“You’ll need documents to live in 2001,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “and my mother will get them for you. She’ll also help arrange the surgery. That’ll happen in New York.”
I frowned. “How can you possibly know that?” I asked.
“I just do.”
“What documents would your mother get me?”
“ID. Driver’s license. Health insurance. Maybe—”
“I have insurance.”
He actually laughed. “Do you really think your insurance will pay for a procedure done in 2001?” he asked. “To be honest, I’m not sure insurance will pay anyway, because I think the surgery is experimental, but my mother—her name is Myra—she’ll figure it out for you. I can promise you that. She’ll take care of you. She’ll get you a new birth certificate, too, in case you need one for some reason. And a more believable social security number. As well as an email address.”
“What’s an email address?”
“A way to communicate via computers. Myra will give you a computer called an iBook that you can carry around with you.”
I felt a stab of fear. “I can’t do this, Hunter,” I said. “For a million reasons, I can’t do it. It’s too scary. Just for starters, I have no idea how to use a computer.”
He laughed again. “That is the least of your problems,” he said. “Don’t worry about any of that stuff. It’ll all fall into place. I’ll give you a backpack to carry things in. I still have that backpack I brought with me from 2018, remember? You’ll wear it when you step off. Whatever’s attached to you will travel with you. And when you’re there, you’ll buy a type of baby carrier that you strap to yourself. It’ll be a perfect way for you to bring the baby back with you.”
Bring the baby back. My heart fluttered in my chest at those words. Joanna would be alive. “Why would I have to stay there until the baby’s born?” I asked. “Couldn’t I just have the surgery and come back?”
“There are no doctors here who could, you know, do follow-up,” he said. “No one in 1970 knows anything about fetal surgery. So you’d have to stay there until she’s born. Then bring her back with you.”
I rested my hands on my belly. I felt my baby’s vulnerability. Her complete dependence on me.
“Could she withstand the time travel?” I asked. “Once she’s born, I mean?”
“Time travel’s not physically painful or taxing or anything like that,” he said. “When you land, you’ll feel disoriented and groggy, but that will pass quickly. Some people are nauseated, but again, it doesn’t last. Your head clears within a few minutes and you’ll be okay.”
“That sounds like it’d be hard on a newborn baby.”
“I think she’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll give you a list of portals to bring you back to 1970, so if the baby needs a little extra time in the hospital in 2001, you’ll still be able to get home. All right?” He made it sound like I’d already agreed to this insane plan.
I didn’t answer him. I tried to imagine leaving Nags Head. Being away for so long. Being alone without Patti and John Paul and Hunter when I already felt lost and adrift without Joe.
“Hunter,” I said, thinking. “I’d be gone for months. Patti would—”
“I’ll have to tell Patti the truth,” he said with a sigh. “I hoped never to have to tell her. I never wanted either of you … I never wanted anyone to know the truth about me. But if you go, of course she needs to know or she’d have the police out searching for you. I won’t tell her till after you’ve left, though, or she’d try to stop you, plus she’d call the men in the white coats to take me away.”
“But…” My imagination was suddenly on fire. “If I’m in 2001,” I said, “I could call up Patti or you … or even myself, and find out—”
“No!” he nearly barked, then softened his voice. “That’s the cardinal rule of the program,” he said. “Remember? ‘No tampering.’ Just keep those words in mind. You want to leave a very light footprint, wherever you go. No getting in touch with people from your past in the future. There’s far too great a chance of getting seriously hurt, Carly. What if, for example, you learn Patti’s dead? Or you’re dead? Don’t do it.”
I shuddered at the thought of learning of my own death. “I wish there was a guarantee my baby would be healthy.”
“So do I,” he admitted.
“Did you know anyone who had fetal surgery?”
“No, but I know a fair amount about it because it fascinated me. I read case studies. That’s how I know they can do it on the sort of heart issue your baby has.”
“Can you go with me?” I asked. “I mean, I know it would be hard for you to be away from—”
“I wish I could,” he said, “but here’s something we discovered in our research: four trips is the limit. By the time I left in 2018, three of our researchers had disappeared on their fifth trips, so fifth trips were taken off the table. The ‘fifth-trip rule,’ my mother called it. I don’t know if they ever figured out what—”
“What do you mean, they disappeared?” The muscles in my chest seized up.
“Exactly that. They left—it appeared that they had a successful stepping off, but they never returned. I’ve traveled three times now. So if I went with you, it would be my fourth time, and I’d have to stay in 2001 or risk … I don’t know what. It’s the great unknown.”
He stopped talking altogether for a moment, but I didn’t push him. It was clear he had more to say.
“I told you and Patti that my mother died of a heart attack,” he said.
“She didn’t?”
Again, that hesitation.
“Hunter?” I prodded.
“I guess you have a right to know.” He let out a reluctant-sounding breath. “My mother was one of those three researchers who disappeared,” he said.
“Oh, no.”
“She thought she’d solved the fifth-trip problem, and, of course, she experimented on herself rather than ask me or one of her other travelers to do it. She didn’t let any of us know the date or place she was going, though she said it would be a short trip, just for experimental purposes, but she never came back. We were helpless to try to find her.” He drew in a long breath. “She took her computer with her, so I couldn’t dig through it for clues. I pieced together papers she’d shredded, trying to study her calculations, all to no avail. I have no idea what happened to her.”
I heard real loss in his voice. “I’m so sorry,” I said.
“We tried everything we could think of to track her down, but just like the other fifth-trip travelers, she’d disappeared.”
I shut my eyes and listened to the waves break against the sand. The word “disappear” rang in my ears. “This all sounds way too scary,” I said.
“We haven’t really discussed the scary part yet,” he said, and I thought I heard a smile in his voice now. “Stepping off. It’s terrified every person I know who’s time-traveled, and at least as of 2018, we hadn’t found a better way to do it. If they’ve figured out a better way since I’ve been … gone, I don’t know it.”
“I don’t think I could do it,” I said. “You said the place you step off from has to be sixteen feet high?”
“The roof of the house would work.”
I tried to imagine being on the roof of the cottage, stepping off into the air. “I can’t possibly do that,” I said. “There’s no—”
“The end of the pier!” He interrupted me, some excitement in his voice. “It’s high enough. Psychologically, you’d feel better if there’s water below you rather than solid ground, wouldn’t you? Not that you’d ever hit the water.”
A tiny bit better, I thought. Drowning seemed preferable to being splattered on the sand beneath the roof. I felt a chill and hugged my arms across my chest. “It’s too crazy.”
“You can leave when it’s dark, maybe very early in the morning, so no one walking along the beach will see you,” he said as though I hadn’t expressed any doubt. “I’ll go out there with y
ou to the end of the pier. I’ll be right there with you.”
“Insane,” I said. “Wouldn’t people see me suddenly materialize in … wherever I end up? Princeton?”
“They’ll think they’re seeing things if they do.”
“How would I get back?” I asked. “You said you’d have … portals or whatever they’re called, but where would they be from? Where would I have to ‘step off’ from? They’d have to be over water, too.”
“I’ll work on that,” he said. “You’re going to be in New York at that time, so I’ll have to do some research. I’ll see what I can find over water that I’m certain will still be there in 2001. Okay?”
“I’m still not saying I’ll do it,” I reminded him.
“Assuming your baby is born near her due date and is healthy, I’ll come up with a portal shortly after her birth.” He sounded far away from me, working things out in his head. “Then I’ll add on a new date every week or so. I’ll give you a list of portals so you know where and when to step off. My mother will help you with money and places to live, but I took a thousand dollars from the stash I keep in the safe-deposit box to get you started.”
“A thousand dollars!” I said. It was a crazy amount, as crazy as everything else about this conversation.
“That’s nothing in 2001,” he said. “Trust me.”
“You already took out the money?”
“Yes.”
“You really thought you could talk me into this?”
“Yes.”
Neither of us spoke for a while. I watched the light of the fishing boat shimmer on the horizon. The boat had moved ever so slightly to the north. Above it, stars dotted the sky.
“I have one really important question about the future,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Do the Beatles ever get back together?”
He laughed. Leaning over, he squeezed my hand and I felt his affection. “I’m afraid not, Carly,” he said, letting go. He was quiet a moment, then sighed.
“What?” I prompted.
“Nothing,” he said. I thought he sounded sad. “But here’s something.” His voice brightened. “I saw the Stones in concert in 2016.”
“You’re kidding! Weren’t they … sixty-something years old?”
“In their seventies, actually. I think Mick Jagger was seventy-two.”
I laughed, trying to picture sexy Mick at seventy-two. “Did they come on stage in wheelchairs?” I asked.
“Not hardly. They looked pretty beaten up, but they had a boatload of energy. Mick still danced around the way he does now, and the music was awesome.”
“My God, Hunter.” I laughed. “I can’t picture that at all.”
We both fell quiet, the levity of the moment dissolving into a reality I couldn’t avoid. I didn’t know what he was thinking about, but my mind was back on my baby. My Joanna. I imagined giving birth to her in 1970. Holding her tiny fragile body in my arms as I watched her struggle to breathe. To survive. I saw her lose the battle before my eyes. If there was a chance to save her, how could I turn it down?
“Hunter?” I said.
“Hmm?”
“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll go.”
He reached over, searching for my hand again in the darkness. When he found it, he squeezed my fingers.
“Yes,” he said. “I know.”
8
HUNTER
Research Triangle Park
I’d gotten used to the primitive access I had to information in 1970. When other tech companies marveled at the advances I was making, I had to chuckle to myself. If only they knew what technological changes were coming down the pike. I did know, and that knowledge kept me well ahead of my competitors, so I rarely minded the technical limitations of 1970. Today, though, as I sat in my RTP office, radio blaring, I did mind. Very much.
I’d bought three excellent detailed maps: one of central New Jersey, one of Manhattan, and a navigational map of the Carolinas, along with a giant coffee-table book filled with photographs of New York. My mother developed the program to locate portals in the eighties, perfecting it over the years as new technology became available, and it was her program I used now, only I had to do most of the calculating on my slide rule instead of by computer. I’d use the mainframe at Duke to check and recheck my work.
When I left Nags Head early this morning, Carly had dark circles under her brown eyes, and I imagined she’d been up all night, stewing about all I’d told her. We were in the kitchen and Patti was with us, feeding John Paul, so we couldn’t really talk. Patti was upset with me for returning to RTP again today. She hated me being on the road so long, always afraid that I’d fall asleep at the wheel or some drunk driver would take me out, which was what happened with her parents. Her anxiety had grown more intense since Joe died. She seemed to have some irrational fear that both she and Carly were destined to end up widows. Usually, I tried to minimize my commuting. Those four-hour-plus drives back and forth to RTP were a supreme drag. Today, though, I had no choice. I had work to do that I couldn’t possibly accomplish in Nags Head.
I’d quickly figured out the longitude, latitude, and altitude for the southeastern corner of the Nags Head pier as well as the athletic field in Princeton where I wanted Carly to land. I remembered that athletic field well and could picture it easily. I’d run track and played soccer on that field during two of my years at Princeton. I knew it would be there in 2001. The mainframe computer at Duke, with the help of my mother’s elegant formulas, would give me the exact time for Carly to step off. She would be safe.
So that was the easy part: Nags Head to Princeton. How to get her home again was the bigger challenge. I didn’t know New York City well. I opened the Manhattan coffee-table book on my desk and studied the pictures, hunting for a good stepping-off spot that would be over water. There was plenty of water—Manhattan was an island, after all—but I had no way of knowing the altitude of the many piers or the accessible locations on the bridges. I turned the pages slowly, hunting for a launch location that would work. It was jarring to see a 1968 picture of Lower Manhattan. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were under construction, rising about halfway to their final height. I was surprised when I choked up as I looked at that picture. After a moment, I turned the page. Sometimes knowing the future truly sucked.
The next page had an awesome view looking south from the Empire State Building. If I were the person stepping off, I’d simply pick the Empire State Building and be done with it, but I knew Carly lacked that sort of courage. Who could blame her? I would have to find her water. That was all there was to it.
I turned a few more pages, and then I found it: the Gapstow Bridge in Central Park. The small, lovely stone bridge spanned a pond in the southeastern corner of the park, and the kind soul who’d captioned the photograph even informed me that the arch was twelve feet above the pond’s surface. If I added in the stone sides of the bridge, I was certain the height rose to at least sixteen or seventeen feet. Carly would have to take a stool with her, something that would help her get up on that stone wall. It wasn’t going to be easy with her backpack and a baby in a carrier, and all of that coupled with the jangling nerves she was sure to be feeling. The park was not completely safe at night, either, especially for a young woman alone. She would have to be careful.
I actually knew the Gapstow Bridge, however vaguely. Rosie and I had strolled across it on our last trip to New York only a few months before she died. We’d scored tickets to Hamilton and had spent the weekend in the city. I stared at the photograph of the bridge for a while, sad for my late wife. Sometimes I could get lost in circular thinking. If Rosie hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have Patti and John Paul. Yet if she hadn’t died, I would still have her. That kind of thinking could make you crazy.
I used the detailed map of Manhattan to determine the coordinates of the Gapstow Bridge. Then I packed up my notepads and maps, turned off my radio in the middle of Three Dog Night singing “Mama Told
Me Not to Come,” said good-bye to Gloria, and headed for Duke and the mainframe to pin down those magical few seconds that would lift Carly safely across the decades.
* * *
I parked my car on the Duke campus, my visitor parking tag hanging from my rearview mirror. Then I began walking toward the computer science building. The day was overcast, the sky threatening, but the air was warm. There was a protest going on—I could hear a voice shouting through a megaphone—but it was a distance away from me. Three students—at least I assumed they were students—walked ahead of me on the sidewalk toward the computer science building. One of the girls had on a long-sleeved heather-gray T-shirt bearing the graphic of the cartoon Beatles from the Yellow Submarine movie. I thought of Carly’s innocent question: Do the Beatles get back together? I hadn’t been able to tell her about John and George. It would have broken her heart. She didn’t need to hear one more sad thing. She would learn many things in 2001 that would break her already aching heart, but having a healthy baby would heal her. I was counting on that, maybe a bit too much.
I spent the next two hours on the computer in the enormous mainframe room. I sat at the terminal while the giant magnetic-tape drive whirred in the room’s perimeter. I would have liked more than my allotted two hours, but I knew I was lucky to get any time at all on short notice. By the time I finished, I had Carly’s launch date and time: She would have to step off the southernmost corner of the pier at 4:11 A.M. on May 8, just two days from now. She’d arrive on April 23, 2001. I also had four portals for her return to Nags Head with her baby. I’d have her land on the dunes at Jockey’s Ridge where there was plenty of room if I miscalculated by a few feet in any direction. Coming up with the portals was tricky and exhausting work and I went over and over my calculations until I was confident they were perfect. The first one—the most optimistic one—was a week after what would be her due date. The next, a week and a half later. I couldn’t get another matchup for two more weeks. Surely by then her baby would be able to travel, but I added a final portal two and a half weeks after that. Her baby would be nearly two months old by then. I looked at my numbers, going over them one more time. Satisfied, I sat back. We were good to go.
The Dream Daughter: A Novel Page 6