The Summer of Impossible Things

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘How did you do that?’ Pea asks me, and I turn to her, my mouth working, but no words emerging. I hardly know how to begin, let alone where.

  ‘Did you take a picture of a photograph of her, is that it?’

  ‘I … yes, that’s it,’ I say, my fingers trembling. ‘I found it on Mrs Finkle’s wall … I’m sorry, I forgot about it. I didn’t mean to shock you.’

  ‘For a moment I thought you’d photographed a ghost.’ Pea presses her fingers to her chest, her laugh brittle. ‘Christ, Luna, please don’t do that to me again.’

  ‘I won’t, I promise. Come on, let’s ask Christie to make some prints for us.’

  ‘Even of the ones that didn’t come out?’

  ‘Even those.’

  I needed proof: proof for myself; proof for my sister. And now I have it the relief that floods through me almost brings me to tears. It’s some kind of impossible miracle that I’m living, not dying, through. It’s no disease, nor tumour, no mundane arbitrary death that awaits me, and I want to laugh out loud because until I saw that photo I didn’t want to admit how scared I was of dying. I can stop avoiding Brian’s calls, phoning to check up on me, to see that I’ve followed up with the specialist he sent me. I’m not dying, I’m living, through some kind of life-changing discovery that could alter everything if only I could tell the world, but I can’t, of course. And perhaps there have been others, before and since, who have discovered exactly what I have, but who will forever remain hidden from history. Because if I succeed in altering the past and saving Mum, then no one, except perhaps me, will ever know anything of what I’ve done. And I might not even be here to whisper the tale to myself.

  It’s a special kind of pain, the kind you get when you realise exactly how much you value life, just when you plan to obliterate it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

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  Searching for the respite of shade, Pea stops outside a dark little shop, its front painted black and over-the-top gold letter proclaiming ‘THE BROOKLYN RARE ARTEFACTS GALLERY’. The contents of the window are restrained behind a metal grid that doesn’t quite tally with the grand name of the store. Pea and I stare dumbly at a strange collection of jewellery, clunky sovereign rings, bejewelled brooches and curious pendants sitting in little black boxes in three uneven rows at the front of the window. Behind that a collection of books, comics and old toys mixed in with ancient-looking electrical appliances.

  ‘Sometimes I think this whole experience is one great big trip,’ Pea says, as we peer into the window, then reads a faded handwritten sign out loud. ‘“Dealing in Gold and Silver. Old Toys. Collectibles. Rare and Precious items.” Huh, since when was a Magimix rare and precious? Luna?’

  I hear her, but it’s as if she is muffled behind some sort of fog. Staring through the tiny squares of the grid, I’m looking into the shop and I see it morph and flex beyond the glass, the crammed, dark shop reforming into something lighter, brighter; people come and go, in and out of my field of vision. My knees buckle; I slide against the glass.

  No, not now, I’m not ready now. I thought this could only happen at my mother’s building, not anywhere, not at any time. What if Pea sees me go? Not now.

  ‘Luna, Luna? What’s going on?’ I can hear Pea, feel the grip of her hands around my wrist pulling me back into the moment she is standing in. I feel her and it hurts, like I’m being ripped in two.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I gasp, as I lean into her, clinging on to her, determined to stay. ‘Let’s go in here, they might have air con. I just need to cool down.’

  The more people who see me, the more fixed I will be in this time; at least that’s what I hope, inventing rules to comfort myself with when I don’t even know what game I’m playing.

  ‘OK, come on.’ Pea opens the door and guides me in, and I hear her talking to someone.

  ‘Do you have a place where my sister could sit down and have a glass of water?’ Behind my closed lids, the room swims as they sit me down on a stool and a glass of water is pressed into my hand. I can still feel it, that other moment, that other time, tugging at my edges with a fierce, magnetic force, but I try to will it away. With Pea here, with the other person who has given up his stool for me, I hope I can’t just disappear, that my existence in this time is confirmed and locked in. Taking a chance, I open my eyes and sip the cool water.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say after a few mouthfuls. ‘I’m feeling better now. We probably should have stayed out of the midday heat.’

  ‘Nose bleeds, dizzy spells,’ Pea says. ‘You aren’t pregnant, are you? I’m taking you to a doctor when we get back.’

  There is a moment when the strange man we are with looks from Pea to me and back, and then he shrugs and grins.

  ‘Well, they do say only mad dogs and Englishmen,’ the storeowner says, and Pea smiles at him. Tall, lanky, long hair and goatee beard, he is exactly Pea’s type, which would normally worry me, except he doesn’t have that sheen of a night spent drinking, or the smell that somehow comes out of your pores. His arms are free of track marks; he seems safe for now.

  ‘You stay there as long as you need,’ he tells me. ‘I’m not exactly rushed off my feet here.’

  ‘I’m Pia. This is my sister, Luna.’ Pea offers him a hand, adding a flick of her curls as a flourish.

  ‘Milo,’ he says, nodding his head as he takes her hand; they maintain contact a second longer than is necessary.

  ‘So tell me,’ Pea asks, ‘do you make any money from this crap?’

  Milo laughs, and shakes his head. ‘Sometimes,’ he says. ‘If the right piece of vinyl or sought-after coin or rare first-edition comes in, yeah, I make enough. In the meantime, I think of myself as a kind of curator for lost things, you know? All these things in here, all the crap. It meant something to someone once. And I’m not really a storeowner, I’m really a writer.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ Pea grins. ‘Isn’t that what all failures say? Like, I’m not really a recovering addict/art-school dropout, I’m really the next Damien Hurst. If he was a very attractive woman.’

  She’s testing him, and he passes when he replies, ‘Cool, do you have a sketchbook I can look at? I can show you my poetry if you like.’

  ‘Have you got anything from nineteen seventy-seven?’ I ask him on impulse. Something in this store reached out for me as we passed, perhaps something here is important, another part of the puzzle, another signpost.

  Pea rolls her eyes as she fishes her latest sketchbook out of her bag. Milo looks at me with mild surprise, as if he didn’t expect me to be able to talk whole sentences.

  ‘Almost certainly,’ he says. ‘What exactly, I can’t think off just off the bat … Wait, there’s a first edition of The Shining right at the back of the shop in the books section, and I might have some old currency around somewhere, in here … want me to show you? Although, you know, it looks pretty much the same as new currency.’

  ‘Are you OK to wander around, Luna?’ Pea passes Milo her sketchbook. ‘Because I’m sure Milo wouldn’t try the hard sell on someone who was just nearly passed out.’

  ‘I’m fine, and Milo was answering my question. I’ll go and look for the book; you stay here and talk about art and writing.’

  It’s not a suggestion she is opposed to, but she hesitates, worrying about me.

  ‘Honestly,’ I say, ‘if something terrible happens you’ll know because I’ll crash into one of his shelving units and it will be like tipping dominoes in here.’

  ‘Please don’t do that,’ Milo says, low and sardonic. ‘It took me ages to alphabetise this crap.’

  Pea is instantly charmed.

  The way to the back of the shop is dark and narrow, though thankfully cool. Milo really has crammed as much as he possibly can into it, on tall shelving units stacked very close together, forming a kind of maze, and I’m pretty sure that none of the strange and curious things he has on display are organised al
phabetically. Right at the back, though, it’s another story. There is a step down to a smaller back room, square and empty except for the bookshelves that line the walls floor to ceiling, carefully arranged by author. Honing in on a handwritten ‘K’ taped to one shelf, I run my thumb along the shelf, past many volumes of Stephen King, until I find one hardback of The Shining. Holding my breath, I take it off the shelf and open it to the title page. The smell of dust and words peels off of the paper and I inhale its heady mixture.

  ‘You like that book?’ A voice speaks in my ear, and I turn expecting to see Michael, but the room is empty. The past is still here, seeping through, trying to reach at me, and I’m scared. I don’t want to go.

  Black chasms open up in my mind and I fall into them, sinking slowly to the floor, dispersing into dust; I can see myself fade away and reform. I can feel it too. It hurts.

  ‘I said, you like that book too?’ Michael is leaning against the shelf and it’s the same shelf, but different. Looking around behind me I can see that now this is a sort of book-cum-record store, and it’s busy for the middle of a weekday. A group of guys around Michael’s age are talking in the other part of the shop, but this part is for books, new books like this nowpristine copy of The Shining that I’m holding in my hands.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asks, concerned. ‘You look … like you got a fever or something.’

  ‘It’s hot in here,’ I say, smiling weakly. He is the one familiar thing here. I don’t want him to leave me so that I spend hours alone again, not sure what will happen to me next.

  ‘I do like The Shining,’ I say. ‘It’s one of my favourites.’

  ‘First time I read it, I stayed up all night.’ Michael’s smile is sweetly enthusiastic. ‘Man, I couldn’t put it down. My dad was so mad at me next day at work, I kept napping on the job. You should try Carrie, if you like that.’

  ‘I will,’ I say, looking past him again, searching for Pea or Riss, or both.

  ‘So, what are the odds that I bump into you here on my lunch break, huh?’

  Michael bends a little at the knee so that he makes eye contact with me, and bobs from side to side until I look at him. He is very wonderful to look at, somehow cooling and reassuring. In daylight I can see the deep glade-green of his eyes, fringed with black lashes, and the longer I look into them the calmer I feel; in fact, I look into them for so long that he blushes and breaks away.

  ‘I mean, that’s fate, right? You and me, running into each other again … that’s a sign right there.’

  ‘Is Riss here?’ I ask him. Why am I here? There has to be a reason that I’m here now. In this place, something called me.

  ‘Nah.’ He looks a little hurt. ‘Riss is just my friend, you know, more of a sister. There’s nothing going on between us, if that’s what you think?’

  ‘I haven’t thought about you at all,’ I lie, unable to resist teasing him. He leans a little closer to me. The first time I met him, I thought he was a dream, a fantasy I’d created, but now I know he is flesh and blood it becomes very hard to stand close to him and breathe sensibly. What happens to this vibrant young man, so full of the power of life and lust, that wears him down to that exhausted-looking man in the bakery? If it’s simply life, then it doesn’t seem fair. It doesn’t seem right that just living can do much damage. But then again, that’s entropy. That’s what it’s all about: the inevitability of decay. Unless it isn’t inevitable, unless nothing is.

  ‘I can tell you’re warming to me. You’re thinking: look at this stud; he’s built like Superman, got the brains of Clark Kent. Am I right?’

  Laughing, I turn a little away from him, enjoying this moment and instantly regretting it. The last thing I should do is start to care about more people, when I know I’ll have to say goodbye to all the ones I love already.

  ‘You look sad,’ Michael says. ‘What did I say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I tell him. ‘I suppose I’m just sad that things aren’t … they aren’t the way I want them to be. I’ve lost a lot recently, and I think … I think to put it right I have to lose a lot more. I don’t want to care about anyone else at the moment; I don’t want anyone else to lose.’

  He studies my face for a moment, before breaking in to a playful smile.

  ‘Well, you can’t lose someone who won’t go away. Let me take you out tonight, take your mind off it? I know this place we can go, it’s real romantic. I’ve been saving it for the right girl.’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ I say. ‘I have plans.’ His confidence falters a little, and his smile retracts, just a fraction.

  ‘Fine, well, you can’t have plans for the rest of time, Luna,’ he says. ‘Let me buy that book for you, and I’ll put my number in it.’

  ‘No, honestly, I already have a copy,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, but that copy doesn’t have my number in it. Wait there, I’ll be right back.’

  He goes; I see him laughing and joking with some of the other guys on his way to the counter, and I hear Pea’s voice calling me from almost exactly where he is standing. A dark painted interior blots him out, and I’m wrenched backwards, forwards, torn out of one moment, and thrust into the other. The pain in my head is excruciating.

  ‘Shit, I knew I shouldn’t have left you.’ Pea finds me with my head in my hands. The book I was holding has vanished; maybe I dropped it on the floor. I blink, trying to steady myself, hoping that my vision will return from the blaze of white light it has become lost in. ‘We should go home. 2001 Odyssey can wait.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Pea. I think maybe we should,’ I say.

  My strange encounter with Michael, in this random place that has nothing to do with Riss or my plan to save her, unsettles me. I want to be somewhere safe, somewhere lockable, where I can curl up under a crisp, white sheet and be reasonably sure I’ll wake up in the same place.

  ‘A long walk in this heat is a terrible idea, isn’t it?’ Pea says. ‘We’ll get you back as soon as you feel up to it.’

  ‘I’ll close up for ten minutes and drop you back,’ Milo says. ‘My car’s out back.’

  ‘OK.’ I nod. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Oh, you didn’t find it yet.’ Walking over to where I am standing, Milo lifts a hardback copy of The Shining off of the shelf just behind me. ‘You know I inherited this one; it was here when I took over the lease of the shop, in a bunch of boxes in the storage unit at the back. It’s practically mint condition. Or at least it would be if some dude hadn’t vandalised it, trying to get laid by writing his phone number in it.’

  He opens the front cover and shows it to me.

  ‘If you let yourself be found, you can’t ever be lost, Mx’

  ‘I’ll take it,’ I say, grabbing the book and holding it close to my heart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

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  ‘Let’s find Mum and Dad’s tree, you know, the one Dad reminded us about when we decided to come here. We promised we’d try.’

  It’s evening, it’s late, the sun has gone down at last, and a soft breeze that runs from one open window to another has cooled the room, cooled my fever. I spent the afternoon alone, under that crisp, white sheet, exactly as I had planned, and I thought hard.

  If I can’t control what happening to me, if I can’t use it to save Mum, then it’s meaningless, and I can’t allow something so miraculous to be arbitrary.

  This is what I know:

  The date and time there is exactly the same as it is here. All that’s different is the year. Which means I don’t have long, only a couple of days, to change the course of my mother’s life before this loophole closes and it’s too late.

  The things that happen around me in the past, stick. They stay.

  The pendant, the ripped camera strap, a dedication in a novel. They stick. Perhaps every time I alter something, a new universe is created, a new version of reality, although not even the more radical physicists believe that anymore. And
neither do I, and, as of about forty-eight hours ago, I’m the wackiest physicist of them all. No, I believe there is just one past, one present, one future, but each is a movable feast, full of possibility.

  I also know that making the transition hurts, whether I want it, or – like outside the Brooklyn gallery – it wants me, it hurts. After every experience I have been weakened, been bruised, almost bloodless. I think that, one way or another, embracing this incredible gift means accepting there is a price to pay, and that, in all probability, the price will be me. That even if I had infinite time to go back and try and fix things, I don’t think I would survive long enough.

  There are so many variables as to what makes a person a personality. Certainly I am part my mother and part the man that raised me, but of course I am part him too, the man that ruined her life. That makes me part Italian, part American, part scientist, part photographer, devoted to my family, loyal and true. Those things I know came from my mum and from Henry; I know because I can see it, it’s obvious. And maybe my courage too, because I know how far I would go to save my mother from committing a sin she couldn’t bear, and maybe I’d commit the same sin to save her, and maybe I would bear it. Perhaps I get that from him. That, and my single mindedness, my determination to succeed, my ability to detach from anything that isn’t relevant right then, to switch feelings off. From my blue eyes to my sense of isolation in the midst of a family I adore, that comes from him too and I can’t regret that. I can’t hate that, because that’s me. I’m not perfect, not at all, but I am me. If I alter the future, there will be no me left, not in my current configuration. Unless I’ve been wrong all my life, and there is such a thing as a soul.

  If I make a better future for my mother, and my sister, it’s me that will vanish. It’s me that will go missing from history. And it’s me that has to pay that price, because it’s me and me alone that can erase the harm my true father did. I was never meant to be, and there is only one way to correct that.