Time-Travel Duo

by James Paddock

  “We’ve got a heartbeat,” Thomas said and Jerry kept on breathing for her, taking turns with Howard. Thomas stepped away. Steven knelt at her head and began stroking her forehead, talking to her. Robert held her hand. Except for Steven and Robert giving her love and encouragement, a deathly silence hung heavy over the mournful hum of idling equipment.

  Above the hum, Abigail could hear a cry, very faint but definitely there. She looked around and then said to Gracy and Francine, “Do you hear a baby crying?”

  “Probably Elizabeth Anne,” Gracy said. She pointed to a door behind them. “She was asleep in Jerry’s office when we came in.”

  Abigail broke free. “She needs to hear that.”

  “Anne?”

  “Yes. She needs a reason to fight.” Abigail ran for the door to Jerry’s office, Francine with her. When she threw open the door, an angry, hungry wail broke out. Within seconds, she had the screaming Elizabeth Anne in her arms and was kneeling down between Steven and Robert.

  “What are you doing?” Steven demanded.

  “She needs to hear her even more than she needs to hear your voice. I want both of you to back off. Give her a chance to focus on her baby.”

  Robert and Steven looked at each other.

  “Now!” Abigail demanded. “I was a nurse for 45 years. I know what I’m doing. Go, now! Watch for the EMS.”

  They both did as she said and backed a few feet away. They didn’t go watch for the EMS. Clyde was already out doing that.

  Abigail laid Elizabeth Anne next to her mother, then picked up Anne’s hand and placed it on her daughter. “Here she is, Anne. Elizabeth needs you,” she said softly and then stroked her forehead and cheek in between Howard’s resuscitation. “Someone get me a wet cloth.” She continued to coo around Elizabeth’s Anne’s crying. The rest watched and waited.

  Chapter 79

  March 20, 1988

  “Da da da da da...”

  “I’m coming Annie.”

  “Da da da da da da.”

  “Okay... okay.”

  “Da da...” Elizabeth Anne grinned at her daddy coming in the door and rattled her crib until she lost her grip and fell onto her well-padded, wet and smelly bottom. She scrambled back to the rails and pulled herself back up in time to be lifted out.

  “Good morning, Princess.” He laid her on the changing table. “Oh, boy! Aren’t we ripe this morning.”

  Elizabeth blew bubbles and kicked while Steven changed and cleaned her. “How about we get some breakfast and then go for a ride?”

  She kicked and wiggled her agreement and then clung to her daddy’s arm as he went down the stairs. He stopped in the living room long enough to pick up a baby blanket and a wooden teething ring already appearing in need of replacement. He pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen and stopped. He and Elizabeth Anne were not alone in the house. He wasn’t sure whether to be irritated or pleased.

  “Good morning, Steven. You’re just in time.” His unexpected guest walked over and took Elizabeth Anne from him. “How is Grandma’s little charmer?”

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” Steven said dryly. “Where’s Sam?”

  “He went back out to get flowers. Did you want flowers, Steven? I should have thought to tell him to get some for you as well.”

  “No. I picked some up yesterday. When did you get in?”

  Francine got Elizabeth Anne strapped into the high chair. “We flew in last night. It was too late to bother going down to the Cape house. Got a room at the Hilton. We’ll go down later. You’ll come with us after, won’t you?”

  Steven didn’t answer. He looked at the omelet Francine was making.

  “Everyone will be there this afternoon. It should be a nice first day of spring.”

  Steven considered saying there would never be a nice first day of spring. He imagined the same routine every March 20 and every November 14, and probably every wedding anniversary until he was laid to rest as well.

  Your heart will heal in time.

  Humph! What if he didn’t want it to heal?

  “You’re still blaming yourself, aren’t you?” Francine said. She handed him a baby jar of semi-liquid bananas, and a spoon. “Feed your daughter. I’ve got to keep an eye on these omelets.”

  Steven pulled a chair close to Elizabeth Anne. She banged on her high chair table. “Da da da da da...”

  “It’s nonsense. Either we’re all to blame or we accept Anne’s theory that it was all preordained and we couldn’t have changed the outcome any more than we could stop an earthquake, or divert the next hurricane.”

  Bang... bang... bang... “Da da da da da da...”

  Steven turned the lid until it popped and then slipped a spoonful of the dull yellow concoction into the noisy mouth. The banging and demanding da da’s stopped, but for only several seconds. He made no response to Francine’s theory. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t heard it before from every one of the other dozen involved. Nor was it as though he hadn’t tried to convince himself of the same thing. There was always some little thing that kept him from letting go of the blame – such as the da da da, the main segment of Annie’s vocabulary. It should be ma ma ma.

  “Da da da da...” Bang, bang, bang.

  He spooned in another noise suppressor.

  “What would Anne say if she saw you moping around every day?” She paused for a response – didn’t get one. “Have you looked for work at all?”

  “Annie needs me.”

  “Annie needs loving care. She also needs a happy, productive father.”

  “I don’t need the money.”

  “Nobody thinks you do, Steven. But you need a purpose that is outside of Annie’s life – an adult purpose. Hire a good nanny and see if you can get on at MIT or any of the other colleges around here. Hell, you don’t even have to stay in Boston.”

  “Da da...” Another spoonful.

  “Look at Robert. You think he doesn’t still hurt after losing his wife and daughter. How about Sam and me? We lost our daughter and our granddaughter. Every day I hurt because we pushed Becky away and before I knew it, she was gone. Do you know what hurt the most, Steven?”

  Steven only looked at her and then responded to more banging.

  “What hurt the most is that I knew before Becky’s accident that she would die. Anne gave the exact date on the recordings. Twelve years now I’ve lived with that – that I maybe could have done something.” She flipped the omelet onto a plate and then pointed the spatula at Steven. “You actually have an excuse, whether you accept it or not. You simply made a mistake. You didn’t see any of it coming. You didn’t have the burden of knowing what was going to happen and then choosing to do nothing, wondering for the rest of your life if you could have done something.” She turned the spatula on herself. “I...” she began crying, “... I knew... I knew, Steven... and I did nothing.” Her crying turned to sobbing. “And I live with it... every... day.”

  Steven stood and put his arms around her and there, in the middle of the kitchen of his New England home, not far from the MIT campus, Steven and his grandmother-in-law clung together until...

  ... Sam walked in. He stood in the doorway holding a bouquet of flowers... looking. “Should I be jealous or something?”

  “We were just...” Francine looked at Elizabeth Anne. “... Oh my Lord!”

  Steven turned to find the jar of bananas dumped on the tray and Annie attempting to lick it up by placing her face in it. She looked up with a banana-eating grin and they all burst out laughing.

  Elizabeth Anne sat quietly in her stroller, silent, remorseful it seemed, as though she understood the reason her father and great grandparents stood around just looking down. A car door slammed and then another. Elizabeth turned to see two more people coming. In her own small way she wondered if she knew them, saw that her great-grandma did, so she probably did too. She kicked her legs and rocked the stroller. The lady bent down and kissed her on the cheek. She smelled nice, like her great-grandma. And
she remembered her – the nice lady – Aunt Gracy. The really tall man kissed her other cheek and he smelled like licorice. Uncle Henry. He was not as nice as Aunt Gracy, but he was okay. Elizabeth Anne liked ladies more. She liked her daddy a lot too, but she really liked ladies. They always smelled so good and talked funny to her.

  Another set of car doors. Papa Hair, Uncle James and Aunt Abby. More kisses on the cheek. All her favorite ladies but they weren’t talking funny to her. They made a pile of flowers and then the ladies, and Daddy, and all the men made a big circle around a big rock and were holding hands. Then Aunt Gracy started saying words – not funny words – big person words. Elizabeth stopped kicking and went silent.

  “Oh, Lord. You brought Annabelle Carol into the world for a purpose secret only unto You. Though we might guess, we wish not to question. We only ask that You give us the strength to rise above our sorrows and progress on with our lives. We know she is with You in your heavenly kingdom, and she is without suffering. We stand before You today, on this birthday of Annabelle to give ourselves as servants of Steven Waring in the care and raising of his and Annabelle’s child, Elizabeth Anne. Of this we vow. Amen.”

  I should kick and wiggle because I heard my name but... but Daddy is crying.

  Although she couldn’t read at the age of eight months, Elizabeth Anne would be able to get through a basic first-grade book before the age of four, and will be able to sound out the inscription on her mother’s gravestone.

  A shadow by her figure cast

  Splits the future and the past.

  Turn and stare toward the sun,

  Past and future merge as one.

  Annabelle walked the narrow line,

  Spanning then and now of time,

  Then gave her life so we should know

  The line but bounds a closed loop show.

  EPILOGUE

  Wednesday ~ July 18, 2001

  Elizabeth Anne, known by most everyone as Annie, closed her eyes for only a few seconds and then casually extinguished the fourteen candles sticking out of the lopsided cake. “You should just buy a cake, Dad,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “No store-bought cake for my princess.”

  “Thanks... Dad.” She thoughtfully picked each candle from the cake and placed them on a napkin. “You know what my wish was?”

  “You can’t tell me your wish or it won’t come true.”

  Annie rolled her eyes. “I wished that you would find a nice woman to marry.”

  Steven laughed.

  “No, really, Dad. You need a good sexual relationship.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t give me that ‘how do you know about these things’ look, Dad. I’m fourteen years old – going on forty as you tell all your friends. The extra credit reading in sex-ed enlightened me as to...”

  “Enlightened? Is that acceptable vocabulary for a teenager nowadays?”

  “Yes, Dad. It has enlightened me to the fact that a man of your age needs regular carnal sexual release – contrary to solo gratification – and...”

  “What?”

  Annie looked directly at her father. “... and a healthy romantic relationship.”

  “This is supposed to be a nice little birthday dinner with my daughter, just her and me as she requested and now, it’s a lecture on my sex... sexual needs?” Steven didn’t know whether to be mad or laugh.

  “In other words, Dad, I need a mother-figure.”

  Steven leaned back in his chair. “Ah! I see. Mother-figure. Not just a mother.”

  “I had a mother. I can never have a mother again. I can only have someone who plays the part of my mother.”

  “And I suppose when greeting this person you would say something like, ‘Good morning, mother-figure.’”

  “Get real, Dad.”

  “Get real! That’s good. Means there’s a live teenager in there somewhere.”

  “I’m afraid so. I’m stuck with the burden of being a teenager for another six years. Hopefully I’ll be out of the stupid verbal stage before I go to MIT in ‘02.”

  “MIT! You’re assuming a lot it seems to me. You think they’re going to accept a fifteen-year-old?”

  “My mother – female like myself – started at the age of sixteen. You’ve said yourself my IQ and photographic memory surpasses hers. Why not?”

  “I’ve created a monster – a precocious monster. Cut the cake.”

  Annie picked up the knife and looked at her reflection in the blade. “I have a second wish.”

  Steven looked at his daughter across the top of his glasses. “How about we stop at one? Or maybe we can just skip that one and go for the second one. Let’s see – behind door number one is a healthy sexual relationship for one’s father. Shall I stay with door number one or go for door number two? Twenty seconds – tic tock tic tock.”

  “How about we go for both doors, Dad? I want to know how my mother died.”

  Steven pushed further back in his chair and wondered if she saw the look on his face. Of course she did. She saw everything. “I’ve told you. A terrible auto accident.”

  “Just like her mother.”

  “Yes.”

  “In Goose Creek, South Carolina.”

  “Yes.” Steven suddenly became very afraid of the questions. What could she possibly come up with to dispute the story?

  “November 14, 1987.”

  Steven sighed. “Yes. Can we get on with the cake cutting?”

  “I was born July 18, 1987.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “In Goose Creek, South Carolina.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “How come my birth certificate says Boston, Massachusetts?”

  “Technically it was Boston.” Steven was already prepared for this question. The mix-up was an oversight when Annie started school. She needed a birth certificate. Abigail and James took care of it, somehow. He didn’t even think about it when he got it, the fact that it said Boston. He presented it upon registration and then filed it away. It was after six years of telling Annie she was born in South Carolina that he realized his error. He easily concocted a story and then waited for her to ask. “We were living in Goose Creek at the time. Your mom went up to visit your grandfather and went into labor a month early.”

  “Hmm! That’s odd. That was kind of what I figured, but when I asked Papa Hair if he was with my mom when I was born, he said he was in London. If he was in London, why did she go to Boston to visit him?”

  Steven bowed his head and searched for a way out. “Actually, your mother and I weren’t getting along. Since Papa Hair was in London she decided that a little separation would be good and went to housesit for him for a while. But right after you were born, we were back together. It didn’t last very long.” Steven wondered what else Robert let slip. “Your grandfather never knew the real reason she went to Boston that summer.”

  The reflection of the knife flashed light across Steven’s face. Annie flicked it back and forth, watching her father’s eyes with each question. “That sounds reasonable, Dad. Out of curiosity I decided to look through the newspaper archives for July from the eighteenth on, and well into August, and found nothing in the local papers about my birth. Thanks to some Internet friends in Charleston, I also checked the same dates in the Charleston News and Courier and the Goose Creek Gazette and again have come up with nothing. I requested a copy of my birth certificate from Boston Hospital and guess what? They never heard of me.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “I’ve got ways. On top of all of that, I checked the same newspapers after the date of my mother’s death and there’s not a single mention of a fatal, or nonfatal traffic accident involving anyone named Annabelle, Anne, or Waring.”

  Steven could feel a rapid thumping in his chest. He didn’t think he would ever have to answer these questions from her, or if he did it would be many years yet. He could just tell her that they will talk about it some other time and end the conversation. He was in charge h
ere. It was his prerogative. He opened his mouth and said, “You were born in Charleston, not Goose Creek or Boston.”

  “Charleston – Goose Creek. Semantics. Why is there nothing in the newspapers? Is July 18 a correct date?”

  “Yes, you were born July 18.”

  “What year?”

  Steven blinked at her. How could she know? No way. She’s just stabbing in the dark, trying to draw me out. “What do you mean, what year?”

  “I mean like, was I adopted or something? You didn’t know how old I was so you just picked a date out of the air. I went digging to find adoption papers or something. Do you know that’s one of the biggest fears of teenage girls? That they find out they are adopted. That their parents aren’t really their parents.”

  “You think you’re adopted?”

  “No, I don’t. I’m just surfacing thoughts, but that’s not what I believe. I didn’t find anything anyway, but I would like to know what is in that locked box in your closet.” She stuck the knife straight down in the center of the cake and then pulled down until one cut was made. She turned the cake around to her father. “Here. You have to do the rest. Bad luck if I do it.”

  “You’ve been snooping around in my private things! You would have my head if I went digging around in your room, peeking in your diary or pulling things out of your closet. If it wasn’t your birthday, I would tan your hide and ground you for a month.”

  “You haven’t grounded me since I was eight. And if I know my father, he would never punish me for trying to find the truth. I deserve the truth as to my birth and the truth as to my mother’s death.”

  Steven stared at the knife handle protruding out of the side of the cake. He should remain angry, but he couldn’t. She was right. She deserved the truth, but how? She would only think he was making up a science fiction tale.

  “You know,” she continued, “Great-grandmother Frick said something strange the other day when I went to visit her.”