by Bob Smith
Junior’s body relaxed but his face was a question mark. “You believe us?”
Carol looked at me and frowned. “You might actually be too mental for our family.” She shook her head, stood up, and began to walk toward the kitchen.
“I know it sounds crazy, but I believe him,” Junior said.
“And I don’t,” she snapped.
“Why not?”
“If you’re gonna claim to be the Easter Bunny, I need more proof than carrot-stained lips.”
Carol’s comment was bemused rather than hostile. Since high school, she’d always used her mastery of ridicule as a means of making friends. As a social strategy, her sharp tongue should have created legions of enemies, but her witty needling worked like an acupuncture treatment; the recipients ended up feeling rejuvenated after undergoing a session with her.
“Do either of you want to shower?” she asked. “I caught a whiff of one of you, and I don’t want to prove you’re the same guy by discovering you share matching B.O.”
I tried to secretly breathe deeply a few times to check out whether I was stinking up the place. I didn’t smell anything and decided it had to be Junior. We got up and followed Carol into the kitchen as she prepared and cooked the pancakes.
After flipping the first batch, Carol turned toward me and abruptly asked, “What do I call Uncle Dave and Aunt Debbie?”
I immediately understood that even Junior’s testimony wasn’t enough to confirm my identity.
“Druncle Dave and Aunt Phetamine.”
Carol had bestowed those nicknames on our uncle and aunt because every breath they took was under the influence of some mind-altering substance. My answer didn’t appear to elicit any reaction from Carol.
“What is Mom not allowed to talk about?”
It took me a second to figure out the correct answer.
“Quit talking about that cake!” I screeched, impersonating a Lily Tomlin character. In college, I’d bought Lily Tomlin’s album of her first Broadway show, Appearing Nightly, and Carol and I had repeatedly listened to a sketch called “Lud and Marie Meet Dracula’s Daughter.” A bratty teenage girl enters the house, and her mother asks, “Is that you?” “No, it’s Dracula’s daughter!” She heads up to her bedroom and slams the door, but can’t shut out her parents’ inane bickering about which cake—the yellow or the chocolate—the father ate the week before. Finally, the girl opens her bedroom door and screams, “Quit talking about that cake!” Whenever our mother began to harp on some pet subject—our brothers’ inability to get along, a neighbor’s irritating habit of parking his car in front of our house (“They have a driveway!”), or a paean to why Buffalo-made Sahlen’s hot dogs are superior to other hot dogs—Carol used to yell, “Quit talking about that cake!” It always made me laugh, and I’d laugh even harder when our mother would earnestly ask, “Who’s talking about cake?”
“When you were in college, what TV show did we watch every night at six and eleven?
“Mary Tyler Moore.”
When the show went off the air in 1977, channel 29 ran reruns twice a day. I’d basically stopped watching television in college until I rediscovered the brilliant Mary Tyler Moore Show. I spent my nights lying on the couch reading assigned books by Matthew Arnold, Charles Dickens, or William Butler Yeats, but I’d start and end the evening watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Carol put the mixing bowl in the sink and ran the water. “You’re good,” she said. “But I still think this sounds like a hoax.”
“How would he know all those things?” Junior asked. “I didn’t tell him.”
“I’m a good liar too,” she replied.
“I’m not lying,” I said, an admission that only invites suspicion.
“Great,” she said, turning to me. “So we’re supposed to believe something that has never ever happened before in history is suddenly happening to us.”
“Haven’t you just described every day of our lives?” I asked.
Carol’s brown eyes glowed for an instant, a sign that I’d gotten off a good one.
“There’s a reason we’re here,” I added.
Junior’s blinking eyes registered his distress upon hearing my ominous intonation.
“Should we do this now?” he asked.
I might have been exasperated with Junior if he hadn’t looked abjectly miserable. He bit the nail on his index finger. I felt sorry for him and for Carol.
“We can’t wait,” I responded.
“What’s wrong?” Carol asked gruffly.
Junior’s eyes moistened, which made me falter. In order to save Carol’s life, we’d have to completely disillusion her. What if I was taking away the few years of real happiness she had without changing the outcome of her fate? It was a possibility, but not doing anything was unthinkable. I avoided looking at Junior, trying to steel myself, but still felt rubbery when I blurted out, “In fifteen years, you’re going to kill yourself.”
Carol laughed. “Not that crazy dream again.” She addressed Junior: “You have to stop worrying about it. Or see a shrink.”
“It’s not a dream,” he said. “You’re going to become severely depressed and shoot yourself. It’s a gradual unraveling of your life. I’m not making this up. It will happen.”
“Oh, God!” She was livid and turned toward me. “I don’t know what hold you have over my brother but I will break it if I have to kill you.”
I didn’t know what to say. After you predict someone’s death, you’ve effectively killed the conversation.
“What was I supposed to do?” Junior asked. “He told me this. I wasn’t going to blow it off.”
“The next time someone tells you he’s from the future, call me.”
“Check out our fingerprints,” I said. “They’re the same.”
“That’s the first thing I’d figure out to fake if I were trying to con someone into believing I’m from the future,” Carol replied.
“It’s not just that,” Junior said. “He does what I do. In Arizona we ordered hamburgers, and his came with pickles and he picked them off just like I would have. He sleeps on his side like I do. He bites his nails like I do. And it’s really made me reconsider that habit because it looks disgusting. He’s pee-shy like I am. He checks out the same guys I’m attracted to. He hates celery and onions. We laugh at the same things, and a couple of times we’ve even thought of the same joke at the same time. He’s read the same books I’ve read, and when he mentions books I haven’t read yet, he quotes things from them that make me want to read them. He buys the same Freshmint flavor Trident gum I always buy. He likes the same music I like—not similar, but the same songs. His signature is mine with just enough changes to make it believable that he’s from my future. He smells like me, and when we sucked face, he tasted like me.”
Carol crinkled her nose after his last remark.
“It’s too many coincidental details for anyone to fake. I can’t explain it, and I know it makes no sense. I wouldn’t believe us either if I were you. But he’s me. I know myself.”
They both stared at me. I was chewing on a thumbnail. I pulled my hand away from my mouth abruptly.
“You two are fucking yourselves? That’s great.”
“We’ve slept in the same bed,” I said, “but we’re not sleeping together. He kissed me before he knew.”
“So you don’t even have a good relationship with yourself.”
“Our relationship is better than yours will be with yourself,” Junior retorted. “We haven’t tried to kill each other.”
“Although at times we’ve wanted to,” I added.
She asked us to set the table as she carried a platter of pancakes into the dining room. After bringing in plates, utensils, butter, and real maple syrup, we carried in our drink glasses and sat down.
“Carol,” I began, feeling uncertain how we could convince her we were telling the truth, “there’s a reason why you become suicidal. In eight years Ed will have a car accident and hurt his back. He�
��ll have an operation to fix it that will only make it worse. He’ll end up on disability and become a prescription drug addict and you’ll become one also. You’ll move to this tiny dark condo in New Jersey, and you’ll feel you can’t divorce Ed because he’s disabled, but you’ll also feel you can’t live like that anymore. You’ll think the only way out is by shooting yourself.”
She smiled hesitantly and shook her head no. “We’re doing great. Ed likes his job. We’re talking about starting a family. We bought this house. I’m even liking my job.” Carol had told us about her new job at an auto parts store. The staff was impressed that she actually knew how to build a starter. “Things are good.”
I didn’t say it outright, but thought, Things change.
Over Carol’s shoulder was a picture of our mother. Again, I thought about how our mother had consoled my brothers and me after Carol’s death. I didn’t feel confident I would ever get through to Carol. It didn’t help that I felt worn out, incapable of thinking clearly, unable to muster the arguments I needed. I was so tired I began to ramble.
“After your death, Mom came to visit me. She was reading a book called Life after Suicide. When she was leaving for the airport, she said, ‘I’ll read this on the plane; that way no one will talk to me.’”
Junior and Carol put down their forks.
“Then a few weeks later I was in Buffalo and Mom was sitting in Dad’s chair in the living room reading another book about suicide. Mom was chewing gum, blowing and snapping bubbles while tears streamed down her cheeks. It was typical of Mom: genuine mourning without losing her zest for life. Later she explained what she gained from reading books about suicide: ‘The whole world’s wacky. I read that this one poor guy was feeling suicidal and he was seeing a therapist and he called to make an appointment. A woman answered the phone and said, “Oh, you can’t make an appointment.” He jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. Go figure that one out. You just have to not think about it and keep going.’”
Other memories came back to me.
“That night we were watching Eyewitness News and the announcer said, ‘It’s eleven o’clock. Do you know where your children are?’ Mom repeated the phrase to herself: ‘Do you know where your children are?’ I was walking to the kitchen and said, ‘Yeah, Forest Lawn.’”
It was completely wrong for me to say that, but I’ve always instinctually known how to make my mother laugh. My mouth was dry and I took a sip of coffee. As I swallowed it struck me that while my mother and Carol shared a disposition toward depression, they also were both delightedly irreverent toward everything. Their tragedy was that they could never see the resemblance.
“Mom and I both cracked up,” I continued, “but I remember it didn’t cheer me up. It was the first time laughter had ever failed to do that. Later I said, ‘Mom, they say not to watch the news before you go to bed. It puts bad thoughts in your head.’ She replied, ‘I watch the news every night before I go to bed and sleep like a log.’ Then she cackled. There goes another crackpot New Age theory, I thought.”
Carol and I had been telling stories about our mother to each other since we were children, and I was too fuzzy-minded to notice that she and Junior weren’t laughing as I would have expected. I thought of something else.
“One time she said, ‘I wish Carol had talked to me. I know about depression. I know the anguish of what she felt. What it’s like to be severely depressed. I couldn’t take care of myself. I couldn’t take care of my children. I felt useless and hopeless. Nothing could bring me happiness.’ I remember thinking it was strange to hear Mom say the word ‘anguish.’ It was a word that I’d never heard her use before.”
My pancakes were getting cold but I’d lost my appetite. “Driving to your funeral, Mom said, ‘I don’t know why you have to kill yourself to hurt people when there are so many ways to hurt people while you’re alive.’ She also started talking about heaven: ‘I hope we don’t fight up there,’ she said. ‘That’s all I need, to be miserable up there too.’ At the cemetery, the hearse stalled out and they couldn’t get it restarted, and while we waited Mom said, ‘Carol could fix it.’ The saddest thing she said was when we were driving home after your burial. She muttered to herself, ‘Now she’s in the friggin’ ground.’”
Carol and Junior appeared to be stunned. Neither of them had said a word, but there were tears in their eyes. I was dead tired, but sensed something had changed among us. I felt as if I’d unburdened myself of what I’d needed to say to her since her death.
Carol cleared her throat. “Only Mom would say those things.” Her mouth opened and closed silently. “You really are telling the truth.” I’d accidentally stumbled on the one thing that no one could invent, the one thing that could convince Carol of her own death: our mother’s inimitable way with words. I started to cry, and so did Carol and Junior.
“I’m sorry,” she said, through her tears. “It just seemed so far-fetched.”
We stood up from the table. Junior hugged Carol and then she hugged me. The squall of tears was short-lived, and suddenly I was overcome with exhaustion and couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. I didn’t care if both Cheneys came to get me now. Carol knew we were telling her the truth. She could change her fate.
As she led us to the guest room, I warned her that the Young Dick Cheney might show up at her door. Like my mother, Carol had no problem believing in a homicidal congressman who would later become a homicidal vice president. No wonder the women in my family were prone to depression, I thought; they really have no illusions about men. I showered first. It felt good to be clean and feel for the first time in days that I wasn’t in a rush anymore. Carol had a chance and maybe Taylor did too. Junior seemed as happy as I did and all his hostility toward me was gone.
“I think she gets it,” he said as he pulled back the comforter on his bed.
“I do too,” I said while adjusting my blanket.
Junior fluffed his pillow before getting into bed. “Do you think we changed things?”
I didn’t know, but I thought of Taylor’s theory that history might be unchangeable since six plus three or two plus seven both equal nine. But I didn’t want Junior to lose hope over the next fifteen years. “We don’t know, but we’ll never feel that we didn’t try. You should feel good about that because I do.”
“I feel good about it too,” he muttered as his eyes began to close.
We soon were asleep, until the sounds of hinges breaking, boots pounding the floor, and commands being shouted woke us up. Camouflaged soldiers pushed us at gunpoint into the living room, where Young Dick cowered as Carol pointed a pistol toward his head. Casey was growling and Ravi was chewing on Young Dick’s pants leg. I’d never seen Ravi bite anyone before.
“I’m going to kick this dog,” Young Dick threatened, “if he doesn’t lay off.”
“You do and you’ll say hello to a Colt police revolver,” Carol responded. She then yelled at the dogs. “Casey! Ravi! Stop! John grab them!” Junior ran over and scooped up the barking bundle. I pulled off Ravi, who continued to growl.
“The house is completely surrounded,” Young Dick said. “There are a hundred troops out there.”
Carol cocked the trigger. It was the pistol she killed herself with, and seeing it was like taking a bullet. “Well, we have your brain surrounded,” she said.
Young Dick ordered the soldiers to put down their weapons.
I couldn’t figure out how Carol had gotten the jump on Cheney. He was smart and wouldn’t allow himself to be outfoxed twice.
“Carol, how did you do this?” I asked, pointing to Cheney.
“The last time Dad was out here, he installed a high-tech security system. It was supposed to look for Bigfoot and flying saucers, but it can also detect helicopters. I just had time to grab my gun before this guy waltzed in.”
It made sense. Before the war, Cheney was notoriously overconfident and predicted how easy conquering Iraq would be. I guessed he thought his home invasion to capture a woman a
nd two queers would be even simpler.
“Now what do we do?” Junior asked.
“I just need him,” Cheney replied, with a nod toward me. “If he comes with me, you two are free to go.”
Junior and I had accomplished what we set out to do: convince Carol that she’d kill herself. I also wanted to extricate them from any further dealings with Cheney.
“I think I should go with him,” I said.
“Are you crazy?” Carol asked. “This guy would give a corpse the creeps.”
There was no reaction from Young Dick, almost as if he took her remark as a compliment. I turned to him. “If I go with you, will you let them go?”
His lips aped a smile. “Sure. We just need you.”
While we had Young Dick at gunpoint, I asked what had happened to Elena, Michael, and Taylor.
“Nothing. We let them go.”
I believed him. Obviously, he’d released Taylor. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a time machine, and we wouldn’t be having this discussion at gunpoint.
“You let them all go?” Junior asked, clearly thinking about Taylor.
“That’s what I was ordered to do. I didn’t want to, but I also didn’t want another sinus bath.”
No wonder Cheney’s so unflappable, I thought. He’s the only man on Earth who can claim with complete confidence that he is his own worst enemy.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Junior said. “You can’t trust him.”
“Actually, in this case we can,” I responded. “If he changes history, he might not become vice president, or maybe his next heart attack will kill him.”
On “heart attack” there was a noticeable intake of breath from Young Dick.
Junior and Carol looked as if they just realized they would never see me again, and I was glad they seemed unhappy about it. It made me heartsick to say good-bye to them, but I was also alarmed. Was I saying farewell to Carol again forever? I felt tears lapping against their break-walls. “I don’t want to say good-bye to either of you,” I said.