You Cannot Mess This Up

by Amy Weinland Daughters

  Kim, as would be her MO as an adult, did not look properly attired for outside play. She wore Jordache jeans tucked into a pair of long leatherette boots. Her shirt had a scoop neck and poufy sleeves, and her hair—well, that was perfectly, almost magically, feathered into wings. All in all, her personal grooming at twelve mirrored what it would look like in her way-off forties, immaculate.

  I, on the other hand, looked somewhat disheveled, wearing an aqua striped, collared shirt that fit snugly. Then there was a marginally attractive turquoise Native American necklace. I probably thought it enhanced my status as a pretend warrior princess. My jeans were criminally tight, with crisscrossing multi-colored ribbons embellished on the back pockets. Topped off with a pair of green-and-white Adidas tennis shoes, it was a look to be proud of, or not. My hair was surprisingly not unkempt only because its short length and bowl shape made it impossible to leave wholly untidy. Perhaps Mom knew what she was doing with my hair after all. Those frequent trips down to the “Sergeant Snips” hair salon now made perfect sense.

  What really captured the essence of me at ten were my glasses. Brown-and-orange frames with enormous square lenses. Wavy arms led to gold metal hooks which attached the unit to my head. If this weren’t enough, someone had paid extra money, actual dollars and cents, to have my initials, in gold foil wavy lettering, affixed to the bottom right of the right lens. Maybe that’s why my eyes bulged so alarmingly. I was trying to read my initials from the back side of my lenses.

  Kim and Rick explained that Dad had just upgraded the Pong game to Atari and maybe later we could play. “Great!” I said, “I’ve played Atari before, but not in a long, long time!” The kids looked back at me with a mix of wonder and admiration. Before they could ask how it had been so long since I played something that had just been introduced, we were interrupted by someone screeching “YOU HOOOOOOOO!”

  Chapter Seven

  THE WALKING DEAD

  It was my paternal grandparents, my dad’s mom and dad. It was Grandma and Paw Paw.

  Frozen to the seat of my rattan chair, I listened in shock. Everyone had said they were coming, but once the dead people starting showing up, my delusion was notched up to an entirely different level.

  As they came down the steps into the sunken living room, I got up, unable, really, to take it all in. Then it hit me, the look on their faces; they looked enthusiastic and pleased, but they didn’t know me. My grandparents, my own personal beloved old people, had no clue who I was.

  What in the hell was I supposed to say?

  Dashing out from the corner of the room, a freshly cleaned Dad gallantly introduced me. “This is Cousin Amy from Ohio!”

  “Oh!” Grandma said as she came toward me. “It is a pleasure to meet you. Now,” she continued while grabbing my hand, but not making me uncomfortable at all, “I am cousin Bee and I am so glad you are here, this is my husband, Gene.”

  As thrilled as I was to see them, the sight of my dead grandparents shook me to my core. Traveling back in time was one thing—seeing people I’d said goodbye to, forever, was another. I felt a cold sweat come over me, like when you’re desperate to use the bathroom but can’t. It was like that, only instead, it was my version of reality being spun violently out of control. I didn’t need somebody to tell me what was going to happen next, life never allowed that, I needed somebody to explain why this was happening. How it could even happen in the first place.

  I was going to need answers.

  “Glad you are here!” Gene said. “OK, let’s all have a beer. Kids!” he directed, “go out to the garage and get five beers and one small glass for your grandma!” As the three kids bustled off to serve one of the primary purposes of their birth, we all took a seat.

  Bee and Gene must have been in their early 60s and looked healthy and robust. Hell, they were younger than my parents were back in my own time. Of all my memories of these two, none were like this. That is, with the exception of the fuzzy family photos. We were living in the photos. The dead people photos.

  Paw Paw was wearing his traditional mustard-colored polyester jumpsuit. The cherry on the top was a bolo tie featuring a cow skull. Grandma looked lovely from her not-so-real blonde hair in an upsweep to her blue polyester suit and shiny gold shoes. Even though it was one hundred percent ’70s, from top to bottom, she dazzled.

  I felt myself go misty as I tried desperately not to stare at them. Being that they were a generation removed from my own, I had always known that they would die. When they did, the loss was metered by the fact that they had lived the “full lives” people were so apt to remind one another of at funerals. That didn’t mean I didn’t mourn them and miss them. Like a million other people, I regretted all the questions I wished I’d asked them. It wasn’t tragic, but from a personal perspective it was monumental, one generation dying off leaving those who remained behind pondering the very meaning of life.

  Seeing them now, I would have to fight the urge to weep openly, holding them dramatically to my breast, telling them that I was sorry I didn’t appreciate their wisdom and guidance while they were still among us. I was in too big of a damn hurry, we were all in too big of a damn hurry.

  It made me realize that I had messed up so many things. Not because I was an idiot, but because, just like everyone else, I was human. Life was about so much more than what it seemed like when we were actually doing it.

  I supposed I would never stop missing Grandma. She had such a presence. At forty-six years old, I still found myself desperately wanting to update her on my life, filling her in on all that had happened since she died. No one knew any of these feelings here—it was just normal, regular life. Mom was trying to survive in the kitchen and everyone else was blissfully unaware that this was but a temporary scene, fleeting at best.

  Grandma looked younger than I had ever remembered. Really, she had never aged drastically in my eyes, but seeing her in her mid60s, almost a decade younger than my own mother back in the present, put aging in a much different perspective.

  “What time does the football start?” Paw Paw asked as he popped open beer number one, placed in a protective Styrofoam koozie.

  “Let’s see …” Dad said as he began to fumble with the large, clunky dial controls on the television set. “Hopefully the antenna will be up to it today!” he added optimistically, but no matter what he did the picture was awful, scratchy and grainy. Luckily no one other than me, from the land of the high definition flat screen 1080p television, seemed to notice or care.

  That TV was crap. These people deserved better and they didn’t even know it.

  Grandma, sitting close to me on the couch, close enough that I could smell her familiar scent, Estée Lauder Youth Dew, began to question me about where I lived and about my family. The earnestness in her voice made me wish I could tell her about my current predicament but, as Mary had said, I knew my limits. There was no way I could tell Grandma, or anyone else, what was “really” going on, who I “really” was. It wasn’t only that I was standing in a field of emotional landmines—how could I get anyone else to believe what was happening if I didn’t even really believe it myself?

  Crossing another item off my fantasy bucket list, I finally got to tell Grandma that I lived in Centerville, Ohio, the same town in which she had raised her own family in the late ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. In real life, we—Willie and I and our oldest son Will—had moved home to Houston from England for less than two years when we added Matthew to our family—before magically being transferred to the Dayton, Ohio, area. Grandma had died just months before we found out about the move. I’d always felt like we missed out on talking about the irony of it. In my real life, I would take my children to the school where she had been the secretary. I drove by her house every day. The chances of us growing up in Houston and one day bringing up our boys in Centerville, Ohio, were a million to one, but it had happened.

  Though I couldn’t tell her who I was, I could tell her exactly where I lived, and she could say she re
membered it. It wasn’t as good as her knowing it was me, but it was close. And it was way better than the nothing I had started this trip with. I had always secretly wondered if she had gotten up there to Heaven and managed to arrange the relocation from Texas to Ohio. I obviously couldn’t ask her that, because, well, she was really dead and I was really hallucinating.

  “Tell me about your children,” she said. She had known my oldest boy, Will, but died when I was pregnant with Matthew. As I was throwing up in the bathroom in her hospital room, she told everyone, “Amy and I are both feeling terrible.” Only she was in the process of dying, while I was growing a new life, fertilizing it with moon pies and beef jerky. Life is ironic, and gassy.

  Telling her about the things Will was doing in school, his aspirations for the future, and then introducing her to the character that is Matthew was nothing short of beautiful. I felt rare tears well up in my over-mascaraed eyes as I spoke of my children, her beloved great-grandchildren, one she would never know but would love just the same. Sensing my emotion, she reached over and grabbed my hand. “You miss your family on Thanksgiving, don’t you?” she asked, looking into my eyes.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I really do …”

  She had always been my favorite person in the world, the one I respected and looked up to. This talk may not have been the reason for my time travel, but it provided comfort and closure that I didn’t even know I needed. Before this meeting, the last time I had seen Grandma she was in the back of an ambulance, her feet flopping uncontrollably as she left the hospital for downtown Houston. That’s when her journey would end for real, in the peaceful, unspoken sanctuary of a hospice. Now I had another picture to draw on, one she would have liked better. I preferred it as well.

  As we continued to talk, Rick approached me with what could only be referred to as a legitimate dance move, handing me a beer can while completing a full lunge. He definitely had flair, part of his personality mirroring Little Amy’s, but he exhibited a far better degree of self-control. “Thanks,” I smiled, amused.

  “You’re so very welcome,” he responded, shifting his head sideways, a sly, almost flirtatious look streaming across his face. I chuckled. This vote of confidence sharpened his look even further. He finished with a couple of quick but effective arm motions, returning to a state of cool before anyone even noticed.

  He was hilarious.

  I slid the can out of the protective holder and found a shiny, red-and-white Old Milwaukee. Wow, I had no idea that anyone would serve this kind of thing to a guest, on a major holiday. The can itself was shorter and wider than what I was accustomed to, but what it lacked in height it gained in sturdiness. Instead of aluminum, it felt like it was made of steel, including the top, which had a tab that had to be completely removed. I hadn’t seen one of those in, well, I had no idea when the last time was, and I wasn’t sure if I had ever opened a beer that way.

  Popping the tab and then ripping it off, I took a huge sip of the full-bodied lager. I needed this nasty morning beer, I needed it in a way that’s hard to describe. It was a lot like the pregnant girl with the moon pies, only it wasn’t near as messy, or satisfying.

  Putting the tab in my blazer pocket for safekeeping, I pulled out my notebook, jotting down, “When was Atari introduced? When did pull tabs go away?” and then, “Buy a vintage Old Milwaukee can on eBay.”

  LITTLE Amy was thrilled with the arrival of new audience members, in a way that made the others’ excitement look like amateur hour. She bounded from person to person with such glee, it seemed like she might violently crash into something at any moment. Her exuberance was borderline dangerous.

  She reminded me, especially in the facial features, of my oldest son Will. Her actions reminded me more of my Matthew. The thought of me in them, or them in me, was alarming. It was almost as disturbing as when I looked at one of them and saw my in-laws. Nobody warned you that one day you’d look into the fresh face of your beautiful son, the same one who grew in your woman parts, and instead of yourself, or your people, you’d get a glimpse of your mother-in-law, or your husband’s uncle.

  So, in comparison, I guess seeing shades of Will and Matthew in the young me wasn’t all that bad, unless we were talking about the young me that was dancing around like a wild freak, at ten. The same one with all those awkward, painful years ahead of her. They could have done worse for a mom, but surely they could have done better. It was just the kind of thought that made Milwaukee famous—for brewing this beer that I was going to finish in the next three seconds.

  As I forced the last sip of the lager down, I could hear the back door open again. It must be my other grandparents, my mom’s mom and dad. We called them Granny and Granddaddy. They lived in an apartment in the Bellaire section of Houston. One of the true highlights of our childhood was when Kim, Rick and I would go there for a visit.

  The arrival of Granny and Granddaddy was met with an unexpected degree of casualness, on all fronts. The five people who lived in this house just didn’t seem as excited as they had been when Grandma and Paw Paw had arrived. It’s wasn’t like it was blaringly obvious. It was subtler, like my breasts. Only I think that’s called supple. If I had my iPhone, I could have looked that, and a bunch of other stuff, up.

  “I’m Ruth MacCurdy, and this is my husband, Frank,” my other grandmother explained, treating me like the stranger I had become. Ruth and I had been great friends when I was younger, from ten to twelve, or, right about now, I guessed. We talked on the phone several nights a week, discussing nighttime soaps like Dallas and Dynasty.

  The greetings died down quickly, kicking off the small talk associated with adults that are forced together by circumstance. Funny, I had never seen this group from that perspective before now. I, in my pea-sized hyper brain, had assumed they were just as happy to be here as I was. But now, I could feel tension. Where before there had been lively conversation amongst the adults, now there was a great calming. It was almost like everyone was taking a collective breath, cautiously, before continuing. I shook my beer can, hoping one of the kids—maybe even the younger version of me—would help me visit Wisconsin again. I couldn’t become a regular though. That might mean blowing this whole scene up, dramatically revealing an identity that didn’t actually exist.

  Dad made the shocking observation, shocking to me at least, that it was already the fifteenth anniversary of JFK’s assassination in Dallas. I was totally mesmerized by the fact that I had lived in a time so close to events that seemed like they’d happened fifty years ago.

  Granddaddy brought up the happy topic of “That crazy suicide pact in Jonestown, South America.” I was fuzzy on the details, but I was sure they were referring to Jim Jones’ “Kool-Aid” mass-suicide pact. I had seen a clip about it on the front page of the newspaper. It must have just happened because the headline was something about the bodies being airlifted out.

  It reminded me of a song my sister listened to in the ’80s. I think it was called “Guyana Punch.” Was it sung by a local Houston group called The Judy’s? I wasn’t sure, but I was struck with the inappropriate and macabre nature of a song commemorating such an event, especially the jazzy number I was remembering.

  AFTER her parents arrived, Mom had only sat down briefly and then returned to the kitchen. The kids ran in and out, mostly congregating in close proximity to the grandparents. It was easy to see that a special bond existed between them. Though I had always assumed this was due to the obvious grandparent/grandchild angle, I realized that they also all fell outside of the twenty-five to sixty age bracket. This meant that neither group—the kids or the elderlies—was considered a serious part of any legitimate decision-making. The kids were too young and naïve to add any value and the older people too out of touch. Even though I was still a certified forty-something, my precarious role as a time traveler made me realize that leaving either group out was a huge error in judgement.

  I also noticed that not one member of the party had risen to offer Mom assistanc
e with the daunting task of Thanksgiving dinner. Again, I had assumed that Mom would have had the help of the other grown women in the group. Did she do this all herself because she wanted to, or because she had to? Pulling the little notebook back out, I jotted down, “Ask Mom about help with Thanksgiving dinner. This is ridiculous.” And “Judy’s—Guyana Punch???”

  Chapter Eight

  BITCHES, BALLERS, AND OLIVE BRANCHES

  Not sure where the hell I fit into this picture, I rose and went, seemingly unnoticed, into the kitchen. I was hesitant, but justified the intrusion by convincing myself that Mom must need assistance.

  “Can I help you, Sue?” I asked, trying to sound casual as I stood shuffling my rubber, leatherette heels on the linoleum.

  “Oh no, I’m doing fine,” she replied, dicing an onion on an unusual three-legged chopping board that was shaped like a birthday cake.

  “Here, let me do that, I feel useless.” Without a word, she moved across the room, not turning back to offer any instruction. “Thanks,” I said, “I needed to get up.”

  “I understand,” Mom said. “I prefer to be up and busy.”

  “Me too,” I said, watching her as she shifted things around on the stove top.

  She looked so different, so young and so steady. The aging she surely felt, today, at forty-something, wasn’t near what it would become. I knew if she could hurl forward as I had hurled backward, she would be shocked at the sight of herself at seventy-five. All physical changes aside, she was the same Mom I had always known, busy, productive, and determined. For all her laid-back nature, the one that didn’t care about material things, or what we were doing, or where we had gone, she had a striking undercurrent of intensity. It bubbled in a way I had never noticed before, at least at this age. The age when l apparently wasn’t registering anything important.

  Looking at her now, it was a lot like that feeling I got when I put a new prescription of contact lenses in for the first time, or like the first time I ever saw a college football game in high-def. I had seen it all before, only this time it was bolder, more vivid, with every detail standing out like a new discovery.