Then it suddenly came to me that, too close nearby was the stairway leading up to the second-floor dress suit rental shop and the third-floor apartment where I'd lived during much of my early high school years with my mother, sister, and brother. I say too close because it snatched back the adversity of time travel. If I went up those stairs and knocked on the door, would my mother open it? She might be working at Ebinger's Bakery, my sister at Abraham & Straus. What if I answered the door? Such an enigma was beyond calculation. He would stare at me, no doubt blankly. I would be speechless. Or, worse, babble some sort of stupid remark. “Sorry, son, I thought this was the tuxedo rental place.” Utterly stupid. Could he possibly guess that I was an aged version of him? How could he? In any event, the moment would be embarrassingly awkward, or worse, frighteningly revealing. Most likely horrifying to both of us, especially me. No, forget that possibility. Just keep walking. God forbid I should ever confront my younger self during this incredible wandering. No, I'd just walk on.
Next block. Grant's five-and-ten. I crossed the street I used to walk to school on. Was P. S. 119 still there? I didn't mean still, I meant now. No point in trying to reach it. What for? The long walk to it—at least three-quarters of a mile—would surely catapult me back to 2009. Then what? Try climbing out that window again? (Assuming it was even there.) Surely it wouldn't work a second time.
No, stay on Flatbush Avenue. Observe. Don't take any risks of losing this remarkable experience. God forbid trying to buy a souvenir. That would be a terrible mistake.
Grant's again. My aunt and cousin Vivian used to shop there the day after Thanksgiving. Or was it the day after Christmas? I couldn't remember which. Taking advantage of what they called Rummage Sales. Useless articles. At cut-rate prices.
On the next block down was Woolworth's, another five-and-dime store. And across the avenue was the small grocery store where, I recalled, during some kind of strike, buying a quart of milk for a nickel. And Pechter's rye bread for nine cents. And a pumpernickel for thirteen cents. Stop that, I told my crowding brain. Just look. Don't dwell on memories of food. Like a trio of cream-filled cupcakes for a dime. Like Dusky Dan stone-hard caramel lollipops for—
Stop! I ordered my losing-control brain. Just...stop.
But I couldn't. Past recollections kept infusing my consciousness. Merkel's Meat Market across the avenue. A pound of bacon-ends for nineteen cents. How I loved the sandwiches my mother made from toasted wheat bread and fried bacon-ends and mayonnaise. I devoured them for lunch in high school. If I ate one now, at eighty-two, the combination would nauseate me. But then....
And the fruit and vegetable store at the corner. I literally visualized my customary purchase, a nickel's worth of “soup greens,” a full-size grocery bag loaded with carrots and onions and turnips and—
Jesus Christ, cut it out! I begged my brain. Just look! But I couldn't control it. On the next block, the Loew's Kings where I saw the Marx Brothers in A Day at the Races. Further down, the Rialto theatre where I saw Gone with the Wind in its later run. The Chinese restaurant, the bowling alley. Was there no end to this? Was that the peril of time travel? At least, the time travel I was immersed in. I had to stop; simply had to stop this endless discharge of pointless memories, this brainless gushing of trivia. But how? I stopped walking and pleaded with myself. Do something right, I begged.
Then it occurred to me.
Adeline.
Of course! How had I missed it? If there was any reasonable point to all this, it was Adeline, my first and only love. But where was she? Was it possible that she was, as I always remembered her, sitting on the porch of the Bedford Avenue apartment house?
Directly across the avenue from the third-floor apartment I lived in with my mother and sister? The third-floor apartment where I stood at the window of my mother's bedroom, looking across the way—? Staring at Adeline.
Why had I never had the courage to cross the avenue and speak to her? Why, when I was totally in love with her? Remember, I was fifteen years old. There would be other females in my life. Jane on Long Island. Lucille in Brooklyn. Mary at college. Agnes in my life. But none compared to Adeline. My angel. I always thought of her that way.
Once, I stood right next to her in the delicatessen around the corner. Did I say hello? Say anything at all? I did not. I stood beside her in mute adoration, paralyzed by love.
I had to speak to her now. I had to!
Blindly—it was a marvel that I wasn't flattened on Flatbush Avenue, although I certainly evoked a number of outraged car horns and one clanging trolley car bell—I rushed up Albemarle Road. I had no idea whether Bedford Avenue was waiting for me. I never gave it a moment's consideration. I had to see Adeline. It was all that mattered to me. So I ran as fast as I could—which at eighty-two, was of limited velocity. More a hasty shuffle. I didn't think of it, however. Didn't give a moment's thought to the possibility of a heart attack. I ignored my pacemaker pounding. Another stroke perhaps? No thought of that. Only one thing filled my mind. One word. One name.
I reached Bedford Avenue; it was there! I turned right and started up the block. My gaze leaped hungrily across the way. There! Two girls sitting on the porch steps of her apartment house!
One of them was Adeline.
I jarred to a halt, aware, for the first time since I'd begun running, that I was panting for breath. I stared across the avenue. It was her, wasn't it? Yes, it had to be. Her hair, that golden wreath around her head. It was unmistakable. To me anyway. The vision had been imprinted in my brain for sixty-seven years.
That brought me up short. I wasn't fifteen anymore. I was an old man.
No, that wasn't so! I looked up at the window of my mother's bedroom. I couldn't see from that angle. Without a thought, I crossed the avenue and looked up again.
There I was at the window, gazing intently at Adeline. I drew in a shaking, almost gasping breath. Can you imagine what it would be like to see your own younger self? Your actual younger self? And know what that younger self was thinking?
And yet I didn't know. I wasn't there—inside his head, his brain. I knew what he was thinking but I wasn't inside his brain. A minor discrepancy perhaps, but, to me, all important.
I had to act as what I was at this moment: eighty-two-year-old Richard Swanson. Determined to not only see the past up close but change it. I turned and walked closer to the porch where Adeline was sitting with her friend, the little Italian girl named—I couldn't remember her name, was it Luisa? I thought for a second, that younger Richard might be watching me approach the porch. How could he miss it? Wouldn't he wonder who I was? Wouldn't it disturb him? Was I breaking one of the cardinal rules of time travel—making contact with the past? No, I told myself determinedly. It was a rule I'd come up with myself. No one had transmitted it to me. So to hell with it. To ruddy, bloody hell with it! I was here. With Adeline. I could change everything.
I stopped in front of the porch and gazed at her, my angel. She was still that. Memory had not deceived. She was beautiful. Incredibly beautiful. I love you, I thought. I've always loved you.
They had seen me stop; now saw me staring.
"What d'ya want, old man?” the Italian girl demanded.
That puts me in my place, I thought.
Then occurred the most horrible event in the entire experience.
The same tongue-tied inability to speak which had assailed me in the delicatessen that afternoon now took place again. I wanted—desperately—to tell her who I was. That my younger self was, at that very second, gazing at her through a window across the way. That he loved her now and that I, the old man standing in front of her, had loved her always. That, somehow, she must speak to my younger self. Get to know him. Love him as he loves you. Now. This year. And always.
I couldn't say a word. Was it me or was I prevented from speaking because I had, after all, broken that rule of time travel?
How long I stood there, a mute statue called wordless love, I had no idea. It must have been lon
g enough to disturb her though. “Why are you staring at me?” she asked.
Because I love you, damn it! yelled my brain. But my tongue, my voice? Still paralyzed.
Then Adeline said one thing I will always remember, always cherish.
"Are you all right?” she asked. Concerned. Loving. I will never forget that.
Her words were disfigured in a moment by the Italian girl snapping, “Get outta here, old man! We'll call a cop!"
That did it. The moment was lost. Without a word—completely unavailable to me anyway—I turned and walked away. Cursing myself inwardly. For Christ's sake, go back and tell her what she has to hear! If you don't, that poor, speechless sap in the window will never say boo. And all will be lost. As always, dammit! As bloody always!
* * * *
I don't remember how I got back to Flatbush Avenue. Not a step of it. I know I must have passed the police station, the Edison store. Not a glimmer of recollection. Only one thing remembered. Sitting on one of the steps to our old apartment.
And seeing myself walk by.
My immediate inclination was to shrink back in startled avoidance. Not that much of a problem since he had already passed me by.
How do I describe my feelings at that moment? There was a fascination, no doubt of that. But also discomfort, even dismay. Why? Think of it. You—eighty-two—looking at your fifteen-year-old self walking by. Moments of distress at the duplicate reality. Two of you, one fifteen, one eighty-two. How could the confused sensation be allied? No way. I had to just accept the anomaly.
Then it struck me: I had a choice. There were no hard and fast rules controlling time travel. I was free to act as I chose. I could alter anything at will.
So I stood quickly and hurried after myself. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? It is crazy. The whole experience was crazy. With one exception.
It happened.
So there I was, my old self striding confidently (willfully at any rate) after my young self. “Richard!” I called, suddenly remembering that the gang at the Y called me “Swanee.” Would he respond to that nickname more readily? Probably not.
He didn't turn, kept walking. I recognized his stride, smiling as I remembered how my mother described it as loose and wobbly. It was that.
I called his name again. This time he heard me and stopped to look around. I approached him—and let me tell you about the uncanny encounter of standing inches from your own younger self. The feeling goes beyond description. It was, at once, thrilling and frightening.
"What is it?” he asked. Not too politely. Who was this old guy and what did he want?
I tried to start what I meant to say, suffering an abrupt dread that I was about to face the same dumbstruck inability to speak that I had experienced in front of Adeline. I fought it off. I would not let it happen again! “I want,” I began, then faltered, “I want to help you,” I blurted.
"Is this some kind of charity?” My fifteen-year-old self asked suspiciously.
I felt a tremor of amusement. I'd always had a skeptical nature. I had to smile. My show of diversion didn't please him. He turned away. “No, don't,” I said abruptly.
He turned back. “Listen, sir,” he said. The sir did not sound at all polite.
"I want to speak to you about Adeline,” I said.
He stared at me. “Who?” he asked. He sounded far more aggravated than curious.
Mentally, I jumped back in my own time. Had this ever happened to me when I was fifteen? I was sure it hadn't. This was something else. Something else entirely. I was transcending time travel.
Which strengthened my resolve to say, “The girl who lives across the street from you. The one you look at from the window of your mother's bedroom.” There. I'd said it. Time was changed.
My fifteen-year-old-self was looking at me with deep suspicion written on his face. He didn't speak.
"You have to speak to her,” I told him.
"What are you, a detective or something?” he replied.
I, my dubious teenage self, replied.
"No,” I said, amused again.
He didn't react well to that amusement either.
"Listen, mister,” he began.
"No,” I interrupted him. “You listen. Adeline—"
"How do you know her name?” he demanded. He was really suspicious of me now. Was it all going wrong?
I couldn't let it go wrong. So, mistakenly or not, I countered him. “You don't know her name, do you? You don't know anything about her."
"Listen, mister,” he started again.
"No, you listen, son!” I broke in again. (Of course, he wasn't my son, he was me.) “You have to speak to her. Stop staring out the window and go to her when she's sitting on her porch. Get to know her. Tell her you love her. That you want to spend the rest of your life with her. Don't make the same mistake I did! You've got to—"
"Mister!” he cried, cutting me off. “I don't know what you're talking about! All I know is you've lived your life! Now let me live mine!"
He was right, of course. I knew it in an instant. I had no right to mess with his life. I knew that he would never speak to Adeline. Would live his life without her. My attempted intervention was a waste of time. Would he even remember it? Doubtful.
I watched him walk away from me, my young self leaving me behind. Living his own life. As he had a perfect right to do. Unhampered by me. I'd tried in vain.... Time travel? Bah! Humbug!
Unless....
Unless it taught me something. But what? Leave yesterday alone, maybe. No point in trying to change the past. It's gone. Only in memories. Which are, face it, indelible; not subject to rewriting.
* * * *
I walked back to the house. It was still there. I rang the deafening bell and the old lady opened the front door. Somehow, it was 2009 once more. I didn't have to climb back through the window. “I've decided against renting that room,” I told her.
She didn't seem surprised. “Thought you might,” she said, then shut the door.
I walked back to Miriam's house. She'd returned from the market and was unloading groceries.
"Where you been, Dad?” she asked.
I kissed her on the cheek. “Went for a walk,” I told her.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Department: BOOKS TO LOOK FOR by Charles de Lint
The Midnight Mayor, by Kate Griffin, Orbit, 2010, $19.99.
* * * *
I'm done complaining about series books—mostly because eighty percent of the books that show up in my post office box now are either part of a series, or they're prequels and sequels. If I don't read them, what am I going to review? Books—especially genre books—don't appear to come as standalone titles anymore. So I'm fighting a losing battle, and finding it very hard to review titles that don't have brothers and sisters or cousins sitting somewhere nearby on the bookshelf.
My problem with series books isn't without reason, though to be fair, a good book is a good book, regardless of where it fits into a writer's body of work. What I don't like are the series books in which you have to be following along from the first book or you can't understand the story. Or the ones that conveniently end with a cliffhanger so that you'll have to pick up the next one to see what happens.
Let me just say to the writers of such books that if you can't give your readers a satisfying story in one volume, you should be looking for another job, because you're not doing this one properly. I don't care who you are. No story you write is so big and so important that it needs multiple volumes in which to be told.
That doesn't mean there can't be an overall arc connecting the books—a bigger story of which each volume is a self-contained part. Or that there can't be character growth so that when certain things happen in one volume, they're reflected in the characters’ lives in subsequent ones. However, each book should stand on its own. A reader should be able to pick up any title in a series and enjoy it. Having missed earlier volumes, they might not get the full resonance, but they should be able to
follow the story readily and be given a satisfying conclusion.
Of course it doesn't matter what I say. The books are going to continue to come out as they do and if I'm going to keep doing this column, I'll have to read a selection of them. But I'm no longer going to avoid reading a book as I've done in the past, just because I missed the earlier titles in the series.
If I really like it, I might go back and read older titles, but I won't feel obliged to do so. Nor will I feel obliged to read subsequent ones.
All of which brings us to Kate Griffin's The Midnight Mayor. I was some thirty or so pages in before I realized that it's the second book in a series, the first being A Madness of Angels. I didn't have the time or energy—or frankly the interest—to track the first book down. As I mentioned above, I didn't see why I should have to read 500 pages of some previous book just to be able to read the one I had in hand.
I could have set it aside, but this is when I realized what I've been talking about above: if I'm going to continue reviewing genre books—and have a wide array of titles from which to choose—I just have to bite the bullet and see how I make out coming late to the party.
In this case the most confusing element was how the narrator's designation kept switching from “I” to “we.” But Griffin doled out the information in a timely fashion and soon I understood that said narrator, Matthew Swift, had died in the previous book, only to be resurrected by something called the electric blue angels. Now Swift and the angels share his body, and share the telling of this story.
The plot is fairly simple. Something has destroyed the wards that protect the city of London from magical attack (the Tower ravens have been slain, the London wall is defiled with graffiti, the London Stone has been destroyed). The same unknown entity has killed the Midnight Mayor of the city, the one who oversees the magical side of London—the night side. But before the Mayor dies, he chooses Swift to replace him, and this is where Swift's troubles really begin.
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