Time Travel Omnibus, page 1059
“But you’re older than that now, right?” J.J. asks, with something of an angry edge. “You wrote the letter this time, right?”
“I’m eligible to write the letter in two weeks,” I say. “I plan to do it.”
His cheeks redden, and for the first time, I see how vulnerable he is beneath the surface. He’s as devastated—maybe more devastated—than Carla and Esteban. Like me, J.J. believed he would get the letter he deserved—something that told him about his wonderful, successful, very rich life.
“So you could still die before you write it,” he said, and this time, I’m certain he meant the comment to hurt.
It did. But I don’t let that emotion show on my face. “I could,” I say. “But I’ve lived for thirty-two years without a letter. Thirty-two years without a clue about what my future holds. Like people used to live before time travel. Before Red Letter Day.”
I have their attention now.
“I think we’re the lucky ones,” I say, and because I’ve established that I’m part of their group, I don’t sound patronizing. I’ve given this speech for nearly two decades, and previous students have told me that this part of the speech is the most important part.
Carla’s gaze meets mine, sad, frightened and hopeful. Esteban keeps his head down. J.J.’s eyes have narrowed. I can feel his anger now, as if it’s my fault that he didn’t get a letter.
“Lucky?” he asks in the same tone that he used when he reminded me I could still die.
“Lucky,” I say. “We’re not locked into a future.”
Esteban looks up now, a frown creasing his forehead.
“Out in the gym,” I say, “some of the counselors are dealing with students who’re getting two different kinds of tough letters. The first tough one is the one that warns you not to do something on such and so date or you’ll screw up your life forever.”
“People actually get those?” Esteban asks, breathlessly.
“Every year,” I say.
“What’s the other tough letter?” Carla’s voice trembles. She speaks so softly I had to strain to hear her.
“The one that says You can do better than I did, but won’t—can’t really—explain exactly what went wrong. We’re limited to one event, and if what went wrong was a cascading series of bad choices, we can’t explain that. We just have to hope that our past selves—you guys, in other words—will make the right choices, with a warning.”
J.J.’s frowning too. “What do you mean?”
“Imagine,” I say, “instead of getting no letter, you get a letter that tells you that none of your dreams come true. The letter tells you simply that you’ll have to accept what’s coming because there’s no changing it.”
“I wouldn’t believe it,” he says.
And I agree: he wouldn’t believe it. Not at first. But those wormy little bits of doubt would burrow in and affect every single thing he does from this moment on.
“Really?” I say. “Are you the kind of person who would lie to yourself in an attempt to destroy who you are now? Trying to destroy every bit of hope that you possess?”
His flush grows deeper. Of course he isn’t. He lies to himself—we all do—but he lies to himself about how great he is, how few flaws he has. When Lizbet started following him around, I brought him into my office and asked him not to pay attention to her.
It leads her on, I say.
I don’t think it does, he says. She knows I’m not interested.
He knew he wasn’t interested. Poor Lizbet had no idea at all.
I can see her outside now, hovering in the hallway, waiting for him, wanting to know what his letter said. She’s holding her red envelope in one hand, the other lost in the pocket of her baggy skirt. She looks prettier than usual, as if she’s dressed up for this day, maybe for the inevitable party.
Every year, some idiot plans a Red Letter Day party even though the school—the culture—recommends against it. Every year, the kids who get good letters go. And the other kids beg off, or go for a short time, and lie about what they received.
Lizbet probably wants to know if he’s going to go.
I wonder what he’ll say to her.
“Maybe you wouldn’t send a letter if the truth hurt too much,” Esteban says.
And so it begins, the doubts, the fears.
“Or,” I say, “if your successes are beyond your wild imaginings. Why let yourself expect that? Everything you do might freeze you, might lead you to wonder if you’re going to screw that up.”
They’re all looking at me again.
“Believe me,” I say. “I’ve thought of every single possibility, and they’re all wrong.”
The door to my office opens and I curse silently. I want them to concentrate on what I just said, not on someone barging in on us.
I turn.
Lizbet has come in. She looks like she’s on edge, but then she’s always on edge around J.J.
“I want to talk to you, J.J.” Her voice shakes.
“Not now,” he says. “In a minute.”
“Now,” she says. I’ve never heard this tone from her. Strong and scary at the same time.
“Lizbet,” J.J. says, and it’s clear he’s tired, he’s overwhelmed, he’s had enough of this day, this event, this girl, this school—he’s not built to cope with something he considers a failure. “I’m busy.”
“You’re not going to marry me,” she says.
“Of course not,” he snaps—and that’s when I know it. Why all four of us don’t get letters, why I didn’t get a letter, even though I’m two weeks shy from my fiftieth birthday and fully intend to send something to my poor past self.
Lizbet holds her envelope in one hand, and a small plastic automatic in the other. An illegal gun, one that no one should be able to get—not a student, not an adult. No one.
“Get down!” I shout as I launch myself toward Lizbet.
She’s already firing, but not at me. At J.J. who hasn’t gotten down.
But Esteban deliberately drops and Carla—Carla’s half a step behind me, launching herself as well.
Together we tackle Lizbet, and I pry the pistol from her hands. Carla and I hold her as people come running from all directions, some adults, some kids holding letters.
Everyone gathers. We have no handcuffs, but someone finds rope. Someone else has contacted emergency services, using the emergency link that we all have, that we all should have used, that I should have used, that I probably had used in another life, in another universe, one in which I didn’t write a letter. I probably contacted emergency services and said something placating to Lizbet, and she probably shot all four of us, instead of poor J.J.
J.J., who is motionless on the floor, his blood slowly pooling around him. The football coach is trying to stop the bleeding and someone I don’t recognize is helping and there’s nothing I can do, not at the moment, they’re doing it all while we wait for emergency services.
The security guard ties up Lizbet and sets the gun on the desk and we all stare at it, and Annie Sanderson, the English teacher, says to the guard, “You’re supposed to check everyone, today of all days. That’s why we hired you.”
And the principal admonishes her, tiredly, and she shuts up. Because we know that sometimes Red Letter Day causes this, that’s why it’s held in school, to stop family annihilations and shootings of best friends and employers. Schools, we’re told, can control weaponry and violence, even though they can’t, and someone, somewhere, will use this as a reason to repeal Red Letter Day, but all those people who got good letters or letters warning them about their horrible drunken mistake will prevent any change, and everyone—the pundits, the politicians, the parents—will say that’s good.
Except J.J.’s parents, who have no idea their son had no future. When did he lose it? The day he met Lizbet? The day he didn’t listen to me about how crazy she was? A few moments ago, when he didn’t dive for the floor?
I will never know.
But I do something I would never normally do. I grab Lizbet’s envelope, and I open it.
The handwriting is spidery, shaky.
Give it up. J.J. doesn’t love you. He’ll never love you. Just walk away and pretend that he doesn’t exist. Live a better life than I have. Throw the gun away.
Throw the gun away.
She did this before, just like I thought.
And I wonder: was the letter different this time? And if it was, how different? Throw the gun away. Is that line new or old? Has she ignored this sentence before?
My brain hurts. My head hurts.
My heart hurts.
I was angry at J.J. just a few moments ago, and now he’s dead.
He’s dead and I’m not.
Carla isn’t either.
Neither is Esteban.
I touch them both and motion them close. Carla seems calmer, but Esteban is blank—shock, I think. A spray of blood covers the left side of his face and shirt.
I show them the letter, even though I’m not supposed to.
“Maybe this is why we never got our letters,” I say. “Maybe today is different than it was before. We survived, after all.”
I don’t know if they understand. I’m not sure I care if they understand.
I’m not even sure if I understand.
I sit in my office and watch the emergency services people flow in, declare J.J. dead, take Lizbet away, set the rest of us aside for interrogation. I hand someone—one of the police officers—Lizbet’s red envelope, but I don’t tell him we looked.
I have a hunch he knows we did.
The events wash past me, and I think that maybe this is my last Red Letter Day at Barack Obama High School, even if I survive the next two weeks and turn fifty.
And I find myself wondering, as I sit on my desk waiting to make my statement, whether I’ll write my own red letter after all.
What can I say that I’ll listen to? Words are so very easy to misunderstand. Or misread.
I suspect Lizbet only read the first few lines. Her brain shut off long before she got to Walk away and Throw the gun away.
Maybe she didn’t write that the first time. Or maybe she’s been writing it, hopelessly, to herself in a continual loop, lifetime after lifetime after lifetime.
I don’t know.
I’ll never know.
None of us will know.
That’s what makes Red Letter Day such a joke. Is it the letter that keeps us on the straight and narrow? Or the lack of a letter that gives us our edge?
Do I write a letter, warning myself to make sure Lizbet gets help when I meet her? Or do I tell myself to go to the draft no matter what? Will that prevent this afternoon?
I don’t know.
I’ll never know.
Maybe Father Broussard was right; maybe God designed us to be ignorant of the future. Maybe He wants us to move forward in time, unaware of what’s ahead, so that we follow our instincts, make our first, best—and only—choice.
Maybe.
Or maybe the letters mean nothing at all. Maybe all this focus on a single day and a single note from a future self is as meaningless as this year’s celebration of the Fourth of July. Just a day like any other, only we add a ceremony and call it important.
I don’t know.
I’ll never know.
Not if I live two more weeks or two more years.
Either way, J.J. will still be dead and Lizbet will be alive, and my future—whatever it is—will be the mystery it always was.
The mystery it should be.
The mystery it will always be.
ROCKING MY DREAMBOAT
Victorya
Jameson was pushing his mother in her rocking chair. He sang her favorite song, his tired voice caressing each word in a mixture of boredom and frustration.
“Tell me something about my father?” he asked.
“He was a bastard,” she replied, not even looking up from the television. In her hand was the remote, and on the screen were commercials. She always muted the commercials and had Jameson sing.
“But you named me after him,” he said.
“Before I realized he was a bastard,” she said. Then, “Hush now honey, COPS is back on.”
Jameson was twenty-six and lonely. He moved back in with his mother after her fall, which wasn’t really a fall, just a stumble while she was out grocery shopping. She leaned into a parked car when she felt her balance leaving and the alarm went off, causing her to jump and stumble into another car. From then on she lived with her son, claiming that since she took care of him for eighteen years, seventeen of those alone, the least he could do was take care of what was left of her life.
He was even lonelier now that Kathleen dumped him. She had just stood up during dinner and walked out. Three months of dating over with no explanation. He bought her roses daily, always commented on her Facebook wall, and called her twice a day. He even waited until she was ‘ready’ and respected her wishes to not spend the night at his house while his mother was in the next room, not that he could stay overnight at her place and leave his mother alone. He did everything right and here he was alone again.
Jameson went to work the next day and tried to forget about it. He pretended to look busy, which is easy with a computer and alcoholic boss, and then went home. Too upset to sleep, he crept into the attic and pulled a loose piece of wood out of the floor. There lay a Legoland Time Machine kit that he always imagined belonged to his father. There was no image on the box, just Think of the Time and Place, and Go! written in precise lettering across the side. Jameson finally had the courage to open it, and cursed the entire time he tried to put the pieces together. He was upset that, when he felt it was done, it was a handheld device and not some helicopter looking thing like he’d figured. He looked at the sole red logo and decided it was the on button. He thought about where he’d like to be, and pushed.
Kathleen’s mother was hobbling down the big cement steps of her apartment complex, just like Kathleen had described on that first night. A teen mother alone, living in a seedy tenement on the wrong side of town, going into labor while she tried to make her way down the stone stairs and into a car that took three tries to start. She stopped on the third step and looked at Jameson. She smiled when he came over, one hand holding the railing the other her stomach, the dress she wore stuck to her from sweat and the breaking of her water. Perhaps she thought he would help her when he reached out his hand, not pull her down the remaining stairs and then proceed to kick her in the stomach. Her screams were answered by windows slamming shut. Blood soaked her dress and puddled around her thighs. She lay on her side clutching her stomach, but her lithe hands were no match for Jameson’s ire.
Mari didn’t appreciate the flowers. She didn’t like the candy, or his calls. She didn’t like his romantic gesture of showing up outside her window and throwing stones at it in the wee hours of the night. They had only gone out for two weeks, but had been friends for longer. They had hung out in groups, sometimes after work with other colleagues, sometimes with Jameson’s friend Steve and Steve’s girlfriend Karen. But now she was saying words like ‘restraining order,’ like ‘scary’ and ‘frightening’ and ‘therapy’ and ‘suffocating.’ Jameson went straight home from work. His mother had made meatloaf and scalloped potatoes.
“What’s wrong sweetie?” she asked while the serving spoon squished into the casserole dish and slurped out a giant scoop of potatoes. They plopped on his dish, the oils pooling along the rim. “You look so sad.”
“Mari dumped me,” he said.
His mother sliced off a piece of meatloaf, the top shining from the baked-on ketchup. She placed it on his plate aside the potatoes.
“You know no girl is good enough for you,” she said. “Not my little boy. No, you’re mommy’s little boy and a very special one at that.”
Jameson winced at hearing her say this. She was old and crimping his style, but she was the only woman that had every truly loved him. No. No girl compared to her, and no girl would hurt him.
Jameson held the time device and pushed the red Lego. He had to be careful. Mari’s mother was married to a cop, and he had rushed her to the hospital the night of Mari’s birth. However, she shopped alone every Thursday after work. Jameson helped her carry the bags from the grocery store to the car. She thanked him and slipped him a dollar. Jameson leaned in and sniffed her. She smelled just like Mari. He smiled and nodded and later scoped out her house. She didn’t live in an apartment like Kathleen’s mother, but a real house with a chain link fence and a gate.
Jameson brought money back with him, making sure all bills and coins were dated from that time or before. He stayed in a hotel a few blocks away and followed her. Sometimes he sat in a nearby park to relax. Finally, he saw his moment and it was so much simpler than he had anticipated. He didn’t have to hit her with a car like he thought he might, merely let loose a puppy into the street, just quietly drop it from his rented car into the middle of an intersection. She swerved, other cars swerved, and while she didn’t die there was twisted metal and blood.
“How did my father woo you?” Jameson asked. He was rocking his mother and singing Someone’s Rocking My Dreamboat during the commercials of COPS.
“This again?” she sighed.
“I’m sorry mother,” he said.
“He read to me,” she replied. “Your father was always such a bastard later, but in the beginning, he read to me. He tried to love me, but didn’t know how. Not like you. You love your mommy, don’t you?”
Jameson pulled the blanket up to her neck. She held on to the remote and unmuted the television when the show came on. She giggled every time a policeman slammed someone into a car or sidewalk. This episode had her in hysterics. When the commercials came on again, she muted the channel and Jameson sang once more.
Jameson found a time he liked, five years before he caused the miscarriage of Mari. 1971. It was far enough back that the prices were lower than his time, but close enough that he could still convert his paycheck to dollars from that era or before with no problem. His money went farther there. He rented an apartment just a few blocks down from a park, the one where his mother and father would get engaged later that year. Theirs was a quick courtship.
