If I Could Turn Back Time

by Beth Harbison

  I would have given anything, absolutely anything, to stay in that deep, black unconscious state.

  If that was what death was, bring it on.

  But no—beep … beep … beep …

  I batted my hand out in the direction of the sound—break it! stop it!—but the movement felt heavy and went without contact or landing.

  Wait, where was I? This didn’t make sense; the puzzle pieces were slow to slide toward each other. Alarm clock? I didn’t even have an alarm clock! I used my phone now, a gentle piano trill to pull me back into the world, not some old-school LCD alarm.

  I tried to open my eyes. God, it was hard. Like they were glued shut with Krazy Glue. That happened to me once. I was trying to put a mug handle back on and got a sudden, violent eye itch and went to touch my eye without thinking of the glue on my fingertips. You think it’s annoying when you glue your thumb and index finger together? Try your eyelids! Nightmare!

  I tried again, and slowly light and color filtered into my brain. My head was pounding. God almighty, I hadn’t been this hung over in years. My head hurt, everything was achy to the point where I felt like I couldn’t move, my mouth was as dry as cotton, even the top of my hand hurt—what did I do? How do you hurt the top of your hand?

  Drunk. I’d gotten drunk. Anything can happen when you’re drunk. All kinds of dumb, embarrassing things, in fact, do happen when you’re drunk. So … what? I’d been on the boat. Now I was in someone’s bedroom somewhere—please, god, their guest bedroom—and someone had set an alarm. Great. Thanks a lot.

  The beeping started to fade. Thank god. Got to love an alarm clock that gives up.

  I blinked and squinched my eyes and the room began to come into focus. There was a red LED readout across the room that read 7:04. The room was light, so it must have been 7:04 A.M. But where the hell was I, that I—or somebody—needed to set an alarm?

  My eyes rested on the door.

  I knew this place.

  The beige door. The familiar full-length mirror on the back of it, reflecting the familiar dresser, with many instantly familiar colors and patterns on T-shirts and clothes that were hanging haphazardly out of the drawers.

  I blinked again. And again.

  What? This wasn’t possible. A dream. A drunken dream? It seemed too sharp to be ethanol-induced, but maybe my brain had energy where my body did not.

  I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, tried to quiet my pounding heart, and took another deep breath before opening my eyes again. I looked to the left. I was expecting—fully expecting—to see the red walls, the black accent paint, the simple lines of the hotel room I’d left before going out on the boat with my friends—but instead I saw the little rose-print Laura Ashley wallpaper of my youth.

  And there on the bed next to me was the achingly familiar, sleeping, gray-muzzled face of my long-gone golden retriever Zuzu.

  My exclamation roused her; those sleepy brown eyes, with what my mother always called “Cleopatra eyeliner” around them, opened for a moment, took me in, and closed again as she stretched her front legs straight out, groaned, and relaxed immediately back into a deep sleep.

  “Zuzu…” The word drifted from me, and the dog didn’t move. She was used to me. I’d sighed her name so many times in teenage angst that she usually waited until the third or fourth repeat before actually believing me and responding.

  I wanted to reach out and touch her, but I was frozen. This was a dream, obviously, but it felt so real that I didn’t want it to end. Reaching for nothing would end it. I wanted to look around and memorize every detail, I wanted to take in the smell, the sound of the neighbor’s lawn mower in the distance.

  So I rolled over onto my side and watched the dog breathing for I don’t know how long. It seemed so real. Tears burned my eyes. Zuzu was the last dog I had. After she died, when I was twenty-one (seventeen years ago), I was too busy with my career to take care of a dog, even though I was every inch a Dog Person and wanted one badly. I was a Real Dog Person; I liked big, bouncy, happy retrievers, and those were not easy to tote to work at the brokerage firm.

  Since I was the third generation of my family in a career having to do with finance, it had never even occurred to me to do something else. It’s an awful lot like being a third-generation psychic or something, because my family has a weird gift for predicting the market. When my grandfather was able to do so in the thirties, naturally people took notice. That gave my dad, and then me, a leg up on the reputation part of the job.

  Not everyone liked my style, of course; it’s risky to put your money down on someone else’s hunches, particularly when those ideas don’t appear to make good fiscal sense, but over and over again I was right, and I made my own nest egg as well as that of more than a few of my clients. The problem, if you want to call it that, was that I wasn’t willing to play it safe. I wouldn’t stop anyone else from playing things safe, but the comfortable stalwarts were easy to find and identify; no one needed me to recommend stock in Proctor & Gamble, which routinely rises and splits, rises and splits. My job was to eyeball the high-growth risks and assess them.

  I didn’t know how to assess this.

  I was lying in what seemed for all the world to be my old bed and looking at the crystal-clear dream room of my past. I couldn’t think of what to do with the emotions of the situation. All I could think was that if I really were time-traveling, to just about any time in which I’d be lying in this bed with this pup, this would be a really excellent time to invest in Apple. And to start watching out for Google to come along in a couple of years. Those two stocks alone could have turned a token IRA contribution into a fortune in two decades.

  I had to smile at the very idea.

  But this was a dumb time to think about work. My mind was playing a cool trick on me; showing me my past with unusual clarity. This was obviously a time for remembering. Briefly “reliving” a carefree, happy time. I saw my perfume bottles sitting on the dresser—the dark red square bottle of Lauren, the thick sphere of Dior’s Poison, the tall rectangle of etched glass with old-time White Shoulders in it. Did they even make that anymore? I hadn’t thought about it in years. Each one of them carried specific memories. I wondered when I’d last had them and what made me abandon them so completely. If nothing else, they could have made interesting aromatherapy. Though, come to think of it, I didn’t think they made that Lauren anymore. If I could take that bottle out of my dream and sell it, maybe I’d get a pretty penny from some collector.

  Well, maybe twenty bucks.

  Staying still, so as not to break the dream, I surveyed the rest of the room, and even though it had been twenty years since I’d last inhabited this space, I was surprised how well I knew every inch of it. I knew what the closet doorknobs felt like in my hand, with their cool, thin brass, knew the tiny, hard-to-reach switch inside the reading light by my bed, and even knew the way my bed squeaked every time I rolled over.

  As a teenager, I’d had to be very careful about those squeaks sometimes when my boyfriend, Brendan, was over.

  I sighed at the memory and rolled over to go back to sleep. Or, rather, to wake up. It had been a pleasant dream, but I had things to do. Only two more days in Miami and then I had to go home and get back to work. I was determined to rest as much as possible before that. Everyone I knew was telling me I was stressed beyond capacity and was acting like a bitch, so I wasn’t going to give them any more ammunition.

  I yawned and stretched, hitting something sharp with my upper arm. I reached up and retrieved a book, Shanna by Kathleen Woodiwiss. Ah. Good one, dream mind. I hadn’t thought about Kathleen Woodiwiss and her historical romance novels in years. Man, I loved those. Shanna was my favorite. I remembered that much, though I couldn’t reel in the details. Something about an island, and water all around, and a handsome, tanned romance hero.… Maybe this was a portent of good things to come. Maybe, when I woke up and went back out on the boat, my own romance hero would finally come to me. Just as Jeffrey, my most recent ex,
was on his way, rather forcibly, out.

  I rolled over and floated back into a comfortable, warm relaxation. It was like going under anesthesia, pleasantly counting the moments as they grew slower and heavier until I was out.

  I don’t know where I went during that weighty sleep, but when I woke again, it was not to the perfumed breezes coming in my Florida hotel room, but to the smell of Endust and my mother bursting in the door.

  “Ramie, what in the world is wrong with you? I’ve been calling you for ten minutes! You have three days of school left. Three days. You’re not skipping!”

  I watched, amazed at the realistic details of my dream, as my mother—from a couple of decades ago—bustled through my room, yanking the closet doors open and digging through clothes I remembered even from across the room.

  Crazy.

  When I woke up, I was going to have to Google this detailed phenomenon.

  My mom’s dress was familiar too, though I hadn’t thought about it in years. A straight pink linen shift. I remembered it. She’d sewn it herself, as she had most of her clothes as well as mine, after she’d found the fabric on sale at G Street Fabrics. It was still more than she’d wanted to pay, but she said she’d “never seen a more perfect ballerina-pink” and she couldn’t resist it. With her lightly tanned skin, it really did look great.

  That made sense, I guessed. She said there were three days left of school, so that would mean it was May.

  Dream May.

  Memory May.

  “Do you hear me?” She turned to look at me. “You are not missing another day. Do you really want to risk not getting credit for your senior year because of yet another unexcused absence?”

  That was bunk, of course. I knew it now. She always used to make those threats when I wanted to stay home. Summer school, being put back a grade, not graduating, and watching all my friends go off to college while I stayed home and began a scintillating career in fast food.…

  I vaguely wondered what would happen next, what I’d say to that. Probably something sulky like, Okay, I was just tired, and wanted to get some sleep. I don’t have to be there for half an hour!

  But I said nothing. That is, Dream Me said nothing.

  Dream Me did not take over and read her lines, like in a play, as she was supposed to.

  And Dream Mom glared at what felt, for all the world, like Real Me.

  “Can’t be bothered to answer?” she asked.

  I tried my voice. “Me?”

  It worked. I mean, of course it worked, but I guess I thought maybe it wouldn’t, since I’d never had to actually try to participate in my dreams before. No dream person had ever stood there glaring at me, waiting for me to take a more active participation in my unconscious.

  Leave it to my mother.

  She drew back and looked at me. “Yes, you. What kind of a question is that? Do you see someone else in here?”

  “No.” It was weird enough to see her. But I looked around, because was there someone else in here? Was Jimmy Stewart holding a crushed flower in the corner? Was Leonardo DiCaprio looking longingly at my door and murmuring, “There’s room for both of us on there…”?

  “Ramie!”

  Me. I was onstage. “I…” I what? “I’m just having a really weird dream.”

  Any minute a giraffe would poke its head in through the window or the kid who delivers Chinese food in my neighborhood would walk by wrapped in a towel, and I’d say something in Dutch and then wake up in my own bed, more than likely with a nice big lump on my head.

  Meanwhile, Dream Mom looked concerned. “Ramie?” She came over to me and put her familiar cool hand on my forehead. Even when I was sick, that always made me feel a little better. “What’s going on? You’re not making any sense.”

  “Well, of course I’m not making sense, an hour ago I was thirty-eight and on a yacht in Florida and suddenly I’m in my teenage bed, where I haven’t slept in twenty years, being yelled at for missing school!” I said this, I didn’t just think it. Why wouldn’t I say it? It was true.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I cannot believe I have to ask you this, Ramie Phillips, but are you on something?” Her voice grew hushed. “Tell me the truth. Did you try pot?”

  I laughed. “About a thousand times in college.”

  Her expression sharpened. “You smoked pot when you were looking at colleges?”

  “In college.” What a stupid, boring dream. What psychological phenomenon was this? I’d never heard of restless, anxious, non-REM dreaming. Maybe I was just supposed to play along. Maybe that was how this would take me wherever I was supposed to be going. “You know, Wake Forest?”

  “Okay…” she said slowly. “So you’re suddenly going to go to Wake Forest and this is your way of … pretending it’s a sure thing?”

  I felt drowsy again. In and out of this world. “It is a sure thing,” I told her. “I went to Wake Forest, graduated in three years with a three-point-nine average and a degree in finance. You always said Dad would have been so proud, because he only got a three-point-eight.”

  “Would have been proud? Like he isn’t here? Why wouldn’t he be proud of you now?”

  “Well, you know … what with him dying and everything.” I hated saying that even still. It never got normal. “Though I guess he’s proud of me wherever he is.” I didn’t know whether I really believed that, whether I really thought there was a wherever he is or if he was just as gone as he’d felt for eighteen years, but there was no point in quibbling with Dream Mom about something so sad and depressing.

  Now she just looked completely flummoxed. “He’s downstairs having coffee.” She gave me a hard look, then yelled without moving her gaze from me, “Robert? Can you come up here for a minute? We have a situation.”

  Italicized situation was what she always said when she was trying to tell Dad I was in trouble.

  “Mom, he’s not going to—”

  There was an answering shout from below. I didn’t hear the words, but the tone was unmistakable. And heartbreaking. It had been so long since I’d heard it, I wouldn’t have thought I could recall it so completely. A rush of emotion welled in my chest, and expanded as I heard the footsteps I hadn’t heard in almost twenty years clomping up the stairs. It never occurred to me before that even a person’s footfall could be distinctive enough to identify them.

  Then, there he was.

  I was speechless.

  Dream or not, this was a moment in my life where I got a second chance, of sorts, with someone I’d loved and lost. Who doesn’t love that story line in a soap opera, where the death is all one big mistake and the loved one returns until the next time the actor wants a raise? Only this was … well, if not my real life, my real father. Dream or not, I was looking at the features I’d once known so well but hadn’t seen in such a long, long time. The kind, watery blue eyes; straight, nonjudgmental brows; dimples in his cheeks that still showed as weathered creases when he wasn’t smiling; and the blond hair gone gray, but tinged a little yellow in front from the cigarette habit that I knew to have killed him eighteen years ago.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  My father.

  My late father.

  How many times had I gotten so irritated with him, just for being? For parenting? How much time had I wasted, when I had him, being pissed off because he tried to stand in the way of fun that could have been dangerous for me? Had I been the disappointment to him that I had once believed he was to me? Had he died thinking he’d failed me because I told him so many times he had?

  Had he died because I’d insisted he’d failed me?

  Was this a chance, somehow, to undo that now, if only in my own conscience?

  I almost couldn’t find my voice. And I mostly didn’t think it mattered, except, once again, nothing happened unless I exerted the effort. “Dad,” I croaked.

  “What’s wrong, baby?” He looked concerned, then shot an uncertain look at my mom. What’s going on?

  “Tell me,” I said urgently, hoping this
was one of those chances you heard about now and then where you could talk to the dead in your dreams and get great insights, “what is it like on the other side?”

  There was absolutely no gleam of wisdom and comprehension, as I’d expected to see upon asking such a profound question. Instead he just screwed up those unruly brows, glanced behind him, then back at me, and asked, “The other side of what?”

  “You know,” I said, then lowered my voice as if a stage whisper were all it would take to get him to spill the beans. “After death.”

  He looked at my mom and she bit her lower lip and raised her brows. What should we do with her? She might as well have said it; that would have been no more obvious than her body language.

  Dad put his hand to my forehead and frowned. “I can never tell if there’s a fever,” he muttered to my mom. “Human bodies are warm all the time.”

  “I didn’t think there was.”

  “Did you check to see if she has some sort of head injury?” He wasn’t really even bothering to keep quiet. Like if I’d had a head injury I’d be too stupid to understand the words he was saying.

  “How?” she asked him.

  “Feel her head!” He came at me and started palpating my head in a way that would have hurt like crazy if I had had an injury.

  “I’m right here,” I interjected, but they ignored me. And rightfully so, I guess, because I’d proven myself to be a completely unreliable witness of my own mental state.

  Dad looked back at Mom. “I can’t really tell anything.”

  “My head doesn’t hurt.” I paused, then added, I don’t know why, “But I do think I hit it when I dove off the boat.” And actually it did hurt. But for some reason, it didn’t hurt at his touch. It was like a cluster migraine on one side of my head, though the feeling was coming and going really fast, and when it was there it was really there, yet when it was gone it was truly gone.