Turning Back Time

I prefer to work in silence. 

The yowls and mews of my apartment and the incessant barking above make it impossible to get any work done, therefore I’m left to find a new solution. Some place quiet. Some place vast. 

Every time I walk up the marble steps to the front doors, I think aaah – this feels like home. I knew it the first time my rough hands pushed open the glass door and my old, worn shoes clacked against the marble as if they were made to dance. That’s how you should feel at home, right? As if you could dance, sing, write poetry. Home should be a place where you feel free to express your most authentic self, not where five once-feral cats claw at your face and carpet all hours of the night. 

The young woman behind the counter smiles at me. A child hands her a copy of some crinkly, plastic-bound book and a familiar ding sings out into the high ceiling. 

That child will probably sneeze into the pages. He will probably lick his fingers and wipe them all over the pictures. That’s one reason Margot hates the library. “It’s unsanitary,” she says, but has she seen what she does to our bathroom? After forty-seven years, she still can’t seem to understand that countertops should be wiped, that towels don’t belong on the floor and – for God’s sake – toilet paper has a home. It’s not made to roll all over the floor, ripped into with claws. 

I take another glance at the young librarian and relax. I’ve done my time. Forty-seven years of it. I’m about to change all of the bad mistakes I made in my youth, all of the concessions and compromises I allowed as a whimpering husband. I get to start anew. 

The puzzle box bangs against my leg through the thin leather of my bag. I sidestep a mother pushing her stroller of crying twins, but she pauses instead, waiting for me to pass. Another blow. I’m at the point where screaming children and overflowing diaper bags don’t pose as much difficulty as walking with a limp and shaky hands. 

If this mother turned around, she would marvel at how my old, decrepit body manages to make it up the stairs. One at a time, mind you. Better than a three-year-old. I don’t even need to white knuckle the stairs – I can breeze up to the second floor with ease, same as I’ve done every day for a month.

I remember asking the young man sorting books on my first visit. He removed his headphones and claimed, “If you want a quiet space, study rooms are on the second floor. Elevators are over there.” He pointed out the direction and I laughed in his face. Elevator! I’m nowhere near that lazy. 

However...stairs do require strong lungs. I breathe harder now than I’ve ever done. Pause a few more times. I glance at my hands every time they move and think ‘Are those really mine? Is that really what I’ve become?’ 

Sure, I’ll bet everyone has these thoughts now and again. I'll never forget my first gray hair or when I was mistaken for my son’s grandfather. Those lines on the forehead seem to sink deeper and deeper the more you stare at them, like some kind of trick in the mirror. But, alas...all that is about to change. 

“Afternoon,” says the tall man scratching his bushy beard, lugging a backpack over his shoulder. He steps out from the study hall. “Back again? You must have a lot of work.” 

His elementary-aged pupil waves goodbye and meets his mother where she stands at the bottom of the stairs. 

“Of course,” I answer. I grimace at the gruff, scratchy tone. “I’m a busy man. Much to do.” I raise my chin. 

He smiles sideways, with obvious pity. 

It churns my stomach, but I know what he’s thinking. I thought it myself at his age, or at least near to it. I remind myself now of him – once the object of my pity and then my rage. His old, tired skin. My aged, loose flesh. One in the same. 

I brush past the tutor and take my usual seat at the farthest left cubicle. The summer tutoring sessions take place at the tables and the internet scrollers borrow time at the computers. I’ve found solace at the little desk, hidden behind a translucent screen. It’s quiet here. I’m not disturbed. No one sees me wince when my knees bend and clench my teeth to sit in the hard hair. No one pays notice when I pull the wooden hexagonal puzzle box out of my lap. 

I try to shake the memory of him from my mind. My one black thumbnail against the wood brings back the recollection of his bruised and calloused hands crinkling the letter. I remember it in my mind as a twenty-five-year-old staring at the reversed image of my own handwriting. 

Of course, he laughed. Not only because he was sadistic, but because I couldn't have been man enough to ask for Anne’s hand with my own voice. I wrote it down. He read it in front of me. Then, he laughed. My blood boils even now, thinking of it over fifty years later. 

I take out a piece of paper on which I’ve been writing my notes. I twist half the puzzle box two times to the right. 

Poor Anne. I knew she loved me, knew that she had envisioned a future with me, but I also understood that her father’s blessing meant she’d have a comfortable life. Without it, her inheritance would pass to her younger sister and we’d live on what I alone could make. Job to job. Paycheck to paycheck. I was never the kind of man who could offer her the security she’d become used to and therefore had to let her go. 

The puzzle box clicks and rattles as I maneuver it, turning back time. 

Anne’s sweet blue eyes filled with tears. 

Nearly there. 

Begging me to explain. 

Almost open now. 

Humiliation stopped me from blaming her father and it probably turned out for the best. She seemed to find a happy ending befitting her family’s dreams whilst I settled for what I could get. But, time makes one bolder. I can stand up for what I want – no, deserve – in a way I didn’t have the guts for in my youth. Once I open this box, everything will be different. 

I’ll finally be able to get it right. 

I pause. This is the final step, I feel it in my bones. One more crank of the right hemisphere, to the left this time, and I’ll discover the answer. I’ll know why Jeremy gave me the box at my retirement party ten years ago. He didn’t wrap it or anything, just handed it to me in the parking lot, dropped it heavily into my palm. “For when you need to turn back time,” he said with cryptic suspense. 

I figured he was high. That I’d just throw it out when I got home. For some reason, however, I never did. When I found it again a month ago, a wave of recognition flooded my body and I researched the ancient symbols etched into the wood. This tiny, twistable box with its sharp edges and sweet cedarwood smell, acts like a time machine. With my strongest hearing aid setting, I’ve listened to the interior wheels churning and wood sliding in and out of place every time I spun the halves. 

I turn it one last time. 

With a glorious, triumphant blossom, the box splits in half and breaks into two open pieces. Out from it falls a single blue flower. A forget-me-not. As fresh and alive as if it’d just been plucked from the ground. 

I’ve done it, I marvel, pinching the stem between my two fingers. Fingers that now didn’t shake, with a grip that didn’t take extra focus. My skin, once thin and spotted was all of a sudden smoother and clearer. I pull out my hearing aids. I straighten my back. 

I did it! I’ve turned back the clock! 

I gasp and cover my mouth, desperate to tell someone, anyone, about my discovery. What would they think when they watch me leave? Would they recognize me as the old, sad man who sat determined in the corner, or would I be mistaken for a young teacher on his summer break, making some extra money preparing kids for their SAT? 

My body vibrates. 

What do I do now? Poor Margot. She’ll be gutted that I’m gone, but only because I’m company. I’ll come visit, as the children do, but it’ll be different. I’m different now. I don’t have to be held back by her old age and limitations. 

I stand and smile at how easily I do. Sure, there are some creaks and groans, but those started early for me, well before I turned thirty. I put the flower back in the box and close it up. As Jeremy the drug-dealing intern one did for me, I’ll pay it forward. The box goes back into my bag. 

I falter on my first step, using the cane as leverage. That’s normal, I reason. I’ve got to psychologically get used to walking on my own again. 

I try to contain my smile as I walk down the stairs. I go slowly, no reason to draw attention to myself. I’m dressed like the old man who walked up the stairs, but now I’m young and new. It’ll shock them, to be sure. 

“Have a great day, sir,” announces the young fellow pulling a cart of books. 

“Thanks, and you as well,” I respond. I clear my throat. Oh...it must take a minute for my voice to come back. It’s still a little gravelly and congested. 

I walk toward the library entrance and glance over at the checkout counter. The young girl scanning books looks my way, as she always does when I leave. I expect her to show no recognition, no sense of familiarity. 

She smiles. “See you tomorrow,” she says. 

Ha! She did not recognize me at all. I’m merely a stranger walking through the doors and she’s probably wracking her brain right now, wondering if she recalled my entrance to the building. 

My cane leads the way as I step out into the sun. Pretty soon my muscles will feel strong, my body limber, and I won’t need any help walking. I linger on the marble steps, feeling the warmth on my ever-tightening, youthful skin. 

This is my second chance. This is my new life. I’ve turned back time and I’m never going back again.