“Here’s what happens: You get to pick a single moment in your life where you made a decision and change it. Any point of decision anywhere in your life. Big or small.”
It was an interesting proposition. Obviously not true, of course, but interesting to think about. Eileen thought about all the possibilities in her life she had missed. The boys she had never dated, the Master’s Degree she had never gone for, all the things that she should or shouldn’t have done…
But she wasn’t excited. She was scared. Very scared. And she knew why.
“What if the change doesn’t affect my life at all?” Eileen looked around the room, as if she could find a clue somewhere there. “Or what if it changes things for the worse? How do I decide something like that?”
“That’s the chance you take,” the parakeet said, without any sympathy in its voice.
“But what if I don’t like it and want to go back to the way it was…I mean, is?”
“You can’t,” said the bird. “That’s the deal. Time can occasionally tweak things but can’t be constantly shifting them back and forth. Better or worse, that will be your life. You won’t even know this happened.”
Eileen stared back at it. “Wait,” she finally said. “Give me a minute.”
She lowered her hand to the armrest of the couch and let the parakeet hop off her finger. She poured herself another generous helping and thought while she sipped. She looked at the parakeet, which was patiently grooming itself. She was too nervous to change her own life, she thought. But if she could change someone else’s…
“Can I choose not to stop Lydia and my mom from moving in together?”
The bird cocked its head for a moment as if listening. “No,” it finally said. “I’m afraid that now that you know the consequences of the action, it would no longer be a gamble. So that one—and the one where you go to Woodstock—is now off the table. Unless,” it added, “it’s a byproduct of a different change.”
“That’s not fair!” The parakeet didn’t seem to care whether it was fair or not, it just shrugged—a weird effect, considering it was a bird—and waited. Marion thought again.
“How about if I don’t specify? If I simply ask Time to change a single decision that would make my life better?”
The parakeet scratched its chest with its beak, considering. “That’s an option,” it finally admitted. “You can just spin the wheel and see what happens. But we can’t promise ‘better.’ Just ‘different.’ After all, we’re not doing this as a favor to you—it’s to give Time something to play with.”
“Then forget it,” said Eileen decidedly. “I don’t want to end up dead or homeless. How do I know that Time won’t think watching me scrounge for quarters will be hysterically funny? How do I know,” and her breath caught in her throat, “that you won’t make my daughter go away?”
It picked at a loose thread in the couch for a moment. “Okay,” it finally said. “How’s this? We’ll spin the wheel and if the results are that your daughter is never born, we’ll throw you back here. But that’s all I can promise.”
The bird raised its head. “Decide. Now. You’ve been moaning about your life for the past two months. Give it a shot—take a chance. For once in your life.”
Eileen took a breath for a moment. Maybe it was the booze, or maybe it was simply that she was tired and bored and unhappy. She said, quickly, “Yes. Go ahead.”
“Okay, then. Hold on.”
“To what?” Eileen asked, feeling a bit silly. She watched as the parakeet jumped up from the couch and began to fly around the room counterclockwise, first slowly, and then so quickly that it became a light green blur. That, combined with the alcohol, made her feel dizzy. She closed her eyes.
* * *
Eileen had done pretty well in her junior high Spanish classes, to the point where she could read a story or write an essay with reasonable fluency, if slowly. But she had trouble speaking—the words simply didn’t come quick enough—and so when she started high school, she decided to sign up for Conversational Spanish.
When she walked into the classroom, however, she saw she had made a mistake. The classroom was full of kids chatting fluently in Spanish; the school had a large population of students whose parents had moved to New York from Puerto Rico, and many of them obviously saw this class as an easy A.
Eileen sat at an empty desk and watched uneasily as the teacher, a tall, elegant woman with dark, carefully coiffed hair, walked into the classroom. “Silencio!” she said sharply, and the class quieted.
“First,” she said, in carefully enunciated Spanish, “I would like you to introduce yourself to the class. Tell us about yourself, and what you expect to get from the class. You first,” and she pointed at Eileen.
Eileen froze in panic. It felt like everyone in the room was staring at her. A couple of girls whom she knew from her other classes whispered together and grinned. Eileen knew she was about to make a complete fool of herself. Her language skills weren’t good; her pronunciation was probably worse. They would laugh at her. They would make fun of her.
“Comienza, por favor,” the teacher said impatiently.
Eileen sat there, unable to make a sound.
The teacher looked around at the class. “This is not a class where you can just sit like a lump and expect to pass,” she said in English. “This is a class where you are expected to participate. If you cannot do that, you might as well quit right now.”
The rest of the class went by in a blur. Once it was over, Eileen collected her things and walked, almost without thinking, to the assignment room. She would quit Spanish Conversation and take Typing instead. Typing would be useful, and nobody would laugh at her, or make her feel small or embarrassed. She put her hand on the door to go in.
Something changed.
Eileen was angry. What right had that teacher to make fun of her like that? After all, it was a class to learn conversation, wasn’t it? Not one for kids who already know conversation! If she quit now, she’d only be giving that teacher even more satisfaction. She’d show her!
Eileen took her hand off the doorknob and ran to her English Lit class where, in a sudden burst of inspiration, she introduced herself to Camila, the shy girl who always sat next to her. Camila, it turned out, was happy to have somebody to talk to. She hadn’t been brought up in a city—her father back in Salinas had sent her to live with an aunt in Brooklyn so she could get a better education, and she felt lost among the street-smart kids in the school. She was also, it turned out, as terrified of English Lit as Eileen was of Conversational Spanish. They made a pact: Each day during lunch, the two girls would sit together. (This meant that Eileen wouldn’t sit with the almost-but-not-quite-popular crowd that she had been edging into, but she didn’t mind that much. They weren’t that nice anyway.) Eileen would help Camila get through Great Expectations and Camila would coach Eileen in conversational Spanish.
* * *
Eileen opened her eyes. She must have dozed off for a moment; she was more tired than she thought. The unopened bottle of bourbon she had brought home was still on the living room coffee table; she reached for it and then stopped—there was a scratching sound near the window. She got up and walked over: A small green-and-yellow parakeet was on the window sill, pushing at the screen of the open window with its head.
“How did you get in here?” she asked it. It chirped frantically and continued to batter its head against the screen. Eileen remembered the tear in her bedroom window screen and shook her head. “Gotta get that fixed.”
She slowly opened the window wider and then pushed up the screen. In a moment, the parakeet had flown out the window and was gone.
“Maybe I should have kept you,” she said, pulling down the screen. “You might have been somebody’s pet. But,” she considered, “you did look like you really wanted out.”
She decided to forget it and went back to the couch. She started opening the bourbon, thinking about how nice it would be to get really drunk and wonder
ing if she should watch something on TV in the meantime. Something meaningless and funny. She could use funny.
Almost in answer, her phone rang. Eileen picked it up and looked at the display. It was her supervisor at work. Of course—why would they expect her to have a life?
She put it to her ear. “Hi, Camila,” she said, a little impatiently.
“Hola, Eileen,” Camila said, sounding contrite. “I’m so sorry to bother you. I know it’s after hours, and I wouldn’t have called, except that it’s an emergency. But if you’re busy…”
“No, it’s fine,” Eileen said, immediately contrite. “Just a little sad, that’s all. It’s the anniversary of my mother’s death.”
There was a short silence. “I’m so sorry,” said Camila. “Your mom was a wonderful lady. I still think about the stories she used to tell about her childhood in Paris. And her friend, who moved in with her later? She was very sweet as well.”
“Yes—Lydia,” Eileen said. “I probably wouldn’t have made it through my teen years without her. Or, at least, not as well as I did.”
“I’m sorry. I should have remembered.”
“Really, it’s fine.” Eileen shrugged, even though she knew Camila couldn’t see her. “What’s up?”
“There have been three more raids,” Camila said, anger leaking into her voice. “Three restaurants, and ICE has taken 17 people. Luckily, one of the restaurant owners called me; we need to get down to the station and make sure everything’s kosher and that we get as many out on bond as we can. I’m on my way, and Julio from the Pottstown office said he could come as well. It would really help if you and he could handle the intake interviews while I’m dealing with the authorities.”
“Oh, hell,” Eileen said. “The raids are becoming more frequent, aren’t they?”
“Not surprising, considering who’s in charge these days,” Camila said. “Can you come?”
“Of course. Just give me a minute to grab my things. I should be there within the hour.”
“Gracias, querida,” Camila said.
“De nada,” Eileen said. “It’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
Camila groaned and hung up.
Resigned, Eileen picked up her coat and shrugged it on. It’s too bad, she thought. It would have been nice to have had a real life, with a husband who stuck around, a kid who calls more than once a month, and enough savings to retire on.
She picked up the bag with the cold pizza in it. She could eat it while she drove to the police station. And the bourbon would still be waiting when she got back. If only I had done something about it when I was younger. Maybe made a different decision somewhere along the way…
She grabbed her car keys. “Just stop it,” she told herself sternly. “You don’t have time for a pity party. You have work to do.”
Time grinned.
Under the Bay Court Tree
A story of Carlos Acosta, Sophia’s grandson-in-law
1996
I met Mrs. Delaney the first time I saw Bay Court.
It was only weeks after we had spilled Ben’s ashes into the lake in Prospect Park. In fact, I guess it all started after the ceremony and the balloons and the useless attempts to comfort Gretl, his heartbroken mother, who had lost her husband only the year before. We went back to her apartment afterwards, where we sat awkwardly in her living room, surrounded by old photos, books and memories that neither of us wanted to talk about. Finally, the few relatives who had also shown up—Ben’s Aunt Isabeau and Uncle Gabe, their grown children, and a noisy little girl named Rachel—made their excuses and left us alone.
Gretl sat and stroked her arm where you could still see the ghost of her concentration camp tattoo. “When he was little, I told him the numbers were magical,” she moaned. “I told him they would protect him from evil.”
I gave her the fistful of pills she needed to get to sleep, put her to bed, and listened as she drifted away, murmuring about somebody named Jakie.
After leaving Gretl, I had planned to go to a bar and get completely smashed, but I realized that I was too exhausted. I stopped off at a bodega, bought a six-pack of beer, and went home. And found a note from my landlady under the door that said she needed our apartment for her daughter, so I had a month to move out. Oh, and she was sorry about Ben.
I couldn’t face looking for a place just yet. I boxed up all our stuff, had it put into storage, and crashed with a bunch of friends. Luckily, they were patient with me—my savings were starting to dwindle, my very Catholic parents hadn’t spoken to me since I came out to them five years earlier, and I just didn’t have the energy to start looking for work.
Still, I couldn’t depend on the kindness of friends—or even strangers—forever. I called in a couple of favors, got some part-time work doing layouts for some small-press magazines, and started to search for a new place to live.
It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. Gentrification had hit the outer boroughs. Everywhere I looked, the place was either tiny, too expensive, or in the kind of neighborhood where you don’t go out after dark—and the fact that I didn’t have a steady job didn’t help. I was too broke to buy, too old to share, and was starting to wonder if I’d end up in New Jersey or have to leave New York entirely.
Then, early one Saturday morning, one of the realtors I’d signed with called and said she had something in south Brooklyn that might suit.
“Two bedrooms, a living room, a dining area and a small kitchen,” she said and quoted a rent that was nearly within my budget.
“Okay,” I said. “What’s the catch? Is the place falling down?”
“The place is fine,” she said. “Actually, it’s in excellent condition. They’re just very picky about who they rent to, and a quiet, single, middle-aged man would suit them just fine. Look, Carlos, what do you care? Just go and look at it. If you like it, and they like you, I’ll see if we can negotiate them down a tad.”
She paused. “You’ll pick up a key from one of the neighbors, a woman named Mrs. Delaney. I understand she can be a bit, well, forthright in her opinions, but if she likes you, you’re in. So be polite.”
The place was a few blocks from the last station on the subway line, and what with slowdowns and changing trains, it took longer than I thought. When I finally emerged from the subway, I found myself in what looked like an old-school working-class Brooklyn neighborhood. There were stores on one side of the street and a large old-fashioned Catholic church on the other; around me, retired men sat glumly outside a dark bar sucking on paper cups filled with beer; teenage girls of varying hues surreptitiously passed around a cigarette; a woman in too-tight denims chatted with another wearing a hijab while toddlers ran around their legs. A white working-class neighborhood in the process of integrating. I wondered if I could fit in.
Following the directions the realtor had given me, I found the right street, turned and walked toward the middle of the block. About halfway down, a small green sign reading “Bay Court” pointed to a stone staircase between two red brick houses. I climbed the six stairs—and stared.
I had expected some kind of bleak apartment complex. Instead, I was standing in a small, quiet courtyard lined on either side by narrow two-story attached brick homes, each with a yard hardly larger than a bed sheet. It was quiet and nearly deserted—any sounds from the streets around seemed muted, far away.
A sudden chatter from my left: A mockingbird sitting in a nearby bush scolded me for a moment and then flew to the center of the courtyard—where there grew the biggest, strangest fir tree I’d ever seen outside of Rockefeller Center.
It looked like a cross between a tree and a huge green lollipop. For the first ten feet, the trunk was as straight as a telephone pole, although it was wreathed in so much ivy that you couldn’t see the color of the wood beneath. Above that, there were a few green branches, and then a few more from which a torn web of what looked like netting dangled. Past that, the tree sprouted huge, thick branches that reached out so far they nearly
touched the roofs of the houses on either side. I craned my neck up; the tree had to be about 20 feet high, at least.
“And who are you, young man?”
I quickly looked back down. A woman was sitting under the tree in a wooden folding chair, a paperback in one hand—for some reason, I hadn’t noticed her before. She was wrinkled and blue-veined, with bright silver hair hanging in a page boy cut that made her look like a somewhat dried-up 1920s flapper. She put her other hand up to shade her eyes and squinted at me from under a blue cotton sun hat.
“Are you the new tenant?” she asked in a distinctly Irish accent.
“Excuse me?”
She sighed in obvious exasperation. “For number eight. Over there.” She pointed to one of the houses, which had a small “For Rent” sign stuck into the tiny lawn. “I’m Mrs. Delaney.”
Oh. Right. Good, Carlos, piss off the new neighbor before you even take the place. I mentally shook myself. “I’m sorry. The realty company told me that you’d let me in.” I smiled, trying to look like a nice, quiet, perfect renter. “My name is Carlos Acosta.”
“Yes, they told me your name.” She stared at me for a very long minute while I waited, wondering if I should ask her for the key. “I see you’ve noticed the tree,” she finally said. “What do you think of it?”
I shrugged. “It’s a bit weird-looking for a tree. But then, I like weird.”
Mrs. Delaney smiled and dipped into the pocket of one of the ugliest polyester jackets I’ve ever seen. She pulled out a key hanging from a huge paper clip, which she tossed it to me. “Take your time,” she said. “I want to finish this chapter.” And she opened her book and started reading as though she’d completely dismissed me from her mind.
I unlocked the door and pushed it open. My first impression was that the house was indeed small; I’d seen apartments that were larger. There was a living/dining room (with, Dios mío, a gas fireplace) and a tiny kitchen downstairs; walking up the narrow stairs, I found two small bedrooms and a bathroom.
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