not really. Instead, she walked with a firm, otherworldly purpose. She called Evelyn.

  “He’s not there, right?” she said.

  Julia didn’t answer right away. She couldn’t. “Is Tom home?”

  “Yeah. Do you need me . . . ?”

  “Can you come over and sit for the kids? They’re in bed.”

  “I’m on my way,” she answered, too quickly.

  Julia put her shoes on. She got her keys. She opened the garage door and backed the car out, pulling out onto the street. Evelyn’s car came around the bend, tires squealing. It slowed and then stopped beside hers. They rolled their windows down.

  “Oh, God, Julia.”

  “I’m going to find him,” she simply said. And drove away.

  * * *

  —

  He’s alive. I feel it.

  Julia wouldn’t put on the radio. She couldn’t listen to that. It meant nothing. Instead, she drove on pure instinct, never once questioning her route. Her car sped across Route 202 and merged onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike as if it drove itself.

  What am I going to do?

  Once again, the thought invaded. She pushed it back. A strange smile lifted the corners of her mouth.

  “He’s okay,” she said aloud. “I’d know if he wasn’t.”

  Can I do this alone?

  That had never been a part of the plan. They were partners. They were supposed to be partners forever. Years should have spread out in front of them like the highway on which she drove, no ending in sight. It had been a promise, made even before their wedding day. One that simply could not be broken.

  “Stop,” she whispered.

  Her thoughts no longer listened to reason. They bounced and crashed with the numbness of circumstance. One minute, the thoughts of the future nearly suffocated her. The next, memories of the past threatened to break her forever.

  AN INTRODUCTION

  Julia was twenty-one when she met him. Of all places, in a bar. At the time, she was due to graduate in less than a year. She was majoring in political science and had just started as a volunteer coordinator for a candidate in Delaware running against an incumbent for statewide office. It was an uphill battle, one destined to be lost. Yet, as that summer started, she felt as alive as she ever had before, with one foot in the future and one dancing to the live music at the most crowded club in Dewey Beach.

  “You need anything?” her friend Mary Beth asked, shouting to be heard over the music.

  Julia shook her head. She stood by the back of the bar, just above the deck that stretched out to the Delaware Bay. It was hot for Memorial Day, in the eighties, and summer had infected everyone in the place. As the band played a fusion of calypso and hip-hop, people stood shoulder to shoulder, all smiles and sunburns.

  “You sure? There’s a guy buying.”

  “Who?”

  With a Cheshire smile, Mary Beth shrugged. “Some frat boy from Delaware.”

  Julia laughed. “I’ll take a Tanqueray and tonic, then.”

  Just as Mary Beth walked away, Julia caught sight of three friends from the campaign. They came over, exchanging loud hugs. They merged effortlessly with Julia, Mary Beth, and all of their friends. Julia sipped at her gin and tonic, dancing and laughing and sweating the hours away.

  “You want an
other?” Mary Beth eventually asked.

  “Is your buddy still here?”

  She pointed. Julia lifted to her toes, trying to get a look. The place had just gotten more crowded. Something distracted her friend and the pointing finger swayed, but not before Julia caught sight of a group of guys near the far corner of the bar. One stood a head above the others. Leaner than his friends, he certainly had the look of a Delaware frat boy in his white T-shirt, slicked-back hair, and Ray-Bans. His glasses hung low on his nose when their eyes met. Honestly, in the moment, she couldn’t know that. They were too far away. Yet she did think he saw her just as she saw him.

  He was the exact type she tried to ignore. She should have laughed him off and asked Mary Beth for another free drink. That’s not what happened, though. Something passed between them. Some inevitable force cut through the humid, smoky air. Later in life, some of her friends would mention similar experiences the first time they saw their future husbands. None of them, however, could truly explain it. No factor stood out. There was physical attraction, certainly, yet the place had a good number of hot guys. From a mundane point of view, though, it could be nothing else. They never spoke. They knew nothing about each other. Yet she felt drawn to him, like if she gave in just a little, she’d find herself wandering across the bar and introducing herself, a truly uncharacteristic move.

  Just as it got dangerous, the moment passed. The music blared and the party around her raged. Her heels touched the ground and she danced, convincing herself she would forget the guy in minutes.

  * * *

  —

  Months later, Julia sat at her computer in the corner of the campaign headquarters. Volunteers milled around her, stuffing letters into envelopes and using small pink sponges to seal them. Out of the blue, she thought about the guy at the bar. His face appeared at random occasions, never called for and always just a little bit distracting. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and looked at the blank white wall. A smile came and went and she shook her head, feeling childish. She had a mountain of work to do, and she certainly didn’t have time for anything so frivolous as daydreaming about a guy.

  “Julia, come here for a minute.”

  She blinked, turning away from the wall and looking across the room. The campaign manager, a twenty-nine-year-old former staffer for one of the state legislators, now hitching his career aspirations to a long shot, waved her to the back office.

  “Hey,” he began. “Would you be interested in working the event tomorrow?”

  Her heart beat faster. The election was two days away. The president of the United States was scheduled to visit Wilmington the next afternoon to stump for one of the other statewide candidates, a long-shot challenger to the sitting US senator and a possible swing seat.

  “Um, of course,” she said.

  Julia left the meeting feeling light-headed and severely unfocused. She spent the rest of the day alternating between uncontrollable excitement and a simmering fear as she prepared, and overprepared, for the next day. At one point, one of her volunteers, a seventy-six-year-old retired nurse, lightly touched her arm. She looked up into the woman’s eyes. They looked milky and damp, but the woman stood as straight as an old oak tree. She’d come to the campaign at its start, sitting a seat away from anyone else and constantly humming under her breath. But when Julia’s gaze met hers, she truly noticed the woman for the first time.

  “Are you feeling okay?” the woman asked.

  Julia smiled ear to ear. “I’m going to meet the president tomorrow.”

  The woman patted her. “Doesn’t surprise me at all.”

  Julia’s head tilted. “Why’s that?”

  “You’re heading for big things,” the woman said. “I can see it all over you.”

  * * *

  —

  Julia sat under a life-sized bronze statue, chatting with a friend who worked for the county executive. In her excitement, she arrived an hour early for the event at Rodney Square, a block of green grass in the center of a gray city.

  “Who’s the guy on the horse?” her friend asked, thumbing up at the sculpture.

  “It’s Caesar Rodney,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “One of Delaware’s delegates to the Continental Congress . . .”

  “Oh,” she said, though Julia could tell she didn’t care.

  Shading the morning sun from her eyes, she looked across the square and watched as more volunteers arrived. The day was cool and smelled of drying leaves and coffee. A steady but not overwhelming line of traffic passed on the street behind her. She could hear a police officer directing cars around the five trucks unloading equipment for the afternoon’s event.

  About five minutes before they were scheduled to start canvassing the city with flyers, a straggler appeared at the far side of the square. He dressed like he belonged in a much bigger city, with fitted black jeans, cool urban boots, and a zip-up gray fleece under a slightly darker sports jacket. What caught her eye, though, were the Ray-Bans.

  Julia watched him walk toward the group. He seemed to watch her as well. The moment was like a near-death experience in reverse. Instead of her past life flashing before her eyes, Julia saw her future. It passed at the speed of light, pictures painted more in emotion than in color. If asked to describe what she saw, or, more accurately, what she felt, words fell short. Instead, she would feel the flutter of destiny rise up to her chest, and her answer would be nothing but a knowing smile.

  For the first few minutes, the two orbited each other. At one point, Julia lost sight of him for a second, but when she turned around, there he stood. His glasses were off and he looked down at her with large blue eyes.

  “You look familiar,” he said.

  She took a step back. “Um, hi.”

  “Oh, sorry. I just saw you and it’s driving me crazy. I know I’ve met you, but I can’t place it.”

  She looked at him. His hair was styled perfectly. He had wide cheekbones but a sharp chin, and his mouth looked locked into a perpetual smile. She recognized him immediately. Not that she would let him know that, though.

  “Can’t tell you,” she said.

  He shook his head in earnest. “We need to figure this out.”

  They crossed paths over and over again that day. Each time, he spent a minute trying to connect the dots and she spent the rest getting to know him. He learned that Julia was an only child and that both her parents worked for DuLac Chemicals, the state’s top employer. She learned that he was the older of two and worked in the governor’s office, though she couldn’t quite figure out exactly what he did there.

  They ended up in the same group for lunch. Five or six of them walked a few blocks to a small out-of-the-way pizza place. They found a table in the back, so shadowed that it was hard to read the menu. They sat next to each other, and as each minute passed, her perception narrowed more and more. Even before their lunch arrived, it might as well have been just the two of them in the restaurant.

  “What do you love?” she asked, feeling empowered by the energy of the day.

  “Me?” he asked.

  “Yeah, you.”

  “Baseball, I guess. I played through college . . . and I miss it sometimes.”

  “Wow,” she said.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” she said. “I love what I do.” She smiled. “I love today.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “Where do you think you’ll be in five years?” she asked, her elbow on the table and her cheek resting in her palm.

  “I’ll run for office. Maybe you can be my campaign manager.”

  She laughed. “Or your opponent’s.”

  “Ouch. From what I can tell, you could probably run against both of us and win.”

  “Sure.” She shook her head. “But I have no interest in being the candid
ate. I just want to do something that, I don’t know . . . means something.”

  “I hear that,” he said.

  “What about baseball?” she asked.

  He laughed. “Hitting a ball with a stick can only get you so far in life. So I thought, ‘Why not politics?’ Anyone’s good enough for that, right?”

  * * *

  —

  Shockingly, she can barely remember any of the event, even the moment when she shook the president’s hand. Later, when she developed the film from her camera, she would find two pictures of POTUS and twenty-two of her mysterious new friend. In the moment, though, it all felt so natural.

  When everything was over, he walked Julia to her car. “Are you going to O’Friel’s?”

  Everyone who worked the event was meeting up there later that night. She nodded, though before that moment she had been on the fence.

  “Can I pick you up?”

  Whoa, she thought. But she nodded again.

  “Great. Can I have your number?”

  She gave it to him. It was the first time she had given her number to a boy, ever. She’d been too busy and, frankly, unimpressed before that day. True to his word, he picked her up, complimenting her outfit and asking her thoughtful questions for the entire ride to the bar. They spent the night mingling with the group and coming back together. He touched her hand and, out of the blue, she touched his hair. When everyone sat down at a long table, she sat at one end, talking to a few of her friends. He glanced at her, lifted his beer, and sat at the other. She paused then, realizing something was very different. He wasn’t blowing her off. He was giving her space. She had never met a guy with the confidence to do something like that.