The Midzone

The Midzone

It was a pleasant office, even more so than all the other pleasant offices I've been in; sunshine, plants, antimacassars on the armchairs, and the fainting couch where I supposed I was to recline.

It was my first visit to the highly touted Dr. Robinson, who remained seated in an armchair when I entered her office. I excused that on account of her pleasant rotundness. She had knitting needles in hand, going a mile a minute on some magenta yarn, and there were more balls of yarn in a bowl on the table beside her. 

“Please, take a seat, Rosalie. Recline if you like. I understand you have a little problem you'd like to discuss.”

“Well, it's unusual. You've read the report from my Primary?”

"Most certainly. My area of expertise is in post-traumatic childhood issues. Lie down, won't you dear, and tell me when this began. If you remember."

"Oh, I remember, alright. Not the exact day or year, though I was about eight. I was with my mother and older brother, and we were watching television. It was at night, at my bedtime, and I was watching from the staircase since I was supposed to be in bed."

“Do you feel guilty about that?”

"Of course not, but in retrospect, I wish I'd never sat on the stairs that night or heard of 'The Midzone.'

“Ah, interesting program. What was on that night?”

"The story of a little boy who fell through a time warp under his bed! The music was spooky, the black and white filming was ominous, and the child screamed. I was traumatized beyond belief! That vision of the child falling has stayed with me, and I've been patting the floor, checking for time warps under any bed I sleep in from that day on. Even now. And I don't like my cats going under the bed. If I'm vacuuming, they'll hide under there, so I've started taking them to my neighbor's when I vacuum."

“How often do you vac?”

“Two or three times a week.”

Dr Robinson tsked. 

“Cat hair,” I explained. “It gets all over.”

“Don't I know it.”

Dr R. moved her elbow, and a ball of yarn was knocked from the bowl and rolled under the table.

"Be a dear, Rosalie, and get that for me?"

"Of course, Dr. Robinson." I took a knitting needle from the bowl, poked the yarn out, and put them back in the bowl.

"Thank you, dear. Do you think time warps are real? And did you think there might have been one under the table?"

"They were certainly real in that program, so I don't take any chances."

“But now, present day, do you think they're real”

"They could be, couldn't they?" 

“What happened when you got scared the night you watched the program?”

"My mother sent me off to bed, and my brother laughed at me and called me chicken because I screamed."

“What did you do when you got to your room?”

"I stared at my bed from the doorway, sat on the floor, and peered under. I didn't see anything, but you know that doesn't mean there's nothing there. Especially something you can't see. My cat was asleep on the bed, but he didn't weigh much. I didn't either, but the tipping point, that's what you have to watch out for. You never know when something will change everything. Like the straw that broke the camel's back. The child in the program was little, five or so."

Dr Robinson nodded, sending her body rocking. Another ball of yarn fell to the floor. I wasn't sure, but her foot might have knocked it farther under her chair.

I thankfully left that uncomfortable moment, reliving that night 30 years ago, and flicked the ball out with the knitting needle and placed them in the bowl for her. 

"You like cats?" Dr. Robinson asked.

“Oh, yes. I especially loved that cat. He was the only friend I had.”

“Would you have gone after him if his weight had been the tipping point?”

I stared at Dr. Robinson. Would I have? I didn't have to that night; nothing happened that night.

“I don't know.”

"But you eventually did get into bed and go to sleep, right?"

Well, yes. When my mother came up, she made me get in. But I patted the floor just in case. It felt solid."

"And every night after that?"

"Yes. I always checked the floor first. I was eight years old. Eight-year-olds scare easily."

“But,” and Dr. Robinson leaned forward to be more emphatic, “How old are you now?” The ball of magenta yarn she was working with rolled off her lap and under the couch I was lying on.

"I'm...."

"Would you get that for me, please, Rosalie?" She smiled at me.

I got down on the floor and looked under the couch. The yarn was toward the back. I tried pulling the string, but it just unwound from the ball. Knitting needles were too short; the thing was an arm's length away. I'd have to reach under. I looked back at the Dr.; she was nodding and smiling away like it was no big deal. The fat klutz.

When I looked again, the ball seemed closer. It hadn't fallen into a warp; that was a plus. I could reach it and keep my arm from touching the floor. 

I knelt in a stable position on the floor in front of the couch and, bending over my knees, reached for it and grabbed it. And screamed.

The tipping point. Always an unknown.

I screamed like an eight-year-old as I fell into a black void, then sideways through a brightly lit tunnel until it became a subway car with passengers all holding onto straps and poles. They streamed sideways horizontally with their newspapers and paperbacks in hand as I flew screaming past them into another void and then into my childhood living room and screamed some more.

"Rosalie, would you stop screaming!" my mother said. "Why must you scream? I thought you were in bed."

"Mom?"

"Rosie's a chicken, caluck, caluck, cluck." My brother mocked. "She's always scared of this show."

Neither one looked at me. I looked at the TV screen. There was the little boy, and he was falling headlong into the warp under his bed. I moaned.

“Go to bed.” my mother said.

Cluck, cluck, cluck," my brother chanted.

I climbed the ten steps to the landing, turned right for three more steps and eleven steps down the hallway to my little room at the end, and opened the door. The overhead light wasn't on, but a dim glow came from the lump of bedclothes on the bed. The lump moved, the sheets parted, and a flashlight blinded me. 

"Who are you?" said my eight-year-old self. "You're not Mom, but you look like her."

"It's, well, it's me. I'm you."

The little eight-year-old girl looked at me with eyes that had seen worse than what she was seeing now and whispered, "Are you from the time warp?"

How could I answer that? I lifted my shoulders and spread my hands. I finally came out with, “I'm not sure. That horrible program is on downstairs.”

“I know,” young Rosalie said, “a rerun. I was on the stairs and decided to come to bed.”

“Did you pat the floor?”

“You know?”

"I'm you, Rosie, only older. I did fall in, but I was tricked, and now it seems I'm here."

"I've seen enough episodes of Midzone to believe you."

"Isn't something weird supposed to happen if someone meets up with herself in a different time?"

Young Rosie shook her head. “That's only in the movies. In real life, a person's cells do a complete makeover every seven years. Your cells and mine are entirely different. I learned that in school this week. You're-how old are you?"

“Thirty-eight.”

Then you and I are..." Rosie used her fingers, "You and I are more than four times removed from each other. We're good."

“Good. You know, I'd love to see Peek again. Is he under the covers with you?”

“He's here, but don't come too close, just in case.”

Rosie retreated under the covers and emerged with my kitty from childhood. I stretched a hand to pet him; ahhh, memories flooded back. He wriggled from Rosie's grasp and jumped to the floor toward me. 

“Don't let him go under the bed,” we shouted in unison, scaring him under the bed.

"Quiet up there," came from downstairs along with our brother's cluck aluck aluck."

"Quick, grab him," Rosie said, leaning over the edge of the bed.

Rosie did a full-body flip as her hands reached for him, grabbed him, and slid under the bed. I snatched at her, took hold of an ankle, and we were all gone into the warp, rolling and tumbling in flashes of light and black till we landed in another speeding subway car. The stations flashed by, white, black, white, black, too quickly to read the names of the stops, even if I wanted to know. I held Rosie and Peek close to myself. They both kept their eyes closed. 

The passengers clutched the straps and hung horizontally to the floor where we huddled. Was the time warp nothing but a commuter rail for those more expert in how to use them?

"Is it over?" Rosie asked me as if a been-there-done-that moment made me the expert.

"I don't know. It was like this on my way home. To your house." I hugged them both. Peek touched noses with me and ducked back under Rosie's robe.

I'd been talking about Peek with Dr. Robinson. I'd wanted to see him again, the little sweetie. I realized I could go down a time warp for him, and I would have done so when I was eight. Actually, huh, I did do it then. And I just did it again now. High maintenance kitty.

The subway came to a sudden stop. Some commuters flew out the door, still horizontal, and the other passengers slowly regained vertical. At the same time, we three slid to the back of the car and fell out into, again, nothingness. 

“Rosie, keep hold of Peek and think about the beach we used to go to when we were five.”

Back into the subway, I was the strap holder this time. I held Rosie and Peek against me as the light and black of time flew past, and we were shuffled off the car in a fluid sliding motion and onto sand. My family sat not too far away: Mom and Dad, Johnny and me. Mom was pregnant with our little brother. They were having a picnic lunch and laughing.

“Rosie,” I said. “We'd better not make contact.” 

She agreed, and while she and Peek watched sand crabs making little trails in the sand, I thought. 

"This is what we're going to do," I explained about the commuter rail and how it took you where you were thinking. At eight, I was pretty bright out of necessity, and my younger self understood completely.

"Let me say goodbye to Peek, and we'll be off. Uh, oh, better hurry, I think Johnny has spotted us."

No time for long goodbyes. Rosie was off back home, and I left soon after debating with myself where and when I wanted to be.

"Did you find the ball of yarn under there, my dear?"

"No, I guess not, Dr. Robinson. I found a lot of other things, though. You knew, didn't you?"

“Some things I can only intuit, Rosalie. What did you find? Answers to life's burning questions?”

"I found my cat. Now I know I'd jump into a time warp to save him and anyone I loved. Things you can't see are not as scary as a vivid imagination can make them, are they"?

"Some things are only in your mind, and they are terrifying. Better you see things and figure them out for yourself. My next client is here now, Rosie. Will you make another appointment?"

I didn't make another appointment. Not then. Two days later, there was a tumbling and bumping sound in the guest room. The door flew open, and young Rosie and a rumpled-looking Peek smiled at me. Rosie clutched a bulging pillowcase.