“This here is a 2012 Toyoto Avalon. I just bought it. Business is really good these days.”
I was confused. Surely he didn’t mean 2012, but if he did it didn’t surprise me. I gave him direction to where the cave should have been but it wasn’t there.
I started crying and he patted my hand, “Let’s go to my house and let Delia take care of you. Don’t worry about any of this right now.”
Ronnie and his wife lived in the area of New Orleans he called the Garden District. It was a beautiful area, with large frame houses with wraparound porches.
His wife, Delia was a beautiful light colored black woman and told me she had been born and raised in New Orleans. They had no children and appeared to love each other very much. She cooked food like I had never tasted and it was delicious.
Toward the end of the meal I was dozing off and she put me to bed.
I didn’t sleep long before I woke up feeling panicky. I made my way to the kitchen for a glass of water and noticed that Ronnie and Delia were sitting on the front porch talking. I made as little noise as possible and shamelessly listened to what they were saying.
“She thinks she’s the wife of the famous Moe Joe,” I heard Ronnie say.
Then I heard Delia laugh, “Moe Joe of the famous jazz group, Moe Joe and Josie?”
“Yeah, that’s the one,” Ronnie chuckled.
Neither said anything for a few moments and then Delia shocked me by saying, “Didn’t Moe Joe’s wife disappear without a trace back in the 50s?”
“You know, I think you’re right. She and a teenage son…what was his name…”
“Seth,” I said coming out onto the porch. “My son’s name was Seth.”
Delia stood up and led me to a chair. She didn’t seem to be surprised and the only thing she said was, “Talk.”
She still didn’t seem surprised at the end of two hours when I was finally finished telling them my story. I saw Ronnie watching her and waiting to see what she said.
“My family has lived in these parts for many years and has seen many strange things. We believe that time is not linear. After what you have been through, I think you will agree.
“Do you know what a mobius strip is?” When I shook my head she went on to explain, “Picture a piece of ribbon. Now in your mind’s eye twist that piece of ribbon and form a figure eight with it. Then tape the ends together, with the twist still in it.
“Picture yourself on the surface of the ribbon, anywhere. You will not be able to tell where you began and where you ended. Furthermore, you can’t tell whether you are on the inside or outside. I believe that time is like that.”
I must have looked confused because she held up her hand and said, “Don’t worry about it.”
She sat there thinking for a few minutes and neither Ronnie or I said anything while we waited for her to continue.
“I don’t know what has happened to you this time, Ashley and I’m not sure if I know how to get you and Joe back together. He’s obviously stuck in the 1950s and you’re here in 2012. Let me think on it. In the mean time, let’s get some sleep.”
That same morning at around 11:00 a.m. Delia fixed brunch: seafood omelets, toasted French bread, fresh fruit, and coffee.
“You cook the best dishes I’ve ever had, Delia. I would have never thought to put seafood in an omelet.”
She smiled and I thought she was beautiful, “This dish originated at Georgie Porgies, a restaurant inside the Hyatt Regency. I had it there once and came home and experimented until I got it right. I’m glad you like it.
“I want to take you over to my aunt Deliliah’s house. She lives just a few blocks from here and she’s a wise old woman. Let’s see what she has to say about your situation.”
Ronnie said he wanted to go back to bed and get some more sleep before he had to open the club that night so Delia and I went alone.
Delia’s aunt lived in a house only a couple of blocks away and built similar to Delia’s. There was a beautiful tall tan colored woman sitting on the front porch in a wicker swing. She looked a lot like Delia but was older.
When she saw us, she got up and met us on the sidewalk. She hugged her niece and then turned to me. When she hugged me, I felt like an electrical charge went through me and the way she jumped, I knew she felt it too.
What she said was, “Oh, honey, you’re out of time. Not that your running out of time but that you are out of your time. Do you understand?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, let’s go into the kitchen and I’ll fix us a glass of sweet iced tea and we can talk. I sure hope I can help you, Ashley,” and as soon as she called me by my name, I realized I hadn’t told her my name.
She had put some mint leaves in the tea and it was delicious and I told her so.
She told me to tell her everything and when I was finished, she sat for a moment staring off into space.
“The last I heard,” she said, “Moe Joe was in assisted living in Gretna, that’s across the bridge, the Greater New Orleans Bridge that goes over the Mississippi river. You want to go see him?”
This was something I hadn’t even imagined and I hesitated but not for long. The three of us left right away with Deliliah driving.
CHAPTER 12
The name of the place was Green Elms and it sat back from the main highway. The small lane we drove down had big oaks whose limbs grew over the road.
The building was all on one floor and I was extremely nervous as we walked toward it.
“We’re here to see Moe Joe,” Deliliah said.
The woman behind the reception desk was a nervous little old lady with pink hair that matched her uniform.
“Are you relatives?” She asked and Deliliah said, “I’m his second wife.”
The lady didn’t seem at all surprised and led us toward one of the rooms down the hall. Some of the doors were open and I was surprised to see that the rooms were large. They all had a full sized bed and a sitting area and a TV.
He was sitting in a recliner reading a book and he was still a handsome man. His hair had turned completely white. I could see the shock on his face when he looked up and saw me.
He whispered, “Ashley, are you really here or am I hallucinating again?” As he said this, tears started streaming down his face.
I bend down and put my head on his chest and, with trembling fingers, he stroked my hair. I could hear his heart beat and the sweater he was wearing smelled like peppermint. He had no muscle tone left and he was just an old man, but I still loved him with all my heart. I had figured out on the way over that he had to now be in his 90s but he seemed to have all his mental capacities.
“Josie was here last night and will be back tonight. She now has grandkids. Oh, Ashley, what happened to you that day? We were looking inside Rakey’s club and you disappeared into thin air.
“No one believed me and the whole band stayed there to play in case you ever turned up again. Josie was so good, Ashley. You would have been so proud of her.”
“I saw the picture of all of you in the club. Josie looked to be about 22.”
“I think she was about that in that picture.”
Delia and Deliliah had been standing in the doorway and I called them over as I dried my eyes. I introduced everyone and told Joe who they were.
“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Joe,” Deliliah said.
“You too, both of you. So you now own Rackey’s,” He said to Delia. “God I miss that place.”
“Joe, what happened to the cave, and Irene, and what happened to Seth and all the others?”
“The cave took off without us not long after you disappeared and Seth was in it. I’m sorry, Ashley. I was going to pick him up and bring him to the apartment I had rented for us after we got a job in the club, but before I got back, it took off.
“Only the band stayed behind. Everyone else left. We never saw them again. How did this happen, Ashley?”
“This is why these two women are here, Joe, they are going
to see if they can help us.”
“I’ve been thinking on this since I heard about it and I may have an answer, “ Deliliah said. She stared off into space and then said, “I’m trying to think how to explain this. It’s clear to me but trying to explain it is hard.
“Okay, if you picture time and space as both floors and rooms in a high rise building, so that, besides being able to go from room to room on one floor, you can also go up and down from floor to floor. Think of all the possibilities there are.
“Most people consider time as linear, so that you would be born on the first floor, in one room, and move to the second and third floor, always in the room directly above, etc. as you age. That’s why believing in heaven is so easy for someone who believes time is linear. You would go to the very top floor before you die and then move on up to heaven.
“I don’t believe time is linear and, after the experiences you’ve both had, I don’t think you believe it either. I think both of you, and especially you, Ashley, have been moving up, down, sideways and back and forth like that.”
Joe interrupted her, “I think I get what you’re saying. With all the moving we’ve been doing, back and forth and sideways, we’ve somehow gotten out of phase.” He laughed, “I wrote a song by that title, ‘Out Of Phase.’ It’s the song that made our band and Josie popular.”
“Can you get us back together in the same time, Deliliah?” I asked.
“I don’t know about that. I wish I could say yes, but understanding and doing something about it are two different things.”
CHAPTER 13
I wouldn’t leave. I stayed with Joe and told the other two I would wait and see Josie. The staff tried to make me leave but Joe asked them, as a favor to him, to let me stay and see Josie when she came later that night to see her daddy.
I was nervous about seeing Josie. It was going to be weird to see a woman age 71 and know I gave birth to her.
After Delia and Deliliah left, Joe reached inside his vest pocket and pulled out a small item that looked like a tiny black box.
“What is that thing, Joe?”
He laughed, “It’s a cell phone,” he said and proceeded to show me how it worked.
“That’s remarkable!” I said, “I want one.”
“Honey, just wait til you see what all has been invented. You won’t believe it. Didn’t you notice the TV when you came in?”
I walked closer and looked. I had only glanced at it when I came in and thought maybe they had shoved it into the wall so that only the screen was visible. But when I got closer, I noticed that the screen was flat.
“Do you get good reception?” I asked.
He laughed, “It’s like being there,” and picked up another gadget that look like his phone and pointed it at the TV and the TV came on.
There was a beautiful blond girl dancing and singing and she could have been live. “That’s Brittany Spears,” he said. “The singers nowadays move a lot while they sing.”
I watched in amazement. There was no snow and the colors were beautiful. I could have watched all night but Joe turned the TV off and started punching numbers in his phone.
While it was ringing, he looked up at me, “I’m calling Josie. I think I should try to prepare her before she sees you.”
“How can you possibly prepare her for this?”
“Hey, Josie? Hi, honey. I need to tell you something and I want you to prepare yourself. Why don’t you sit down? Oh, how did you know? Are you all right? Okay, I’ll let you talk to her.”
He handed me the weird phone and I tried to get the front toward my mouth. Joe started to tell me what to do and then I heard Josie and I moved the ear part to my ear.
“Mom?” She was crying and it made me start crying.
“I’m here, darling. Are you coming over?”
“I’ll be right there. Put dad back on.”
I handed the phone back to Joe and they talked some more but I couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying. My mind was going off in all directions.
It wasn’t a half hour later that Josie showed up. When she saw me she started crying and I joined in. We held each other and then she hugged her daddy. I watched her as she asked how he was doing and it felt so weird to be the mother of a woman in her seventies.
Joe told her about meeting Delia and Deliliah and what Deliliah had to say about the time phase shifts and she said she was going to see if she could find anything out on the internet.
“What is an internet, Josie?” I asked and she laughed, “Mom, you have so much to catch up on. When we leave here, we’ll go to my house and I’ll show you how to look up stuff.
“It’s the most remarkable thing. There is so much information that you’ll feel overwhelmed at first.”
Josie and I stayed and talked to Joe until one of the nurses came by and insisted that we leave. We both kissed Joe goodbye and got into Josie’s car.
“This is a weird automobile. You have to climb up to get in and there’s so much room inside. What do you call it, Josie?”
She laughed, “It’s an SUV, a sports utility vehicle, mom. Everyone drives them now. This one is a Lexus.”
I watched her feet as she drove, “No clutch?” I asked.
“No one wants a stick shift anymore. This has automatic transmission. It’s easier to drive. And I can fit all my kids and grandkids in here.”
“I can’t wait to meet your kids and grandkids.” I laughed, “I’ll bet I’m the youngest great grandmother that ever lived.”
Josie drove back across The Greater New Orleans Bridge, down Canal Street and into an area she called Old Metairie. She pulled onto a driveway of a huge old two-story frame house. It was painted light pink and trimmed in red.
The street out front was lined with huge oak trees and they grew over the top to form a canopy.
“Dad bought this house when our band started doing so well. Now it’s mine…I guess I should say it’s yours.”
“Why don’t we say it’s ours, Josie?”
We walked up onto a big wrap-around porch that was painted light gray and entered a hallway. There were portraits lining the wall and I stopped to look. I had a beautiful family and I got tears in my eyes thinking about how much I had missed.
She pointed them out, “This is my oldest son, Seth. Yeah, I named him after my brother. I don’t know what I would have done without dad, after you disappeared and then the cave left with Seth. It was a horrible time.
“This is his wife, Cloe and their son and daughter, Ginger and Sandy. And this is my daughter, Christine and her husband George, and their twin girls, Zen and Zoe, after you know who.”
We continued down the hall and came to a group of photos of all ages of children and she proceeded to tell me who was who. There were several photos of each child at different ages.
I lost track of them and who they belonged to, and I’m ashamed to say that I felt no connection to these kids, I just felt a great sense of loss.
After showing me to my room and fixing us something to eat, we cleaned up the kitchen together and she told me about her life. She was a widow.
“My husband died six years ago. I miss him so much. You remember him mom, I married George from the band. He was quite a bit older than me and dad didn’t approve at first but, we loved each other very much and he couldn’t argue with that.”
As I listened to her talk, I felt so disconnected from everything and I felt so hopeless. She stopped talking in the middle of a sentence and hugged me, “Come on, mom. Let me show you how to look something up on the internet.”
CHAPTER 14
I thought I had felt overwhelmed when Joe showed me the cell phone and the TV with the young woman dancing and singing without many clothes on, but the computer made me feel like I had stepped into some unknown world where miracles were possible.
“All of this information at our fingertips, Josie, it’s amazing. How do I know what I want to look up?”
“You can just type in a question and it wil
l give you all kinds of information.”
So I typed in, “Is it possible to get caught in a time phase shift?”
There was too much information. There was stuff about some TV show called STAR TREC: THE NEXT GENERATION, some articles on witchcraft, one article about phase shifts in seismic waves, and I saw that there were ten more pages of article titles.
Josie was looking over my shoulder, “Let’s try something else,” she said. “I have an idea. Let me try something.”
I got up and let her sit and I saw her typing in, “Disappearances of people into thin air.”
There was a case about a prisoner in Prussia who had been chained to other prisoners and disappeared by slowly fading and becoming more and more transparent. This was in 1815.
There was another case in England, in 1873 where a man had made a bet with friends that he could run 16 miles. They took him up on the bet and followed him in horse drawn cart and he vanished into thin air in the same way.
There was one article about a place called Bennington, Vermont where, between 1920 and 1950, several people disappeared in front of witnesses.
Josie went back and changed her search to, “People who disappeared into thin air in New Orleans,” and got my story.
It was an article in the Times Picayune and I read it out loud, “Today, a woman disappeared into thin air in front of a club in the French quarter. Her name was Ashley Verona and she is the wife of Joe Verona who will be playing, along with his band, in the club where she disappeared. Joe said she began to fade and grow more transparent right before his eyes.”
I turned away. I couldn’t read anymore. I stood before the window and stared out. I felt so alone. I felt Josie put her arm around me and I turned into her and we held each other.
“What am I going to do, Josie? No one can help me, no one.”
“At least we have each other now, mom, it could be worse. I have an idea, why don’t I have everyone over for supper tonight and you can meet you grandchildren and great grandchildren.”
TIME AND TIME AGAIN The sequel to 3037 Page 4