Reasons Only Time Allows

by Micah Thomas

  Water. Yeah. A shower would be better than sleep.

  In the bathroom, he planned. He’d clean up. Help his dad. Then, if his brain hadn’t righted itself, he’d decide if he needed to check into the loony bin.

  He ran the shower hot. The water insisted wake, real, awake, real on his back and scalp. This isn’t a dream. His parents’ soap and shampoo brands were real. Same as always. Generic even though they could afford the good stuff.

  As he soaped his body, he grounded more firmly in this irresistible reality. Water beat on his skin, hot and intense pressure. His hands and eyes confirmed his anatomy; lean with a little pot belly he’d had since a toddler. He rinsed the shampoo from his hair, eyes closed, face into the showerhead. Naw. I’ve never been to the Moon. I’m just a black man in America, visiting my folks, and I’ve had a psychological breakdown. He watched the water spiral down the open drain in the bottom of the tub. An optical illusion struck him. The tub and the world spun. The water did not move—rather, everything around it circled.

  I was more than a person. Not a God, but something. I moved across space and time. I traveled beyond the rainbow. What happened to me? Where is my mind?

  No. That didn’t make sense. Thelon squeezed his eyes shut against the rotation. He didn’t want to be divided. He wanted to be present.

  If I don’t live here, I live somewhere else. This presented a problem to Thelon. The sense of another life skittered and clashed against the now. He shifted his weight and slipped in the tub. The awkward jerk of catching himself on the soap holder hurt his back, but more importantly, he imagined—no, he saw—a flash of himself sitting behind a computer in an office. I have job. It’s Sunday. Do I have to work tomorrow? What do I do?

  The shower curtain, caught in the atmospheric push and pull of steam and chilly air, flapped inward, sticking to his thigh.

  “Damn!” he shouted. The cold slimy touch triggered another memory. A fuzzy one. Of disembodiment and someone else. Henry. Henry had…he’d been a part of me, somehow. Not a narrative memory. No story or context. The curtain reminded him of… and it was gone. Tiny hairs lifted on his neck, prickling his scalp, a nauseating quiver rumbling in his stomach. He attempted to rationalize it. It’s just a memory of a dream.

  He could have stayed in the hot water until it ran cold, except the creeped-out feeling ruined the moment.

  Through the bathroom door, while he toweled off, he heard Dad jingle his keys. Familiar. Old childhood, teen years feelings. Man, he’s always gotta be rushing me. No time to chill and make sense of things. Time to go to the hardware store.

  Dad drove a big truck. Fancy, too. A large digital screen flashed the rear-view camera as they backed out of the driveway. Thelon was shaken. Dad in a truck like this? I’m not in Kansas anymore. He thought about it and laughed. Fucking ‘Back to the Future’ and Marty’s big-ass truck.

  Dad laughed too. As he got them on the road, he hit a button on the steering wheel. The radio blared with talk. Every station buzzed with the news. Unlimited Energy. The great Energy Portal. Promises of change and greatness for Americans echoed the President’s words. There was another promise: Eden. The alien God. A promise of a utopia. But that hadn’t happened. Fragments of memories competed within Thelon as he listened. Energy Portal. Henry. Eden. Thelon began to recognize the seriousness of his condition. I’m not hung over. I’m not on drugs. Something is wrong with me. Bound in this recognition of the problem, Thelon did not want to tell his father about it. Confusing, contrasting memories fought inside him against rational thought. Give it more time, Thelon. Wake up.

  They drove through the old neighborhood of large, aging homes. Gnarled trees buckled the sidewalk with their surging roots. Familiar, but not quite right. Part of Thelon rejected or failed to connect with a sense of home. He let out a frustrated sigh.

  “Son, what is wrong with you today?”

  “I don’t know.” He nearly talked then. Almost told his father. But a knotting cramp squeezed his belly and the words didn’t come out. Instead, he pressed the heel of his fist to his stomach and willed himself to forget the dream about Eden and adventures in space. He closed his eyes and grimaced, trying to think about work and boxer shorts and be present in the moment. Henry. What about Henry and the Energy Portal? You saw something. Henry. The name echoed in his mind and his stomach relaxed.

  “I probably don’t say this enough, but we—your mother and I—are extremely proud of you.”

  “Dad…” Thelon couldn’t have a heart to heart. Not right now.

  “Listen to me. We know you are under a lot of pressure. Between work, that big promotion you got coming, and the engagement, but don’t be afraid to talk to me. I can’t solve your problems, but I can listen.”

  Engagement? He clutched at the seatbelt strap over his chest. It pulled tight. Too tight to breathe. He cleared his throat but had nothing to say. I should tell him I’m having a crisis. That I’ve got amnesia. But we must fix the roof…

  His thoughts churned too slow. I’m impaired. Though afraid for his sanity, a pervasive anticlimactic sense dominated him. He sat, a bunny in a cage watching humans do human things, but not understanding any of it.

  Then, with an involuntary gasp, he knew a woman waited for him. He felt warmth from the sense of her but could not picture a face. Another shock traveled through his body, tingles down his legs and arms. Something. Is. Wrong.

  This sent him deeper into disordered thinking. How can I remember that I forgot and not the thing itself? Thelon closed his mouth, unsure of how long he’d left it hanging open. I’m not hallucinating. I woke up this morning, but before that, I was not here. Period. Reflexively, he clenched and unclenched his fists. His breathing slowed and he decided to wait, to push these things aside for the time being. If I don’t or can’t get my shit together, I’ll get help.

  Dad didn’t take notice of Thelon’s inner turmoil. He kept talking like everything was fine as he parked the truck at Home Depot, backing into the spot as he always did when shopping. “Yeah. No two ways about it. You got a lot on your plate.”

  “Yeah. A lot on my plate.”

  “But all good things. Not like you are heading to prison like so many young men out there.”

  Prison. His father’s words triggered him as he got out of the truck. His body walked with his father, but his mind took the word ‘prison’ and barfed up an image of a bloodied woman.

  He blinked but saw her in his mind’s eye even though the parking lot remained. He knew her. Karen had been her name. The dead girl. My crime. I didn’t do it. That’s why I went to prison. He shuddered. The Moon! Like trying to clear an Etch-a-Sketch, he shook his head. It helped.

  Be here. Be with Dad. Figure this out when you’re alone. Without reflecting on it, he spoke to himself as though he were another person. With effort, he focused on the sensation of walking. He made himself read the signage of the store. Any detail he could cast his attention on helped him keep his inner dialogue silent.

  In the store, Thelon trailed his fingertips across pallets of wood and other construction materials as they shopped. Reality confirmed reality. A quiet, rational voice in his mind wanted to freak out and scream for help. He couldn’t muster it. While he could think, some external pressure trapped Thelon within himself. His intensities shifted from panic to laconic disinterest too quickly for him to process anything.

  Listless, he observed his father explore rows of drills and saws as they strolled through the store. Dad talked on and on about what various projects these tools would serve. Thelon tuned him out but nodded. Dad’s lectures were the stuff of his childhood. Safe topics where they approximated bonding as father and son.

  Making and fixing things never held Thelon’s interest, despite Dad’s efforts. Parties had been his thing. Music and the vibe. He smiled. There, something made keen sense. His life before Eden and the mad dream was clear in his mind. He knew that his childhood, his core memories of growing up, were intact and true.

  “Yo
u have one of these in the house?” Dad held up a sink wrench.

  Thelon shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “Well, we should get it. You see, when a woman—or a man—drops their ring down the sink, you need one of these bad boys to get up under the basin.”

  “Sure,” Thelon said and put it in the cart.

  Physically present, mentally a zombie, Thelon followed through with the motions of shopping. The nods to the people. The ‘no, we’re fine’ to helpful employees. The smiles to kids with their grandparents or parents. He pushed the cart around the store as Dad finally picked up roofing materials, nails, and other stuff he already had in the garage. Thelon realized he’d squandered time meant for bonding with his father—just as he always had. While he could not connect to anything meaningful, he understood the guilt of never bridging the gap in their relationship. He sighed to himself as they checked out. What is wrong with me?

  Autopilot. Cruise control. Images of robots and Frankenstein came to Thelon’s mind. He couldn’t think and feel at the same time, but he could do things. The activity grounded him. His body worked and he let it.

  By ten a.m., they were still on the roof, sweating under a hot sun. From the vantage of their second story height, he gazed down at the neighborhood. The distraction of labor, memories from growing up here, brought him calming familiarity. There was the alley where he and Tony, his cousin, set off bottle rockets and nearly caught a house on fire. Four houses down by the intersection was Old Miss Lena’s house, where he’d mow the lawn and got paid in candied apples which he’d eat standing on her porch while she smiled at him. This is real. Thelon smiled, warmth flushed him at the memory of good times of the past.

  Dad barked an order and Thelon resumed work. The major business of replacing the roof appeared more than half done before they’d started, but Dad needed this finished today. Was I up here yesterday? The job looked good. Straight lines. No gaps. Did I do all that?

  Thelon took off his gloves to wipe sweat from his eyes only to find he’d rubbed shingle grit across his face. Tiny particles stung like touching insulation.

  “Boy, I didn’t raise you to be that stupid,” Dad said, looking up. Then with more compassion, he added, “You gonna lose an eye or what?”

  “Yeah, Dad. I’m fine.” And he was. The sweat and labor, instruction and banter, being with Dad in the moment, made him feel like he’d had a regular Sunday morning. Except when he stopped moving, stopped hammering, questions formed that he could not answer.

  When they’d finished, tools hung back on the wall in the organized garage, Thelon had the spontaneous urge to drink. Beer. Whiskey. Wine. His mouth watered at the thought, but drinking in the middle of day? Dad might have a beer, but Mom would give me the look if I reached for one. He settled on accepting lemonade in the kitchen, cold but too sweet, the way Mom always made it.

  Mom walked in and caught him puckering at the taste. She laughed. “You-Know-Who called.”

  “Who?”

  She snapped his leg with the tea towel in her hand and clicked her tongue. “I told her you’d call her back after you were done with your father, if you both didn’t fall off the roof and break your necks.”

  “Okay, Mom. Damn.” Fianceeee. She’s talking about my fiancé.

  “What time are you going back anyway? We have wine group tonight. You’re welcome to stay, but do you really want to hang with the old folks all day?”

  ~

  THE REST OF the day blurred in fast forward.

  A sense of the real world sat outside of himself and confusion dwelled within. On the cab ride home, the nothingness pushed his jaw into an unnatural, teeth-grinding jut. He couldn’t think his way out of the miasma of unpleasant, weird thoughts. He was Dorothy, awakened from the dream of Oz and life rolled out before him. His mind divided two fractured sets of incomplete recollection. His notion of self, everything tied to his name and personality was in question. He wanted to wake up again, to redo this day without this confusion, or to wake up somewhere and someone else. He bit his tongue and tasted blood.

  Then, they arrived at his destination: the address he’d read from his driver’s license. He looked up at the tall apartment building. This is where I live. Old stone. Big windows. A classy place like he’d seen in movies. He coughed and put on a fake corny smile as he approached the big double door. Before he reached the handle, the door swung open.

  “Late night, Mr. T?” the young doorman asked.

  His first thought: He knows me. His second: Mr. T? I let people call me T?

  Thelon went with it, but it grated on his ears. “Why yes.” Sound like you belong here. “I was visiting…”

  “Home, your peeps. I know. Let me guess, you forgot your keys again?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Mr. T, you often forget your keys, which is exactly why I have your spare right here.”

  “Hmm. Excellent.” Thelon fumbled with his wallet thinking to tip the doorman.

  “That won’t be necessary. You take good care of me, Mr. T. Have a good night, though it looks like you already did,” he said with a wink.

  Thelon stood there too long, completely baffled.

  The doorman grinned and said, “Room 602?”

  Thelon nodded; his smile gone.

  The elevator ride scared him. Mirrors on all sides. He saw an infinite number of his reflections and his face looked worried in some, and angry in others. He shut his eyes until the elevator beeped to let him know he was at his floor.

  There were only two doors facing each other along the short hall: 601 and 602. He knocked, then waited. He anticipated someone would be in the apartment.

  Nobody home. Thelon let himself in and took a deep breath. The apartment smelled like cedar and water. Water? How can something smell like water? Thelon, get a grip.

  He flipped on the lights and found uncomfortable silence magnified with the illumination. Disconnected from a sense of ownership. I feel like I just broke into someone’s house.

  Abstract, distant, unimportant in his own sense of things, a mundane thought came to him. I should take my shoes off. He contradicted himself. Why, though? He slipped off his shoes and placed them on the mat by the door.

  Through the foyer, a taupe and eggshell austere interior. Everything tidy without an item out of place. Why does none of this feel familiar? Not even a little bit.

  At his folks’ place, all he wanted was time to be alone with his thoughts. Now that he had it, glancing around, pilfering through this stranger’s belongings, he wished someone else was there.

  This is mine. All this stuff is mine. That’s my parents in that photo. He repeated variations of that line in his head, not wanting to hear his voice in the empty apartment and hoping to trigger some memory or attachment. He lived here. He had a job. He paid his bills. He had a fiancé.

  “This is my house, damn it.” Saying it hadn’t made it feel so.

  Something was missing and he only knew it from another sudden intrusive thought. Where’s my phone?

  As he had at his parents’ home, his hand expected a phone in his pocket or on a counter. A physical reflex. Something out of a deep habit told him he needed it.

  He laughed at himself. I’m reaching for a phone, but who am I going to call?

  Still, he went around searching for it to satisfy this itch. He checked between couch cushions and then back in the foyer. A sideboard made of deep polished brown wood held his lost keys, a notepad, and a black rotary phone relic.

  Curious, he took the receiver off the hook. No dial tone. This was just for show, but there was no cell anywhere. Damn. Thelon, you don’t have a fucking clue about what is going on with you.

  A click inside his neck, a release of pressure, and with a pop, something in his mind awoke: This is not my house. That felt better. Admitting it.

  Mentally, he separated himself from the man who lived here. The moment he did so, he decided to call him the other guy, T. This decision stopped his failing attempts to
connect with memories because T and him were different people.. More truth. Thelon shook his head but accepted it as a fact. He couldn’t connect to anything because this wasn’t his life at all, but he was going to find out to whom it belonged.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and began his exploration with this new sense of discovery. No food on the counter. No food in the fridge. T must eat out.

  A formal dinette opened to the living room where a large window overlooked the street below. He touched the heavy, ornate fabric of the curtains. He gazed closely at the art— portraits of jazz performers—on the wall.

  Though he smiled at the one of Thelonious Monk at the piano, his musician namesake, he felt nothing. Learned nothing from the photograph about this man, T. He wandered down the hall to where two bedrooms were located.

  Neither looked lived in, which added to the catalogue of falsehoods of the apartment. Beds made crisp, not a dent in the duvets. Not a speck of dust on the dressers.

  In the bath attached to the master bedroom were ridiculous luxuries: a soaking jacuzzi tub and a separate rain shower. Through another door was a deep walk-in closet.

  He marveled at the clothing. Expensive. Stylish. Good brands. Immaculate. T must spend a fortune on clothes. Nothing sparked as he flitted through the racks and rows. No sentimentality towards a sweater that might have been a gift. No sense of which pair were his favorite jeans. Looking at the tidily folded and hung garments, he could have been at the mall.

  Staged. It all looks staged.

  Back in the living room, a desk in the corner made it appear like a tiny home office. Ah, a laptop. I’ve got you, fucker.

  He turned it on and stared at the password prompt.

  “You get this wrong and it locks up, you are shit out of luck,” he said to himself, lightly resting his fingers on the keys. He closed his eyes and cleared his mind. Like the impulse to check his phone, he experienced a physical operation of his hands, and when he opened his eyes, the computer verified he’d entered the correct password. Yeah, but what the hell did I type? He did not know.