A Year Without Autumn

by Liz Kessler

  I know it sounds a bit far-fetched, but the idea makes more sense than anything else that’s happened. I find myself practically running back to our condo, excited and relieved that I’ve got a plan for how to get out of this nightmare.

  My legs are like jelly as I stand outside our door.

  I reach for the doorknob, my hand shaking, and push the door open. I waver, my hand gripping the doorknob so tight that my fingers turn white.

  What if I never remember the last year and I’m lost in this confusion forever? What if it’s not amnesia, and it’s something that I’ll never be able to understand or explain to anyone?

  What am I going to find in here?

  I could turn back now. No one’s heard me. I could go. Run away. Go to sleep or something. Maybe if I do that, my memory will be back when I wake up. Maybe this is all a dream! That’s why none of it makes sense. It’s not even happening!

  But I know I’m kidding myself. I’m not dreaming. However crazy and frightening it is, whatever’s happening here is real. I have to get to the bottom of it — and whether it gives me all the answers or not, I have to face whatever might be waiting for me in our condo.

  I step inside and close the door behind me.

  The hallway is filled with junk. That’s the first thing. Coats on the floor, shoes everywhere. And a stroller. I stare at it with the same level of amazement as I would if it had just dropped out of a flying saucer in the sky.

  And then I go into the living room.

  The difference there is almost as shocking as anything I’ve seen so far. If you knew my parents, you’d understand what I mean.

  The condo that’s always so ordered, so neat and tidy, with nothing ever out of place, is littered with clothes, toys, blankets, scrunched-up tissues, dirty plates, half-empty glasses, plastic bottles, congealed food on plates around the dining-room table, unwashed dishes filling up the sink.

  This is not my family’s condo. It is absolutely one hundred percent the wrong place. I’ve walked into the wrong condo — simple as that. It’s the only explanation.

  I’m about to turn around and walk straight out when someone speaks.

  “Jenni, thank goodness you’re here,” Dad’s voice says. I wonder if that’s how everyone greets each other in this strange new world. I also wonder why the furniture spoke to me with Dad’s voice.

  And then his head pops up from behind the sofa. “Give me a hand, will you?” he says. “Your mom’ll be here any minute. She’ll kill us if it’s like this when she gets back. You know what she’s like.”

  Do I? I’m not sure I know what anyone’s like. I don’t think I know anything about anything anymore.

  Dad grabs a bowl of congealed goo from the floor in front of the sofa, picks up a few tiny items of clothing off the floor, and nudges me on his way past. “Jenni, come on. She’ll be back any minute.”

  I want to ask so many things. I want to ask who all these tiny clothes belong to, since the last time I looked, any baby in this family was still firmly inside Mom’s stomach and not going anywhere for at least another month. But then if I really do have amnesia, I suppose things have moved on from then.

  I want to ask if we’ve been ransacked and burglarized since I went out — but I don’t want to offend, just in case we haven’t.

  And I want to ask where Craig is — but after what’s happened to Mikey, that question turns into a hard knot of iron and gets stuck in my throat.

  So I do the only thing I can: I wash the dishes.

  “Thanks, love, you’re a star,” Dad says, bringing more plates and bowls with congealed mess in them to the sink and giving me a kiss on my shoulder. “Let’s get this place as tidy as we can. I don’t think I could cope with another of your mom’s meltdowns today — you know what I mean?”

  “Mm,” I say. No, I don’t know what he means. Mom’s meltdowns? Mom and Dad don’t do meltdowns. They talk reasonably and calmly, and they work everything out efficiently and sensibly.

  I’m still trying to figure out what Dad could have meant by this when a bloodcurdling scream fills the air. I leap about a foot in the air and drop three plates in the sink in the process, splashing soapy water all over my T-shirt.

  “What on earth was —?” I begin.

  “Oh, no — will you get her?” Dad says as he wipes the dining-room table. “She’ll probably need changing.”

  I turn to stare at my dad. I have soapy water all down my front, I have a best friend whose life is in tatters because the most awful thing — which I have no recollection of at all — has happened to her brother, and now I am being asked, perfectly casually, to “change” someone I have no idea exists. How on earth am I meant to respond to that?

  “Sure, Dad,” I say with a smile, and head upstairs in the direction of the howling, which has now increased to a glass-splitting siren wail.

  I check the door to the bedroom I share with Craig. The sight of Dirty Boy’s jeans and piles of cars and diggers scattered everywhere makes me sigh with relief. At least some things haven’t changed.

  The sound is coming from Mom and Dad’s room.

  My heart is pounding ridiculously heavily in my chest as I gently turn the doorknob and go in. There’s a crib in the far corner, mangled sheets hanging over the side, and a teddy bear lying facedown on the bedroom floor next to it.

  I pick up the teddy bear and put him back in the crib. As I do, the source of the screaming — a tiny, red-faced, wet-cheeked image of Craig when he was a baby — turns its bright-blue eyes on me and breaks into a smile that feels like the sun coming out from behind the heaviest cloud in the sky. The pink onesie with a fairy on it confirms that Mom was wrong about the baby being a boy.

  I smile back, instantly in love with this little person whom I presume is my sister. “Hello, you,” I say, lifting what is admittedly a very smelly baby out of the warm crib, and clearing my throat to get beyond the emotion croaking into my voice.

  I think of all the times that Mom’s called me and Craig her little angels. She always wanted three of us, though. She thinks that’s the perfect family. She says that’s why cars have two seats in the front and three in the back. That’s how it should be; that’s nature’s way. I always found myself wondering whether car designs and nature have really got that much to do with each other, but I knew there’d be no point in saying anything. When Mom gets something into her head, she can find a million signs that prove she’s right.

  And now she’s got her third little angel.

  The baby gurgles and drools onto her chin. I lean forward to kiss her head, breathing in her soft scent as I do.

  “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me today,” I whisper into the fluffy wisps of blond hair scattered on her little head.

  Clutching her tightly, I fish around in the bag next to her crib for a diaper. Then I lay her down on the bed, tickling her and making her giggle as I remove the cause of the smell, clean her up, and put a fresh diaper on her. I used to do this all the time with Craig. I was only about seven then, but it’s still the same now. He’d stare at me and giggle all the way through diaper-changing time, then reach out for me to lift him up afterward, just like my brand-new little sister is doing now.

  I hold her close and kiss her plump little cheeks, blowing raspberries on her face to make her giggle even more, and we head downstairs together.

  Dad’s somehow managed to transform the living room while I’ve been gone. It looks much more like the Green family household again now. Nothing strewn across the floor. No dirty dishes anywhere. Calm restored.

  “Hello, my little pumpkin pie,” Dad says to the baby whose name I’ve suddenly realized I don’t even know. It’s not exactly the kind of thing I can ask, either. ’Scuse me, Dad, what’s my little sister’s name again? I’ve momentarily forgotten; you know how it is. No, I don’t think so. I guess I’ll have to call her Pumpkin Pie for now as well.

  She reaches her little arms out for Dad, and he takes her from me and kisses her neck
with big squishy kisses that make her giggle so much she hiccups.

  I smile as I watch them, and for the first time since this nightmare started, I’m almost happy to be here.

  Then Dad says something that reminds me why I could never, ever be happy in this new reality.

  “Were Autumn and her parents doing OK?”

  Once again I have no idea how to answer this. Oh, yeah, you know — her dad’s off drinking, her mom’s like a zombie, Autumn’s like a ghost of her former self, and Mikey’s in a coma. They’re fine!

  Luckily, I don’t get the chance to reply, as the front door is thrown open and there’s a bustling noise in the hallway.

  “Phew, just in time, huh?” Dad says to me with a wink. “Now, don’t upset your mom, OK?”

  Upset my mom? Why would I do that?

  “We’re home!” The front door slams, and Craig bursts through the door. An elongated version of little Craig. He’s shot up. He must be a full head taller than when I last saw him — a few hours ago! His face has thinned out, and he’s got two big front teeth where he used to have a gap.

  “Guess what?” he says, bursting into the room. “Mom was talking to the new man, and he said we can ride in the front of the train and I can help drive it, ’cause he knows the driver and he said he’ll talk to him especially for us.”

  He plonks himself down an inch away from the TV and switches it on.

  “Hi, hon,” Mom says to me as she follows Craig into the living room and automatically turns the TV down. Her face is tired and more serious than usual. Her hair is tied up in a neat bun — and she looks as thin as a rake compared to this morning. Well, this morning she was eight months pregnant!

  It’s only when she goes over to Dad and takes Pumpkin Pie off him that she looks anything like her old self again. It’s as though looking at the baby flicks on a light behind Mom’s eyes.

  “Did you have a nice time, darling?” Dad asks gently.

  Mom’s busy rearranging the baby’s clothes. I must have put her pants back on wrong when I changed her diaper. “Lovely,” she says with a quick smile. “Have you changed her?”

  “I did it,” I said.

  Mom turns to Dad. “Did you remember to put the sides up when you put her to bed?”

  “Yep,” Dad says.

  “All the way?”

  Dad’s voice tightens a touch. “Yes, darling, all the way,” he says.

  Mom nods. “OK, who wants some juice?” she asks, jogging the baby on her hip as she goes into the kitchen. At the sink, she spins around, the baby on her hip, obliviously twirling mom’s hair around her tiny fingers. “Tom, what’s this?” she asks, pointing at the dishes that are draining next to the sink.

  Dad joins her in the kitchen. “Er . . .”

  She hands him the baby and starts gathering things up from the dish rack. “Knives, Tom? You left knives lying around?”

  “I’ve only just finished,” Dad says, still calm, but with an edge of exasperation creeping into his voice. “They were on the counter before. At least they’re clean now.”

  “Oh, my mistake. You left clean knives lying around, and they’re in the dish rack, rather than on the counter! Well, that’s much better, isn’t it? You do know that eighty percent of household accidents occur in the kitchen, don’t you?”

  “Yes, dear,” Dad says. More quietly, he adds, “You’ve only told me about a hundred times.”

  Mom just shakes her head as she noisily puts all the knives away. Then she surveys the room, as though checking it for any more potentially life-threatening hazards. Clearly satisfied that there aren’t any, she goes back to the fridge and gets the juice out.

  “Do you want one?” she asks without looking at either of us.

  I glance at Dad and realize for the first time that he looks different, too. Not as different as everyone else, but different nevertheless. More tired. And there are a few spots of gray in his dark hair that I’m sure weren’t there this morning. But who knows? This morning’s already feeling like a lifetime ago.

  “What’s up with her?” I mouth at him.

  Dad makes a “Just leave it” face at me before handing me the baby and going to join Mom in the kitchen. He gets two cups out of the cupboard, gives her a tiny kiss on her cheek, and smiles gently at her, as though she’s an old lady he’s helping across the road. “I booked a table,” he says.

  Mom looks vacantly at him. “Table?”

  “For tonight. Our anniversary.”

  “Oh, yes. That. OK. As long as Jenni’s sure about Thea.”

  Thea? I look at the baby. Is that you? “Of course I am,” I say, more than happy to spend the evening with my little sister.

  Mom glances over at us. “I don’t know,” she says to Dad. “Can we see how she is later?”

  “Jenni will be fine with Thea, and so will Craig, won’t you, Craig?”

  Craig grunts a reply without looking away from the TV.

  Dad puts his arms around Mom’s waist. “Darling, they’ll be fine. Nothing’s going to happen to anyone. We can call them every half an hour just to check. But it’s our sixteen-year anniversary, and I would like to take my wife out to celebrate. OK?”

  Mom looks at him and finally smiles. “OK,” she says. Then she gives him a quick peck on the cheek and wriggles out of his arms so she can pour the juice.

  Dad comes back into the living room, and we sit down on the sofa together.

  “What’s up with her?” I ask in a whisper.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Why’s she being like this? Mom’s never moody.”

  Dad runs a hand through his hair. “What planet are you living on, Jenni? Have you actually been around for the last year?”

  “Good question,” I say under my breath.

  “What?”

  I shake my head. “Nothing.”

  “You know how all the stuff with Mikey’s affected her,” Dad goes on. “She just needs a bit of time to get back to normal.”

  Hmm. Don’t we all? I kiss Thea on her soft little head and hold her out to Dad. “I’m going out, OK?”

  “Do you have to? You only just got back in,” he says, taking Thea and cuddling her.

  I look around at the room, at all of them, and suddenly I can’t take it — any of it. “Yes, I have to,” I say.

  “Can I come?” Craig asks instantly, breaking away from the TV for the first time since he came in.

  “No.” I need to be on my own. I’ve got too many questions racing around in my head to start dealing with Craig.

  “Be back in an hour at the latest, all right?” Dad calls. “I’d like to spend a little time all together before we go to dinner.”

  “No problem,” I say, and I make my escape.

  My head’s spinning as I walk aimlessly along the path. I keep looking for things that have changed. I’m sure there’s a tree missing — and wasn’t that blue shed green this morning? Everything’s so familiar and yet so different. It’s too spooky.

  I automatically head over to Autumn’s building. But I stop outside her new condo. No, I can’t do it. I can’t go back to see her. That would be even worse than our place was.

  I need something that makes sense to me. Something that can help me work out where my life has gone. But there’s nothing that can do that, and nowhere I can go. I’m totally alone and lost in a strange world that isn’t my life.

  Wait!

  Who said that? Someone said almost exactly the same thing — I’m sure of it.

  With a shiver that snakes the length of my body, from my head to my toes and back up again, I remember who it was. The woman upstairs, in Autumn’s old condo. I remember her words exactly because they were so strange.

  No one knows — no one ever knew. Only me. Always lost.

  That’s exactly how I feel!

  Does she . . . could she . . . ? Is it possible that she might know something?

  One thing’s for sure — I’m not going to get answers anywhere else. If there�
�s a chance she could help, I’ve got to try asking her.

  And before I can talk myself out of it, I’m inside the building and taking the elevator up to Autumn’s old condo. The normal elevator, that is. The old one is closed and silent beside it.

  “I only want a minute of your time,” I say quickly before the woman’s had a chance to tell me to go away.

  She’s holding on to the door, almost hidden behind it, her face peering around the side.

  “I’ve got to understand something,” I say. “I need your help.”

  “Why?” she asks suspiciously. “How on earth could I help you? You’ve come to make fun of me again, haven’t you?”

  “No! I haven’t. I promise.” I can see she’s about to close the door in my face — and part of me thinks I might as well give up. But then another part — a new part, a part of me I don’t even recognize — speaks up firmly. “Don’t shut the door on me. Please. I need someone I can talk to.”

  She looks at me for a long time, searching my face, her eyes screwed up tight, as though scanning me with a lie detector.

  “Very well,” she says eventually. Opening her door, she adds, “You can have five minutes.”

  I follow her into the condo. “I’d offer you a drink, but I’ve only got rose-hip tea, and you won’t want that.”

  “I’m fine, thanks.” I wave away her offer, if that’s what it was.

  She sits down at the table and points to a chair opposite her. “Now, what can I do for you?” she asks, smoothing down her dress.

  “I don’t really know,” I say.

  “Well, that’s a fine start, isn’t it?”

  “I just — it’s just that I came here, and then everything changed.”

  “Everything changed? Now she’s not even making sense,” the woman says to the room, as though there was an audience sitting on the sofa.

  “I came up here. Where Autumn’s family comes every year.”

  “Autumn again. I’ve told —”

  “Where they used to stay,” I continue quickly. “Autumn’s my friend. Or she was. Well, she still is, but — anyway, I was coming up here to see her.”