Then Again

by Rick Boling

  “What’s up, kiddo?” I said.

  She raised an eyebrow and smiled. “The jig,” she said. “The jig is what’s up Dad.”

  “And what jig would that be?” I said, thinking this was some kind of joke. “Don’t tell me you finally found out I’m an imposter and that your real dad was Jimmy Hoffa?”

  Shaking her head slowly, as if admonishing a child, she said, “I’d love to keep up this banter, but I’m afraid what I need to tell you doesn’t lend itself very well to humor.”

  “Oh, God. Please don’t tell me you’re pregnant. I can’t handle another—”

  “Dad!” she said, “I’m not pregnant, I’m not getting married, I don’t have a venereal disease, and I don’t have cancer. Unfortunately, this is far more serious than that.”

  “More serious than cancer?” I said. “What could be more serious than cancer?”

  “I found Mom’s diaries, Dad—her journals, as she calls them. Four volumes full of single-spaced, typewritten pages chronicling everything, starting from that day in 1960 when you two met at the park on Coffee Pot Bayou.”

  “I see,” I said. I knew about Doris’s journals, but the significance of what Ellie was saying hadn’t quite sunk in yet. “So, was there anything embarrassing? I can’t imagine your mother writing any graphic details about our sex life. I mean, you know how she …” When I saw the look in Ellie’s eyes, it suddenly dawned on me what she was talking about. “Oh, holy shit,” I said, “You don’t mean—”

  “That’s exactly what I mean, Mr. Vaughn. So I think—how did you put it? Oh, yeah, I think it’s time we had a little talk.”

  Our ‘little talk’ ended up being nothing of the kind. For one thing, Doris’s journals turned out to be incredibly detailed. Not only had she faithfully chronicled the evolution of our relationship, she’d transcribed my narrative confessions as if she’d been taking shorthand while I spoke. When Ellie confronted her, Doris lost it, breaking down in tears and screaming at Ellie for invading her privacy. After she calmed down, she tried to claim that the journal entries were notes she was making for a novel she intended to write.

  “She swore that’s what they were,” Ellie said, “and she made me promise not to tell you because she said you might get upset with her. But why would you be upset with her for writing a novel? Besides, they explained a lot of things—how you, as a teenager, managed to seduce an older woman, the little bugs you put in Sam’s ear about recording innovations and computers, your ability to write and arrange at such a young age. Even what happened with Patsy. Anyway, after I convinced her I wasn’t buying that story, we had a long talk, and she said she’d planned to tell me when I was older. Turns out she’d always thought I should know, but she wanted to tell me in her own words, not have me find out by reading her journals.”

  “What difference would that make?” I said, still trying to figure out how to deal with the news. “Obviously the journals were far more detailed than any conversation would be.”

  “Yes,” she said, “and that was the problem. She didn’t mind so much my learning the truth about you. What she did mind was that I’d read all the intimate stuff about you guys. And boy that was some read. She may be shy about openly discussing sex, but she spared nothing in describing what went on between you two in the bedroom. And when she found out I’d read all that, she was so embarrassed and angry she went off on me.”

  Ellie’s revelation hit me like a sledgehammer. My first impulse was to deny everything, but when I saw that familiar look of unyielding determination in her eyes, I knew there was no chance I could lie my way out of this one. My sudden brain freeze must have been evident, because she reached out to hug me.

  “Everything’s going to be okay, Dad,” she said. “I’m not mad at you, and I can certainly understand why you didn’t want me to know. Mom and I talked it over after she calmed down, and we both think it was for the best. In fact, you’d be amazed at how much she’s loosened up with me now that we have no secrets. We’ve been getting along famously ever since, talking about things we never would have before and brainstorming about the future. By the way, I know quite a bit about quantum mechanics and the theory of alternate universes, although I’m a little lean on Native American religious rituals. I plan to do some research on the subject so I can get a better grip on this Heyoka character. Sounds like a pretty eccentric fellow to me.”

  “He was—is, I guess. I’m sure you’d find him fascinating.”

  “And his sidekick sounds a lot like me. Math whiz and all. Extremely logical. I’d love to meet him someday, though I guess that’s impossible.”

  “Her,” I said.

  “Her? I thought the guy’s name was Fred.

  I was wondering what she meant, until I remembered that in my narrative I’d substituted Fred for Aurélie. Ellie didn’t know it, but she was actually talking about her namesake. “Yeah,” I said, “Fred. It’s short for, uh … Frederica. You’d be amazed at how much you two are alike. So, okay, now you know. It doesn’t change anything, though. I mean, I’m still your dad and I still love you. All the other stuff is water under the bridge. We can put it behind us and move on, right?”

  I didn’t like the look in her eyes; it suggested that all the water had not quite passed under the proverbial bridge. In fact, it looked downright conspiratorial.

  “Well,” she said, “I don’t think so. You see, Mom and I talked about a lot of other stuff, too. Like how reluctant you’ve been to use your knowledge of the future to stop bad things from happening. We both think you’re being too conservative, especially when it comes to saving John’s life.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond, but I figured since she already knew what was going on there was no reason to avoid the subject. “I’ve changed my mind about that,” I said. “I don’t have a definite plan in place, but I’m not going to let it happen. Things are going to unfold differently now that you’re in the picture, and that will introduce a whole new set of variables, making it almost impossible to predict what Chapman will do. I’m working on it, though.”

  “Can I help?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’ll let you know if I think of anything you can do. Meanwhile, I want to work on it myself, at least until I come up with a basic plan.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Now there are a few other things we need to talk about.”

  “Oh, no,” I groaned. “Don’t do this to me Ellie. I know what you—”

  “Hear me out, Dad. Please. Mom told me about your fear of not being able to forecast the overall impact of changes you might choose to make in the flow of history. So I’ve spent the last couple of months researching the science of forecasting, studying the work of experts in the field like Willi Dansgaard, John Nash, Eric Siegel and others. I’ve been working on this from a mathematical perspective, and I’ve developed some pretty exciting algorithms that can create highly reliable, long-term forecasts for almost any set of circumstances.”

  I realized that now I was really in for it. Doris had been a formidable opponent, but with Ellie on her side I would be seriously outgunned.

  “You’re messing with Sasquatch,” I said.

  “I’m what?” she asked. “This has nothing to do with mythology.”

  “Sorry, that was a euphemism. What I meant was you’re playing with fire. You and your mom have no idea what the consequences of intervening in history will be. Some things are going to happen that all your scientific algorithms and naïve theories couldn’t begin to foresee in detail, and there’s no way to predict the consequences when something we do interacts with those events.”

  “Not necessarily,” she said. “Look, I know this is probably going to be way over your head, but maybe you can grasp a little of it. My algorithms are based on a technique called logistic regression. Using this, I can analyze available statistical data to conduct what mathematicians and futurists call predictive modeling. It’s not perfect, I’ll admit that, but it’s really only restricted by the size of the
database and the fact that we don’t have specific known target events to analyze. With your help, however, we will have those target events, plus information about how things originally evolved. And with Sam’s advances in computing power, we can build databases large enough to make reasonable predictions about the impact of any intervention we decide to make. We could accomplish a lot, Dad. Maybe save millions of lives. Maybe even change the course of human history for the better.”

  “Regardless of whether or not I understand what you’re talking about, the keyword here is ‘reasonable,’” I said. “Millions of reasonable assumptions have been proven wrong in the past. What you’re not taking into consideration is a little thing called chaos theory, otherwise known as the butterfly effect. There’s an element of randomness in the way things evolve, and that randomness is impossible to anticipate. Playing around with future events means experimenting, Ellie, and experimenting by definition means taking actions for which you do not know the ultimate outcome.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “Certain aftereffects may be impossible to predict precisely, but they are not impossible to predict in a general sense. Granted, there’s some gambling involved, but every decision we make is a type of gamble. When you see someone drowning and you dive in to save that person, you’re gambling your own life to change an outcome. Do you let that stop you? There are never any guarantees, Dad, only educated guesses, and those guesses are based on how we analyze the available data.”

  Her words were startlingly similar to something Aurélie had said. The difference was that Aurie would not be arguing for large-scale intervention; she would be arguing against it. At least I assumed she would. Her reluctance to help me deal with Chapman seemed to confirm that.

  “I see what you’re saying,” I said. “But you’re forgetting one small detail.”

  “Oh, what’s that?”

  “Scale,” I said. “You’re not taking into consideration the potential impact of interventions that could affect large numbers of people. If I jump in to save someone from drowning and I die trying, that only involves two people. But when you scale that up to, say, attempting to do something that will save millions of lives, as you suggest, the potential impact is exponentially larger, and a larger scale means a wider butterfly effect. What if one of those people you save kills someone who was slated to do something earthshaking, like inventing a cold-fusion power generator or discovering a cure for cancer? Even using the largest database in the universe you wouldn’t be able to predict every possible outcome.”

  “That may be true,” she said, “but the same thing applies at any scale, and it works both ways. For example, what if that one person you saved from drowning turns out to be a mass murderer or the carrier of a new communicable disease that causes a worldwide epidemic? Anticipating the worst is one thing, but there’s a difference between anticipation and paranoia. Based on your timorous theory of non-intervention, no one should ever do anything to intervene in even a single person’s fate.”

  Her disease example reminded me that I’d failed to mention the AIDs pandemic when I was listing major events for Doris. Having lived under the shadow of HIV for so long in my first life, I’d forgotten that the crisis was yet to come in this one. And when I realized this, I began to wonder if there was any way I could warn the medical community of the looming threat. Obviously Ellie’s arguments were getting to me or I wouldn’t even be entertaining such an idea, and the fact that I had made it clear that I needed time to think before continuing the debate. I was trying to come up with a plausible reason to postpone our conversation when my eyes were drawn to the flashing lights on my phone.

  “We’re going to have to continue this another time,” I said, pointing at the phone, which was lit up like a Christmas tree. “Janet will kill me if I don’t start taking some of these calls. I’ll think about what you’ve said, and maybe we can come up with a compromise. But right now, I have to get back to work.”

  “You’re not getting out of this by putting it off,” she said, kissing me on the forehead and ruffling my hair affectionately. “I’ll let you off the hook for now, but I want to talk about it again soon.” She was halfway to the door when she stopped and looked back. “Oh, and that traffic jam of a phone? That’s something else we need to discuss. Mom and I both think you need to back off before you have a nervous breakdown.”

  After she left, I reached up to smooth my hair, and was shocked when my fingers touched bare skin. In my first life I’d kept a full head of hair into my late sixties, and now I was losing it in my thirties? I jerked my hand away and hesitated for a moment before reluctantly lowering it toward the row of flashing buttons. But instead of pressing one, I found myself lifting the phone off the desk. I held it in the air for a moment, then jerked the wires loose and threw it across the room. Janet opened the door just as I let it fly, and she watched calmly as it crashed against the wall and landed at her feet.

  “Phone’s broke,” I said.

  “Yes. I see,” she said, staring at the jumble of wires and splintered plastic. “Well, you weren’t answering it anyway. I’ll call the phone company. Meanwhile, you have some visitors.”

  “Tell them I died. And cancel the rest of my appointments.”

  “They didn’t have an appointment, but you might want to reconsider,” she said.

  “I don’t care if it’s the King and Queen of England, I’m not seeing anyone.”

  “Odd looking couple,” she said, ignoring me. “Grizzled old Indian with a twinkle in his eye and smile like a neon sign. Wife looks a little like Brigitte Bardot. Said they’d like to take you to Coney Island for lunch, so I figured they must know you pretty well.”

  Requiem

  Morning sunlight painted a pastel kaleidoscope on the majestic cupola above the choir loft. Sculpted to resemble the cupped hands of God, the once-chalk-white façade had yellowed over time, transforming the stained-glass reflections into an undulating, milky smear. As Carol Henderson’s fingers fluttered over the three-tiered keyboard below, somber notes from unseen pipes rumbled through the sanctuary like melodic thunder.

  It had been nearly two years since I’d sat in these time-burnished mahogany pews; two years, in fact, since I’d given more than a fleeting thought to things religious. My parents had fallen in love with the Mediterranean on their trip overseas, eventually deciding to return and live out their retirement in a small house on the coast of Italy. So I’d taken the opportunity to stop attending church, since my adherence to that ritual had been maintained only for their sake. Primarily out of respect for her mother, Ellie had continued to accompany Doris on Sunday mornings, while I took those precious few hours of relief from the business to sleep in.

  My daughter now sat beside me, our fingers intertwined in a moist, fretful grasp, as we fought against the grief that threatened to overpower us at any moment. Though flanked on either side by my folks and Ellie’s maternal grandparents, and surrounded by friends and extended family members, we nonetheless seemed isolated, as if imprisoned in our own private world of despair.

  Reminded by the brick-hard, butt-numbing contours of the unpadded bench, I recalled those Sundays of my youth when I was forced to sit—without fidgeting or making a sound—and listen to the scary, hellfire-and-damnation ranting of our evangelic minister. I’d learned back then to concentrate on the wavering colors as they mingled with reflections from the water of the baptistery. And so far this morning I had managed to remain stoic by doing just that. But as Carol led the choir in a powerful, tear-jerking rendition of Amazing Grace, Ellie’s grip tightened, and I found I could no longer avoid glancing down at the velvet-draped bier that stood in front of the podium. Once my eyes came to rest on the gold-trimmed, alabaster casket, covered in a profusion of candy-striped carnations, my emotional control dissolved like so much tissue paper in a churning whitewater of sadness and remorse.

  I’d tried without success to forgive myself, not only for being unable to anticipate the depth of Chapman’s
lunacy, but for the years I’d spent perpetuating the self-serving fantasy of loving two women without slighting one. I’d justified this by telling myself they were different kinds of love: one a spontaneous, uncontrollable infatuation that grew and strengthened until it became an inseparable part of my soul; the other born of friendship and sexual desire, leavened over the years by loyalty and respect and appreciation. Had there been any choice, I would certainly have chosen Aurélie, but knowing the impossibility of that relationship, I’d done my best to dedicate myself to Doris.

  It wasn’t as if I’d attempted to deceive her; she’d been aware early on that there was someone else. And she had accepted this dichotomy without a trace of bitterness, resigning herself to the fact that she would have to share my affection with another. Oh, she would occasionally refer to it in a jokingly sarcastic—though never spiteful or quarrelsome—way: “That mysterious woman from your former life, what was her name again?” she’d say, knowing I would never answer the question. Then she would smile and add some mildly threatening declaration, like, “Well, if I ever have an affair, I won’t tell you his name either.” At times, I almost wished she had taken a lover; at least that would have evened the score a bit and alleviated some of my guilt. But that wasn’t Doris. Despite those flippant and mildly acerbic comments, her commitment to the marriage had never wavered from the day she’d accepted my somewhat awkward proposal.

  “I’m not blind,” she’d said. “I know there’s someone else in your heart, someone who’s miles ahead of me.” Then, as if to justify her decision to marry me, she added, “I also know that you care for me, maybe even love me a little, so I’m willing to take what I can get.”

  From that moment on, I’d tried to devote my life to Doris, and later to both her and Ellie. In a way, I’d succeeded, at least when it came to outward appearances and my conduct within the closed circle of our family. Inside, however, Aurélie continued to hold first chair in the orchestra that played privately to my heart. It was an affair without fulfillment, one that not only frustrated, but that often left me feeling as if I were in love with a ghost or was plagued by a phantom limb that itched but could never be scratched. And now, as I stared at my wife’s closed casket, the guilt I’d carried for that silent betrayal tortured me with unrelenting shame.