by Leyna Krow
2 For this, I love him already.
3 How many apocalypses have there been? I don’t know. I myself have experienced seven. If I had to guess though, I would say there have been infinite apocalypses. It seems the universe is stuck in a never-ending loop of creating and destroying itself. With each re-creation, the universe is reborn more or less the same as the previous version. The end doesn’t always come at the same point in time though. The last apocalypse took place in the fall of 1997. I was eating a bag of Sun Chips and watching Boy Meets World when it happened. I remember turning the volume on the TV up as high as it would go in an effort to drown out that horrible beeping.
As far as I can tell, there’s no rhyme or reason to when a given incarnation of the world will end. One time, the apocalypse might happen in 2074, the next time in 1812. I’m aware that whole worlds have begun and ended without me ever having existed. Not every Earth lasts long enough to see my birth in 1984. This is fine with me. I don’t mind sitting one out every now and then.
4 I can picture this so clearly, it’s almost like I’m there with Cole. Or like I am him, in a way. I can feel the chill of the fall air against his arms as he walks to the store. I can feel the weight of the cans and bottles in his hands as he lifts them from the shelves. This is too close. This is not information a mother should have access to. Yet, at the same time, it seems right and natural. I wish I could better explain how time and personhood are not fixed or concrete at all. We walk around thinking we are one person in one place at one time, but this is not really the case. Except when it is the case. Which is most of the time, for most people. Just not for me. What makes me so special? I can’t even begin to speculate.
Though it’s currently August, the chill from Cole’s walk to the store has given me goose bumps. I wrap my arms around myself. My boyfriend asks, “Are you cold?” As if anyone could actually be cold drinking coffee indoors in August. He tells me he’s got a jacket in his car I can wear. I tell him no, I’m fine. This feeling will pass in a moment.
5 Aaron and I will be pretty good at anticipating one another’s reactions in most situations. After all, we’ve already known each other for most of our lives. Or most of my life, rather. There’s a bit of an age difference—almost a decade between us. We grew up living mere blocks from one another. The first time I saw Aaron, I was five years old and riding the bus in Everett with my grandma. As soon as we boarded, I spotted a group of teenagers near the back. I pointed to the slightest among them. “Someday you and me are going to get married,” I told him. This was Aaron. The other boys laughed and Grandma apologized on my behalf, but Aaron was a good sport. “Sounds like a plan,” he said, flashing me a thumbs up. After that, he’d wave whenever he saw me around. This waving continued for a number of years, until he left for college.
6 It’s an experience I’m glad Cole will get to have this time around. Obviously, when the apocalypse doesn’t happen during his fifteenth year, Cole’s teens go a little differently. His whole life goes a little differently. Everyone’s does, except for mine. In these instances, I still always cash out at the gym on the same day in June. But there are some versions of the world where Aaron too gets to see his life to its natural end—a stroke shortly after his eighty-second birthday. Cole goes, along with his wife, a decade later in a single-engine plane crash, orphaning their twin sons. Since I never meet my grandchildren, the grief they must feel does not weigh so heavily on me. As adults, they go on to co-own a successful toy store in Missoula, Montana.
Of course, no one remembers any of this from one apocalypse to the next. No one, except me. A gift and a curse. Live enough of the present and you get to see into the future. Although I’ll admit, after this many times around, it’s hard to separate memory from premonition.
7 Of course, no movement is ever independent. The geologists will know this. Newton taught us that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Has there ever been a more true observation? Look, I can bounce my leg against one end of the table in front of me and at the other side my boyfriend’s coffee splashes about in its cup, his scone threatens to tip off its plate. “Could you not do that?” he asks. Then he picks up the scone and takes a bite. My point? The world’s creation ensures its eventual destruction. And that destruction ensures its eventual re-creation. So yes, the earthquakes are connected, both in the sense that all earthquakes have always been connected, and also in the more immediate sense as well.
8 I should mention that today is the day Aaron and I meet. Or re-meet as adults. In fact, he’s already here.
My boyfriend and I come to this coffee shop every Sunday morning. It’s our routine. We bring a newspaper, books, journals, whathaveyou, and camp out in a pair of armchairs by a large south-facing window. We usually stay until noon, then we pack up and go elsewhere, sometimes together, sometimes separately. More often than not it’s been separately, as of late. I try not to worry too much about this, considering that in a month’s time, I’m going to leave him for another man.
Aaron got here about an hour ago. He’s working on his laptop at a table across the room, with his back to us. But every so often he turns to look in this direction. He still appears very much like the kid with the skateboard I propositioned more than two decades ago, only taller now, shoulders broader, etc. In a few minutes, my boyfriend will get up to go to the restroom and Aaron will take the opportunity to come over. “Excuse me, I know this sounds lame,” he’ll say, “but you look so familiar. Have we met before?” I’ll say yes, but I won’t remind him of the bus, only that I recognize him from the old neighborhood. “Well, it’s good to see you again,” he’ll say. Nothing more than that. But in the coming weeks, we’ll cross paths several more times. And like the old days, we’ll wave each time. Until Aaron works up the nerve to ask me out.
9 Believe me, I know this feeling, this want to always, always be with the ones I love. Even as I am, at this moment, preparing to meet Aaron, I am also preparing to lose him. Although the universe’s incarnations may be infinite, my time within said universe is not. I haven’t always been here. And I won’t always be here. In fact, this universe is my last go-around. I find no relief in this knowledge (which, again, I know just as you know all things familiar and inevitable to you). Just the opposite. I hate to think that this is the last time I’ll marry Aaron on the shore of Lake Washington, the last time I’ll hold Cole, pink and angry and new on the day of his birth, each moment spent alongside my husband and son the last of that moment. I would gladly keep going on like this with them forever.
10 And in thinking of this, I’ve started to tear up a little. I wipe at my eyes with the sleeve of my sweater. My boyfriend looks at me over his newspaper. “What’s wrong?” he asks. I can’t tell him. “Sad thoughts,” I say. He shakes his head. We’ve been together four months and, though he’d never say it, he’s already tired of this behavior—my unexplained shifts in mood, my detachment, my clinging, my crying. I’m all over the place these days. “Let me run to the restroom and get you some paper towels,” he offers. It’s the best he can do. The most he’s willing to do. He folds the newspaper and tucks it under his arm as he goes. Across the room, Aaron turns to look at me once more, stands, pushes in his chair, and takes his first step toward me.
Go to Our Website
www.featherproof.com
Learn more about This Company