by Mike Ashley
“In a nutshell. I can give you some cash to help, er, convince her if necessary. Frankly, I don’t care how you do it. I want that paper, Dr McCullough.”
He looks a little agitated now, and there’s a shrill undertone to his voice. I suspect Dr Chambers is planning to take credit for what’s in the paper, maybe even hoping for that second Nobel. I think for a minute. Dr Clarke’s will left everything to Jim Kennedy, her assistant and fiancé. Even if Chambers gets the credit, maybe there’s a way to reward the people who actually did the work. I make up a large, random number.
“I think $30,000 should do it.” I clutch the arm of the chair and rub my thumb nervously over the smooth polished wood.
Dr Chambers starts to protest, then just waves his hand. “Fine. Fine. Whatever it takes. Funding for this project is not an issue. As I said, we only have enough of the isotope to power one trip into the past and back – yours. If you recover the paper successfully, we’ll be able to develop the technology for many, many more excursions. If not . . .” he lets his sentence trail off.
“Other people have tried this?” I ask, warily. It occurs to me I may be the guinea pig, usually an expendable item.
He pauses for a long moment. “No. You’ll be the first. Your records indicate you have no family, is that correct?”
I nod. My father died two years ago, and the longest relationship I’ve ever had only lasted six months. But Chambers doesn’t strike me as a liberal. Even if I was still living with Nancy, I doubt if he would count her as family. “It’s a big risk. What if I decline?”
“Your post-doc application will be reviewed,” he shrugs. “I’m sure you’ll be happy at some other university.”
So it’s all or nothing. I try to weigh all the variables, make a reasoned decision. But I can’t. I don’t feel like a scientist right now. I feel like a ten-year-old kid, being offered the only thing I’ve ever wanted – the chance to meet Sara Baxter Clarke.
“I’ll do it,” I say.
“Excellent.” Chambers switches gears, assuming a brisk, businesslike manner. “You’ll leave a week from today at precisely 6:32 a.m. You cannot take anything – underwear, clothes, shoes, watch – that was manufactured after 1956. My secretary has a list of antique clothing stores in the area, and some fashion magazines of the times.” He looks at my jeans with distaste. “Please choose something appropriate for the reception. Can you do anything with your hair?”
My hair is short. Nothing radical, not in Berkeley in the 90s. It’s more like early Beatles – what they called a pixie cut when I was a little girl – except I was always too tall and gawky to be a pixie. I run my fingers self-consciously through it and shake my head.
Chambers sighs and continues. “Very well. Now, since we have to allow for the return of Clarke’s manuscript, you must take something of equivalent mass – and also of that era. I’ll give you the draft copy of my own dissertation. You will also be supplied with a driver’s license and university faculty card from the period, along with packets of vintage currency. You’ll return with the manuscript at exactly 11:37 Monday morning. There will be no second chance. Do you understand?”
I nod, a little annoyed at his patronizing tone of voice. “If I miss the deadline, I’ll be stuck in the past forever. Dr Clarke is the only other person who could possibly send me home, and she won’t be around on Monday morning. Unless . . .?” I let the question hang in the air.
“Absolutely not. There is one immutable law of tempokinetics, Dr McCullough. You cannot change the past. I trust you’ll remember that?” he says, standing.
Our meeting is over. I leave his office with the biggest news of my life. I wish I had someone to call and share it with. I’d settle for someone to help me shop for clothes.
Friday, February 17, 1995. 6:20 a.m.
The supply closet on the ground floor of LeConte Hall is narrow and dimly lit, filled with boxes of rubber gloves, lab coats, shop towels. Unlike many places on campus, the Physics building hasn’t been remodeled in the last forty years. This has always been a closet, and it isn’t likely to be occupied at 6:30 on any Friday morning.
I sit on the concrete floor, my back against a wall, dressed in an appropriate period costume. I think I should feel nervous, but I feel oddly detached. I sip from a cup of lukewarm 7-eleven coffee and observe. I don’t have any role in this part of the experiment – I’m just the guinea pig. Dr Chambers’s assistants step carefully over my outstretched legs and make the final adjustments to the battery of apparatus that surrounds me.
At exactly 6:28 by my antique Timex, Dr Chambers himself appears in the doorway. He shows me a thick packet of worn bills and the bulky, rubber-banded typescript of his dissertation, then slips both of them into a battered leather briefcase. He places the case on my lap and extends his hand. But when I reach up to shake it, he frowns and takes the 7-eleven cup.
“Good luck, Dr McCullough,” he says formally. Nothing more. What more would he say to a guinea pig? He looks at his watch, then hands the cup to a young man in a black T-shirt, who types in one last line of code, turns off the light, and closes the door.
I sit in the dark and begin to get the willies. No one has ever done this. I don’t know if the cool linoleum under my legs is the last thing I will ever feel. Sweat drips down between my breasts as the apparatus begins to hum. There is a moment of intense – sensation. It’s not sound, or vibration, or anything I can quantify. It’s as if all the fingernails in the world are suddenly raked down all the blackboards, and in the same moment oxygen is transmuted to lead. I am pressed to the floor by a monstrous force, but every hair on my body is erect. Just when I feel I can’t stand it any more, the humming stops.
My pulse is racing, and I feel dizzy, a little nauseous. I sit for a minute, half-expecting Dr Chambers to come in and tell me the experiment has failed, but no one comes. I try to stand – my right leg has fallen asleep – and grope for the light switch near the door.
In the light from the single bulb, I see that the apparatus is gone, but the gray metal shelves are stacked with the same boxes of gloves and shop towels. My leg all pins and needles; I lean against a brown cardboard box stenciled Bayside Laundry Service, San Francisco 3, California.
It takes me a minute before I realize what’s odd. Either those are very old towels, or I’m somewhere pre-ZIP code.
I let myself out of the closet, and walk awkwardly down the empty hallway, my spectator pumps echoing on the linoleum. I search for further confirmation. The first room I peer into is a lab – high stools in front of black slab tables with Bunsen burners, gray boxes full of dials and switches. A slide rule at every station.
I’ve made it.
Friday, February 17, 1956. 7:00 a.m.
The campus is deserted on this drizzly February dawn, as is Telegraph Avenue. The streetlights are still on – white lights, not yellow sodium – and through the mist I can see faint lines of red and green neon on stores down the avenue. I feel like Marco Polo as I navigate through a world that is both alien and familiar. The buildings are the same, but the storefronts and signs look like stage sets or photos from old Life magazines.
It takes me more than an hour to walk downtown. I am disoriented by each shop window, each passing car. I feel as if I’m a little drunk, walking too attentively through the landscape, and not connected to it. Maybe it’s the colors. Everything looks too real. I grew up with grainy black-and-white TV reruns and 50s technicolor films that have faded over time, and it’s disconcerting that this world is not overlaid with that pink-orange tinge.
The warm aromas of coffee and bacon lure me into a hole-in-the-wall café. I order the special – eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast. The toast comes dripping with butter and the jelly is in a glass jar, not a little plastic tub. When the bill comes it is 55¢. I leave a generous dime tip then catch the yellow F bus and ride down Shattuck Avenue, staring at the round-fendered black Chevys and occasional pink Studebakers that fill the streets.
The bus is
full of morning commuters – men in dark jackets and hats, women in dresses and hats. In my tailored suit I fit right in. I’m surprised that no one looks 50s – retro 50s – the 50s that filtered down to the 90s. No poodle skirts, no DA haircuts. All the men remind me of my pop. A man in a gray felt hat has the Chronicle, and I read over his shoulder. Eisenhower is considering a second term. The San Francisco police chief promises a crackdown on vice. Peanuts tops the comics page and there’s a Rock Hudson movie playing at the Castro Theatre. Nothing new there.
As we cross the Bay Bridge I’m amazed at how small San Francisco looks – the skyline is carved stone, not glass and steel towers. A green Muni streetcar takes me down the middle of Market Street to Powell. I check into the St Francis, the city’s finest hotel. My room costs less than I’ve paid for a night in a Motel 6.
All my worldly goods fit on the desktop – Chambers’s manuscript; a brown leather wallet with a driver’s license, a Berkeley faculty card, and twenty-three dollars in small bills; the invitation to the reception tonight; and 30,000 dollars in banded stacks of 50-dollar bills. I pull three bills off the top of one stack and put the rest in the drawer, under the cream-colored hotel stationery. I have to get out of this suit and these shoes.
Woolworth’s has a toothbrush and other plastic toiletries, and a tin “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” alarm clock. I find a pair of pleated pants, an Oxford cloth shirt, and wool sweater at the City of Paris. Macy’s Men’s Shop yields a pair of “dungarees” and two T-shirts I can sleep in – 69 cents each. A snippy clerk gives me the eye in the Boys department, so I invent a nephew, little Billy, and buy him black basketball sneakers that are just my size.
After a shower and a change of clothes, I try to collect my thoughts, but I’m too keyed up to sit still. In a few hours I’ll actually be in the same room as Sara Baxter Clarke. I can’t distinguish between fear and excitement, and spend the afternoon wandering aimlessly around the city, gawking like a tourist.
Friday, February 17, 1956. 7:00 p.m.
Back in my spectator pumps and my tailored navy suit, I present myself at the doorway of the reception ballroom and surrender my invitation. The tuxedoed young man looks over my shoulder, as if he’s expecting someone behind me. After a moment he clears his throat.
“And you’re Mrs—?” he asks, looking down at his typewritten list.
“Dr McCullough,” I say coolly, and give him an even stare. “Mr Chambers is out of town. He asked me to take his place.”
After a moment’s hesitation he nods, and writes my name on a white card, pinning it to my lapel like a corsage.
Ballroom A is a sea of gray suits, crew cuts, bow-ties and heavy black-rimmed glasses. Almost everyone is male, as I expected, and almost everyone is smoking, which surprises me. Over in one corner is a knot of women in bright cocktail dresses, each with a lacquered football helmet of hair. Barbie’s cultural foremothers.
I accept a canapé from a passing waiter and ease my way to the corner. Which one is Dr Clarke? I stand a few feet back, scanning nametags. Mrs Niels Bohr. Mrs Richard Feynman. Mrs Ernest Lawrence. I am impressed by the company I’m in, and dismayed that none of the women has a name of her own. I smile an empty cocktail party smile as I move away from the wives and scan the room. Gray suits with a sprinkling of blue, but all male. Did I arrive too early?
I am looking for a safe corner, one with a large, sheltering potted palm, when I hear a blustery male voice say, “So, Dr Clarke. Trying the H. G. Wells route, are you? Waste of the taxpayer’s money, all that science fiction stuff, don’t you think?”
A woman’s voice answers. “Not at all. Perhaps I can change your mind at Monday’s session.” I can’t see her yet, but her voice is smooth and rich, with a bit of a lilt or a brogue – one of those vocal clues that says, “I’m not an American.” I stand rooted to the carpet, so awestruck I’m unable to move.
“Jimmy, will you see if there’s more champagne about?” I hear her ask. I see a motion in the sea of gray and astonish myself by flagging a waiter and taking two slender flutes from his tray. I step forward in the direction of her voice. “Here you go,” I say, trying to keep my hand from shaking. “I’ve got an extra.”
“How very resourceful of you,” she laughs. I am surprised that she is a few inches shorter than me. I’d forgotten she’d be about my age. She takes the glass and offers me her other hand. “Sara Clarke,” she says.
“Carol McCullough.” I touch her palm. The room seems suddenly bright and the voices around me fade into a murmur. I think for a moment that I’m dematerializing back to 1995, but nothing so dramatic happens. I’m just so stunned that I forget to breathe while I look at her.
Since I was ten years old, no matter where we lived, I have had a picture of Sara Baxter Clarke over my desk. I cut it out of that old physics magazine. It is grainy, black and white, the only photo of her I’ve ever found. In it, she’s who I always wanted to be – competent, serious, every inch a scientist. She wears a white lab coat and a pair of rimless glasses, her hair pulled back from her face. A bald man in an identical lab coat is showing her a piece of equipment. Neither of them is smiling.
I know every inch of that picture by heart. But I didn’t know that her hair was a coppery red, or that her eyes were such a deep, clear green. And until this moment, it had never occurred to me that she could laugh.
The slender blond man standing next to her interrupts my reverie. “I’m Jim Kennedy, Sara’s assistant.”
Jim Kennedy. Her fiancé. I feel like the characters in my favorite novel are all coming to life, one by one.
“You’re not a wife, are you?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Post doc. I’ve only been at Cal a month.”
He smiles. “We’re neighbors, then. What’s your field?”
I take a deep breath. “Tempokinetics. I’m a great admirer of Dr Clarke’s work.” The blustery man scowls at me and leaves in search of other prey.
“Really?” Dr Clarke turns, raising one eyebrow in surprise. “Well then we should have a chat. Are you—?” She stops in mid-sentence and swears almost inaudibly. “Damn. It’s Dr Wilkins and I must be pleasant. He’s quite a muckety-muck at the NSF, and I need the funding.” She takes a long swallow of champagne, draining the crystal flute. “Jimmy, why don’t you get Dr McCullough another drink and see if you can persuade her to join us for supper.”
I start to make a polite protest, but Jimmy takes my elbow and steers me through the crowd to an unoccupied sofa. Half an hour later we are deep in a discussion of quantum field theory when Dr Clarke appears and says, “Let’s make a discreet exit, shall we? I’m famished.”
Like conspirators, we slip out a side door and down a flight of service stairs. The Powell Street cable car takes us over Nob Hill into North Beach, the Italian section of town. We walk up Columbus to one of my favorite restaurants – the New Pisa – where I discover that nothing much has changed in forty years except the prices.
The waiter brings a carafe of red wine and a trio of squat drinking glasses and we eat family style – bowls of pasta with red sauce and steaming loaves of crusty garlic bread. I am speechless as Sara Baxter Clarke talks about her work, blithely answering questions I have wanted to ask my whole life. She is brilliant, fascinating. And beautiful. My food disappears without me noticing a single mouthful.
Over coffee and spumoni she insists, for the third time, that I call her Sara, and asks me about my own studies. I have to catch myself a few times, biting back citations from Stephen Hawking and other works that won’t be published for decades. It is such an engrossing, exhilarating conversation, I can’t bring myself to shift it to Chambers’s agenda. We leave when we notice the restaurant has no other customers.
“How about a nightcap?” she suggests when we reach the sidewalk.
“Not for me,” Jimmy begs off. “I’ve got an 8:30 symposium tomorrow morning. But why don’t you two go on ahead. The Paper Doll is just around the corner.”
Sara giv
es him an odd, cold look and shakes her head. “Not funny, James,” she says and glances over at me. I shrug noncommittally. It’s seems they have a private joke I’m not in on.
“Just a thought,” he says, then kisses her on the cheek and leaves. Sara and I walk down to Vesuvio’s, one of the bars where Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, and Ginsberg spawned the Beat Generation. Make that will spawn. I think we’re a few months too early.
Sara orders another carafe of raw red wine. I feel shy around her, intimidated, I guess. I’ve dreamed of meeting her for so long, and I want her to like me. As we begin to talk, we discover how similar, and lonely, our childhoods were. We were raised as only children. We both begged for chemistry sets we never got. We were expected to know how to iron, not know about ions. Midway through her second glass of wine, Sara sighs.
“Oh, bugger it all. Nothing’s really changed, you know. It’s still just snickers and snubs. I’m tired of fighting for a seat in the old boys’ club. Monday’s paper represents five years of hard work, and there aren’t a handful of people at this entire conference who’ve had the decency to treat me as anything but a joke.” She squeezes her napkin into a tighter and tighter wad, and a tear trickles down her cheek. “How do you stand it, Carol?”
How can I tell her? I’ve stood it because of you. You’re my hero. I’ve always asked myself what Sara Baxter Clarke would do, and steeled myself to push through. But now she’s not a hero. She’s real, this woman across the table from me. This Sara’s not the invincible, ever-practical scientist I always thought she was. She’s as young and as vulnerable as I am.
I want to ease her pain the way that she, as my imaginary mentor, has always eased mine. I reach over and put my hand over hers; she stiffens, but she doesn’t pull away. Her hand is soft under mine, and I think of touching her hair, gently brushing the red tendrils off the back of her neck, kissing the salty tears on her cheek.
Maybe I’ve always had a crush on Sara Baxter Clarke. But I can’t be falling in love with her. She’s straight. She’s forty years older than I am. And in the back of my mind, the chilling voice of reality reminds me that she’ll also be dead in two days. I can’t reconcile that with the vibrant woman sitting in this smoky North Beach bar. I don’t want to. I drink two more glasses of wine and hope that will silence the voice long enough for me to enjoy these few moments.
