Fossil

 Fossil 

My eyes burn and tears have been soaked into my robe. I’m on my knees before the chamber. I hit the metal with my fist denting the side. The chamber holds the ribbon Lovata had held.  I return to the biogenic mass on the table downstairs. I use the flathead screwdriver and the hammer, tapping into it with a tenacity I hadn’t felt before, loosening the rocks, and the glasses, and crushed shells allowing them to fall to the plastic tablecloth. A heart shaped box is revealed, and inside, a folded note:

Dear Dr. Vespertine, when I went to the future, I was told I would die at the bridge. I wanted to give you the box before it happened. There was nothing I could do. But I received an option to become someone else at the bridge. And that is what I chose. 

Love Always, Lovata

April 1998

“What is it?”

Julia leans into the biogenic object, a strand of her hair getting caught on my unshaven chin.  The thin strands fragile, increased in silver over the last year.  Mine too had begun turning.  She lets out a breathy gasp.  As pure a sound as the moon brushing past cosmic dust, childlike in her wonder of things.  I brush tan and black sand off the crusty object calcified over by decades of erosion.  The rough surface of pointy shell edges, fragments of Lightning whelk egg cases and crushed Keyhole Limpet. I pull my hand away and she traces the crevices of a treacherous surface, a conglomeration of common pebbles, glass, rubbed out by years of water polishing, the salty bay gentle waves making a smooth surface like a deep emerald stone.  Some elegant, the zen-like stacks we often find under that bridge,  now more often knocked over by the rising sea.  “I remember these kind.” 

Clouds gather over us in comforting plumes of a promised storm, reminding me of her trepidations.  She isn't my first love. The history of my first washed out to sea twenty years ago.  The sea. Where we met in 1997, when the rocks were still visible under the bridge, and we pretended to be married.  The day she disappeared lingers still, like the morning fog.  I still have the ribbon she had tied off in front of me.  

“Earth to Dr. Vespertine,”  Julia says.  She snaps her fingers in front of my nose over and over, the big childish grin I adore an ear to ear exhortation. I extend back my brawny arm, the calcified object in hand, like I’m pitching a baseball, “No!”  Lovata snatches the object from my hand.  “There could be something in there.”  

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.”  She shrugs in the slow manipulating way, her blouse falling off a defined shoulder, wisps of hair drawing over freckled skin.  “Gems, money, pirate treasures dating back to the pre-Jesus days.  A clue.”  She does the shrugging thing again, but this time with a snappy motion.  She holds the collection of cemented beach particulates in both hands as if looking into a crystal ball.  The clouds have darkened, gathering in terrific concentrations of blackness. I never really discussed what happened to Lovata with anyone, not Julia, not anyone. Except the local authorities. I remained a suspect for almost a year. She runs with the rock formation in hand, skipping and swooping down with one arm to touch an incoming wave, and bringing up the sea,  foam dripping off her hand and in between fingers. She rubs the rock formation.  She spins, object in hand, her freedom delivering me into the hand of an angel, reminding me of Lovata. 

***

The wind shakes me awake, and the chimes, hanging from the enclosing gate, hitting the rod iron bars every so often.  Julia sleeps through the loudest sound, and awakes me often through laughter.  I sometimes wish I could join her wherever she is.  Her hand comes to touch me.  I place her fingers in a straight line over the blanket, deliver a kiss to her cheek, and tuck the duvet tightly around her body. I met Julia near the bridge where the disappearance of Lovata had occurred. She seemed to just materialize there.  The same day, I encountered the ribbon she had held in her hand just before the freak wave. I tie my robe at the front, go into the kitchen where the biogenic object sits on the table, granules of sand encircling its base.  I locate a screwdriver and a small hammer kept in my toolbox by the front door. Handyman jobs in beach communities are aplenty. The fact I went from doctor to handyman is not my greatest accomplishment. I tap the end of the screwdriver lightly, knocking a pebble off the formation.  Sand and crushed particles  fall onto the tablecloth, a plastic pattern of lilies and sunflowers. The bungalow shakes with the current wind, and no doubt an unexpected swelling, air cooler at my bare feet arriving out of the void between the floor and cabinet. I pull the cord to the stairs, removing webs with one hand, holding tight to the ladder with the other. I end on my knees, using a heavy chair to pull myself up, and dusting myself off vigorously. I have wondered how this chair ended up in the attic. I myself don’t remember heaving it up those stairs. My eyes focus on the ghostly appearance of sheets covering over furniture and family heirlooms I haven’t visited in more than ten years. I pull the corner of one sheet to reveal an easel with an old painting, my mother’s name signed at the bottom right of the canvas. Ginger. I pull another sheet, disturbing an extraordinary amount of dust into the stuffy air. The chamber is here. I had it brought up after Julia disappeared. The steel contraption closely resembles what a time machine might look like–because it is one. The knobs and rusty indicator dials. Lovata and I played around with the machine. At some point, we even thought the thing worked. 

January 22nd 1978

Lovata wears puffy sleeves in pink patchwork. I remove the helmet from her head. I made it myself, from scraps of metal I scavenged from the junkyard.  Lovata gasps for air, yet still able to grin, her hair curled forward in healthy rolls. I am in a moment caught up in the thought of her in a wedding gown. Her smile dissipates to a frown and she holds tightly to both of my hands.  I look into her wild child-eyes and place my hand on her forehead.

“Where did you go?” I retrieve my medical bag. 

“Something terrible and wonderful!”  I place a thermometer in her mouth. She mumbles words I can’t understand, moving the thermometer up and down wildly.  I hold up one finger to my lips. She silences and waits. The beep comes and I remove the instrument.

“Normal.  How far off?”  

“The sea has risen.  You wouldn’t believe!”  She walks to the open window staring out at the expanse of the ocean. I help her back to the chair, and strap a blood pressure reading machine to her arm. Her eyes seep moisture at the corners, drawing out her anxieties, her body suddenly dead weight. 

***

It’s been weeks since Lovata fell out. She has no memory of her teleportation. She arrives at my bungalow after my last patient, holding a little pink bag.  She pulls out a little red box and ties a red string around it. I turn on the chamber for calibration and check my notes. 

“I know it’s not the actual day, but I got you something.”

“Can I get a readout on the calibration?”  

“Dr. I’m feeling a little woozy now.”  Lovata twists her hand up to her forehead and lets her head fall back. 

“Well, let’s see what I can do for you.”  I motion for her to join me on the sofa. 

“Is that science talk?”  She bats her sparse lashes, quick steady beats, then long and intentional.  “Let’s go to the bridge.”  She pulls me up by my hands toward the door. “I want to give you the gift there.” 

***

We walk hand in hand. The little pink bag in her free hand. We’ve exchanged gifts at the bridge before.  It’s a kind of ritual between us. The fog now has settled over the surface of the bay, waves swelling like her lips when we kiss.  The storm has already begun.  I look off toward the sea line, where my eyes can no longer stretch around the curve of the earth. Lovata has walked quite a ways to the edge of the rocks, and the sand, dangling the little pink bag from one wrist.  She places one foot in front of another, one white sneaker in front of the next from rock to rock. The sea rises with each recession, gathering more of itself. 

“Lovata!”  I wave my hand calling her in.  Her loose garment flows like a ghostly veil.  She appears to be walking on water when a wave rises up at her back. She turns and stares at the wave reaching up and curling over her.  “Lovata!”  I run to her, but the wave has already knocked her down, and I no longer see her. I step over rocks and wading pools to the one she stood on, jump into the water. I thrash, feeling for her with my legs, diving into the cold sea, feeling for her under, coming back up to see if she’s emerged. Over and over. I dive, feel, come up gasping for air. I do this repeatedly. I don’t know how many times. I’m back again, in the here and now, and the present, swept away twenty years ago with Lovata.  I look up from the calcified heart. Julia stands at the doorway. Her ear to ear grin an exhortation.