Time Flying

by Dan Garmen

  I drove away from the cemetery, heading back toward my hotel. My back was starting to hurt again, the accident creating some damage I was worried wouldn’t completely go away, but this time I worked hard to stay away from any pain medications I couldn't buy over the counter at Walgreens. I had a 20 pill bottle of Oxycodone, however, and would often down 2 or 3 Ibuprofen, or if things were really tough, some of the hated, liver killing acetaminophen tablets sold as “Tylenol” and hold the Oxy bottle for comfort, knowing if I had to, I only had to open the bottle and take one, but so far, had resisted the impulse to do so, even though I could never completely forget about the pills.

  Once an addict, always an addict, the saying went.

  For my physical body, seven months had elapsed since the accident, a time period that seemed about right. At the same time, my mind had experienced almost 16 years since the day I drove to Belton, met Annie Bennett and left the present for the past. I realized my mind and memory were a bit like an Escher drawing, detailed and familiar, yet impossible in perspective and function. The longer I spent here in 2007, the more logical my memories of everything seemed. 1976 didn't seem as far removed in time as it had before my accident, but yet everything made perfect sense. The more I examined it, the more I realized the impossibility of my experience.

  I hadn't been back to my hotel room for more than 10 minutes, when the knock came. I knew without checking the security peep hole Jeannette stood on the other side, so my opening the door wasn't even preceded by a resigned sigh.

  "Hi, Jeannette," I said, stepping back into the room. The hotel was a modern chain business hotel in a pre-fab leafy area just off Interstate 465, I’d picked because of its proximity to Indianapolis International Airport on the western edge of the city. The night before, driving around in search of a meal, I stumbled into the Noble Roman's Pizza restaurant, the setting for the beginning of my time with Amanda, and in a way, what almost ended our life together. I sat and ate by myself, across the room from the table Amanda and I spent two different evenings at, and happily, Nicky Collins wasn’t present.

  Amanda's mother had obviously followed me back from the Starbucks where we had coffee, and I was surprised to realize her doing so didn't bother me at all. Amanda may have died in this timeline, but I still considered her mother family, and I think she sensed this, accepting the unspoken invitation to enter the room, a determined expression on her face. After pausing for a second, she turned around.

  Jeannette stood for four or five heartbeats before her resolve and defiance melted and she relaxed. For the most part, considering her physical appearance, she remained the Jeannette I remember, but something all of a sudden, seeped out of her, and she seemed to sag.

  "I'm sorry, Richard. I don't..."

  "I know, Jeannette," I said softly. "I'M sorry. I should have told you everything. Please sit down." I pointed at the sofa behind her, to the lounge/"office" area of the small suite.

  She sat, not bothering to unbutton her coat. I didn't bother asking her if she wanted anything to drink. She wasn't here for a drink, instead thirsty for information. I began to try and quench her thirst.

  "A few months ago, my company needed me to go to Cincinnati for a few months..." I began.

  45 minutes later, I paused, standing up to dispose of the two empty water bottles I had emptied and stretched, glancing over at Jeannette. She had hardly moved while I told my story, but looking at her, I was confident the decision I had made to tell her everything had been the correct one. Years had been lifted from her face, and the hint of a smile touched her lips. She had listened to my story, only stopping me a few times to ask for more detail about something, the color of Aaron's eyes, where we stayed on a particularly happy vacation in Hawaii, or what activities we enjoyed when Jeannette and Gene visited us in Washington. She also asked me to tell her about my accident, how I felt in the seconds before and as I traveled to 1976. But mostly, she listened intently.

  "That is an incredible story, Rich," she finally said, staring out the window of my first floor room. The sun was bright, the air clear and crisp, and though there were no leaves on the trees, it was...pretty. "Thank you for telling me. Do you really believe you will go back to nineteen…” she trailed off.

  “Thirty-three,” I said, completing her thought. “I don’t know. After what I experienced in the coma after the accident, nothing seems impossible.”

  “It must worry you,” she said simply.

  I shrugged. “Yea, it does, I suppose. I just can’t figure out how what happened to me relates to it. It *has *to be related.” Then, getting back to our discussion, "Does it all make sense, Jeannette? Does what I’ve told you feel right, considering what you have experienced the past several years?"

  She continued to gaze out the window, but after a few seconds of consideration, she nodded and the hint of a smile on her face grew larger and she nodded. "It makes perfect sense, Rich."

  Then, turning to look at me directly, Jeannette said, “But your accident was only a few months ago, but I've been dreaming about Amanda and the boys for years.”

  I shuddered a little at her mention of "the boys," the words a strange echo of how Amanda and our families had referred to Michael and Aaron. She said the words in such a familiar, easy way, it took almost no imagination to hear the Jeannette in my other timeline saying the same words the same way.

  "I don't know, but I'm pretty sure time isn't quite what we think," I began, not sure of where I was going with this, but forging ahead anyway. "I think we experience it in a very small, limited way, and there is a lot more going on than we are aware of.” As had happened many times since my accident, the cold pain of despair over losing Amanda and my sons, and to a lesser extent, Pat, Tony and my other shipmates, reappeared and seeped into my thoughts. I felt a little guilty at this, since I left Amanda alive and well and living with her two sons, the rest of her family healthy and happy. The Jeannette in front of me had buried her Amanda years ago, which clearly installed a shroud over her life, keeping her from ever again being truly happy.

  "Does your wife here know about this?" Jeannette asked suddenly, startling me out of the reverie.

  I looked up at her, seeing her eyebrows arched in a questioning way, and replied, "Some of it. I've shared part of what happened to me," I answered, warily.

  "Are you happily married, Rich?" Jeannette asked, sounding a bit like a prosecuting attorney in a court of law.

  "Yes, Jeannette, I am. Very happy," I replied.

  "Then why did you have a relationship with my daughter when you went back to 1976? Why didn't you pursue your wife, so you could be with her again?" Jeannette's tone was still soft and friendly, but her words...

  The blood rose into my cheeks, and my brow furrowed in thought, or maybe the beginnings of anger, but when I realized what the answer to her question was, I a strange flood of relief poured into me, giving birth to another lump in my throat. I sat back into the chair from which I'd told Jeannette my story, and buried my face in my hands, unable to stop the jumbled rush of emotion made up of love, pride, anger, revenge, devotion and crushing despair. The proverbial gates opened and I lost control, sobbing for perhaps a minute. This was a new thing for me, the terrifying loss of control shook me up badly. At some point, I became aware of Jeannette's hand on my back, and a few seconds later, her embrace. I returned the hug, which sent me further down into the complicated soup of emotions.

  After a time, I regained control, and my meltdown subsided, like rainwater retreating from the hight point in the middle of the road. I opened my eyes to Jeannette kneeling in front of me, her coat still completely buttoned, her eyes rimmed in red, and a light trail of tears tracking down each side of her face.

  She smiled. So did I.

  I sighed. "I loved your daughter, Jeannette. I did things differently when I had the chance, not because I don't love Molly and Samantha," I said, a sudden stab of emotion I had to shove back down when it threatened to derail me again. "But because I wanted Am
anda to live. The biggest regret in my life was not something I'd done, but rather something I hadn't done. I wasn’t strong enough to tell your daughter I loved her, I thought she hung the moon and that she was the single most beautiful thing I ever saw.”

  Jeannette was getting close to crying again, but as much from happiness as anything, so I continued. "When I got a second chance, I did tell her, and she spent the rest of my life proving to me I was right."

  We sat for several minutes, not talking, until Jeannette stood up, removed a tissue from her handbag and dabbed her eyes, even though they'd already dried. I stood up, got another bottle of water, offered her one, which she refused, and sat back down.

  "Rich, I am so happy we met today," she finally began. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a suspicion you'd be at the cemetery today. How in God's name I knew, I have no idea, but I did. Rich, I am grateful beyond words to you."

  Jeannette had been gazing out the window again, but now she turned her attention directly to me and said, her voice solid and sure, "When Amanda died, most of me did, too. I didn't consider continuing to live in any way a good thing, and my life was a sentence. I failed my little girl."

  At this point, Jeannette's voice quavered a bit, and I could tell she was working hard to maintain her composure and say this.

  "I let her date Steve Collins. I knew somehow, he was bad for her,” she continued on, though I was starting to fear her anger and hate toward Steve, which I completely agreed with, derail what she wanted to say.

  Jeannette seemed to sense this, too, because she paused for a few seconds, took a deep breath and regained her composure.

  "I failed Amanda, and my punishment has been to live without her all these years."

  I nodded my understanding, not saying anything, not wanting to impede her progress.

  Jeannette continued, “When the dreams started, about a year after she died, I considered those additional punishment, God or whoever, taunting me, showing me what my failure to keep her safe had cost."

  I listened, marveling at how this amazingly strong and resilient woman could say these things without breaking down into an emotional wreck.

  "Eventually," she said, "I began to look forward to the dreams, and started to take notes when I woke up, trying to piece together a...narrative...of her life."

  Jeannette reached into her purse and pulled out a small, red USB thumb drive, which she held out for me to take. I turned the small, bright red cylinder over in my hand, and returned my gaze to Jeannette.

  “Please keep it,” she said, and when I nodded, she continued. "Thank you for doing whatever you did to give my little girl a life she wouldn't have otherwise had. Rich, it was so hard for me not to call you back then and tell you how much Amanda loved you...Well, in the way a teenage girl can love a boy when they are both 17 years old.” At this she smiled, with no hint of the regret I've seen on her face every minute we had been together that day.

  I smiled a little and nodded.

  “I wish you would have recognized what you two had when you were together," Jeannette said, her gaze again drifting away from me to seemingly drift into the past leading to today, which included her only daughter dying in a car crash not five miles from this spot. "It was so obvious to everyone else you needed to be together," she said, now back in the present, shaking her head ruefully.

  "You kids were the only ones who didn't get it," she concluded, and as an afterthought, said, “but then when you returned to 1976, not blinded by your own youth, and understood you and Amanda needed to be together."

  I nodded, but instead of the comfort of knowing I'd done the right thing, I sensed the stirrings of something darker, not quite right, so I barely heard Jeannette when she said, “Thank you for that, Richard."

  A few seconds of silence, then I startled myself aware again, looked at Jeannette, seeing someone more at peace with themselves than I'd experienced in a long time. I'd have time to consider and think about this impression later.

  I smiled. "You're welcome, Jeannette," I said, reaching out to embrace her again, as we both stood. "And thank you for everything." She hugged me warmly, patted me on the cheek when we let each other go, and turned to leave.

  "I'll have to check to see if Hallmark makes Mother's Day cards for your alternate timeline mother-in-law," I said, opening the door and watching her walk through. Jeannette laughed, sounding exactly like Amanda. Amanda laughed all the time, but it was the first time I'd heard her mother laugh since the 90s, in the other timeline. She turned once more, smiled at me and said, “Goodbye, Rich."

  As I watched Jeannette disappear around the corner of the building, a sense of relief seemed to fill the air, burdens released. But, there the hint of darkness hung around, just out of sight, a question unasked, a signal missed, and the thought popped into my mind that we hadn't made plans to get together again, which bothered me, so I made a mental note to call and check on Jeannette, and make sure she understands that it wasn’t the car accident that was behind my time travel, nor did I expect to go anywhere but wherever we all go when we die when my days in this timeline are over. I hoped she was clear on these things, but as I thought about it, the darkness, slinked away, and I made the decision to take one last trip before flying back to San Diego.

  I needed to drive to Belton and talk with Annie, not sure what I would ask her, but knowing she had answers I needed. I assumed I would discover the questions on the road, or when I was in her presence. My rental car sped north in I-465, and in a few minutes I turned off on US Highway 36 and made my way toward Belton.

  The day progressed and got colder, November promising a bleak winter ahead. The trees in Belton were long bare, having shed all their leaves, the wet, matted piles here and there telling the story of a windy autumn. The feel of the place was so far removed from the quaint, pastoral setting I visited only seven months ago, I had a hard time believing I drove through the same Belton, Indiana. I pulled up to the house my father grew up in, now owned by an old woman who represented the lynchpin, the connection between today, and the yesterday I would travel to in the next year. The place seemed colder, harsher and less inviting.

  The tree in the front yard, the one my Grandfather planted when my father was a baby, still stood overlooking the house, like seven months before, but all of its leaves were gone, and its lush, majestic appearance different now. I walked up the sloping and cracked sidewalk to the three steps of the porch, where the table and chairs still sat, silent and empty. They looked almost abandoned, sitting without the plastic, floral patterned tablecloth that had covered the table. I rang the bell.

  I heard no voices, or even footsteps, before the door swung open, Annie's daughter Liz stood before me, the storm door's screen separating us. Behind her, the living room was illuminated by a single lamp, and I could see several collections of boxes in the room. Someone had been packing, or,unpacking.

  Liz had been a good friend of my father's as they grew up, running into each other a few times after my parents bought the lake cottage, but they didn’t really keep in touch. She recognized me instantly.

  “Richard!” Liz said, opening the screen door and inviting me in. As I entered, she noticed the cane, but didn't say anything about it.

  I had seen her interest though,and said, “I had an accident a few months ago”.

  She nodded in acknowledgement.

  I laughed, “Actually, the day after I met you and your mom here in April.”

  “I know,” she replied. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine. I drove back to Cincinnati that night, and the next morning, I was out running some errands, getting ready to go back to San Diego, when a woman ran a red light.” I wanted to make sure she understood the accident had nothing to do with my visit here.

  She nodded, not surprised by my story. “I just need this,” I held up my cane, “to get around, for a little longer.”

  Liz smiled and said, “I’m so sorry.”

  “Well, unless you were driving
the truck that hit me, nothing to be sorry about!” I laughed, encouraging a polite chuckle out of Liz as well. “Is your mom moving?”

  Liz’s smile disappeared as she said, “Oh, Richard. I guess you didn't know…”

  Now, was my turn to wear a furrowed brow came.

  “Mom passed away about six months ago. We just sold the house.”

  Driving here, I didn’t even consider the possibility Annie would be gone. Sure, she'd been 90 years old, but seemed to be in excellent health, and mentally, sharp as someone 20 years younger. Hell, I thought, 50 years younger for that matter.

  My turn to say, “I’m sorry” came, and I asked about the circumstances.

  “It was all pretty sudden,” she replied, smiling sadly, and laughing a little as she explained “as sudden as someone 92 years old dying can be.” She got a summer cold, and within a few days, she developed pneumonia. She went into the hospital in Indianapolis, and had an aneurism the second night.

  I nodded, “Wishard?” feeling odd as I Liz nodded, and I realized I had been at the same hospital visiting Thelma the night she died, from my perspective, about a year ago. It had been 1990, of course, but again, for me barely a year ago. “I’m sorry, Liz. A sweet lady,” I said.

  “Most of the time,” Liz laughed. “She lived a good life, and said so a lot.” We both nodded in agreement and smiled, each of us silent for a few seconds remembering the lady who had been my father's friend's mother for 70 years, and the person at the center of the strangest experience of my life.

  “How's your Dad?” Liz asked, after a few seconds.

  “Fine,” I answered. “I told him we'd met, but didn't get into all the details.” Liz nodded her understanding.

  “So, what brings you all the way out here? You still live in San Diego, don't you?” she asked.

  “Yes, I do,” I replied, realizing my trip to be pointless now. I had a question for your mother that hadn't occurred to me until I was in the car after meeting Amanda's mother at the cemetery. Such an obvious question, I was surprised I hadn't thought to ask while here before. But then again, my trip to Belton last time uncovered a “mother of all information bombs” I hadn't counted on. I'd been so overwhelmed, I guess, I hadn’t thought to ask Annie if she’d known me in the past, since I will, according to my Grandfather’s letter, travel to 1933 Belton, soon. “I just had a question for your mom.”