Losing Track

"Are you hungry?"

That’s Jay, my brother. 

I’ve just woken up, and he’s come into my bedroom with my birthday card and a monster pack of Snickers, my all-time, world-championship favourite. I sit up in bed. 

"Hell, yes", I respond. I am starving most of the time. Well, I'm sixteen. Too bad that most of the foods I like best seem to end up in one gigantic zit right in the middle of my forehead. Of course, when I fell asleep, I was twenty-four, but eating for two, hungry all the time, three months gone with a lump in my stomach that shouldn't be there, stuck in a one bedroom apartment on the wrong side of town with Dave, who beats me when I burn the toast. Still, even that’s one better than when I was thirty-two, mother of three, alone and on Welfare after he finally decided he had had his fill of abusing me, and that firmer flesh was required. Thirty-six is a year or two away, but I doubt there will be any improvement in my life. That’s why my trips back in time to happier days are such a relief.

Strange how it seems to work in cycles of four years. I never could fathom it out.  I'd go to sleep, or faint, any time of the day, and when I came to myself again I would be in what seemed to be another body. Except that it wasn't; it was me, but at a different age. I couldn't control when it happened, and there seemed to be no rhyme nor reason to it. It stopped being frightening. No disasters overtook me while I was out of it. I didn’t have to worry about taking clothes with me. I wouldn’t arrive naked and vulnerable. I’d just simply lose the original me and reappear in the new one. So there was no big deal about it. 

Mom, Dad and Jay all saw what was happening. It must have been pretty alarming to begin with, but they got used to it. I would disappear from view as if I’d stepped into the next room, and then reappear a few hours later. They got used to covering up for me when I went walkabout, and then listened with rapt attention, torn between belief and disbelief, as I explained where and when I’d been, a bit like the farm hands in The Wizard of Oz listening to Dorothy telling them about the Lion, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow. 

And it was just like she said: there was no place like home. I was happy to begin with. I don’t really remember four, but eight was a lovely age, my favourite, definitely better than the halting, hesitant puberty of twelve: out of babyhood, but not yet besieged by the ghastly periods which started early and sometimes laid me low for a day or two each month. Loads of friends to giggle with; pitcher on the school softball team; OK reports: I wasn't Einstein, but I had some smarts. Mom, Dad, Jay and I all lived together in a little wooden house. I was loved, cared for. All the Oreos my little heart could desire, washed down with the milk of human kindness. I was rather big to be coming into my parents' bed in the early hours, but, if my glimpses of the future were too much, I would find a pair of encircling arms to wipe away my tears and fears. 

Dad used to tell jokes all the time. Mostly, they were so corny you could have eaten them for breakfast. I would always laugh hysterically – anything Dad did or said was great with me. Jay would groan, and Mom would roll her eyes, but all the time with great big grins on their happy faces. It’s painful to remember now. It all ended when Dad threw himself under a subway train on platform one of 23rd Street. The bottom fell out of our world. We’d all been as happy as Larry. He didn't have any debts, no worries at work. It happened on my sixteenth birthday. We'd all been supposed to go out to a movie that night. God! What a celebration that was.

The longing I had for him was a physical pain. The worst thing was simply not knowing why he'd done it. I can remember the cop calling at the house. He was young, not really equal to the job. He had obviously decided that he needed to set his features in some appropriate expression, and got stuck somewhere in the middle of apology and sympathy. He asked Mom to sit down because he had some bad news. She put her hands to her face, but she was strong then. She went with the officer. She was away some hours, while Jay and I waited, caught between fear and hope that it might all be some mistake. When she returned, she was changed out of all recognition. She was short with me. I wanted to be held, and she wouldn't hold me. Jay wanted her to talk about it, and she wouldn’t. Her eyes had this haunted expression. She didn't let us attend the inquest. That was OK, I understood that, but it was the shutting us out of her life that we couldn't stand.

Jay stabbed himself to death four years later, about the time I myself really hit the self-destruct button. So Mom is all I have left, and when she recognises me in the street she crosses over to the other side to avoid me. I want to tell her that none of it would have happened if Pop was still alive: the drugs, the drink, the petty theft, the promiscuous sex in my constant search for security. I thought I had found it with Dave, but it didn't take long for me to be jolted out of that little cocoon. Off would come the belt, and I wouldn't be able to sit down for days. Sex became a chore. I wouldn't have wanted to bring any child into that world, but I stupidly missed out on my contraceptive pill one month - and, bingo! You can guess the rest. Of course, he thought I'd done it to trap him, which made him ten times worse. I suppose I should count myself lucky he stayed around as long as he did.

So today, it seems, I'm sixteen. What a lucky chance. Because I know exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to follow Dad to work, and I'm going to try to change history. I’m going to stop him from throwing himself under the train. I have read up about it. I know that it was about two o'clock in the afternoon. One or two of the witnesses said that he seemed to have this shocked expression on his face, and that he suddenly lunged forward. One woman said that his arms were stretched out looking as if he was going to grab something - except, of course, there was nothing there except empty space, so that couldn’t have been true. All of them confirmed the moment he fell headlong into the path of the E, and his life was cut short. 

After Dad leaves for work, I tell Mom I have my period, so that means no school. I’m supposed to stay in my bed, but I lump up the sheets and blankets and pillows like Ferris Bueller, and sneak out of the house. I have some birthday money, and I manage to get to the station in good time. And there’s Dad! Strolling along, briefcase in hand, seemingly not a care in the world. I walk right up to him, and he has this really surprised look on his face, as well he might. I’m the last person he would have expected to see. I’m about to tell him that I know what he’s going to do, and that he mustn't do it, when damn it! I’m off on my time-travels again. Marty McFly had it easy. All he had to was to get into the Delorean, and accelerate to 88 miles per hour. He was conscious all the time. I have obviously passed out, as I always do. Next second, I’m back in grade 2 with Mary-Jo and the others standing round me and calling for Miss Wimslow because Susie’s fainted again.

I’m not there long. Soon, I’m back, sixteen again, in the little wooden house, ready to receive the worst news of my life. But I know I’ve missed some vital moment. I’ll weep for days after that. It’s still the not knowing that’s killing me. Whatever his troubles, didn't Dad love me - us - enough to stay around to sort them out? Surely he knew we would have helped him? Whatever it was, it couldn't have been worse than what he did.

So today, I decide to confront Mom. I see her in the 7-11. I block the way out. I tell her, I scream at her. Everybody is looking, but I don’t care. I have to know. And something strange happens. Instead of the normal curt rejection, she actually touches me. Without a word she beckons me to follow her. We walk into the little wooden house and over to the TV set. With an ominous calm, she brings out a video-cassette. I didn't think people had video-players any more, but then the house doesn't look as if she has updated it all those years. As if she didn’t care any more after Dad left her alone.

Mom speaks then for the first time. Her voice is calm, but filled with some emotion I can’t identify. There’s what appears to be loathing, but it’s mixed with something else. It looks as though it could be pity, but surely that can’t be?

"When I went to the morgue that day, the officer had this video. He had obviously been given it by the staff at the subway station, taken from the CCTV camera. He showed it to me. I’ve kept it all these years. I never wanted you to see it. Now I want you to watch it, and understand. Then it would probably be best for you to then walk out of that door and never, ever speak to me again."

The picture on the set is a bit blurry to start with, but then it clears. I can see Dad on the subway platform, walking along without a care in the world. And …. Oh my God! - there's me, unmistakably me, walking towards him. He has this expression of amazement on his face. And then I'm fainting, just like I always do when I’m time-travelling. Except that this time I can see I'm about to fall sideways towards the track, and Dad is leaping forwards with his arms outstretched to catch me, to stop me from falling, because he loved me and would have done anything to stop me from coming to harm. But, of course, I’ve disappeared. I'm not there. Because I'm already back eight years with Miss Wimslow, Mary-Jo and the others. There is just Dad, off balance, chasing shadows, falling onto the path of the oncoming train.

Now, my hands are round my head, and I'm screaming. Mom looks at me. She has this expression on her face, like sad and regretful now, and suddenly we are two lost souls, standing in the middle of the room, weeping, clutching each other as if our hearts would break.