Necessity

Where I live, people always talk about how the summer heat feels. It feels sweltering, blazing, blistering, searing, oppressive, miserable. Some describe it in degrees: hot one today—heat index of 120 degrees—can you believe it? Some people explain it with physiology: it’s so hot out there, your sweat could water the desert. Or: it’s so hot, just looking out the window will give you a sunburn.

But when I think of the heat, my native language is frequencies. Days like today sound like cicadas hissing so loudly, your eardrums still ring with it when you step inside. They sound like the distant hum of air conditioners whirring as hard as they can in a futile battle against an unstable climate. They sound like yard sprinklers spitting awake in the early mornings, and the soft, measured breaths of melancholy naps in the afternoons. But even more elementally, it’s almost as though the air itself feels somehow thicker—soundwaves sagging loosely through it in lazy strands, making every noise seem a little hazy around the edges.

It’s almost impossible to imagine that this same thick, syrupy air will someday snap against my skin, urging me to burrow under thick blankets with fingers curled around a steaming mug—that the hissing cicadas and croaking crickets will give way to birdsong and the scratch of leaves windblown across pavement—and that everything will feel ripe again.

It’s impossible to imagine.

Because the soundwaves aren’t the only thing caught up in the goopy weight of summer heat. Every year, on this most scorching day, my mind collapses back into the same aimless suspension—slowing down time, motion, and sound until all that’s left is...her.

Or I guess us. Or maybe just me. It depends on how you look at it. And depending on when you ask, I see it from every angle. What I should have done, what I couldn’t do, what I needed, and what I didn’t have: all the ingredients that made up this moment. THE moment: the mecca I attempt to journey to in vain at the peak of each summer.

I used to dread it—used to hate the feeling of bewilderment each time that it hadn’t happened, like I’d overlooked something important. But today, I feel ready for it, as though it’s closer now than it ever has been before.

I pour myself a bottle of iced tea, pull on my tall boots, and gingerly take out the blanket that lives most contentedly at the bottom of my coat closet 364 days of the year. It isn’t until I reach the kitchen drawer that my fingers hover hesitantly. This drawer: the one that generously holds all of the loose ends that I’ve halfheartedly promised to take care of later. Its wheels squeak along the tracks as I tenderly reveal its treasures. I push a few half-full lighters, letter openers, and unused refrigerator magnets aside until I feel the cold steel brush against my fingertips.

Breath, which I hadn’t realized I'd held hostage, tumbles out of my mouth when I hold up the 5-inch rusted sheers for inspection. I open and shut the blades against one another once, twice, thrice, before carefully sheathing them in my deep overalls pocket. I absently knock the drawer shut as I make for the door and scuttle down the porch stairs, marching with purpose into the open field toward the spot.

I’m not sure how to describe the spot other than to say that I know when I’m there. There’s nothing visually distinct about these particular six square feet within hundreds of acres of flat, vaguely beige prairie. And it’s quite possible that it has never been the same spot twice. But it feels right in that same intangible way that I hear the heat sizzling on the air. So the spot just is the spot, and that’s all I can say about it.

I’ve never taken anyone here, not even the man I loved. It was the one thing I kept from him—a place too sacred for even his soul to trespass. In a well-practiced ritual, I unfold the blanket, pull off my sweaty boots, and unlatch my overalls straps so that the fabric bunches loosely at my hips. I roll my shoulders before kneeling and sliding my fingers into the grips of the rusted scissors.

I take a deep breath of thick, hot air that stings my nostrils. An echo of a shakily whispered promise reverberates in my mind: I will never let you go.

And then I cut my hair.

I take huge fistfuls of it, and I chop feverishly until I begin to feel a soft breeze wick away the sweat at the nape of my neck, sending shoots of cold shivers down my arms. The more of it I cut back, the more I begin to cry. I cry because I know what comes next, and at the same time, I have no clue if it will happen today. My body is filled with the adrenaline of maybe this time, but also, maybe not yet. 

When there’s nothing left of my hair to chop, I gather the clippings from the blanket around me and I scatter them in even clumps, taking care to arrange everything in the exact order I’d memorized from a single glance long, long ago. I wipe away my tears and take a trembling breath, unsure if I can bear another failed attempt. I’ve never truly known when or how it will happen, but despite the paranoia that I will blunder, it has always seemed absolutely vital to try. So I wait.

I lie back against the warm earth and drape an arm over my face to keep the sun from burning my eyelids. It would be close now. If it were today, I would hear it happen—the dulled frequency an oddly dissonant harmony to the cicadas’ blaring symphony. It would build slowly until crescendoing into a moment of complete, deadened silence just long enough for the hair on my arms to stand on end.

And that’s why, when the goosebumps spread across my arms, my whole body tenses with apprehensive anticipation. I lift my arm just a fraction, squinting to the other side of the blanket. And there she is. Exactly as I had shallowly hoped for so many years despite the growing knot of doubt. I’m terrified that if I move too abruptly, the moment will unravel, so I slowly sit up. She looks so young, staring wide-eyed back at me, huddled in shock at the farthest edge of the blanket.

“What the—” she starts—well, I start—to bellow.

In truth, I have waited so long for this day that the memories of that surreal moment—this surreal moment—were beginning to fade around the edges. It wasn’t possible. Isn’t possible. And yet…here I am, nearly a decade apart from myself, but together in every way that matters.

“You’re not crazy.” I say, the words feeling like an involuntary kind of déjà vu as they glide across my tongue. I see her eyes drift to my hackneyed hair. “And I’m not either.” I add with a small smile lifting the corner of my mouth.

“How is this happening?” she asks cautiously.

I shrug my shoulders. “Does that really matter more than the fact that it is happening?”

She rolls the question over in her mind for a while, and I’m silent as she takes in the scene: the same blanket she was sitting on alone just a second ago. The same meadow. The hair that litters the ground, a perfect match to her own tawny locks. I know every thought flying wildly through her mind as she rationalizes the impossibility of this moment. I remember every emotion as vividly as if it were…well…now. She’s memorizing every detail, soaking in every nuance of the scene that I would later recreate every year until the day it brought me back to her. From the second it first happened, I understood that I would live this moment twice, I just never knew exactly when. Until now.

“Then what exactly is happening?” she finally processes, “Am I—are you—or…I guess, we…like, time travelers?”

“I wouldn’t say that you are a traveler so much as that you will travel.” I explain, trying to steady my wild pulse, “Once. Today. The hottest day of the year. I don’t know how it works, but I know that it does, and I know that it’s necessary.”

“Necessary?” her eyes snap to mine, fear bleeding into her features.

“It’s necessary,” I confirm, seeing all the traces of it clearly woven through her appearance, “because you need me.”

I see the lack of sleep, the missing weight, the dullness in her hair, and the slight tremble in her fingertips clenched a little too tightly into fists at her sides as she battles the demons in her own mind. It breaks my heart how so much of my life stood poised before me despite my conviction at the time that it was all over. Her face falls with the understanding of it. She is struggling and she knows it. I know it. Because I was her once.

“And because…I need you too.” I add hesitantly, “I need you to do something. For us.”

This snatches her attention back. “What’s wrong?” she flinches, “Am I dying or something?”

Laughter buckles every nerve latticed tightly across my body. Somehow, knowing that I was about to say that didn’t make it any less amusing.

“I’m a time traveler, not a ghost.” I chortle.

Pink color floods her face as her lips soften into a mirrored smile, “I guess that would make logistics a little tricky.” she laughs at last.

“Trust me. You’re fine.” I soothe, “And you will be fine.”

“Then,” she puzzles, “what’s wrong?”

I sigh and stare out at the meadow stretching all around us. I don’t really want to say it, but I know that I will—or that I have already—in some strange time-convoluted way. So I take another steadying breath, and I speak.

“I loved someone.” I shift to study her, “You’re going to love him more than anything.”

We sit in silence for a moment as I struggle to explain—to envelope into words the years of immeasurable joy we shared, how every rigid corner of he and I fit together like the final piece of a jigsaw I hadn’t known was incomplete, the tilted axis of the world when he told me he was sick, the rage and agony of powerlessness when everything was wrenched from my hands.

“You lose him, don’t you.” she finishes for me in a soft whisper, “Or, I guess...I lose him.”

I nod soberly, unable to keep the tears from stinging my eyes.

“How?” she asks.

My throat tightens around the singular word as I choke out, “Disaster.”

“Then, what do I do?” she pleads, “How do I change it?”

I remember feeling the faith she has in these words—the blind confidence that, if I had found a way to break through time to visit my younger self, surely there was something of immense importance that I was being called upon to do. Because why would time crack open for me, of all people, and here, of all places, if not to prove that the impossible was indeed possible—that I could fix, change, alter…even save. The sadness of that faith falls like a stone in the pit of my stomach now.

“I need you to hold on to him.” I instruct, praying—and also knowing—that she can’t see the defeat in my eyes, “Don’t let your sadness keep you apart from him. Throw your whole self into every moment. You hold on so tight, that not even time can rip him away.”

I see the slight confusion painting her brow, “So…I just hold on…and that will save him?”

“You hold on,” I grit out, losing the battle against the tears, “and that will save you.”

And that’s when I feel the breeze—the lightness of it latching into me like a hook, pulling me with it across time and space. She sees it happening too. She reaches out to me, desperate for more time.

“Wait! How will I know it’s him?” she rushes, “Tell me who he is!”

It’s difficult for me to concentrate now, but I force the words through to linger on the vacant air around me, “You’ll know when you hear it.”

Suddenly, I’ve jolted up from my blanket with a start, alone once more. My body feels sore, as though I’ve just dragged a freight train a mile down the track. Exhaustion drags me down like a rushing tide, but I can already feel my skin tingle with the beginnings of a sunburn, so I rub my palms deep into my eyes and shake my head. I gingerly gather up my things, take a long swig of now-lukewarm tea, and I do the only thing that makes any reasonable sense. I make my way back to my small house at the edge of the horizon. The rhythmic thump, thump, thump of my boots as they hit the ground lulls me into a waking trance as my mind replays the conversation again and again.

But of course, nothing has changed. No new memories start to surface. Nothing about my life shifts from anything it was before. I am mindful as ever of the now-dull throb of his space in my soul. I still remember the words I said to him moments before he drifted out of my reach—words I recite to myself every day: I will never let you go.

I have, after all, already been that girl I just met on the blanket. I have already played audience to every choice—already felt like I had failed a thousand times when I held on as tightly as I could, and death still ripped him away from me. I have already endlessly contemplated the futility of this annual trek because it had never once been about changing the past.

There has always been so little I knew about what happened today. And even so, I’d accepted long ago that no amount of additional information could’ve held back the tide of fate. His fate. And mine. No matter how little material change my visit affected, I knew that when I’d sat there on that blanket, I wasn’t alone. And perhaps that’s what I needed more than anything: assurance that, when I’d done all that I possibly could have done and disaster still prevailed, I would find a way to carry on through the crippling pain of it. I would find a way to hold on for him…for me. And I did—I held on as tightly as I could and treasured every savored happiness so that not even time could erase him from my heart.

I suppose now that my visit has always given me a nearly intangible sense of purpose. It’s like I’d told myself all those years ago (or perhaps just a moment ago): why it happened, how it happened…they are much less significant than that it did happen. It happened when I needed me the most.

And now that the moment in its entirety has finally come and gone, I think I should feel relieved. For almost a decade, I’ve held onto this—been tied together by the strings of time to this exact place and moment of necessity. But now that the string has been severed, I can’t tell if I feel free…or just lost.

Sweat drips generously down my spine when I reach the porch steps. I slowly ascend, leaning heavily into the door as I step inside the house. I yank free of my boots only to collapse against the wall, my ears still thrumming with echoing cicadas as my head lolls to the side. I know there’s more life ahead to hold onto. There must be. It’s just that, for the first time, I don’t know for certain. The world seems to deafen with the weight of it. Goosebumps rise on my arms as sweat evaporates from my skin.

And that’s when I hear it. The solid, startling clatter of a pot being slid onto the stove in the kitchen. My body goes rigid as I scramble for something to clutch for protection. But the noises begin to build, layering in on themselves in an eerily familiar composition: shuffling footsteps, creaking cabinet hinges, the crack of eggshells, a softly hummed melody.

My arms go slack at my sides. My mind leaps toward the person who had hummed that exact melody the day I met him, and nearly every day after. Every thought, every hope, leaps toward him. I approach the kitchen cautiously as my heart pounds against my ribs. Perhaps I had been wrong all this time. Perhaps the world had bent in on itself once more, inverting impossibility into reality.

I hesitate for just a moment, steeling myself before rounding the corner. And then I stop short—the world suspended in a moment drawn out by decades—because slightly greyed tawny locks lie scattered across the floor in haphazard clumps. My mouth falls open as my eyes drift up to meet a figure with close-cropped hair and eyes glinting with mischief.

“It’s really much easier with clippers, you know.” her smile—my smile—is wide open when she sees the single tear race down my cheek. She cocks her head to the side, “What? You didn’t think you’d ever grow it out, did you?”