You Cannot Mess This Up

by Amy Weinland Daughters

  Seeming to magically read my mind and detect my connection with something familiar, Mary signaled and turned the massive Ford into the parking lot of the school. Pulling into one of the spaces in the empty lot, in perfect view of the tetherball poles, she put the car into park and turned to look at me.

  “OK, Amy, now I’m going to try to prepare you for what you have to do today. I know that you are aware that our surroundings have been, well, altered, and you are correct about that. There are very few rules, but, you need to know that you cannot mess this up. No matter what you do, everything will appear to work out just as it would have anyway.”

  What was she saying?

  I didn’t understand and I’m sure my face reflected that, but Mary ignored this, along with reasonableness in general. “Amy, your role today is that you are a writer in Houston meeting with an editor, your meetings ran long and won’t finish until after Thanksgiving. You are stuck in town over the holiday with nothing to do, so, you are going to visit some distant cousins who live in the northern suburbs of Houston. You will arrive today and you will leave tomorrow, just before the sun sets. You are Amy Daughters from Centerville, Ohio. You are the married mother of two sons, one in his teens and the other in elementary school. You are a stay-at-home mom who writes as a sideline occupation. You are forty-six years old. Basically, you are yourself and can speak freely about your life within limits which shall become clear to you.” Leaning all the way across the wide expanse of the LTD, she grabbed my clammy left hand in hers and looked me directly in the eyes, stating unequivocally, “Amy, this is going to be all right, I promise.”

  I was completely overcome with confusion and shock, but not familiar enough with Mary, the boss’s wife for the love of

  God, to yell “WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!” So, instead, I opted for sitting dumbfounded and silent as she pulled the car back out of the school parking lot.

  MY ROLE, MY ROLE, I can’t mess it up!?!?

  What was she saying, oh my Lord, she had just grabbed my hand in a meaningful fashion. She was definitely crossing the pre-established and sanctioned lines of engagement—there was no hand holding prescribed in this relationship.

  Someone had laced my Starbucks, my Greek yogurt was tainted—my deodorant had been tampered with. THIS WAS NOT HAPPENING!

  Chapter Three

  THE FREAKING PEOPLE

  Well, crap. I guess I knew where she was taking me next, but I absolutely couldn’t accept it as reality. Staring blankly out the window, I watched as she made another hard left.

  Then it happened. Something registered and resonated deep within my suburban-raised soul. Even in my mentally unstable state, I could see that this was a glorious sight, miraculous and dreamlike.

  It was like a glowing city on a hill.

  It was the Northampton Subdivision in its absolute prime.

  Venturing boldly, or involuntarily, into a land where sheer terror and confusion were delicately intertwined with pure enchantment, we passed through the still-pristine white brick gates of the subdivision, our subdivision. The white bricks were proudly adorned with their red heraldic shields dominated by a majestic N, the remainder of the glorious name spelled out in black Old English font.

  Northampton was an upper-middle class affair carved out of the dense piney woods, thick underbrush, and peaceful meadows of far-North Houston in the late 1960s. When my parents, along with my sister and me, first moved the thirty miles from the I-10 corridor of Houston to Northampton in 1969, there were only three streets, the community eventually expanding to 5,000 residents a decade into the new millennium. As time went on, two clubhouse complexes complete with Olympic-sized swimming pools and tennis courts were erected. These areas became the hub of social activity, the site for everything from swim meets to Fourth of July picnics, Brownie meetings to wedding showers. We rode our bikes to the “club” and spent the entire day there. Mom didn’t seem worried—she never even asked us to check in.

  I wished I could still pull off riding a bike in a bright yellow-and-pink string bikini, damp from the chlorinated water, the wind blowing my bowl cut … the smell of Frito pie drifting through the air. If I tried that now, I’d either be arrested or cause a terrible car crash.

  As we started down the main drag, Northcrest Drive, we passed the enormous one hundred-year-old oak tree that had greeted Northamptonites throughout the ages. It sat proudly on the first of the long, green line of well-manicured esplanades that stretched the entire length of the main thoroughfare. Each was maintained individually by a teen or family, one lucky winner being awarded “Esplanade of the Month” every thirty days. Next to winning “Yard of the Month” or, perhaps, being presented the coveted orange band of the school-safety patrol, it was the highest honor in all of suburbia.

  The familiar-looking homes were new and neatly painted, fresh and minus any hints of the green mildew and algae that would eventually spread across their fresh stucco. What hadn’t changed was the massive amount of trees the builders left on each enormous lot, making it seem like the houses were an actual part of the forest as opposed to replacing it.

  We passed the old club house, pool, and tennis courts, flanked by “Ye Old Firehouse” with its red siren mounted precariously atop its pointed roof. This was the original version of the Firehouse, before it ironically burned down in the middle of the night, requiring the nearest Volunteer Fire Brigade to come to the rescue, from their subdivision to ours. This no doubt gave we, the action-starved suburbanites of America, a story to share and savor.

  “Remember that time our ‘Ye Old Firehouse’ burned down?” “Remember that time that what’s-his-name’s wife cheated with that guy at the Ho-Jo on I-45 and 610?” “Remember that time those kids put rotten eggs in all the mailboxes?” All of them, and many more, were suburban myths specific to Northampton. As unique as they were, surely similar tales were shared by the countless pockets of suburbia that dotted the country, nay, the world. This was our folklore, a commodity you could lay claim to even if you didn’t have a banjo or a log cabin.

  Taking the main road, we passed by the street names I knew from the banana seat of my bicycle. My heart sang out their sacred names: Allentown, Bayonne, Craigway, Darby Way, Elm-grove, Fawnwood, and Glenhill! I could still remember the surnames of most of the families that had occupied a coveted corner lot on the main street. There was Kristi Beauchamp’s house, glowing in the morning sun, her mother’s flower pots meticulously cared for as always. There were bird baths, metal swing sets, and cars parked inside of clutter-free garages. I knew kids who lived on each street, kids that by and large had started kindergarten with me and then gone all the way through to matriculation at the new high school that would be built over the tracks from the entrance to our shared subdivision.

  A building that was now eerily missing.

  For all the bad press the concept of suburbia gets from sociologists, historians, and even artists, growing up in Northampton was a pretty sweet gig, at least the part of it that other people could see from outside the colorful array of front doors.

  FINALLY, Mary maneuvered a hard right onto the longest of the long side streets, Creekview Drive. Winding down that familiar way, I knew precisely where we were going, where we would stop, where this could and should all end—but I couldn’t compute the big questions of “Why?” “How?” and “What (TF)?” What I was absolutely sure of was that I couldn’t handle whatever came next. I couldn’t go there.

  There wouldn’t include just the house. No, surely this bullshit made-up fantasy came complete with the people. THE FREAKING PEOPLE! Dad, Mom, Kim, and Rick—they would all be there. Wouldn’t they? And then it hit me. Oh, crap. If they would be there, then SHE would be there! LITTLE AMY would be there! Holy, Holy, Holy CRAP. How old was I going to be when I got there? In other words, how old was SHE going to be? Surely I wouldn’t have to have that … HER—us—shoved down my throat.

  Oh. My. God.

  But destiny, or fantasy, or some form
of mental paradox was calling us onward. Even though Mary had never been here, to my little corner of the past, and didn’t have the GPS necessary to find it, she knew just where to pull off to the side of the road, making a slow stop in front of the biggest house on the block. I looked up and gazed unencumbered through the large car window at number 24314 Creekview Drive, my childhood home in all its glory and spanking new splendor.

  We had moved here in 1976 when I was eight years old. Mom and Dad didn’t sell the place until after I graduated from college. The last time I had driven by the property, it had been transformed by its new-millennium owners. The covered brick entry was gone, a second-story front porch had been added, the garage had been converted into a living space, and the entire color scheme and outer materials had been unscrupulously altered. All that remained intact was a set of the original windows, perched high on the third level. I sketchily remembered that a flood had occurred at some point in the near past, the creek from behind finally rising high enough to overcome the ever-vulnerable structure, requiring a massive renovation. It had been that disastrous one year in a hundred that we all hoped wouldn’t happen on our watch, the reason the house was zoned in the flood plain in the first place.

  But on this day, at this splendid but untrue hour, the years of aging were yet to occur. Yes, on this day it was perfect. It was pristine, it was unfettered and it was glorious. Holy crap, I was home when it was still our home, I was back when it was still back in the day—I was at the place where previously only my subconscious could take me. Looking wide-eyed, drooling mentally, my next thoughts were the most lucid that I had conjured up since landing at Hooks airport.

  What did I have to do now?

  And so, I turned to Mary, who had become the cruise director—my own personal Julie McCoy—for my fantasy voyage backward. And, like Julie’s little Vickie, like a young grasshopper awaiting instruction from her Michigan-born sensei, I awaited the answer.

  Mary turned to me with a look of compassion. “Amy,” she said with grave preciseness. “It is ten thirty a.m. Thanksgiving morning, November 23, 1978. You are about to play the role I laid out for you earlier. I will leave you here and pick you up tomorrow at five p.m. They are expecting you. You have to go now. You absolutely have no choice. You must get your suitcases and walk up that sidewalk and ring that doorbell.”

  Her words were delivered with such force and gravity that I had no choice but to listen and obey. It was almost like what she said couldn’t be questioned—she had been placed in charge by an authority who could alter time.

  This was going to happen, regardless of how ridiculous it was.

  MARY got out of the car with relative ease while I struggled to open my door—a massive, long, steel beast positioned awkwardly close to the ground. Somehow it managed to avoid whacking the curb completely, but the bottom grazed the concrete, creating an awkward friction. I met Mary behind the car, where she unlocked the trunk, again with the key, giving me my suitcase, the work-type satchel and what looked like a version of the cosmetic case my maternal grandmother had carried. Granny had called it a train case. This version was green, vinyl, and textured to look like leather, complete with visible stitching along the sides.

  “I think you have everything,” Mary said, peering into the deep cavern of the trunk and then slamming it down with a huge, hollow thud. I stood motionless, but she continued to move, turning toward the front of the car. Looking back and seeing me still standing there, she returned to where I was, with my bags on each side of me. She patted me warmly on the back, smiling broadly. “Good luck, Amy!” she said. “I’ll wait here to see that you get inside!”

  “I mean …” I began awkwardly, panicking as she moved toward the driver’s side door. “How do I do this … How do I get a hold of you if I need something? Like, if I get in trouble or get sick … What will I do?”

  “We won’t talk,” Mary said firmly. “You won’t need me, you’ll only need yourself—you are the only one who can do this.”

  “Can I text you?” I whispered, my voice trailing off. “If I have a question, about like, my role and all that?”

  “You can’t text here,” Mary said. “It won’t work. There are no mobile phones here, no personal computers, and no internet. No messaging, no emailing, and no texting. YOU are the only one who can do this and you will have questions, but, Amy …” Now it was her voice that trailed off. “You have to answer them, only you can answer them.”

  Then, once again, she cocked her head, like she was going to either say something profound or ask me for a dog biscuit. “It’s less about the answers than the questions themselves. It’s time to ask the questions …”

  Questions? I thought. What questions? I didn’t have any freaking questions and I didn’t need the answers to questions I didn’t want to ask, because there weren’t any. I knew what happened, in there, in that yard, in that house, in that childhood.

  Yes, it was a part of me, but it was over and really, it was insignificant, it was as normal and vanilla as the very suburbia that I was standing in. It was common. Seriously, come on, I wasn’t Anne Frank, Anne of Green Gables, Anne Boleyn, Anne Hathaway or even Annie from that stupid musical I didn’t like.

  Nothing to see here, folks, move along to something else that mattered, not this.

  “It’s time,” Mary cut in, coming ominously behind me, putting her hand on my shoulder. “You can do this, and you must.” Eyeing her briefly as she nodded, smiling again in that disturbing yet meaningful fashion, I stood by the mailbox and stared at her, as if in a drunken stupor. I looked toward the house, back at Mary, and just stared. “You have to go now, Amy,” she said firmly. “You don’t get to decide, it’s been decided. Believe me,” she said, softening her tone ever so slightly, like she could possibly understand my dilemma. “It will be OK, I promise …”

  Slowly turning toward the house, I looked up, and then after an additional look back at Mary, I started up the path to my house, or was it their house, who knew?

  This is where the whole people-pleasing mentality worked against you, because if you ever go back in time you ought to at least put up some resistance, or ask some tough questions, or do something other than nod furiously and go along with the program. I had always gone along with the program, sometimes to my benefit, other times to my demise. Today it could go either way. That is, if any of this BS was even for real.

  THIS IS a dream, this IS a dream, this IS a dream, I repeated in my mind over and over. Maybe if I clicked my sparkly red shoes— or vinyl Yo-Yo heels—together, I would be transported back to Ohio, or Kansas, or someplace in the future that was supposed to be the present. Half of me wanted it all to end right here, willing the wild aberration to stop before it went even a blink of an eye further. The other half wanted me to have the courage required to do this right and bravely face whatever was at the end of the sidewalk.

  It was all there: the pine needle covered lawn, the tall towering pines, the holly shrubs, the flower beds lined with bricks left over from the construction, the long driveway. There is a special smell associated with a thick, lush lawn of St. Augustine grass, almost enabling you to taste its blades. It was exactly what came to mind when I read that verse from Psalms, “He makes me lie down in green pastures.” The green pastures in my soul were always a thick bed of St. Augustine grass, laying in the yard, this same front yard.

  The house was atypical even for the 1970s, as many of the doors, windows and other features had been supposedly pulled from a house in New Orleans by a builder who had originally designed and constructed the house for his own family. The builder went bankrupt, the house went on the market after construction (but before wallpaper, carpet, and other optional items were chosen and installed), and my dad, always game for a bargain and an unconventional living space (or unconventional anything for that matter) convinced my mom to buy the house, finish it, and move four streets back in the same neighborhood we had lived in since 1970.

  The outside appearance was
a fusion of English Tudor and 1970s American Contemporary, chocolate-brown wood and white stucco. It stood a full three stories high, unusual for our neighborhood. We were always referred to as the people who lived in the three-story house. An honor really.

  Reaching the place where the sidewalk ends, I placed my shaking finger on the doorbell, pressed firmly, and waited for whatever lay behind the door at 24314 Creekview, Spring, Texas, zip code 77379. Good God, this was still the 713 area code … nobody knew anything about 281 here, or 832. In my time you had to dial ten digits, here it was only seven. God, there was still long distance … what if I needed to place a collect call to my husband?

  Could you even still do that, and could an operator really connect me with the future, my real life, the one where I was sexually active?

  Chapter Four

  HELLO FROM THE OTHER SIDE

  After a few long seconds, providing me more time to realize this was all probably crap, the door began to open.

  “Hello!” a middle-aged man who looked just like my dad said, thrusting his hand forward. “Happy Thanksgiving!” he continued.

  I took his hand timidly and shook it, staring at I’m not sure what. “I’m Dick Weinland,” he said. “And, well, I guess we are cousins! We’re glad you could come for Thanksgiving!”

  A meek “Thank you. I’m Amy Daughters,” was all I could manage to reply, almost inaudibly, trying both to look, and not look, into his bright young eyes.