“You should loosen the lug nuts before you get the wheel off the ground.”
“Thanks, but I’ll do it my way.”
“Don’t be stupid, Tommy. You’ll just spin the wheel if you try to loosen them once it’s off the ground.”
He froze for a moment, then threw the jack handle in the mud and went to the back of the car. I picked it up and wiped the mud off with my fingers while he came back with the wrench. He dropped to his knees and slipped its end over one of the lugs. I could hear him grunt softly as he pushed against the tool, then he rose on one knee and leaned in to put his body weight against it. I saw the wrench shift a bit before he leaned in again.
“Careful,” I said, but I was too late. The wrench slipped and Tommy dove forward, driving his knuckles across the edge of the lugs. I saw a splash of red in the puddle beneath him before he spun and cupped his hand to his chest.
“Shit, Tommy, let me see.”
“Get away!” he screamed, shifting his butt back in the mud. He got up shakily and flicked his hand at the ground. “I don’t need your help,” he said, mopping his knuckles with the hem of his T-shirt.
“You need somebody’s help.”
“Yeah, well, it’s pretty clear I can’t count on you for it.”
I threw the jack handle in the mud at his feet.
“You gotta be kidding,” I said. “I’ve been looking after you for your whole life. I didn’t mind when you were a kid. But it never stops, Tommy. Even when it was my turn to finally get away to start my own life at college, I was still on call to come home to clean up your messes.”
“I never asked you to.”
“Well, Mara did. It’s not like her boyfriend was up to the task.”
“You know, Campbell wasn’t a bad guy, Paul. At least he treated me like a friend.”
“You didn’t need a friend!” I closed my eyes and took a breath, forcing my voice lower before I continued. “You needed a father. Someone to tell you that the classes you were ditching were the key to your future. Someone to march you right back to the stores you shoplifted from and make you hand back the DVDs and apologize. Someone to go through your dresser drawers to find the pills or pot or smack or whatever else you were on and kick your ass from here till Sunday till you got the message.”
Tommy looked at me and shook his head. “There you go again, just like Dad.”
“Yeah, well, he wasn’t there. I was.”
“You’re not him! It’s not your job to keep me on the straight and narrow. I didn’t need you to do it then, and I don’t need you to do it now.”
“Yeah, cause you’re doing such a good job of it on your own.”
“I’ve been clean for thirty-seven days. You think I don’t know how close I am to never making it to a hundred—hell, to fifty? The only way I can keep from going crazy with fear is to stay focused on the person I’m trying to be. Holding on to that vision helps me make it, one day at a time. It’s called faith, Paul, the thing that keeps me going. The little bit I manage to muster up each morning is the only thing that stands between me and a needle, and every time I see the expression on your face when you look at me, you take some of it away.”
He got up and wiped the mud from his pants. As he turned and walked away, I stared at the fat red drops of blood he’d sprayed across the ground.
***
It took me almost an hour to finish the job. I slammed Kim’s trunk after I stowed the tools and stared into the woods. I was so soaked that I no longer cared about the weather. I willed my thoughts away from Tommy’s words, forcing myself to focus on the sound of the rain and the soft pattern of brush and branches I stared into. After a moment my eyes fell on a thin ribbon of trail that led from the parking lot. I followed it to a boulder resting a few feet off the path. It was almost a perfect pyramid of pink Katahdin granite. I studied its symmetry and felt the world tilt, then tip. Time unspooled, leaving me dizzy with an almost overpowering sense of déjà vu.
It took me a while to place that rock in my past. It had disappeared into the same hole that swallowed everything else close to Jordan’s death. But as I stood there shaking cold and wet, the memory of that marker—and what lay beneath it—began to return. More and more of it came back to me with every step I took toward my truck. By the time I lifted the shovel from its bed, it felt like yesterday.
Chapter 42
The Myth of Time
I placed the Tupperware box on the center of the table in the library. “Aida and Aaron,” I said, “can you go find your mother and Uncle Tommy? There’s something here I think they’ll want to see.”
As they left, Mara looked up from her needlework. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the box.
“A surprise.” She turned her attention back to her canvas and worked her needle in and out a couple of times before she spoke again. “You should get your father too. There’s nothing he likes better than a surprise.”
I was about to correct her, but I let it go. I was uncertain about how to handle Mara’s increasingly frequent lapses into dementia. Part of me thought revealing them to her might help her stay focused on the world she was slowly leaving. But another was resigned to that foggy journey, thinking that it didn’t really matter what she thought was true—as long as she was happy believing it.
I brushed the last few crumbs of dirt off the box, peering through the translucent lid at the soft white shapes inside as my mother continued to sew to the sounds of the fire and rain.
Kim and Tommy followed the kids in a few minutes later. Neither my brother nor my sister looked happy. “What’s so important?” Kim said. I pointed to the box.
Tommy’s eyes followed my finger. “What’s that?” he asked.
I watched Kim’s face change, her brow unknitting as she kept her eyes on the box while her hand found the rail of the chair next to her. She pulled it out slowly and sat down. “Oh my God,” she said softly.
Aida and Aaron took seats at the table. My mother came over and did the same. Tommy frowned as he leaned over to pick up the box, running his finger over the thick strips of duct tape that covered the seal between the bottom and the lid.
“What is it?” asked Aida.
“It’s a time capsule,” I said. “Your mom, Tommy, Jordan, and I buried it in the woods years ago.”
“But why?”
“It was Jordan’s idea,” said Tommy, turning the box over as the memory finally came back to him. “They buried one at school, and she wanted us to make one of our own and plant it here.”
“I don’t remember that,” Mara said.
“Like I told you,” I said, “it was supposed to be a surprise. We were going to dig it up and show it to you and Dad later. Years later was the plan.”
“What’s in it?” Aaron asked.
“Letters,” Tommy said, sitting down slowly. “That was Paul’s idea, to write letters to ourselves—our future selves.”
“Well?” Aida asked. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
Tommy handed the box to me. I slid my knife from the sheath on my hip and took the last seat at the table. I worked the blade’s tip under the edge of the tape, then began to peel it off in strips. I’d put it on in layers, and it took me a few minutes to strip it away. When I had finally finished, I brushed the tangles of tape aside and placed the box in the middle of the table. We were so quiet that when I cracked the seal on the box, we could hear the soft sigh of ancient air escape, carrying with it a faint scent of musk and pine.
I lifted the four letters out, resting them side by side so we could read the names on each one. “Paul” was printed in the careful block lettering I used when I made my lists: programming notes in the old days, ranger to-dos now. Kim had penned her full name, “Kimberly,” on her envelope in elegant cursive script. “Tommy” was a quick scrawl, barely legible. Though the letters in “Jordan” were shaky, I could see they were carefully drawn, as was the purple heart that floated at the end of her name.
“So,” said M
ara, as the six of us stared at the letters. “Surprise me.”
I lifted my envelope and tore open the end, slipping out a sheet of folded notebook paper. A silver trinket spilled out after it and fell upon the table. It was a small key chain with a red crest in the center. Aida picked it up. “VE-RI-TAS. Harvard. What does ‘VE-RI-TAS’ mean?”
“It’s Latin for ‘truth,’” said Aaron.
“But why’s it in there?” asked Aida.
“That was my idea,” said Kim, “for each of us to put a treasure inside.”
“Why Harvard, Uncle Paul?” asked Aida.
“Bill Gates went there. At least until he dropped out to start Microsoft. I wanted to be like him.” I unfolded the paper in my hand and began to read aloud:
Dear Paul, did you ever study computer science? I hope so. Dad sells lots of Commodore 64s, but he says it’s better to be the person that makes them than moves them. Those are the people with the real power. Maybe you’re working for Compaq or Microsoft. If not, I hope you’re at least creating programs for some big company and that you’re smart enough to figure out what they need. Maybe you make the programs that go into the computers Dad sells. If you’re not doing any of this, I hope that whatever you are doing is productive and that you turned into someone the family is proud of. If not—get to work!
Tommy laughed.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s just that it’s clear why Dad never kicked your ass. You did that on your own.”
“My turn,” said Kim. She took her envelope, opened it, and began to read:
Hi Kim. Are you married? I hope so. Maybe to Will Tayberry? (Kidding, but oh my god, what if that’s true!!!) Are you a mom? I guess yes, but I hope you have a job too. Maybe you’re a teacher. Mrs. French says I would make a good one. That would be cool, doing something that really helps people, not just making money to buy more stuff we don’t need. I think Mom may have wanted to do that. I know she loves us, but she’s so smart! Sometimes I think she’s sad she never got to find out how far she could go. Anyway, I hope you found a way to have kids AND have a career that helps others. I’m putting in my gold cross from fourth grade bible study that I keep in my change purse and a prayer that all of this comes true!!!
Kim turned the envelope over, and the cross hit the wood table with a soft jangle. She picked it up by its thin chain. It spun in a slow circle as it dangled from her fingertips. “Can I see it?” asked Aida. Kim handed it over. “What are you going to do with it?” she asked her mother.
“Oh, I don’t know. Why?”
“Can I have it?”
“Sure, but I thought you didn’t want to wear a cross because it’s too exclusive of other religions,” Kim said.
“This is different,” said Aida, slipping the necklace over her head. “This one was yours.” Kim’s eyes began to fill as she stared at her daughter. Mara touched her lightly on the sleeve.
“You were right,” Mara said. “I don’t regret a moment of the time I spent being your mother. But I did wonder—do wonder—what else I might have become.”
“Your turn, Uncle Tommy,” said Aaron. Tommy reached over to pick up his letter.
“Judging by my handwriting and what I remember of third grade,” he said to Aaron, “I wouldn’t expect this to be quite as revealing as the notes from your mom and Uncle Paul.”
He took a moment to read it to himself, laughed, then shared it with us:
well I dont want to be any of the stuff they talk about in school. I want to play third base for the Phillies like Mike Schmit. if I cant get that I want to play in a band. rock and roll, not stupid Baytoven like mom likes. maybe for Bruce Springsteen but Dad says hes too loud. here’s a clover for good luck. It only has 3 leaves, but its all I got!
Everyone laughed. Despite all that had happened, the Tommy of twenty-six years ago was still alive in the one that sat with us today. And though the notes Kim and I penned reflected optimism and ambitions that had waned, or even died, there was something in our words that still rang true years after the day we buried them. Then I remembered what day that was, and time disappeared. The distance between it and the moment we were caught in collapsed with the speed and power of a dying star.
We buried the box the day before my sister drowned.
Tommy squeezed the edges of his envelope till it puckered. He put his lips to the opening and blew a puff of air inside. When he turned it over the table, the small, brown flake of his unlucky three-leaf clover fluttered down to land on the only letter left: Jordan’s.
Every smile on the faces around the table disappeared. No one spoke. No one moved. Not a single hand reached to pick up that last envelope.
I don’t know how long we sat there. Time felt as foreign as the world of clocks and commitments that ticked beyond Baxter’s green walls. In the end, the girl who stood in my mind as the one Jordan might have become—the young woman standing at the end of one of Aaron’s pathways of possibility—raised the envelope and broke its flap with a single flick of a pink fingertip. Then Aida began to read.
43
Love Letter
I hope paul gets to make compyootrs.
I hope kim gets 4 babys like mom.
I hope tommy gets good grades for dad.
I hope nanna gets better so mom wont cry.
I hope dad gets to always bring us to kidny pond.
here is the best skiping rock I ever fownd.
tommy can have it.
love,
Jordan
44
Chapter & Verse
Aida looked at each of us after she finished, then placed the letter on the table. She picked up its envelope and tipped it toward her hand. A small, flat, white rock slipped out and fell to rest on her palm. She held it out to Tommy. When he picked it up, I could see that it was almost perfectly round.
“But she never said what she wanted,” Aaron said softly.
“She did,” Kim replied. “What she wanted was for us to get what we wanted.”
“And she got each of us right,” Tommy said. “What we wanted most, at least back then. Computers were all you talked about, Paul. And Kim, I remember you playing mother to us right alongside Mom but being fired up about career day at school too. The thing I wanted most was for Dad to be happy with me.”
“And all I wanted was to have my own mother back,” Mara said. “But I tried to hide how far Nanna was slipping from you children. And how I felt about it.” Her voice dropped to a whisper before she continued. “Jordan saw right through me.”
I went over to the fire and picked up the iron poker lying on the floor, opening the stove to prod the logs apart until they came alive with fresh flames. “She got Dad right too,” I said, closing the door. “All he wanted was for us to be together. I don’t know why the rest of you could never see that.”
Kim shifted in her chair to face me. I saw a wince cross her face as she moved her brace-clad ankle before replying. “What are you talking about? You think he’s the only one who wanted us to remain a family? A family is a group of people, Paul—like Mom, Aida, Aaron, Robert, and me. It’s not some guy living up in the woods by himself.”
“And what about the group of people who needed each other back then?” I replied. “You think I didn’t want to crawl away and hide after Jordan’s death too? Dad had a plan to help us all get over it. He was the plan. We only had to follow him to stick together. Once he died and you found your heavenly father, you seemed to forget about the things our real one taught us.”
Kim shook her head as she responded. “Only you would put Dad in competition with God, Paul. Dad wasn’t God, even if he acted like he was—”
“He was here!” I yelled. “He wasn’t off on some cloud. He was dealing with everything the rest of us were running away from. He may not have been big on church, but I remember his favorite bible verse. Do you? First Corinthians 16:13. ‘Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong.’ We only had to
rely on his strength to stick together. After he died I tried and tried to remind you of that—every one of you,” I said, glancing quickly at Mara. “But you all turned away to put your faith in other people.” I turned to look at Tommy, “Or other things.”
Tommy’s eyes flashed. He got up from his chair and took a step toward me. “Just say it, Paul. You’re so big on courage; have the balls to call me weak for using if that’s what you mean.”
“Better if you say it.”
He laughed. “Okay, Paul, here you go. I am a drug addict. I am a weak and deeply flawed human being who has caused the ones who love him much suffering and pain. But did you ever think to ask what drove me to pick up a needle in the first place? Do you care?” He held up Jordan’s rock. “It was this. She asked me to go skip rocks with her that morning. If I had, Jordan wouldn’t have died.”
“Oh, Tommy,” Mara said quietly, “you can’t think that.”
He spun to face her. “Oh, but I do, Mom. I think it every day.” He turned back to me and placed the tip of his finger in the center of the blue star tattooed on his neck. “That’s what this is for, to remind me that Jordan’s floating somewhere above me instead of down here living the life she deserves. When I told Cody why I wanted it, he had a tattoo artist come to Vimutti to give it to me. I had him ink it right over my carotid artery, the path between my head and my heart, so I’d never forget the connection between the pain I carry from my past—our past, Paul—and the decisions I make for my future.”
“As long as you’re honoring angels floating around from the past, why don’t you use that star to remind yourself of our father? He was looking out for you from the day you were born. You could have saved yourself and the rest of us a lot of trouble if you’d just followed Dad’s lead.”
Autumn Imago Page 18