In case thinking this over starts to worry you at all, let me reassure you on a couple more points. The bank cameras were not working that day, and even if the banker who handled our account sees you at a later time, she will find you only faintly familiar—she won’t remember you as the clever schemer who raided the account of one of their customers.
I do not think we’ll meet again, but it has been a great pleasure knowing you, and an even greater pleasure working with you. By the way, this time next year, you will be a great-grandmother. Have a wonderful Halloween.
The letter was signed, C. She wondered if that was supposed to stand for Clinton, or if it stood for his real name.
Well. That was quite an adventure. She went to get Blossom’s leash to take her out for a walk to the bank, to deposit her money. It was mostly in tens and twenties, but there was one crisp, new hundred-dollar bill. With a faint feeling of mischief—someday, my ever-responsible daughter and son-in-law will have to go through these—she attached the hundred dollar bill to the letter with a paper clip and then filed it away.
Won’t this just make them wonder.
Author’s Note
Iris is my real-life grandmother. In 2004, when she turned 80, I wrote this story as a birthday gift to her. The whole family went to Ohio to celebrate her birthday at Lake Hope State Park, and we read the story around the campfire one night, passing the manuscript around.
To my knowledge, Grammie never met an immortal con man, but much of the story is built from real details of her life, from her job at the FBI to the Airdale terrier Blossom. My Grampy doesn’t appear as a character in the story, but he did in fact write her a love poem for each birthday and Valentine’s Day, until the dementia stole his writing ability.
My Grammie moved to the Twin Cities a few years after I wrote this, and at the time of this writing is 92 years old and still living.
THE WALL
t was February of 1989, and I was a freshman in college. I was sitting in the student center trying to do my Calculus homework and drink a cup of coffee, both of which were surprisingly hard, when someone pulled out the chair across from me and sat down. “Meghan,” she said.
I looked up. She was old—not old like a senior, old like my mom. She actually looked kind of like my mom, and I bristled instinctively. “It’s Maggie. Who are you?”
“I’d forgotten about the Maggie phase,” she said, looking introspective. “I’m you. You, from the future.”
I put down my pencil. “. . . Oh?” I said, wondering how this crazy person had found out my name. Maybe this was a non-traditional student doing a Psych class experiment. How do randomly chosen students respond to utterly implausible claims? “Uh. Why are you here?”
She leaned forward. “You should study abroad in the fall. In Germany. West Germany. In Berlin.”
I blinked at her. “I don’t speak German.”
“All the more reason to go! You could learn German.”
“But I already have my language requirement,” I said. “In French.”
“That is the sort of thing that Europeans mock Americans for. ‘I already know one foreign language! That’s practically two more than the average American!’”
That stung. I scowled at her. “Look. My mom didn’t let me go to France last year. Even though we’d paid the deposit. And that was just a two-week trip with chaperones. And you think she’s going to cheerfully send me off on a study-abroad program?”
“You’re eighteen now. How’s she going to stop you?”
“She could refuse to pay,” I said, incredulously.
“Dad would take your side,” she said. “He feels guilty about not standing up to her about France.”
I folded my arms, thinking about the fight with my mother and how my father wouldn’t even stay in the house while we were arguing. It was sure nice to think he had a few regrets about that. “Mmm hmm. Why is it so important to you that I go to Berlin?”
“Because the Berlin Wall is going to fall this November. On the 9th.”
Okay. This was clearly a joke. “The Berlin Wall is going to fall. This year. You even know the day. That’s awesome. I can’t wait. Now in the meantime, I should probably work on my Calculus homework.”
She stood up to go, then turned back, her eyes narrowed in an expression that almost looked like something I’d seen in my own mirror. “You should just drop Calculus now,” she said. “You’re going to get a D.”
*
She turned up again in May.
As weird as that first encounter was, I couldn’t just put her out of my mind. Yes, she was probably a lunatic, but I did at least think about going to the study-abroad office to ask about studying in Berlin. The problem was when I imagined telling my parents I wanted to go abroad, it was the whole scene I found myself unspooling, complete with a migraine headache for my mother and a guilt trip from my father. It was usually my younger brother who defied Mom: I was the good girl. And I was still getting guilt trips for leaving Iowa for college, even though they’d gone along with it.
I finally stopped into the study-abroad office in April. It was too late to apply for a program in the fall, but I leafed through the brochures, filled with pictures of smiling students frolicking by the Eiffel Tower, the Coliseum, giant golden Buddha statues, the Taj Mahal. I traced the Golden Buddha. Now, that would be something to see, if my mother ever chilled out.
I was more proactive with Calculus. When I couldn’t get through the homework the crazy lady had interrupted, I concluded that maybe she was a Message from Somewhere that I ought to sign up for the free tutoring at the math skills center, and I headed there straight from the student center that afternoon.
The second time she came, she found me in the library. “Maggie?” she said, more hesitantly this time.
I looked up. “You, again? How’d you find me in here?”
“I remember my favorite library spots.” She sat down next to me on the ugly orange couch.
I normally liked this spot because hardly anyone came to this section. Being pursued by a lunatic made me rethink the advantages of this strategy, but it seemed a bit premature to scream for Campus Security. “What do you want?”
“I want you to go to Germany. You didn’t apply for a study-abroad program, did you?” I shook my head. “Well, that’s okay. You can take a leave of absence in the fall, and just go.”
“And tell Mom and Dad what, exactly?”
“Tell them you want to travel. Lots of students travel. You don’t need their permission. There’s actually a work visa program for American college students—you can get a work visa for six months in West Germany, so you wouldn’t need their money.”
“I’d go to West Germany and apply for a job?”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“I don’t speak German. What kind of job would I get, exactly?”
“You could teach English. Or—I don’t know. You’d find something.”
I gave her a look of disbelief. “Mom would have a nervous breakdown.”
“At some point, you have to realize that her anxiety disorder is not your responsibility.”
This was almost a word-for-word echo of something my high school best friend had said. I shot the woman a narrow-eyed look of my own. “Who are you, anyway? For real.”
“I go by Meg. And I told you the truth. I’m you.” She pulled something out of her pocket; it looked like a little like a calculator. “Here, I brought something to show you. This is my pocket computer.”
I took it. It had a smooth, black surface. “It doesn’t look very useful,” I said.
“Put your thumb on the screen for a second. It’s keyed to my fingerprints, which incidentally are the same as yours.”
I did, and the black surface suddenly sprang to life, presenting me with rows of little pictures. “Does it have a mouse?”
“Your finger’s the mouse. Tap on the icon you want.”
I tapped on one randomly. It spit out a stream of music, and the orderly row
s disappeared. The screen showed a cascade of images: a close-up of a snowy owl in flight, a wood landscape, and then the interior of a room with stone walls. Meg leaned over to look. “That’s a game,” she said. “It does useful stuff, too. When I’m in the future I can use it to get my e-mail—which everyone in the future has. I can use it to get on the Internet—almost all information is online in the future. It stores all my music, photos, and books. It’s also a camera, a video camera, a credit card, a GPS—that’s sort of like a talking atlas—and a phone.”
I stared at it. The graphics were amazing. “When you took it out, I thought it was a calculator.”
“It’s a calculator, too.”
“This is really cool,” I said. “Can I keep this?”
“No. You have no way to recharge the battery, for one thing.” She took it back. “Now can we have a serious conversation about getting you to Germany?”
“So does everyone in the future have a time machine, too?” I asked.
“No,” she said, her gaze wavering a little. “No, mine is special.”
I stared at the pocket computer and tried to imagine telling my parents that a woman from the future had told me to go to West Germany, and I knew she was from the future because she had amazing futuristic technology and even if I’d had the gadget with me I was pretty sure my mother would not be convinced.
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s the thing. I have to admit that you really might be from the future. If I’m going crazy, this is an awfully detailed hallucination. But.”
“But?”
“I got a B+ in Calculus last term. You thought I was going to get a D!”
“You got a B?” she said incredulously. “A B plus? How?”
“Well, I went to the math skills center for extra help, and—”
“The math skills center,” she said. “Why didn’t I do that? I can’t remember why I didn’t even think to try that.”
“Anyway,” I said. “You’ve sort of undermined your credibility, you see. I think maybe you’re from the future but we’re actually from different time streams. Because I really can’t believe the Berlin Wall is going to fall in less than six months. I mean, Gorbechev seems pretty cool and he’s made some really amazing changes but Honecker—”
“Honecker’s going to resign in October.”
I stared at her skeptically. I’d started paying attention to the news after her first visit, and although there had been a lot of good news from the Soviet bloc, Honecker was really an asshole. And assholes with power rarely seemed to say “oh, hey, I’ve just realized something: I’m an asshole. Maybe I should resign!”
“He’ll get sick,” Meg said. “And Gorbechev can’t stand him. He’ll resign. The Wall is going to fall and you can be there to see it.”
“Here’s the other thing: I have no money. ‘Go to Germany,’ you say, like I could just hitchhike there. I’d have to buy a plane ticket—”
“That’s what credit cards are for.”
“And I’d pay it off with what, exactly?”
“Your work-study earnings. It would be worth living with debt for a while if you could be there.”
“I want to graduate in four years, not four and a quarter. Especially since I’m planning to do my student teaching the fall after I graduate. That’s how it’s set up. If I throw the schedule off I’ll have to wait until the following fall.”
“Oh, God,” she said. “Teaching. Of course, you’re planning around the student teaching calendar. Listen, you should just forget about it. You’re going to hate teaching. I mean, you’ll realize it during your student teaching year and then spend three or four years doing it anyway before you wise up and change careers. Really, if you pulled a B+ in Calc, just switch right now to an Econ major, it’s going to be so much more useful to you later.”
“Useful for what?” I said. “Am I destined to become an investment banker or something?”
“No, you’re going to manage a non-profit focusing on public health. Econ would still be way more useful. At least take statistics. You can drop the Educational Studies stuff and take a bunch of Econ and Stats while you major in English.”
“The only reason Mom isn’t freaking out about the English major is that I’m doing the teaching concentration!”
“Maggie, forget about what Mom wants. You’re a legal adult. You get to make your own choices!”
“Yeah? She’s paying my tuition. What if she cuts me off?”
“She won’t. She didn’t cut my—she didn’t cut our brother off for majoring in Theater, later.”
“Robbie’s going to major in what?”
“Yeah, and Mom threw a fit about it but she adjusted in the end. To everything.” She sighed heavily and said, “At least think about it.”
“Berlin, or my major?”
“Berlin,” she said. “Your major, too. But mostly Berlin.”
“Okay,” I said, because it was clear this was the only way I would get rid of her. “I’ll think about it.”
*
She was crazy.
Or maybe I was crazy.
I didn’t arrange for a leave of absence and I didn’t buy any plane tickets. And I certainly didn’t tell my parents about any of this. But when I packed to go back to college in August of 1989, I crept downstairs late one night and rooted through the filing cabinet with all the papers until I found my passport.
*
Meg knocked on my dorm room door in September. My roommate was out, which was actually a little disappointing, since it would have been nice to have some sort of external validation about the whole “I’m you from the future! Look at my futuristic technology!” routine.
I didn’t invite her in, but she came in anyway and I sighed and closed the door behind her.
“Just go,” she said. “Buy a ticket and go. Even if you fail your classes, it’ll be worth it.”
“I’m actually taking statistics right now,” I said stonily. “So on one hand I should take statistics! It’ll be so useful! When I’m a grownup! But never mind that, I should just fail all my classes and—”
“—go to Berlin, yes.” She chewed her lip. “You could have taken the term off. I did suggest that.”
“Yeah, well, I was actually looking forward to coming back in the fall, as it turned out.”
She looked at me blankly and then recognition dawned in her eyes. “Peter. It’s Peter, isn’t it?”
“You know, for someone who claims to be me from the future, you don’t seem to remember your own life very well.”
She started pacing. “That’s because I did my best to forget that I ever dated Peter. Oh my God, Maggie, he was the biggest mistake ever.”
“Well, you might view him as a mistake, but I happen to like him!”
“He cheated on us. He gave us an STD, Maggie—oh, not that one,” she said, when she saw me blanch. “Christ, if he’d given us AIDS I wouldn’t be here because we’d probably have been dead before the better treatments started coming available. No, it was one of the curable-with-antibiotics kind. Thank God we didn’t marry the son of a bitch. He’s currently working part-time for cash to avoid paying his wife child support. In the future, I mean. He seems nice, sure, but he is an ass.”
I sat down on my bed. “You know,” I said. “When you were me, did you have some woman coming back from the future and giving you advice?”
“No,” she said. “Or I never would have dated that stupid son of a bitch.”
“Right,” I said. “You got to make your own goddamn mistakes without some stranger from the future butting in. You know? If you’d had someone turning up and yelling ‘oh, don’t date that one! He’ll give you an STD!’ you might have wound up dating someone who was, oh, secretly gay—”
“Yeah, don’t date Roger, either.”
“I figured that one out for myself, thanks.” I glared at her.
“Right. I should have remembered. Sorry.”
“Look.” I tried to calm myself down. “You seem like you’d
really love to go to Berlin in 1989. You have a time machine so why don’t you just go there?”
“Because,” she said, through gritted teeth, “I can’t go anywhere that’s further than a quarter of a mile from where you are. Which in 1989 is Northfield, Minnesota.”
“Why do you have to stay so close to me?”
“Because that is how it works. The time travel, I mean.”
“Oh,” I said. I felt bad, for a minute or two, and then I said, “Well, my point still stands. This is my life. I get to make my own mistakes. And I would like it if you’d stay out of them.”
She stood up and walked to the door. Just before she left, she turned back. She looked like she was trying to hold back tears, but she smiled at me and said, “You’re doing a good job of standing up for yourself. Try to use some of those assertiveness skills with Mom sometime. It would be good for both of you.”
*
Erich Honecker was voted out of office by the Politburo on October 18th.
At that point, I started to think that maybe Crazy Meg was right.
You in the future, reading this, are probably thinking, MAYBE she was right? MAYBE? But you have to realize, it wasn’t nearly as clear in October of 1989 what was about to happen. I’d signed up for German 1 on impulse (I hadn’t said anything to Meg about that when she visited, because I was too pissed off about what she’d said about my boyfriend) and we spent some time in class discussing current events. On October 19th, one of my classmates said, “I can actually believe that the Berlin Wall is going to fall within my lifetime.”
Within my lifetime. Not, you know, early next month.
*
Erich Honecker’s resignation did not persuade me to run out and buy a ticket. I did go find out how much a ticket to Berlin would cost, but it was a lot more than I had in my bank account, and where the hell was I going to sleep once I got to Germany, anyway? The whole thing just seemed crazy once I was actually sitting in the travel agency office and I apologized for wasting the travel agent’s time and left.
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