by Ryan Schow
“Why didn’t you come home?” she asks.
“I had no home. Technically I wasn’t even born yet.”
By this time she knew I traveled in time. She didn’t know about Hitler, because I didn’t want to tell her about a man so foul he needed beheading, but she knew enough to be both interested and skeptical. When she asked why I traveled back in time, I said I went on an expedition. I made it sound like I was an historian or something. Someday she’d see the picture of me and Hitler, but not yet.
I look in her eyes, see the eyes of her daughter, and I want to cry. How long can I push all these memories away? When do I tell her? Do I tell her?
Back to Hitler, I tell myself.
One day maybe she’ll know why I had to go back in time and kill him. How him not dying the way he was supposed to back in 1945 was so catastrophic to the nation, it nearly left the world in a cloud of nuclear ash. Because I did what I did, there was no rise of the Fourth Reich, but at this point in time, Rebecca doesn’t even know about the Third Reich and I sort of want it that way.
“Where were you living before New York?” she asked. “Were you always here in America?”
I’m not sure if we can get hot cocoa this time a night on Christmas eve, but I intend to try. So at this point, we’re cruising down University Avenue about ready to grace Rebecca with a story from my past when Sebastian texts me.
He wants to know when I’m coming down and, honestly, the way I’m wet AF for that boy almost on command, it’s all I can do to keep my eyes on the road. Or keep my sweet ass parked in Palo Alto. If I could, I would drive down to see him tonight. In fact, I would’ve left already if not for tomorrow being Christmas. Or me not being Raven.
For as smart as I am, I still haven’t figured that one out yet. God, there are so many things I still don’t know!
Taking a deep breath, ignoring the text because texting and driving is just plain stupid, pushing back the question of when to mention Skye, I say, “In the sixties, I lived on the Irish coast in Cork County, Ireland. Because I was craving solitude, I bought a coastal home in Glengarriff, which is a small seaside village that sits on the Beara peninsula overlooking the enclave of Bantry Bay.”
She says, “I don’t understand anything you just said,” then gives me a meek smile.
Sometimes you start talking about your worldly travels, about the off-the-beaten-path places you’ve gone, and you can lose the audience in a flash. But the truth is, there’s something deeply personal about traveling. How when you decide to go somewhere, it’s usually because you have some inexorable need that must be filled. I had a broken heart, and my nightmares wouldn’t go away. Moving to Ireland was me fulfilling a need no one else would understand.
Ireland, specifically Glengarriff in Cork County, is just about the closest place to America I could live while still being across the Atlantic ocean. It was home for awhile, but it was also not home.
“Basically I was in a place where no one knew me, where I could barely comprehend the dialect, where I was able to keep to myself and…not be me. You’d have to know what I’d just survived to understand how important Ireland was to me. How much I needed that.”
My mind is sectioning off, splitting itself into three uneven parts. First, I can’t stop thinking of Sebastian; second I’m reminiscing about a place I once called home in a country few people in America barely understand, let alone know anything about; and third, I’m thinking about Rebecca, how lucky I am to have her as a sister, how beautiful she looks in the low lights with her red hair and her shimmering eyes and that neutral face that seems to want to understand everything.
To think she used to be older than me but that now I’m almost seventy years her senior…it truly astonishes me at times.
“What did you do there?”
“I read a lot. Took long walks. Grew this magnificent garden. The cottage I bought was on five and a half acres in the middle of an old oak woodland with views of the sea, a lovely little poke of land called Garnish Island and the surrounding mountains. It was breathtaking, Rebecca. You can’t imagine how green it was all the time, or how you could pick flowers all day and never get sick of it. The rainy season sucked. It’s colder than an ice bath and twice I lost half my roof to the storms, but there was something about settling in for the night with a hot cup of tea and a good book of poetry that made me forget…things I was desperate to forget.”
Namely the slithering sounds the knife made as I cut off Adolf Hitler’s head. It was the slicing sound of the blade parting flesh, muscle, sinew and bone. For a second, I can’t even remember the screams. But if I close my eyes, I can see the puckering of his neck flesh, the way it separated so easily for the blade, how the hot spurt of blood sluicing from the opened arteries tasted when some of hit my forearm and splashed up in my mouth.
The screaming comes back to me.
The struggle.
Getting Hitler’s head off his body in front of a film crew wasn’t as easy as if I just visualized his decapitation and it happened. There was nothing simple about his death. I had to really cut and saw my way around his neck, enduring the mad struggling and the shrill of his high-pitched German screaming, ignoring the grunts and gurgling, and all the red mess. Then there was that final blood-soaked gasp as all the fight and life left his body. And still I wasn’t done. He was dead, but his head needed removing. There had to be no way for him to get to Dr. Gerhard for his genetic renewal or his Fountain of Youth serum. His dying screams, though…they are the faint sounds I hear in my nightmares.
Sometimes I even hear this phantom last breath when I’m awake. That final poof of sound. The way his body suddenly weighed more in my arms because it was dead.
I used to rock in my bed at night, sobbing, screaming, wishing all the things I’ve done could just settle into the bottom of my soul and disappear. That’s when The Operator would awaken inside me. I could feel his black soul smiling. I could feel his restlessness.
For weeks I couldn’t get Hitler’s blood out of my hair or out from under my fingernails. For years I couldn’t sleep more than a few hours without waking up gasping for air.
Ireland cured me of that, but not in short order. It took time. An entire decade.
By now we’ve arrived at Café Venetia on University Avenue, and all I have to say is, between here and Timothy Adam’s Chocolates, it’s a toss up for who serves the best hot chocolate in Silicon Valley. The thing about hot chocolate is it’s Rebecca’s thing these days, and what I want most is for her to enjoy the holidays. To feel like a member of this family. To feel like a sister. My sister.
We step inside and already I can tell Rebecca is thrilled to be here. We draw the usual slack-jawed stares by men and women alike, and we hear people whispering about us. Talking about how we look. How beautiful we are. It’s like this wherever we go: people are always whispering about our clothes, our hair, our perfect, perfect faces.
First I loved the attention, then I hated it, then I hid for awhile behind hats and big glasses and big coats, and then after years I finally accepted that this is me and I am the way I am and that’s all that matters. Rebecca, however, seems oblivious to all this. Except for when Jacob comes around. Then she’s super conscious of her hair, her makeup, how she looks.
I wonder what kind of mother she’ll be. No, that’s not true. I know she’s going to be an amazing mother. If she wasn’t, Jake wouldn’t have married Skye.
Rebecca and I went to Jacob’s grandmother’s funeral a couple of days ago and honestly, any hate I ever harbored for Jacob long ago dissipated. Part of me thinks I actually want him to be with Rebecca, but only because the me I replaced—in our various versions—I’m now sure we broke him of his old, bullying ways.
Will he stick around when he learns about Skye? Will she tell him the truth about her time with Dr. Heim? I believe Jacob will be good as an ordinary boyfriend, but how will he be with Skye? How will he feel about Rebecca being a mother?
“This place is great,
” Rebecca says.
I smile in response.
Café Venetia is this tall rectangle of a space with dark hardwood floors and table tops and super tall buttercream colored walls. At eye level there are gorgeous pictures of chocolate squares and champagne flutes and coffee beans; but higher up, there are what look like ten foot tall pictures of Italy. God, I love Italy. Inside I miss the man I left behind. I miss the life that was almost a permanent thing.
“Those pictures must be twice my height,” Rebecca says, gazing up along the walls.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” I reply.
At the bar we both order the Mousse al Cioccolato, which is a super thick, cream based hot chocolate and my favorite here. “You sound like you know Italian,” the barista taking our order says, and the two of us break into a brief conversation in the language.
I’m fluent in Italian and my accent is spot on, which really surprises him. He asks if I grew up there, and I say, “I spent time in a villa in Liguria overlooking the Ligurian sea.” The barista seems impressed. He should be. If you’ve never been to the Italian Riviera, honestly, what’s the point of living?
Rebecca and I enjoy our night together, then head home where we open one present (as is our tradition with our family). After that we watch the movie Bad Santa, which was a highly irreverent romp that had us in fits of laughter, then crawl into bed wondering what Santa had in store for us in the morning.
LOL.
If I tell you about our Christmas, I swear to God, I’ll bore you to freaking death. So I won’t. All I can say is it’s weird having your parents give you “kid gifts” knowing they know you’re twice their age. But that doesn’t stop me from having a great time with everyone.
Jacob even comes over and I can see by the way he and Rebecca are looking at each other, there’s definitely something brewing. A quick bump off his thoughts and already I can see he’s not the Jacob fat Savannah knew. He doesn’t seem to want anything more than to have a real relationship with Rebecca, and that both makes me happy and breaks my heart. To see your first crush with your brand new sister…well it sort of takes me back to the time of never being good enough to love. But whatever. That ship sailed long ago.
Besides, I’m practically salivating at the idea of seeing Sebastian again.
That afternoon I text him, tell him I’ll be there in a week or so. What I don’t say is I’ll see him tomorrow. This whole thing about me not being Raven anymore, it’s delicate. It needs to be handled just right. Sebastian’s not the kind of guy to sleep around, and he’s still a bit raw coming off a failed long-term relationship, but he’s willing to be vulnerable and in my book, being sexy AF and vulnerable is so hot.
We’re talking, way-beyond-Jacob-freaking-Brantley hot.
No offense, Rebecca.
4
The drive down to Huntington Beach gives me a chance to be one with the road and think. I always process life better when I’m driving anyway. Not sure why this is, it just is.
It’s my love for fine German cars, I guess.
For the last two hundred miles or so I’ve been reflecting on the long life I’ve lived, and how I’ve now come full circle back to here. To this specific boy.
Sebastian Fray.
Seventy years ago I met him (although it would be less than a year to him) and sort of fell in love with him in a love-at-first-sight kind of way. I gave myself to him emotionally and physically; he kicked a small hole in my heart. Not that he’s to blame.
I let him in. I wanted him in.
After all the disappointments in love I’ve suffered throughout my life, I like to think my heart is now encased in steel. Maybe unbreakable, though I haven’t tested the theory in awhile. When it comes to beautiful men, I still feel like that little girl just wanting to be loved. Even now I wonder, who will love me? Sebastian, I tell myself.
Perhaps…
I’ve been reminiscing in the memories and emotions of my short time with Sebastian. When I first started plumbing the depths of my long term memory, I bumped into the unwanted sickness known as The Operator. That sour duck fart. He’d been silent for almost an entire decade now, so unintentionally rousing him wasn’t a pleasant thing. Fortunately his tantrum, as ferocious as it was, didn’t last long.
Thinking of The Operator has me thinking of Delta. And Tavares Baldridge. At first I remember wondering if it was Delta that gave me the courage to behead Hitler at the end of World War II, or if that was The Operator. After much deliberation, I realized that was all me. This frightened me. Made me wonder what this version of me was capable of. I wondered, am I going to be Raven, just in a different body?
We can alter our appearance, and our timelines, but what happens if our insides refuse to change, too? Am I slated to always be Raven? To always crawl in and out of conflict only to worm my way back into it?
Looking back, I’m beyond fearful that this is the case.
One ray of sunshine cutting through the dark bank of clouds that sometimes hangs over me is that Delta feels gone. I’m sure of it. Without any repeat occurrences, I convinced myself Delta was a one-off program cemented into my brain with permanence through the use of Dr. Delgado’s physical implant. With that implant gone and Tavares dead, I’m finally starting to let my guard down. That still doesn’t mean people are safe around me. And it doesn’t mean I won’t have a few PTSD moments. Lord knows I’ve had plenty over the years.
After the war and Hitler, I sort of forced myself into a relationship. I dipped my toe in the proverbial waters, found promise in them, then finally talked myself into jumping in with both feet. For awhile it was intoxicating, but seven years later I was single again. The end was difficult. Far more emotional that I would’ve expected, but like I said, that’s another story for another time.
Because I can’t help it, because I need someone in my life, I’m now analyzing all things Sebastian. Every conversation. Every feeling I felt. Every observation I made that I could use to help him fall in love with me instead of Raven.
It’s amazing how clear the memories have become.
Good God this is going to be tricky! How do I get him to forget about me and hook up with me, too? What a clusterfu—
Sorry. I really should think in less vulgar terms. Not that this tiger will ever change its stripes. I should try though. I mean, seriously, if not now, when?
Moving on…
So the first thing I do when I get into town is rent a beach house with an actual garage. The paint on the Audi doesn’t need salt water residue, and it’s going to be hard explaining to Sebastian how me and Raven drive the exact same car, so having a garage seems logistically important.
It’s easier than I imagine finding a place, but mostly because it’s overpriced and not as close to town as I want. On the downside, however—as nice as it is—the house isn’t facing the beach, which kind of sucks. Oh, well. It’s December and I left my bikini at home. The upside is there’s a great kitchen and a gorgeous wood-burning fireplace.
Before settling in for the night, I call Rebecca and we talk for awhile, then I say good night to her, Orianna and Christian. After that it’s a good ten hours rest. When I wake up, I feel revived. And instantly nervous. I’m going to see Sebastian today.
With the weather still feeling a bit warm, despite it being December, I venture into town on foot, heading straight to Huntington Beach’s Original Surf. HBOS is a surf shop that doesn’t sell premade boards as much as they hand make them for you. It’s a full blown specialty shop. Not as busy or as commercial as Jack’s Surfboards with their clothes and shoes and towels and surfboards. Original Surf is original and charming.
When I breeze in, I see Sebastian and my heart surges. It literally leaps inside my chest and it’s all I can do to talk straight, or walk straight. Now I remember the look of him. How beautiful he is.
Bumping off his thoughts, almost like a hit and run, I realize he feels the same way about me. You can see it in his eyes. How everything about him com
es to life at the sight of me. It’s just the two of us. Totally intimate.
“Afternoon,” he says, playing cool.
“Hi.”
I feel like a girl again. Not old AF. Just a whimsical girl gazing at a boy I once tried to give everything to.
“So what brings you in today?”
“I have a friend,” I say, and then tragically my mind goes blank. Which is totally stupid since I’m too damn old to be acting so damn young.
“That’s great?” he says, smiling.
“It’s your smile, I think,” I say, “or perhaps it’s your face. I got…sidetracked.”
He smiles and my heart continues to swell, shoveling weakness and need through me in competing currents. Even though I’m nearly a hundred years old, even though I look like I’m around twenty years old, I’m just standing here, gushing like some typical love-struck tweener.
God, no wonder I gave myself to him!
“What about my smile and face?” he says, knowing exactly what I mean.
“Don’t read too deep into it,” I say, pulling myself together. “Your smile reminded me of a friend of mine. And your face looks similar, too. It’s uncanny.”
“Oh,” he says. “Okay…”
“So…I need a surfboard for a friend of mine,” I tell him.
He’s looking at my half-Caucasian, half-Hispanic features thinking he’s never been with a brownish girl before, but right now all he wants is this interaction. All he wants is me. But not in a sexual way. That’s what I’m really starting to like about him. He’s not staring at my breasts. Not trying to imagine me naked, or wondering what it would feel like to rail me. He’s thinking he’s never seen a more beautiful face, except for Raven’s. The previous me. My competition.
Oh, boy.
Now he’s thinking about Raven and reeling himself in.
“Does he have the same height and build as me?” he asks. “It makes a difference in the type of board he’ll want.”
“He’s your height and build,” I say, my voice not as strong or as steady as I’d hoped.
