Movement

by Gabe Sluis

It was noon at the Golden Lantern Retirement Community when the Clarks gathered. They came from across the state to celebrate the ninety-third birthday of their mother, grandmother, and for some, great-grandmother, Lora Clark. For most, the event was more of a family reunion than strictly a birthday party, especially since ninety-three was a odd birthday to insist on a large gathering. But the family complied, not to discredit the years conquered by the amazing woman who had given them all so much.

  Ariella Kelly arrived late. She was twenty-four, with wild brown hair that she gave little attention. She was relieved to find, upon meeting the rest of the extended clan in the large rec room reserved for the occasion, that she was not the only one who was dressed casual for the occasion. Working through the room, saying her manufactured sincerities to the knots of family she passed, Ariella was drawn into a longer pause with a group of cousins that were all around her age.

  "Ell!" a blonde girl cried, getting up from her set on a table. She threw her arms around Ariella energetically.

  "Hey, Ashley! Long time. What's new?"

  "Oh, you will never guess! Grand helped get me in to Stanford! Stanford! Can you believe it!"

  "That's so great!" Ariella answered. With five other aunts and uncles, Ariella had a huge pool of cousins to keep track of. Mainly due to the coloring of the spouses, the cousins generally came out, and tended to group in two ways. There was the cliquey blonds and the loaner brunettes. At family gatherings like this, the blondes were led by her cousin Meredith, who was a red-head, strangely enough. The blonds were always kind and accepting of the brunettes, but outside of forced family interaction, they were not as inclusive.

  Meredith was the oldest of three and her father came from a wealthy family. He was wealthy in a way that not even Lora Clark had been able to pass on to her five daughters. Uncle Peter had a cabin in the Catskills and Meredith had a penchant for inviting only her blonde cousins up to the lakeside cabin in the summer. Ariella had seen the pictures of the group having a great time posted on Facebook, but never had the drive to point out that she would love to be invited along.

  "I'm so nervous and excited!" Ashley continued. "I knew that Grand said she would help any of us get into school there since she had connections, but I still can't believe they took me!"

  "She is pretty great," Ariella agreed, scanning the room for the woman of the hour. "She got me and Mikey in the same way. If it wasn't for her, I don't know if I ever would have ever gotten my journalism degree."

  "Oh, I don't know about that," Meredith said, joining the group. "You were always Grans favorite, Ell."

  "I don't know about that either! 'Scuse me, guys! I should really go find the birthday girl and say hello."

  Ariella escaped from the clump and wound her way back to a nook in the back of the room. There was bookshelves lining the walls of the little alcove, with a pair of siting chairs on top of a nice rug. Lora Clark sat in one of the sea-foam high backed chairs, facing diagonally out at the large picture window, a hardback in her hand.

  "Hey there old lady! What are you reading?"

  Lora Clark wore a dark blue sweater over a white floral print dress. She was still thin, but not frail, though her skin and dark grey hair gave away her age.

  She jumped at the voice, putting down her book and embracing her granddaughter.

  "Oh, Ella! I'm so happy you made it! I've so been missing you!"

  "I have missed you too, Grand! I should have come by since after I graduated, but I've been so busy with work and looking for big girl jobs. It's no excuse though!"

  "Oh, doll, it's fine. Really! I want you to focus on yourself and starting a career. You remember what I told you at your graduation, don't you?"

  "How could I forget," Ariella said, shaking her head at her grandmother. "Right in front of my boyfriend and everyone, you told me to forget about boys and pursue my dreams, that I shouldn't depend on any man!"

  "And I meant it, despite how your own mother reacted to that statement!"

  "Yeah, well the funny thing was that Brad told me later he was planning to propose there at the ceremony, and you threw him off so bad he couldn't do it!"

  "Oh, no! You didn't..."

  "No, no, no! And it wasn't your fault. He was trying to fix our problems by getting in deeper. I would have said no anyway. But I think he owes you for not embracing himself in front of everyone."

  "Still darling..." she said, placing her hands over Ariella's.

  "In fact, over the past few months, I have really taken your advice to heart. I want to secure myself before I do anything else. That's why I have been working hard on landing a writing job. I'm trying for a lot of newspapers and magazines, but it's really tough. They wanna see a portfolio of work. The best I can do is to come up with some articles on my own since I have nothing previously published."

  "I want to tell you a story. If you want to write about it and use on your resume, I would love to be of help. It's a story no one will ever believe, and probably won't ever matter, either way things turn out. I wanna tell you a short tale about my life; my whole life from the very beginning."

  "Okay," Ariella said, confused. She looked at the hardback book that he grandmother put aside. Dynamics of Nuclear Fusion. The hum of the party/reunion continued in the background as the two women talked, forgetting the world around them.

  "I was born in 1921 in Dallas, Texas. My last name was Blickton back then, before I was married. My father was a grocer and my mother sold hats in a department store. I was an only child, but my mother desperately wanted more. She was from Germany and missed having a large, close family. I guess in a way, her desire for family was passed on to me.

  "But I've learned, sometimes having a large family is more about financial feasibility. That was the lesson I took from my mother. Sometimes it takes more than love to run a huge ship. But I got it right, eventually."

  "I think the whole family thinks you did fine, Gran. Look at us, we are all here for you!"

  "Hush!" she scolded the younger girl. "Don't you try to distract me with a bunch of silly praise. I'm trying to tell you something serious!"

  "Oh, sorry Gran..."

  "Now, where what I? Yes! So, I lived a normal life growing up in Texas. All the pretty girls had light brown hair and dresses from the catalogues. I, unfortunately, never fit properly into those dresses. My father was a boxer before he sold produce, and he had the upper body of a gorilla. His legs though! They were skinny as toothpicks. Those broad shoulders were passed on to me and with my dark hair, darker than yours, I didn't fit in with the pretty girls. I didn't own a horse like the ranchers daughters. I was a mess back then!

  "But I met a boy, my senior year in high school."

  "My friend and I, Pam, who your aunt is named after, went out to Galveston one weekend. We told our parents we were going to a fabric shop and we're going to visit some of Pam's cousins. We did neither!"

  Ariella sat with a bemused grin on her face as she watched the far off look in her grandmothers eyes as she told this story about late teenage rebellion. It was pretty cute to imagine a young version of her old Grand lying to her great-grandparents.

  "It was 1939 and no one questioned a pair of dolled-up girls in a dinner club. In fact, we were not out of place at all. We danced and had a few drinks, overall a wonderful night. And that's where I met Thomas Clark.

  "He was tall and handsome, and I knew right away I had to get to know him. It was as if something was drawing me to him. I walked right up to him and demanded he buy me a drink. Without even smiling, he nodded and got me what I wanted. And that was how it was the rest of the time I knew him. That tall quiet boy rarely smiled and spoke only when he had to. I think I'll always love him most for that, never opening his mouth more than necessary!"

  Lora Clark let out a solid laugh, causing a few heads to turn in amusement. She shook her head at her own private joke and then continued.

  "I got his address and we kept in touch..."

  "Because he was in th
e Navy. I know this bit!" Ariella said, encouraging the story.

  "Oh, you think you know this bit..." Lora said with a smirk. "He was, and the war had not yet fully begun for our side. But he was off sailing the high seas, nonetheless. Thomas was all I could think about those years I stayed at home and he was off. I saw him occasionally when he would come back on leave and we planned on getting married. I went to secretary school while I waited for his service to end, but it never did."

  Ariella noticed the story was taking a turn that she did not recognize. She had heard from her mother the story of her grandparents a hundred times, and this was starting to veer away from what she knew.

  "In November, 1945, I was twenty-four years old. Thomas was out in the Pacific, helmsman on a heavy cruiser called the Northampton. They named the battle Tassafong after the damn place it was fought. Thomas's ship was hit by a torpedo at the end of the battle and the whole ship caught fire and sunk. Most of the men aboard died, including my quiet Tom."

  Ariella shook her head.

  "No. No, Grand. Grandpa didn't die in the war. He survived that battle because of a letter you wrote him. He came home, you had six kids and became a geology professor. I remember Grandpa from when I was four, right before he died of cancer!"

  "Quiet girl! Do you want to hear my story or not? I told you I would tell you this story from the beginning. And that is what happened!"

  "Alright, Gran. I'm still listening."

  "He died and I was heartbroken. I was silly and couldn't get over it. By the time the war was over, I was in my mid twenties and had finally grown into my looks. Boys were interested in me, but I just didn't have the equipment inside to deal with them. I kept to myself and worked as a secretary, eventually moving out to California. There was a big boom in defense contracts and there was plenty of work in the towns that sprung up around the companies.

  "I took a job at an insurance firm and that was where I met Dale. The long of it was that he wore me down. He was ten years older than me and also fought in the war. His hair was thinning, he had a slight gut, and he never kept his mouth shut. I swear that man had no filter. I guess at was part of the thing that held my attention at first; he was persuasive. But as an insurance salesmen, I guess that is a prerequisite.

  "In my own defense, I turned twenty-eight and my biological clock started ticking. He pursued me relentlessly and I figured that I might as well jump before I woke up some day at forty, all alone because I couldn't get over something more than a schoolgirl crush on a dead man.

  "So we got married and had two children..."

  "No..."

  "Dale left his job to start his own insurance company..."

  "No..."

  "It didn't take off the way he hoped. He was always gone at work while I stayed home with the kids."

  "Gran, that's not how it happened..."

  "I grew to hate him, but life just kept going on. I became best friends with my children, the oldest a boy we named Mark, and the girl Susie."

  "Gran, stop!" Ariella begged. "This is silly. You won the Vetlesen for your work in Central America. They included Geology as a category for the Nobel prize after your discoveries! You pressured the scientific community into recognizing that earth scientists are just as important as the physicists!"

  "I know, dear," Lora said. "But first, I settled for a slimy insurance salesman and grew old and even more restless. The highlights of my day were reading the National Geographic and spending time with you."

  "Wait..."

  "Of course it wasn't really you. It was Susie, but you two are the same. Separate lives of the same person. Same looks, same personality. It's the strangest thing. It's like you were meant to be in this world, one way or another! It just took a generation for you to show up!"

  Ariella was speechless. Susie? She went to open her mouth to speak, unsure herself of what would come out, when she was interrupted.

  The lights went down and everyone started singing.

  A large cake with a conflagration atop came whisked into the room. Everyone stopped what they were doing and sang. Everyone except Ariella.

  Cake was served. Toasts were made. The birthday girl was brought to the center of attention, away from her favorite granddaughter and away from the middle of her story.

  Ariella sat in her chair, unable to move. Unwilling to move is more like it, she thought to herself. Thoughts ran wild across her head, none staying long enough to catch and take root. She wanted more than anything to hear the rest of her grandmothers story. The beautiful woman celebrating her ninety-third birthday had never led her astray before. There was no reason not to hear the story to the end.

  The party soon disintegrated. Lora Clark gave special attention to each guest as they said their goodbyes, coming to tears over every member of her huge clan. Families sensed the closing of the gathering and came up with excuses to leave. The guests dwindled down to the single remaining granddaughter. As the staff cleaned the room of plastic cups and cake plates, the two women sat back in their chairs.

  "Why did you want a big birthday party this year? We didn't even have something like this for you three years ago," Ariella said, fighting back her own tears.

  "Because last time, I only made it halfway past ninety-three."

  "Are you seriously telling me that you lived a full life of ninety-three years and then did the same one over again?"

  Lora Clark nodded. "That's the question I have asked myself my whole life. What would you do if you lived your life through and then woke up, knowing all you know, and got to try it again? And so I did! I knew just what to say to Thomas when I saw him that second time in the club. I had never really gotten over him, even after ninety years. So there was no way I was not going to see how my life would turn out if I kept him alive.

  "I sent him a letter. I made sure it would get to him in plenty of time. I told him not to open it until November, since it had been so many years since I could remember the exact day his ship participated in that surprise attack. I was amazed by how much I remembered of the event. It was not like I knew I would live my life over again and that I should study before I went into the next cycle.

  "I told him I had a dream. He was the helmsman of the ship, and I told him that I dreamed he would die if he didn't move the ship as the battle drew to a close. He was on one of the last ships, covering the others as they left the attack. The Northampton was hit right on the keel. He listened to my letter and at that moment he turned the ship, against the captains orders, and the torpedoes hit on the side where sealed bulkheads kept the ship afloat long enough for an orderly evacuation. Apparently there was still a large fire, but most everyone got off the ship.

  "He came home to me and I had the family I wanted, rather than the one I settled for. I was sad when you didn't show up. Six daughters and not one was you. I went to college rather than wasting my time being subservient to career minded men. I got a PhD in geology, which always interested me. Those articles in National Geographic kept coming back to me. I focused my research on the K-PG event and proved that it was an asteroid that hit Central America and broiled all the dinosaurs. I worked on that for twenty years, stealing the ideas from people in the future who didn't get a chance to look into the event because I had inside information.

  "Still, it was fulfilling work. I got to raise my large family the way I wanted and the feeling of restlessness was gone. I truly feel that this was the life I was meant to live. The same old life, and it was just me who was different."

  "And, what? Do you think that it will happen again? That you will die and wake up a child again in the 20's?"

  "I don't know, dear," Lora said. "I just don't know. But in the last decade, it's been on my mind. Part of me hopes not. I don't want to do it again, I know I won't be able to just keep living the same thing like that movie, life in and life out. And what happens to all my children? What happens to my beautiful daughter Susie if I have children with someone different?"

  Tears filled both Lo
ra and Ariella's eyes. Lora cupped her granddaughters cheek in one palm.

  "But if I can't stop it, what can I do? Maybe next time you will come back as a great granddaughter. Maybe his world will keep going without me. You will live out your own life, not ceasing to exist because I have to start over again. Perhaps I'm starting my own reality each time. In less than six months I'll know, and that scares me. All I can do is my best to make this world a better place in case one day I don't came back.

  "I have to look at this like a gift," Lora said, wiping the tears from her eyes. "It's all I can do. I was pitiful the first time through, selfish the second, and if I do it a third, I will be selfless."

  "Oh, Gran!" Ariella cried, throwing he arms around her frail grandmother.

  "I hope to see you again, love. It has been the greatest joy of my life, seeing you again. I knew just as soon as I saw you as a newborn. I recognized you right off. You are my link to the life I deserve. An echo of the life I should have had for being a scared indecisive girl.

  "Don't live your life the way I did," she whispered into Ariella's ear. "Do what makes you happy. Write about me and I hope I don't come back to erase all you could become. But if not, I'll be on the lookout for you and make sure you are named Ariella. I was so unimaginative calling you Susie the first time around!"

  Onyx