Calling Her the Next Day

Lori, hi. I just wanted to thank you again for last night. It was… surprising. And wonderful. You looked amazing. Dinner was great. I loved our conversation. I just felt such a connection, you know? I hope you did, too. I loved our little walk to your place – all those stars. And then, at your place – you know – the way we....

Well, anyway, it was just perfect. I loved it, all of it. I left your place this morning still tingling, like the whole world was vibrating. All the way home I kept thinking: it doesn’t get much better than this, you know? All the rest of my life I could spend trying to recapture that kind of perfect moment. Maybe I could be that completely happy again someday; maybe I could even be a little bit happier – but I can’t imagine it would be by much. The other thing I kept thinking was: I can die right now. It kept going on and on in my head: I can die right now, I can die right now….

So when I got home, I decided… that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Cash it in, check out, get out while I’m on top. I hope I’m not freaking you out, I really don’t mean to do that. And it’s nothing you did – or it’s everything you did, but in a good way, you know? I just want to make sure you know it’s not your fault. There is no fault. This is a good thing.

And it’s not as if this is coming out of the blue. All my life, I’ve been determined to eventually end things on my terms. I’ve always been ready, I’ve always been prepared. I’ve even planned how to do it. It’ll be quick, and painless, and – not messy. Like falling asleep. All my affairs are in order; they’ve always been in order. So, again, don’t worry about this being anything bad.

God, I really hope I’m not freaking you out. I thought about not calling you at all, but I couldn’t go without thanking you. So, thank you. From the bottom of me heart. And I wish you all the best. I hope you live a long and happy life. I hope you have a life full of moments like what I felt last night, like what you made me feel last night.

Take care.

(February 2013)

A Hostage in Time

David and Sylvia are the only ones remaining in the lab, performing diagnostics on the portal after having sent through it several cases of classified CIA files. In twenty-five years, the documents would reappear in the portal, ready to be unsealed, the court-mandated time period having elapsed. If the man had come in a couple of hours earlier, the place would have been swarming with agents. But he had obviously been watching the building carefully and waited until almost everyone was gone for the day.

He enters through the lab door, shoving Serge the night watchman before him. Serge stumbles and falls, and remains on the floor where he lies, face down, barely moving but breathing heavily, his bloody hand pressed to the side of his head. Bewildered, Sylvia is about to go to Serge, but freezes when she sees the gun the man is holding in his fist. Suddenly it’s all she can see. It seems so huge; it seems to loom and fill the room. It seems to stop time itself.

Her heart starts pounding in her ears; she begins saying to herself, I have to keep calm, I have to keep calm, I mustn’t miscarry. Over and over the words run in a spool in her mind: a litany, a prayer.

“All right, you two,” the man says to them grimly. He gestures with his gun to the arch that rises from the platform in the middle of the lab. “I want to use that thing. I want you to send me back in time.”

Sylvia and David look at each other, two masks of fear mirroring each other. David says, “I’m… I’m sorry. We can’t do that.”

The man yells, “Don’t give me that! That’s a time machine! I want to go back to the past. Seven years, four months, two days. Send me back now!”

David tries to make his tone reasonable. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.”

“Bullshit! I’ve read up on it. People go through it and they show up months, years in the future. Just put it in reverse and send me backwards!”

David licks his lips. “Please understand: I’m not refusing. We just can’t send you back in time.”

“Are you sure about that?” The man aims his gun at David’s face. Sylvia hears his sharp intake of breath.

“Wait, wait!” Sylvia screams. “He’s not lying! Please, let me try to explain.” She trembles when the man turns the gun on her and she finds herself staring into the black pit of its barrel. I have to keep calm, I have to keep calm…

She forces herself to speak. “Yes, the arch is a temporal portal. A… a time machine. It creates a field that touches every point in the time continuum. Theoretically, it allows passage to any point in the continuum, including the past. But in reality, physical objects can only move in one direction.” She pauses, suddenly struck by the horrifying absurdity of the scene. My God, am I really lecturing temporal theory to a madman?

She continues, talking hurriedly, “The future! To what we call the future. We’re already moving along the time stream in that direction. The portal allows you to jump ahead. That’s what you read about. We can send people, things forward in time. People who are sick who may find a treatment for their diseases in the future. Or… or artifacts that gain value over time, like paintings or antiques. But it doesn’t allow us to send anything to the past, it’s… it's just not possible…” Her voice trails away, faltering at the man’s cold expression.

David tries to take it on. “Look, you’ve seen time travel movies, right? Someone goes back in time, makes some kind of change in the past, and things change in the present? Well, that’s the movies. In reality, that can’t ever happen. If it were possible for an agent – a person, or any physical object – to enter the portal and go back in time, it would alter the time stream so the agent never would have entered the portal in the first place. The universe resolves the paradox by preventing even the possibility of backwards travel. When we try to set the temporal field to a point in the past, all that happens is the field disappears.”

Sylvia adds, “It’s just a universal, chronophysical principle. The past is fixed. It’s already happened. Nothing more can happen in it. But the future is undetermined, open. It hasn’t happened yet, so any number of things can still occur. An agent sent to the future simply becomes one of those many things that can still occur. It’s like –” she lights up with a sudden insight “– it’s like we’re all walking through a tunnel that’s caving in, filling up behind us. We can go forward – even leap forward – because the way forward is still free. But behind us, the tunnel has already closed itself up.”

The man glowers at them fiercely. “You think I’m dumb? I told you: I read up on it. I read in the net that that’s what all you time scientists say, but you’re really just hiding the truth. You just don’t want people to know that backwards time travel is possible. Like you said, going back and changing the past can change things, can change history. Someone might go back in time and help the Nazis invent the atom bomb or something. And you’re afraid of that happening, so you cover it up.”

David groans. “That’s not the case at all! Those are just conspiracy theory websites that –”

The man interrupts him. “Well, I don’t want to change history. I don’t want to change anything important. I just need to go back seven years, four months, two days and do just one little thing that’ll make no difference to anyone – except me.”

David asks, “Why? Why that time span? What happened seven years ago?”

The man suddenly looks to be in agony. He says, “That’s the day before my wife and kid…” He chokes up. “I tried to save a few bucks and tried to fix the gas heater myself. I wasn’t even home when it happened…”

He pulls himself together. “I’ve got to go back and get them out of the house. Or stop myself from being such a damned fool. I have to make things right!”

The mad light returns to his eyes. “So you see, if I can’t go back, then I have nothing left anyway. And nothing to lose. So start telling the truth now and help me, or I’m going to shoot you all –“ he swings his gun in a slow arc “– maybe starting with this rent-a-cop here.” The gun stops, pointing straight at Serge’s prone figure on the ground.

“Wait, wait!” Sylvia pleads. “We’ll help you! You’re right, it’s a cover-up! Time travel to the past is possible. We tell everyone it’s not because we don’t want anyone to alter the timeline. We’ll send you back like you asked.” David stares at her astonished.

The man smiles at her grimly, triumphantly. “I thought you might.”

“I’ll need to program the arch, on that console over there.”

He waves her through. She steps to the console and starts working the touch screen, trying to keep her hands from shaking. The man sidles over and peers over her shoulder, but keeps an eye on the others. She enters the command to power the portal. She looks up and he follows her gaze. A milky white field has appeared, stretching across the arch.

“Tell me what you’re doing,” the man says.

“I’ve… I’ve activated the field.” She points to the monitor on the console. “I’m about to enter the time period you said. Seven years… What – what was it again?”

“Seven years, four months, two days,” he says. She taps on the screen.

He asks, “What happens now?”

“You just walk through the arch, through that white field. You come out on the other side of the arch in the past.”

“Sounds simple enough.” He raises his gun at her. “But you’re coming with me. Just in case you’re trying to pull a fast one.”

The blood drains from Sylvia’s face. “No, please! I’m three months pregnant! My life is here, now! I didn’t even know my husband seven years ago! I’d have no way of coming back, the portals back then weren’t powerful enough!”

Her imploration barely fazes him. He scowls his impatience. “You’ll see him again… in time. It ain’t that long to wait.”

A sob breaks out of her. “Please.”

“Move.” He jabs her shoulder blade with the barrel.

“Wait.” She nods to David, her cheeks streaked with tears. “David has to monitor the field as we go through. To make sure the field is stable.”

He turns to David and says, “All right. You come here.” David moves to take her place at the console. He glances at her with surprise when he sees the screen.

The man takes her by the arm. She tries to pull away, but he is relentless. He drags her up the steps to the platform, pauses in front of the arch, then gives her a nudge to let her know she should go first. She holds her breath and walks into the white space…

…and ducks instantly, dropping to the platform as quickly but as carefully as she can. I mustn’t miscarry, I mustn’t miscarry!

A half dozen black-clad, armored figures are standing in a half circle on the other side of the arch, pointing rifles at the platform. She covers her head with her arms. Someone shouts over her in a booming voice, “LOWER YOUR WEAPON! NOW!” There is a moment’s silence, then the air shatters in a series of bone-jarring explosions. The gunfire stops, and she hears a loud thud behind her, and two of the black-clad men are lifting her up and half-carrying, half-dragging her away. She looks back over her shoulder and manages to see before she is pulled out the door that a couple of other black-clad men are approaching the platform slowly in a crouch, swirling the lingering smoke in their wake, their weapons aimed at the heap that lies bloody and twisted under the arch.

* * *

Several hours later, David enters Sylvia’s hospital room. She has been admitted overnight for observation, just to make absolutely certain she and her baby have come through the ordeal unscathed.

Sylvia smiles tiredly from her bed. “How’s Serge?”

David replies, “He’s in ICU. He has a concussion, but they say he’s going to be all right.” He sits down on the chair beside her bed. “Thank you. That was really quick thinking. You saved all our lives.”

She shakes her head. “I was so terrified, you’ll never know.” She adds, “You kept your head, too. When you saw I had programmed the portal to send us forward, you got Serge out, called the police, let them know the situation, so they were ready when we came through the arch… an hour later.”

He shrugs. “What really embarrasses me is you had me believing for a moment that everything I knew about temporal physics was wrong, and you really were about to go back in time. You were so convincing.”

“I wish traveling to the past was possible. I’d go through the portal right now and skip today.”

He puffs his cheeks and blows his breath out. “I’d join you.”

(March 2013)

Rejoinder

She was slumped deep in the sofa cushions, still dazed, her insides jello still quivering from the shock. Still staring at her apartment door. She couldn’t take her eyes off the damned door. The door he had closed behind him softly but with finality when he left; that he had used for his cliché-ridden exit. Really, Bob? she said silently to the door. You really think that it was just that we had grown apart? That we just don’t want the same things anymore? That no one is to blame, really? Or if there was anyone at fault, that it wasn’t me, it was you? And you’re really sure now that someone else will come along who would be so much better for me? She couldn’t decide what pissed her off more: 1. that he had reached the conclusion she had still been working her way towards (for of course he was right that things had gone pffft between them long ago); 2. that he had snatched the role of oh-so-gracious dumper before she had a chance to (leaving her the dumpee); 3. that he had laid on her cliché after infuriating cliché; or 4. that she had been left speechless as each patronizing platitude fell upon her like a blow, locking up her brain, leaving her open-mouthed, unable to even squeak out a retort or response. Over and over, her thoughts kept bouncing between 1, 2, 3, and 4, like a ping-pong ball in a doubles match, faster and faster, until her mind was a white blur. Unable to contain her oscillating anger any further, she yelled to the empty room, “OH, YEAH? FINE BY ME! JUST MAKE SURE THE DOOR…” Wait, that wasn’t right. “I mean, umm… don’t let... DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOUR ASS ON THE WAY OUT!” Hah! So there! Then, impelled by an urgent need to drive it home with one final exclamation point, she rose from the sofa, stomped to the door, opened it, and – BLAM! – slammed it shut on him so thunderously the pictures on the wall flinched on their hooks. She stood before the door, hands on her hips, still panting, nostrils still flaring. Okay. Silly. But it felt good anyway. Twenty minutes late, but still.

(February 2013)

The Stories of Your Lives

You were so few and unobtrusive when you first started appearing that you did not even register in my awareness.

Truth to tell, I cannot say with certainty that I even had any awareness at all at the time – certainly not of you; nor, perhaps, of anything else.

You were all so ephemeral.

You were like a puff of wind, like mist, like distant sparks in the corner of my eye that winked out before I could turn to you.

But over time, more and more of you started drifting towards me from the other side, forming gusts and flurries, like snowflakes blowing in only to melt in the air.

Over time, I woke up to your nebulous presence billowing in and dissipating all at once.

Over time, I learned how to differentiate each one of you from the myriad others in that burgeoning cloud.

I learned to see the uniqueness of each spark, to catch each singular snowflake, to discern the patterns each of you formed.

I learned to know what you truly were.

Thus did I realize – slowly, haltingly – that you were the final unraveling thoughts and memories parting from your mortal selves on the other side, just as your mayfly lives moved towards termination.

* * *

Many of you were fragmentary: merely broken pieces of the final sights and sounds and sensations that you perceived, the last emotions you felt.

The surprise as the black, metal grill of the truck loomed instantaneously, impossibly large; the dark, massive shock as the screeching world crushed you.

The weeping faces of your loved ones looking down on you, growing dimmer against the backdrop of the larger darkness.

Watching yourself from the ceiling with the utmost clarity and compassion, as the gloved hands of the green-garbed man worked furiously inside your open chest.

The fluttering, dissociated images of your dreams as you passed away in your sleep.

The sound of your breathing becoming raspy and labored, the beating of your heart growing fainter and further apart – the only sounds remaining in the world, slowly fading away.

The strains of a song you once heard.

The scent of cinnamon from your grandfather’s bakery.

Your long-dead mother’s voice, speaking inaudibly but lovingly.

And so on, and so on.

* * *

Some of you were more complex, forming more coherent wholes.

Some of you flashed through memories spanning your entire life, all in an instant – providing me with a narrative of your existence.

Some of you saw beings in your mind, with whom you spoke, who bestowed upon you a sense of contentment and unconditional love.

Some of you beheld visions and images of strange, fully conceived places that never existed in your world.

Some of you felt yourselves falling or flying into an all-encompassing light, being surrounded by it, experiencing a peace and bliss you had heretofore never felt.

Sometimes I wonder if it was my being these last few sensed in those final moments, mistaking me for the light.

Perhaps.

* * *

But then you dissolved, just as countless others came in to take your place in a roiling, unceasing fog – only to dissolve themselves.

All of you, every last one.

* * *

Of course, many of the things I have spoken of do not really exist in this immaterial realm, on this side of the divide.

There are no sparks, no wind, no mists, no gusts nor flurries, no snowflakes, no air, no clouds; I have no eye to see you with, no head to turn to you.

Until you came to prick my awareness, there were not even such things as words, or thoughts, or time.

There was no I.

There was, I surmise, only an inert, insensible being that only slowly became conscious of itself when you began to appear and it began to perceive you.

Becoming aware of you, awareness stirred within myself.

Becoming cognizant of the period when I slowly awakened, and measuring my growing consciousness from that point, my awareness shifted into forward motion, putting me on the track of time.

Learning your thoughts and memories, I grew to know your words.

Deciphering your words, I pieced together the over-arching story of your kind.

And the more I knew about the moments of your deaths, the more I understood the stories of your lives: your experiences of sorrow, fear, anger, regret, joy, contentment, solace, grace, love, peace, resignation, curiosity, surprise, awe, compassion.

And so I have been changed, and continue to be changed.

And so there is a me to be changed.

And so more and more I have been fashioned as an image of you.

* * *

I do not know what this all means.

I do not why you have come to me to affect me so.

I know you do not mean to do so, that your passing briefly into my realm is not something you intended, nor have any power to accomplish, really.

I know that many of you believed in a teleological direction to your lives, a purpose for your existence – or for existence – though few of you were ever able to attain complete certitude in these matters.

Thus, your uncertainty and doubt give rise to mine.

Perhaps there is a purpose to all of this, though I do not know what it could be.

Perhaps I will discover it someday; perhaps it will become clear.

Sometimes, I do vaguely feel as if I am moving towards something.

Sometimes, when I am moved by the joy and happiness that you have imparted upon me, I think that this is all a gift – that your coming has been and continues to be a gift.

But then sometimes, as I contemplate the truly enormous weight of your fear and suffering that I have had to bear, I think this is the worst possible affliction of all.

And then sometimes, even as I apprehend you as you continue flowing towards me in an ever-growing haze, I am caught by something else entirely: a stillness, an empty space – and I am left to simply wonder.

(February 2013)

Stranded

You scan the parking lot as soon as you peel away from the burbling stream of children pouring out of the school entrance. You spot my car in the lines of waiting cars, and just for an instant, there and gone, a look of relief flashes on your little girl face. But the expression winks out at once, replaced by a frown. You let your bulging backpack weigh you down, so that you are slouched and shuffling as you amble towards me and my car. It’s been nearly a week now, and you still haven’t forgiven me – not yet – though I think you’re getting close.

You open the back door, dump your backpack on the backseat, and clamber in. My smile and chirping “Hi, sweetie!” bounce off you as you arrange yourself carefully on the seat and drape the seatbelt across your chest and click it in. I turn around to face front, but continue watching you through the rearview mirror. You only graduated from your car seat last year. Divested of that bulky, plastic, cushioned appurtenance, you seem so small now against the gray fabric backdrop of the backseat. A familiar feeling washes over me: of joy and repose, streaked with just a tinge of heartbreak, at how small and beautiful you are. A familiar feeling, and yet still, always surprising.

The cars ahead of us move forward in fits and stops, car length by car length, taking on their young passengers, until at last we are at the head of the line and clear to exit. I maneuver the car onto the street and we are on our way home.

“How was school, sweetie?” I ask. Your answer was, of course, clipped: “Good.”

I have to keep trying, though. “Anything happen? What did you do during recess? Did you play with Tricia and Megumi?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do?”

“Played in the slide.”

Hmmm. So, maybe not so close as I’d hoped. After you had tantalized me last night by letting me read you a bedtime story after having refused for three nights.

But then you add, unasked, “Some of the boys kept sliding down and then they kept crawling back up the slide instead of going around. We didn’t get many turns.” – and I brighten up.

“That wasn’t fair,” I say, pricking my ear for a hoped-for response.

But you remain silent, and I sigh, wearying of your stuttering, two-steps-forward, one-step-back dance towards me. But then that, in other circumstances, is one of the blessings of you, isn’t it? That wider, more expansive sense of time that you have that sometimes forces me to step out of my frenzied tempo of life, so filled with drop dead deadlines and constricted minutes and things that needed to be done yesterday. You make me match your pace, slow down to your more measured, more deliberate, more hesitant rhythms.

It had been a deadline at work, dumped on me last minute, that had delayed me in leaving the office to pick you up on Monday, five days ago. I had tried to rush to you to make up for time, but several cars ahead of me had piled into each other in a string of fender benders that slowed traffic to a crawl. It was in a state of growing agitation that I inched forward in my car and watched the dashboard clock as it ticked slowly to 3:00 o’clock, then touched it, then stretched on past it. I had wanted to call the school to let them know, but when I scrounged around inside my purse for my cell phone, in a moment of face-blanching consternation, I found that I had forgotten it at work in my hurry to leave.

I finally reached the near-empty school parking lot, driving in slowly, taking care not to tear into it. I saw you sitting on a bench along the wall, hugging your backpack, your face pinched and tear-streaked, your mouth downturned in an inconsolable little pout that tore me to pieces. Your teacher, Ms. Wati, was sitting with you. I parked and ran to you at once, but I had to hug you and your backpack together since you kept holding it in front of you. I explained, to you and to Ms. Wati. Ms. Wati was annoyed and disapproving; she cautioned me how important it was to be on time, especially with younger, sensitive children such as yourself. But she is an adult, and well-versed in the vicissitudes of life; despite her reproof, I am sure she understood.

You did not, and you were unforgiving. And I understood. It was just forty-two minutes that I made you wait, but, as I knew, time passes for you differently than it does for me. Forty-two minutes is barely anything to me, just an instant that flies by. But to you, it must have been endless – and horrible. There must have been ten or fifteen terrifying minutes there, after you saw the last of the cars drive off, when you felt you had been left behind, when you imagined you had been abandoned forever. I quite understand why you have been so hurt and intractable. It didn’t matter that it was the first time I had ever been late, that it was one transgression after years of reliable constancy; indeed, the breaking of the pattern might have made it worse – like the breaking of a promise, like the cracking of a foundation that once seemed solid.

I turn into our street. We are nearing home. I say, still trying, still in a cheery tone, “It’s Friday. Tomorrow morning, we’re visiting grandpa and grandma.”

You say, “I remember.”

“They’ll be so happy to see you. Are you looking forward to it?”

“Yes.”

I turn into our driveway and park the car. I get out and open the door for you. You unstrap yourself, climb down, pull your backpack after you. We walk to the front door in silence and I unlock the door and open it. You enter our house. I pause for a moment, and think about how these little moments – even the wretched ones in which it seems things have unraveled between us – are the threads we are slowly weaving together, that are being stranded together in a skein, binding me to you forever. You may not know this yet, but I do. 

I walk in, following you.

(February 2013)

The Birthday Party

He had been sitting by her bed for a couple of hours, reading, when she finally stirred. She emerged from her sleep slowly, with long, ponderous blinks, then stared at him blearily, blankly. He got up to stand beside her.

“Hi, Mom. How are you feeling?”

She merely looked at him, through him.

“Do you recognize me? Do you know who I am?”

She shook her head slowly. She said in a rasping whisper, “I don’t know who you are. But you do seem familiar. Are you my brother Joseph?”

He grimaced. “No, Mom. Uncle Joe died more than five years ago. I’m your son, Jeremy.”

She said nothing, and presently closed her eyes once again.

* * *

“She’s about where we expect her to be. The memory loss – it’s a toss-up if that’s from the Alzheimer’s or the astrocytoma. However, she’s been having more frequent hallucinatory episodes, and that’s almost certainly from the tumor pressing on her temporal lobes and causing dream-like seizures.”

Jeremy sat slumped in his chair in Dr. Samuel Kyle’s office. He said, “She keeps seeing faces, people then?”

Dr. Kyle said, “Yes. Some of them frighten her, some confuse her. The nurses sometimes catch her talking to herself, questioning people who aren’t there. And she's starting to suffer from misperceptions, misidentifications; sometimes she mistakes the nurses for other people, people from her past.”

Jeremy looked at the neurologist balefully. “I know. She thought I was her brother just now.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jeremy stood up heavily. Dr. Kyle observed him with a clinical eye. He said, “Are you taking care of yourself, Jeremy? I’m sure you got that talk about how caregivers have to make sure to see to their own needs.”

Jeremy smiled wanly. “I’m fine. I’m just a little worn out. It’s just been a long couple of years, you know?” He shook Dr. Kyle’s hand. “I’ll be back tomorrow. It’s her birthday.”

“Yes, I’d heard you wanted to give her a party.”

Jeremy’s smile faded. “Well, that was the plan. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find anyone to come.” He shrugged. “Most of her friends are gone or not in good health themselves. It’ll just be me, most likely.”

“What about your family?”

Jeremy shook his head. “My father’s passed away. Her brother and sister are both gone, too. Maybe my sister, if I can convince her.”

Dr. Kyle leaned back in his chair. “Well, a small, quiet celebration might be for the best. This may sound terrible, but it’s not likely she would appreciate a party… or remember it afterwards, really. Her short-term memory is almost gone.”

Jeremy looked grim as he left.

* * *

“It’s her 78^th birthday, Shannon,” Jeremy said to his sister over the phone. “Are you really sure you can’t make it?” He had thought of reminding her that with the tumor slowly growing in her brain, their mother likely wouldn’t have a 79^th – but he decided against playing that card.

A short silence over the line. “I told you before, tomorrow’s a really busy day for me. We’re doing inventory at the store, I can’t take the day off. And it’s an hour and a half drive to the home.”

“But if you…”

“Besides, it’s not as if she’ll even know it’s her birthday,” she continued, talking over him, echoing Dr. Kyle’s line of reasoning. “She won’t even remember it the next day.” He let the justification, the excuse of their mother’s mental deterioration – which he had heard a number of times from people he had tried to invite to the party – pass. He understood it to be cover for the reluctance, the fear, the sadness of dealing with someone who wasn’t all there, who was all but gone.

Shannon went on, “My shifts will lighten up in a few weeks, after we get through our busy season. I’ll try to visit her next month.”

“Okay.”

“You let me know if anything changes with her, all right?”

“Okay.”

* * *

One last try.

Jeremy stood beside his parked car in front of the college hall steps, scanning the young men and women as they streamed out the front door. Finally he saw his son emerge with a small group of friends. Jake spotted him, and, with a quick word to his friends, went down the steps to Jeremy.

Jake looked confused. “Hey, Pops. What’s up? What are you doing here?”

“I was wondering if you got my invitation to your grandmother’s birthday party tomorrow.”

“Um, yeah. Or Mom told me about it. Didn’t she get back to you?”

“Well, yes. I know your Mom doesn’t want to come; I understand if it’s still too soon after the divorce. But I was hoping you would change your mind and join us. It’ll just be an hour or two for lunch.”

Jake glanced back at his friends, who were watching them from the steps. “Um, yeah. I don’t know. It’s such a long way. And I have a study group tomorrow.”

Jeremy nodded. “I understand.”

Jake studied his father, noting the sag of his shoulders, the tight set of his mouth, then said, “You know what? Why not. I haven’t seen Grams in months. What time is it? Would you mind if I rode with you?”

Jeremy’s face brightened. “Of course, not a problem. I’ll pick you up at your house at 10:30.”

Jake patted his father’s arm, then turned to rejoin his friends.

* * *

On the day of the party, a blessing. When Jeremy entered his mother’s room, he noticed at once that she seemed a little stronger, a little more alert than usual. She was propped up on her bed with pillows, and she looked like she had been freshly cleaned up and dressed by the nurses. She peered at Jeremy closely as he came in burdened with take-out food and a small box of cake.

She smiled and said in greeting, “Joseph.”

Jeremy paused just inside the room. She looked past him, and smiled again. Jake had just come in after his father, towing behind him several brightly-colored balloons. “And Jeremy. How nice to see you, son. I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.”

Jeremy and Jake exchanged glances. Jake said, “Um, it’s Jake, Grams. Happy Birthday.”

But she had turned back to stare at the open door, her smile widening further. She said, “And Beth, and my good friends Chandra and Pepper and Ward, and Mr. Abe, and Mrs. Woods from down the block, and Mom and Dad. But where’s Shannon? Oh, here she comes. How are you, dear?”

Jeremy and Jake cast about the near empty room as they set the food on the side table and tied the balloons in various spots. She continued looking around beatifically at her phantom guests, nodding to each one in turn.

She said, “My, I don’t know how we’ll all fit in this small room.” Then her face turned anxious, and she waved to Jeremy to come closer. She whispered, “But where’s Tom? Why isn’t he here yet?”

Jeremy shifted uncomfortably, “Um, Mom, Dad’s not coming. He left us, you know, quite a while…”

But she had turned away from him, smiling again, looking at the still open door. “Oh, there he is.”

Jeremy turned to where she was gazing, expecting to see just more empty space. He was startled to see Dr. Kyle standing at the doorway with a bouquet of flowers. He said to Jeremy, “I hope you don’t mind that I stopped by. I just wanted to drop this off for Mrs. –”

She stretched out her thin arms to him, saying, “Thomas, sweetheart.”

Dr. Kyle looked at Jeremy questioningly as he walked in. Jeremy whispered to him hurriedly, “My father. She thinks you’re my father.” Jeremy looked at him with an expression wrought with pleading.

Dr. Kyle returned his stare, momentarily nonplussed, then nodded. He turned to Jeremy’s mother and laid the bouquet beside her. “And how are you today, dear one?”

She took his hands in hers. “I’m very happy. Is this all for me? Is it my birthday?”

Dr. Kyle said, “Yes, it is. Happy Birthday.”

She closed her eyes blissfully. “It was so good of you to surprise me with a party. How did you get everyone to come?”

Dr. Kyle glanced at Jeremy, “Well, actually, it was Jeremy’s idea. He planned the whole thing.”

She turned to Jake and motioned him over. She pulled him slowly to her to clasp him in an embrace. “You are such a thoughtful boy. I am so blessed to have such a thoughtful boy. This is the best party I have ever had. I will never forget it.”

Dr. Kyle sensed Jeremy move away and sit down on the armchair by the window. He turned to look at him, then quickly interposed himself between him and his mother, so that she could not see him as he sat on the chair, his face in his palms, his shoulders heaving silently as he was wracked with soundless sobs.

(January 2013)