I had to work a lot harder to get tan. Even though I was fair, with dark blond hair and light blue eyes, I didn’t tend to burn. But neither could I hold on to a tan to save my life. Two days after looking like a sunscreen ad, I’d look blotchy and pale again. So I really needed to work on my tan. I had a perfect green sundress all ready to go, while Tanya was opting for the more obvious turquoise. We were also going crazy with the Close-Up toothpaste, hoping for perfect Christie Brinkley white smiles with our tanned skin and highlighted hair.
And only then did it occur to me to wonder what I actually looked like at this point. I got up and made my way to the mirror on the door.
The first thing I noticed, even just getting out of bed, was that my body didn’t ache. It always did lately, either because of the muffin top I was constantly working to get rid of or because of the workouts I was constantly doing to get rid of the muffin top. It seemed like something always hurt, not just my back.
Not today, though. Today I felt as light as a ballerina. It was uncanny. Almost zero-gravity stuff. Just for fun I bent down to touch my toes—in my thirties my hamstrings had gotten as tight as banjo strings, so I didn’t think I’d get past my knees, but to my surprise I went all the way down easily and touched the cool wood floor.
My first thought was: Sex would be SO great with this body!
Seriously.
What a fool I’d been to hold out all through my high school years, being such a high-collared prude instead of enjoying the hell out of this thin, tight body.
Next thought: Brendan.
Naturally.
Brendan Riley was my boyfriend in high school. From the tail end of tenth grade through twelfth, which I guess made him my boyfriend right now. I laughed out loud to myself. I had an eighteen-year-old boyfriend. Typical black Irish, with dark, wavy hair and light blue eyes. The lightest sprinkling of freckles over his cheeks and nose. He was beautiful, honestly. He’d set my standard for male beauty at a young age, and he was still the yardstick for my “type.” Hopefully I would be able to wrangle this dream to see him, but either way, he was out there somewhere. Wait till I told Sammy.
Assuming Sammy would believe anything I said and not just have me committed right away.
And assuming I wasn’t already committed, and this wasn’t just a manifestation of whatever I might be being obliviously treated for. Which seemed pretty possible.
This was the problem with spending a lifetime imagining different outcomes and scenarios: it was all too easy to imagine things that were too tough to really contemplate.
Back to now, I reminded myself. Whatever now was. Back to the present thoughts. Back to the thing I was wrestling with above all else. Back to the past.
I looked in the mirror.
It was a shock. It doesn’t seem like it should have been: waking up in my high school bedroom, talking to my parents about my last week of high school, and knowing, therefore, that this was a dream about being in high school should certainly have prepared me to look in the mirror and see my high school self. Or my present self. Or J. Lo, or a Martian, or just about anything. Nothing should have been a shock.
But when I saw the smooth skin, the fuller cheeks and lips, and the bright, clear eyes, something cold ran down my spine. Previously I’d thought I hadn’t really changed that much from high school. I was definitely holding up all right, thanks to a lot of work and good genes, but, wow, it turned out I really looked quite a bit different. I honestly felt like I was seeing an old friend whom I hadn’t seen for a very, very long time.
And, obviously, in a sense I was: I was definitely seeing a face I hadn’t seen in twenty years, but wasn’t it so completely embedded in my subconscious memory that seeing it should have felt natural on some level? Why didn’t the part of my brain that knew exactly what was in the closets and drawers, and that knew exactly where I’d taped my Jon Bon Jovi pinup, know my own face as well as the material echoes of that time?
I can’t say, but I stood there, frozen, looking at my reflection until I realized I was holding my breath, and let it out in a heavy flow. My heart was pounding, racing. It was uncomfortable and scary. Not really fun, like you’d expect, but terrifying.
Was this what crazy felt like? Being trapped in a false “reality” and unable to break through to the other side? It was like floating around in a soap bubble that wouldn’t break. I could see, or remember, everything from my real world, so part of my mind was completely intact and logical, yet everything I looked at—the gauge I’d usually call the most trustworthy one—defied every single thing I thought I knew.
Time travel doesn’t happen. There are no time machines. And spontaneous time-hopping is a ridiculous notion, best saved for children’s books and sci-fi enthusiasts. Fun? Sure. In a movie.
But this was madness.
I was trapped, surely, in my own mind, and I couldn’t get out.
And who would believe me? No one who wasn’t experiencing the exact same thing could possibly understand. No scientist or doctor who hadn’t been there could treat this, unless the “treatment” was strong sedatives and a straitjacket.
This was the most alone I had ever felt in my life.
I took a bracing breath and looked back in the mirror, hoping—I don’t know—hoping I would morph back into myself or something.
Now, I’d never even wished to go back in time and be younger. I wasn’t one of those people who was constantly lamenting the past. Admittedly, when I’d gotten out of bed with no aches and pains, that had been pretty nice, and not something I’d really expected. But looking at my reflection made me feel, more than anything, like time had passed without my realizing it.
People drop out of our lives all the time, we all know that. Friends come and go. People join you for a reason, a season, or a lifetime, as the saying goes. But you never really stop and think about all the selves you lose on the way. I wasn’t the same person I was in high school anymore, obviously, but there were things about her I had liked. Qualities she had that I was sorry to have lost. A certain optimism, an absolute faith that everything would be all right and that I’d have everything I ever dreamed of, a security that came with having no real responsibilities and both parents, loving and present and comparatively young.
I saw all of that in the face in the mirror. Crazy or not, I saw truth there. All of those thoughts and confidences and dreams. And that, perhaps, was the biggest difference between my eighteen-year-old face and my thirty-eight-year-old one: A lot of the dreams had gone out of me. There were too many things I didn’t believe in anymore. I’d lost a lot of my optimism.
Yet there it was in the face in the mirror.
Physically, the differences were to be expected: My eyes were completely without crow’s-feet. There were no faint ghost lines where I raised my eyebrows. My mouth was fuller than I’d ever realized it was, though I could recall being embarrassed by my pillow lips because they definitely were not “in” back in those days. Now I saw it was flattering, though. Youthful, you might redundantly say.
It was still going to take a decade or so for that to be considered desirable.
My hair was a ridiculous mess of layering and strawlike highlights from the sun and chlorine. Now I knew how to fix that with some good conditioner, a blow-dryer, and throwing out my old lavender curling iron, which smelled like burning rubber when it was turned on, and which had left countless burn marks on my wood dressing table. But then I’d been doing my best, and my best left a lot to be desired.
So perhaps the most surprising thing of all—no matter what had brought me to this dark old corner of my mind—was that, more than envying the girl I once was, I kind of felt sorry for her.
I looked at my youthful face in the mirror and saw my eyes shift—“smize,” Tyra Banks would call it in a couple of decades on America’s Next Top Model—with the secret knowledge that I was being given a second chance to enjoy my history and relive those magical make-out sessions of youth without being a cougarish creep.
/>
Because, make no mistake, Brendan was really cute. My days with him had been sweet and romantic and exciting and in so many ways wonderful. I know every generation looks at their youth as a time of so much more innocence, but I think that is particularly true for the pre-9/11 generation. There just wasn’t as much fear in the air, back in those days. There was a hope and positivity, at least for me, that I didn’t fully realize I’d lost until the very moment I was standing in my old room, surrounded by my old stuff, looking at my young face.
Somewhere along the way I’d stopped wanting to be the happy homemaker and had made a new decision to be strong in the workforce. I was proud of how I’d succeeded and there had been a lot of rewards along the way, but there had been some niggling doubts along that path as well. Lisa’s news wasn’t just a huge bolt from the blue for me, it was the icing on the top of a tall, precarious birthday cake I’d been assembling for thirty-eight years now.
If I had the chance, if I could turn back time and have the chance, would I do anything differently?
That was the question, obviously. That was the only question that made sense in this situation, no matter what this situation actually was. I was here for some reason, so if this was a fork in the road, and I had the chance to go a different direction, should I?
Did I really have the chance now?
It was a heady thought. I went to the bed, sat down, and picked up the phone receiver. Because that’s what eighteen-year-old me would have been doing, she would have been talking on the phone to Brendan. And didn’t it make sense for me to do what eighteen-year-old me would have been doing?
I still knew the number, having dialed it so many times.
So I picked up the phone and dialed.
It didn’t go through. There were three tones, then a recording telling me to “check the number and dial again.”
I’d forgotten that back in the day we didn’t need to include the area code.
I lifted the receiver again and started to dial. Then stopped. What was I actually going to say? What did thirty-eight-year-old me have to say to an eighteen-year-old guy?
Hey, kid, like cougars?
He’d think of the animal.
And he’d probably say yes because he really did like animals. He probably even actively liked cougars.
Brendan and I had been together on and off for two years, but in senior year we really started to get closer. I think the deep-known realization we both had that we were going to go our separate ways for college made us cling even harder to one another.
Then—oh, it made me sad just to think about it—then, as I’d thrown away the stuff of my childhood and packed up my stuff to go to college, I’d thrown him out, along with most of my pictures and souvenirs of junior high and high school dances and anything else that made me feel like a baby instead of the grown-up I’d really wanted to be. I’d thrown away the only tangible evidence I’d ever have of this life I’d grown out of.
I regretted that. Profoundly.
Not just Brendan, though ending things with him in such a harsh, abrupt manner was something I had come to regret more and more as I got older, more successful, and emptier. I’d been so determined to yank on my Big Girl Panties that I had thrown out all the stuff of childhood. Including my last days of it.
Including people.
That’s not a commentary on the life I eventually chose, because my life had been happy for the most part, but I definitely see that I lost my grip on the life I’d had at the time, a life I’d never be able to get back.
Except, well, now …
I picked up the phone and, without letting myself stop to think anymore, dialed his number.
CHAPTER SIX
Funny, the feeling of the squishy numbers, the sound of them, which mobile phones tried to emulate but, I realized now, missed the real mark on. If you pressed the 7, 8, and 9 together, then the 4, 5, and 6 together, then the 1, 2, and 3 together, and so on, you could play Mary Had a Little Lamb. You couldn’t do that with a cell phone.
Naturally, I did take a moment to do that. I also called the old weather number, which was 936- and whatever other digits you cared to add; then the time number, which was 844- and whatever other digits you wanted to press. Small things, but even hearing those old recorded voices—“At the tone, the time will be…” and “This is the Bell Atlantic weather service with today’s forecast…”—gave me a kick.
Done with my games, I finally dialed Brendan’s number, and held the phone to my ear. While it rang, I distracted my nerves by wondering why we’d ever decided tiny little flat phones, which obeyed the commands of your cheek and hung up on callers minutes before you realized you were talking to no one, were better than the old technology.
He picked up on the third ring, just as I was calculating that in two more rings it would have gone to the machine, which he probably didn’t have yet. “Hello?” No caller ID, no familiar greeting, no way to gauge mood.
“Hey,” I said, like I was trying my voice for the first time. That’s what I would have said then, so that’s what I said now.
“Hey.” His tone gave me a complete picture of him, smiling and relaxing his shoulders, maybe leaning against the kitchen doorframe, since the phone was tethered to the wall. No question at all who he was talking to. “You just about ready?”
Ready? Ready for what?
“What, uh…” I searched for a sufficiently generic question to prompt him with. “What did you have in mind?”
He gave a laugh. “Come on, Raim, we’re supposed to leave in like ten minutes and you’re always late. Hop to it. Get your ass in gear, I’ll be there in fifteen.”
“But—”
“Get moving!” He hung up.
Well, shit, what was I supposed to do now?
Plans, plans, plans, what plans did we have around my birthday, right before school ended? I just couldn’t remember. There were so many things going on at that time, graduation parties and so on.
I went out into the hall and down the stairs. “Mom?”
No answer.
I started down the stairwell and called again, my voice echoing in a way I would never have guessed would register yet another memory for me. “Mom!”
“What?” She was in the kitchen.
I went the rest of the way down, another six steps. That old green carpet was still on the stairs! Only now did I realize this was the first time I’d left my room since I’d been back, and somehow I hadn’t even thought to tour the house.
I touched the textured wallpaper behind the banister. Getting rid of it had been a good idea; it was tacky only a few years after it was “in,” yet it had lived a long obsolete life on the wall anyway. But at this moment I was glad to see it again. How many Christmases had I come down these stairs in the semidark of six A.M., waiting while Dad got the Super 8 movie camera (and eventually camcorder) ready? I would inevitably be sent back up a few steps to start over when he forgot to put the light on … which he did pretty consistently.
I could almost feel the anticipation of Christmas, Easter, the first snow of winter, all of the wonderful things I came down this stairway to find. I found myself smiling as the anticipation rose, unbidden, in my chest, even though I was headed for none of that. What would I see? What forgotten corners of life were about to bloom before me in full Wizard of Oz Technicolor?
I got to the bottom step and put my bare foot on the cold slate floor of the front hall. It was always cold, I remembered suddenly. No matter the season. I loved that in summer; running in, wet from the sprinkler, squinting against the absence of sun, and slipping carefully across the cool floor to go to the kitchen and get a snack. Pop-Tarts from the cupboard, Jeno’s Pizza Rolls from the freezer, kiwifruit in the fridge, Mom got it all. Even Carnation Instant Breakfast, which I’d shake up every morning in a Tupperware cup with milk and drink with it still bubbly on top.
How had I not realized how easy I’d had it then?
Why had I always been in such a hurry to g
row up?
Maybe now I had my chance to get at least a small snippet of those carefree times back. Maybe not Santa Claus; I was still on top of things enough to know that was a myth. But some of the last days of a teenage summer?
I could really use that now.
“So, Mom?” I went into the kitchen and smiled at the bright, sunny, familiar haven. I went straight to the cereal closet. Lucky Charms. “Yes!” I couldn’t help a private little fist pump. I mean, honestly, who doesn’t love sugary, colorful breakfast cereal? Especially when they have the metabolism to process it?
“What’s that?” my mom asked.
“I’m starving suddenly.” I passed her and went to the closet to take out one of the little Corelle bowls she’d had for decades. White with that seventies gold/wheat-colored border. It was horrible, but it had been horrible since before the time I could tell, so to me it just felt even more like home. “I’m totally in the mood for this.”
“Junk food,” she muttered and shook her head, returning to the task of peeling hard-boiled eggs at the sink. “Apart from adding a few calories to your bony frame, it has no nutritional value.”
Totally right. I would never have this in my place now. I’d have organic pineapple and banana—neither of which would last longer than like two days—and organic oatmeal that tasted like paper, extra-protein almond milk, and unsweetened Kashi. Which made me realize, all the more, how much I missed the simple pleasure of Lucky Charms. It wasn’t broccoli, but it wasn’t quite candy canes either. I got the milk out. “Hey, you’re the one who bought it!”
“It was supposed to be a dessert, remember?” That was the rule in our house. Those sweet cereals were only an after-dinner treat. Never allowed as the one-and-only breakfast food, because Mom knew—as anyone does now—a bowlful of sugar would not lead to good memory and mental sharpness, but a sugar coma about the time I’d have gotten to school. And of course I knew this because of the number of times I’d crept downstairs and had “dessert” for breakfast.
If I Could Turn Back Time Page 5