Ripples Through Time

by Lincoln Cole

  “Yes?”

  “When did you first realize Jason was using?”

  She scrunched her nose. Not the question she was expecting.

  Adam misread her confusion. “If you don’t remember…”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I remember. He was seventeen. Back when his hair was still long. He came home from a party and his eyes were really red. And he smelled like…well, he smelled like weed.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I called him out on it. Told him I’d tell mom.”

  Adam nodded.

  “He just laughed at me,” Beth said. “And told me to go ahead and tell her. She wouldn’t care anyway.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  “No,” Beth said. “She would have killed him. In hindsight, I should have.”

  The waiter appeared again, gathering plates and leaving the check. Adam dropped a few bills on the table and glanced up at Beth.

  “Would you like to go for a walk?”

  “Sure,” she said. Her nerves were settling now that there was food in her belly, but she was still nervous. This must be when he was planning on asking her. It made sense, really, to ask her by the same benches where they’d talked the night away.

  They headed out into the cool night air. He guided her slowly—and predictably—toward the benches. It was pleasant if a little chilly, the moon splitting through the clouds to bathe them in its white glow.

  They were the only ones outside. Considering the lateness of the season she wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t really bothered by the weather. She was used to being cold, preferring it too hot.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. Adam took her hand and held it, rubbing her thumb with his, and smiled at her.

  “There’s something I’ve wanted to say for a while now,” he said.

  She tensed.

  “I’ve planned this for a long time. I’ve wanted to, it just never seemed right. The right place or the right time.”

  Her stomach started doing flip-flops. She didn’t respond. She still didn’t know what her answer was going to be and it was tearing her up inside.

  “I love you, Bethany.”

  She would swear she could hear crickets. There weren’t any, of course. But she could hear them.

  Adam blinked.

  A pin dropped. Probably in the restaurant. Maybe in her stomach. Definitely not in reality.

  Adam’s lips grew thinner. “Bethany? I…wasn’t expecting…”

  “Sorry,” she said, scrunching her nose. “I love you too. Of course I do. It’s just…”

  Finishing with: Is that it, didn’t seem like the best plan. She left the thought unfinished.

  Adam looked visibly relieved. “Good,” he said, gently squeezing her hand.

  Another moment passed. The worst was over. She was safe.

  Naturally, she couldn’t help herself:

  “Is that it?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.

  “I mean…you seemed nervous about saying that.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I wasn’t sure what you would say when I said that I loved you. I thought it might shock you to hear it.”

  She shrugged. “Oh. I was just thinking that after all this time together it was sort of…”

  Her voice trailed off. It hit her, suddenly and out of nowhere.

  Obvious.

  He’d never said the words out loud, but it was something she’d always known. It didn’t shock her that he said ‘I love you’ because it was obvious. She never, never, thought twice about it, just took for granted that he loved her. That he would always love her, no matter what. She’d never felt the need to say it, either, because she was comfortable with the reality of their feelings.

  Because it was obvious.

  Answering his unspoken question, in fact, was suddenly the easiest thing in the world.

  “Yes,” she said, the word slipping out.

  He tilted his head again. “Yes, what?”

  “To your question. My answer is yes.”

  “What question?”

  “I thought you brought me here to ask me to…”

  She hesitated when his face turned into a tomato.

  Her stomach fell. “Oh.”

  “No,” he said, panic-stricken, “I mean yes. I mean…”

  “You weren’t going to ask me?”

  He shook his head.

  Beth fought down sudden terror. This was not what she’d been expecting. Not at all. Those disaster scenarios she’d been envisioning about this moment, she realized, were incomplete.

  Him not wanting her hadn’t made the list.

  Adam cleared his throat, still beet red. “I just…I didn’t want to…not tonight…because I thought your answer would be ‘no.’”

  He leaned back, taking deep breaths.

  “Edward’s got the ring.”

  “You bought a ring?”

  His face looked on the verge of popping it was so red. “It wasn’t really…”

  Beth suddenly started laughing. She couldn’t help herself. Adam looked even more embarrassed for a second, then just stared at her like she had lost her mind. Maybe she had. Finally, he joined in. The tension slipped away on the breeze.

  A couple walked out of the restaurant, arm-in-arm, heading for the car lot. They stared at Beth and Adam like they were crazy.

  “I don’t think,” Bethany said breathlessly once they’d calmed back down, “I could have made this any worse.”

  “Probably not,” Adam agreed, sighing. “I’m stuck between being the happiest and most embarrassed man in the world.”

  “Do you want to marry me?”

  “Of course. More than anything in the world.”

  “Then ask.”

  “I don’t have the ring,” he said.

  “You think I care about a stupid ring? Ask me, before I change my mind.”

  He stood up, and she stood beside him. He lowered himself to his knee and looked up at her.

  “Bethany Elizabeth Greenwood. I’ve loved you since the day I first met you. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes!” she said, laughing. “And yes again, for good measure.”

  He stood up, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her long and hard. When they finally broke apart they were both breathless and grinning.

  And cold.

  “You ready to go?” he asked her.

  She nodded. They started walking down the path back to his car, hand-in-hand and happy.

  “For the record,” he said, “I was going to ask you. On our next date.”

  “Mmhmm,” she mumbled. “Sure.”

  One Year Ago - Emily Greenwood

  Interlude – Outside of Time

  “Would you stop puttering?” I asked, my throat raspy and dry. I knew I was wasting my breath. Calvin couldn’t stop puttering if his life depended on it.

  To his credit, he at least stopped pacing around the room in a big circle. Instead he kept picking up things on the dresser and movin’ ‘em. But he still looked as nervous as a sweet little honey getting ready for her first prom. All doe-eyed and bushy-tailed.

  “They can come pick you up.”

  “I ain’t riding in no ambulance,” I replied. I hated those things. Too small. Too loud. And too many damn people hovering around me, asking me if I’m alright. Is the comatose old woman strapped to the dirty gurney alright? Is she feeling alright? Bunch of morons. I’d been in enough ambulances to last thirty lifetimes.

  “Bethany said she’d pick you up.”

  “She’s at work,” I said.

  “She can call off.”

  “Damn it Cal, we aren’t going to the hospital,” I said, adding the finality to my voice to shut him up. “And quit puttering. I’m fine.”

  “You fell.”

  That was true. I fell, and I hit my head, but if truth be told I felt better after the fall than I had in weeks. Months even. Maybe that’s the secret, to hit my head on the
floor every morning. I bet those damned doctors with their soft hands and shifty eyes would never recommend that.

  It had been this morning, a couple hours ago. I wanted to get up—I don’t like shoving bed pans under my lily white ass—and got my legs tangled up in the blanket. They don’t stop shaking nowadays, and most times it’s not really in my control. I should have been patient and waited for Calvin to come help, but I don’t like to be stuck in bed all day.

  We have a railing next to the bed. Jason installed it the last time he came by. Him and his stupid drill; he thinks he has to make up for lost time, always fixing things, using his hands. The rail must have been put in at least a year ago. Usually I can grab a hold of it when I’m about to fall, to keep from hitting my head, but I missed it this morning. I hadn’t really realized how bad the shaking had gotten until I couldn’t wrap my hand around the bar.

  “I’m fine Cal. Just go make some food.”

  “You’re hungry?”

  No, but if it will get you to stop worrying…

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Toast,” I said. Toast was hard stuff to eat with all its crumbs, but slab some butter on it and it was delicious. “And some butter. The real stuff, not that fake stuff Bethany wants me to eat. I’d rather eat nuthin’ than margarine.”

  It was enough to get Calvin out of the room. I could finally rest in peace. But I knew he was just in the other room, making me food I wouldn’t eat and listening intently for me to fall again. He probably had one ear pressed against the door. I knew, and I hated it. I didn’t want him to fret over me or worry. He’d been taking care of me almost exclusively for the last four years as I’d slowly lost control of my body.

  Parkinson’s. That was what they called it. A disease. It makes me incapable of doing things for myself, and the doctor said it would keep getting worse. But there might be a cure, he said. Someday. He was the first doctor. The second one told me it wouldn’t be so bad and they had all kinds of programs to help people like me. He said that I could live a normal life and would barely notice any changes.

  The third one, now, he was honest. Must not have been a real doctor.

  The first five years wouldn’t be so bad, he told me. But after five and until seven it would keep getting worse, and after seven…well…anything goes.

  When I asked if ‘anything goes’ also meant ‘I could suddenly be cured’, he’d just laughed. That’s when I hired him.

  They diagnosed it in around the second or third year. At least that’s what Dr. David Smith—the third doctor—said. And now it was two years later, so it just kept getting worse and worse. I was going to keep getting weaker, and Cal would have to do more and more just to take care of me.

  I heard the phone chirrup in the other room. It hit the fourth ring before Calvin got to it. I couldn’t remember it ever taking him so long to answer the damned phone before. He must be getting old too. But I couldn’t hear him talk. He was muttering on the line, conspiring. Probably to put me in a nursing home with other old fogies. .

  It was another few minutes before Calvin came back into the room. He had the toast on a tray with a glass of orange juice as big as my head. He was bent over with his brow furrowed in the utmost concentration, struggling to keep it level. That’s the look he got whenever he was thinking hard, never his specialty. He finally got it over to me.

  The tray was one of those kinds that sat overtop my lap on its own legs. I think Calvin got it off the TV on one of those infomercials, but I’m not sure. He wouldn’t tell me where he got it, but he was proud of it because it meant I could eat without having to get out of bed.

  I don’t like it. It’s wobbly and stupid and makes me feel lazy. But I’m not going to tell him that and hurt his feelings.

  “Bethany called,” he said after getting the tray into position. I tried to sit up, to scoot my butt back, but it was hard going. Finally I was up far enough to reach the tray.

  “Uh huh,” I said. “Still ain’t going to the hospital.”

  Cal grunted in response, the way he always does when he disagrees with me but is afraid to say so. Him and his grunts. “She didn’t say that. She said she’s going to bring her grandkids over tonight. Ginger’s children.”

  “Erika and Michael?”

  Cal grunted again. He never was good with names. He even called me Deborah once a few years after we started dating. He figured out pretty quickly that that wasn’t going to fly.

  It did perk me up a bit, though, to hear that the great grandkiddies were coming over. Sweet little Erika and her big brother. They belonged to Ginger, Bethany’s adopted daughter, so they weren’t technically related by blood. But they were still my great grandchildren, no matter what anyone said.

  They used to be tiny little pink things, always squalling, like mine were. But mine grew up, made some of their own, and now those were making their own. A beautiful and continuous circle: the cycle of life.

  Or just breeding, if you didn’t ascribe to that lofty garbage. Stick something in, wait a while, and something else comes out. The little ones don’t care who Cal and I are. To them we are just old people they are supposed to be nice to.

  But I don’t mind. I suppose I used to be the same, even though I don’t really remember. I used to be young, used to be quick and sharp, used to be able to…

  I groan as a burst of pain wracks my body. “How long?”

  “A few hours.”

  “I should rest then,” I said. I always try to take a nap before getting visitors, because otherwise it’s too hard. I feel sick and weak, and then I’m just miserable to be around. Ghastly, grim, ungainly, and gaunt. Even with a nap, I can only stand being around people for a few minutes at a time.

  The problem is, I don’t like being seen to be weak. I used to be strong, and that’s the woman I want them to remember.

  When I glanced up from my thoughts Calvin was staring expectantly at me. I nibbled at the toast, mostly to be polite. The butter was sweet on the tongue, but in just seconds I was feeling nauseous. I groaned.

  The pain came like a storm, sudden and without warning. No blood sky in the morning. The stream of my life ebbs and flows, rapids all around, waiting to drag me under.

  Cal was quick to pull the tray away. He went to the bathroom and wet a rag under the faucet, and then used it to wipe off my forehead. I was panting now, and shaking, but the coolness felt good.

  The spell passed, and then I laid my head back and closed my eyes.

  “It’s those damn patches. They make me so sick,” I muttered. “Get them off me, Cal. Give me one of those pills instead. One of the perca-candy.”

  “I will in an hour,” Cal said. “But if I take the patch off now you won’t be able to sleep, and then you’ll be too tired to see the kids.”

  “Maybe tonight’s not a good night,” I said. The nausea was still there, but now I was tired. So tired. I closed my eyes and started to drift away. “Maybe tomorrow…”

  ***

  When I woke up, the pain was back. And with a vengeance. I must have cried out when I came to, because Calvin appeared in the doorway. “Mellie?”

  “It hurts, damn it,” I said. Or at least that’s what I tried to say. What came out of my mouth was a cross between a cry and moan. A small cup of water appeared in my hand and Cal stuck a pill in my mouth. I managed to get it down, but by the time I was done I was covered in water.

  One of the good ones. This was the stuff dreams were made of. Or nightmares. The pain slowly diminished and I sighed in relief. “I told you not to fill the cup so full, Cal,” I said. “Now the bedclothes are wet.”

  “I was planning on washing them anyway,” Cal said, chuckling.

  I collapsed back in the bed. The pain was subsiding, but I was still exhausted. And weak. And wet. And miserable. Mostly miserable. Definitely not strong enough to entertain people. This wasn’t one of my good days.

  The good days, I was starting to realize, weren’t coming as o
ften anymore.

  “I don’t think they should come tonight,” I said.

  “They are already here. They brought some soup and bread from a store up the road,” Cal said. “Want me to bring them back to see you?”

  Suddenly I was crying. “No, I don’t want them here,” I said. “I’m not…” I shouldn’t have to explain myself! I didn’t even want to cry, it was just happening. “Send them home.”

  “They just want to see you for a few minutes.”

  I closed my eyes. God I was drained, and broken, and pathetic, and it was making me sad. The sadder I got, the weaker I got. Can’t he see I’m just a broken old woman? They don’t want to see me, their parents are forcing them to. “I need to rest Cal. I’m too weak. Send them home.”

  “Alright. I’ll send them home, and then I’m going to call the hospital,” Cal said.

  My eyes shot open.

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “I’ll have them bring a squad and pick you up. We’ll go to the emergency room and have them run all them tests and check you out.”

  “Cal you put that damn phone down,” I said, sitting up. “I’m not going to no damn hospital.”

  “Are you sure? I’m thinking maybe you’re right. Maybe you are too weak to see anyone right now.”

  “I said put it down.”

  Cal did. He always listened to me when I told him to do something nowadays. He didn’t always when we were younger, but he started to when I got sick.

  But now I couldn’t go back to sleep. If I did he would just call the hospital and have an ambulance come and get me. I couldn’t trust him to let me be, and I didn’t want to spend the next couple of days in a hospital room with some doctor saying: ‘the test results are in: you’re old.’

  Now I’d have to show him I wasn’t sick enough to go to the hospital, just to shut him up. I could prove him wrong, no problem.

  “Go ahead and have them come in. For a bit.”

  A few minutes later the kids were inside. They were small, but bigger than I remembered. Erica was shy, rocking back and forth and staring at the floor, but Michael just stared at me. They didn’t seem to know what to do. Bethany gave me a hug, and her husband Adam was holding that god-awful serving tray. He’d probably been the one to recommend it to Calvin.

  Adam was a big man, a lot bigger than Calvin had ever been, and most of it settled in his gut. He worked for the fire department, or so I’d heard, but I’m still not sure I believe it. I don’t remember firefighters ever being so fat.