Just Plain Weird

by Tom Upton

  I had little doubt that we had the largest yard sale the town had ever seen. It was amazing all the junk, masquerading as keepsakes, our family had accumulated over the years. My mother had the entire history of small household appliances covered; she had irons and toasters and blenders, some handed down from her mother and grandmother. If you looked at them all lined up chronologically on the picnic table in our yard, you could see the evolution of household gadgets from Stone Age to present day. My father had every manner of tools, from ancient to power. Most of them had been given as presents, which was a great mystery, because he probably never learned to use a single one of them properly. The mere fact that he was selling them all off should have been enough to lower the premiums on his health and life insurance. When my brother moved out, years ago, he had left cartons filled with books stacked in the basement. All those were sold, along with my workout equipment-- weight bench and weights and barbells, etc.-- much to my concern. The whole idea was that since we were moving so far away we were to take only what was absolutely necessary. We even got rid of most of our furniture. After we settled in in Batavia, supposedly, we would replace many of the things we sold. That was the plan, anyway.

  The yard sale lasted two weekends, and by the time, we were ready to move, all our worldly possessions fit into a small rental truck.

  I wasn’t sure exactly how long it took to drive to Batavia. It seemed as though we were stopping every twenty minutes for something or other. If it wasn’t my mother needing to go to the bathroom or having to buy cigarettes, it was my father pulling over to the shoulder of the road to nurse a leg cramp. He was driving the rental truck with my mother as passenger-- God help them both-- while I followed them driving the family station wagon. Once we actually stopped just because my mother wanted to switch and ride with me for a while. All she did as I drove was chain smoke while she complained about the way my father drove. After about fifty miles, I had to pull over and send her back to the rental truck. It wasn’t just that the air conditioner of the old wagon couldn’t clear out her cig smoke fast enough, but she was one of those people who absolutely had to turn the car radio off when she spoke and so you were forced to focus on everything she said. It wasn’t until that trip that I realized how truly annoying my mother could be.

  Surprisingly when we finally reached our new home, it was everything my father had promised, and more. It was much better than our old house, a hundred-year-old frame bungalow that sometimes seemed older. This house was actually made of brick and appeared at least to have been built in the twentieth century. It was designed in a ranch style. There were no stairs and in front part of the house there was a brick wall with three large archways behind a line of pines trees, which created a cozy little enclosed area where you could sit on lawn furniture in the summer and remain cool and unseen. Inside the rooms were huge-- and would seem huger still, until we finally got furniture. My bedroom was about twice the size of my old bedroom, and the view from the window was considerably better than the view I had from my former bedroom window, which had been the driveway next door. It was so nice that I hardly minded the idea I would have to sleep on the floor for a month or so, until my father would be able to buy me a bed. The kitchen was large and modern and seemed to be made mostly of stainless steel-- everywhere you looked, things were shiny and gleaming-- and the sight of the room had to be inspiration for my mother to learn to cook finally.

  We settled in quickly, the vast spaces of the house swallowing our meager possessions. On the second evening we spent in the house, someone rang the doorbell, which resonated throughout the mostly empty rooms. It is an odd thing to move into a new house and hear the doorbell for the first time. Your immediate response is, What the hell is that? followed by embarrassment when you realize it is only the doorbell and not some kind of warning alarm.

  I was lying on the carpeted floor of my bedroom and enjoying the central air-- which actually worked-- when the doorbell rang. I could hear the murmuring of faraway voices, and then my father called up the staircase for me to come down.

  I didn’t know really what to expect-- maybe a visit from the neighborhood church group. As I walked down the stairs, I got a partial view of the front door. My mother and father were standing just inside the door and talking to someone outside. At the bottom of the stairs, I saw the woman just outside. She was attractive and I guessed she was in her forties, though she looked younger. There was something in her manner that suggested that, despite her looks, she was well seasoned. She seemed fairly pleasant and she spoke, smiling often, telling my parents about all of the points of interest in the neighborhood. I lingered behind my parents and off to the side as I studied the woman-- that one fact about myself remaining true, that I was socially maladroit. My father finally glanced back and saw me standing there.

  “Travis,” he said. “Don’t be shy. Come and meet the neighbors.”

  I walked forward quickly, to prove I wasn’t at all shy, my eyes focused on the woman. I squeezed between my parents, and the woman let me shake her hand. She told me her name, which I hardly heard, trying really hard not appear bumbling or idiotic. Then she introduced me to her husband, standing at her side, of whom I’d taken no notice. When I turned toward the man, determined for once in my life to make a good first impression, and got a good look at him, my lungs hedged and I must turned ghostly pale. It was Doc. He was standing there with his hand proffered, tilting his head curiously as he studied me.

  “You all right, son?” he asked, and shook my hand, which must have been shaking. I tried to say something, but nothing came out of my mouth. “Well, we were just telling your parents,” he went on, still eying me-- more with concern than with suspicion, “that it’s probably a very good thing you moved here during the summer. It’ll give you a few weeks to get familiar with the area. You know we probably could see that you’re shown the neighbor. My daugh--”

  Her and his wife stood closely, and he stopped speaking when an arm slipped between them and tried to pry them apart. When Doc stepped aside, obviously a bit irked at the rudeness, I saw Eliza standing there. She looked the same as I remembered her, with dark blond wavy hair and bright green eyes and a mouth always on the verge of smiling or laughing. It was like remembering something from a dream, something that couldn’t possibly exist in reality, and yet there it was. The only difference I could discern were that her clothing appeared better, more expensive-- designer jeans and a white short-sleeved top-- and she actually had a suntan, not really a dark tan but shaded enough to hide the roadmap of veins beneath her skin. After staring at me a moment, she boldly thrust out her hand for me to shake, and cried, “Hi-ya, Travis!” Her green eyes sparkled with mischief and her tone was so sure and knowing, I was absolutely convinced she remembered everything that had happened. I knew that was impossible, but still the way she acted….

  The moment, with all its shocks, was too much for me to handle. I had endured plenty in the past year, endured injury and pain and surgery and pain and rehabilitation and pain and moving from the only home I’d ever known-- not to mention everything that had occurred to me before we set everything back on its natural course; such as, being driven off a cliff, learning about the artifact, being telepathically connected to an alien intelligence, accidentally destroying the world, being attacked by a seven foot cockroach, getting laid for the first time, and so on-- every experience of the past year loaded my brain, and what was transpiring now sent it into overload. I reached out to shake her hand, and only made it halfway before my eyes rolled up and everything went black.

  Well, so much for finally making a good first impression.

  When I regained consciousness, I was lying on the living room floor. Although my parents and Doc and his wife all showed grave concern, Eliza stood there not looking down at me but trying to look everywhere else as she nervously chewed her lower lip.

  “Well, it looks like his color’s coming back,” my father said.

  He and Doc help me up to my feet. I w
as still pretty wobbly, and there was talk about taking me to the hospital.

  Just then Eliza waded in to save me from the emergency room. She reached out, grabbed me by the arm, and began towing me out of the house, announcing to everyone, very tersely, “He’ll be all right. I’ll show him around.”

  Shocked silence filled the living room as we left. The only thing I heard anyone say behind us was Doc mentioning, in a very blasé way: “My daughter can be very strange, sometimes.”

  We left through the front door, Eliza walking quickly, as though she couldn’t get away fast enough. When we cleared the front lawn and reached the sidewalk, she slowed down some, but still didn’t release my arm.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said. “You actually fainted. You know what that tells me? You didn’t listen to me-- again. You just never listen, do you? You went ahead, like you always do, questioning everything. In all these months, didn’t you ever once remember everything I told you about fate? Obviously not-- or you wouldn’t have been shocked enough to faint….” She went on some, mostly mumbling to herself, and I was glad to see was as odd as ever. I knew she was really mad, though, and so I didn’t say anything for a long while. By the time I hazarded to speak, we were already far from the house and strolling down the sidewalk under the bright sun of a mid-summer day. She’d let go my arm, and was now walking with her arms crossed before her. She seemed to be thinking hard, considering something, maybe.

  “I don’t understand how you remember,” I said. “You weren’t supposed to remember a thing.”

  “Mmmm?” she said, still distracted by her thoughts. “Oh, that…” she said, but didn’t go on to explain. “I’m sorry, Travis, I just saw everything going a little more smoothly-- our reuniting and all. I certainly never thought you would pass out. That’s not the way I pictured things. I thought maybe it would be very romantic and all. Ah, maybe I just built it all up too much.”

  “But how did you remember?” I insisted.

  “I didn’t,” she said, and dropped her arms. She reached out and grabbed my hand as though it was so natural a gesture she had been doing for years, although in this reality it was the first time. “I didn’t remember a thing-- not at first. About a year ago, I started having these weird dreams. They were like dreams but somehow not like dreams. They were about everything that happened, except that they were all jumbled up. As time went, I had them more and more often and they started to follow an order and-- well, let’s just say there were a few weeks there when I thought I was losing my mind. It was like having memories that never really happened. I can’t tell you how strange that seems. It was only after a while that I realized what I was experiencing weren’t my memories but yours. Everything fell into place and began to make sense, then.”

  “How could you be having my memories?”

  “The artifact did something to me, I think. You remember how it seemed as if I was reading your mind. Well, I really was. I think the artifact made that happen, and even then I knew why. We were worrying about never seeing each other again, and even if we did meet by chance, you would be a total stranger to me. I think the artifact fixed it so that I could read your mind then, and also after everything was returned the reality we’re in now. That way I could know everything that happened by remembering your memories. That was the little secret I knew before I left you. Otherwise I wouldn’t have left so calmly, I promise you that-- Doc would have had to drag me outside for sure,” she said, chuckling at the thought.

  “So you remember everything?” I asked.

  “Everything,” she assured me, and bobbed her eyebrows in a mischievous way. “I know everything afterward, too,” she went on, more somberly. “Like when you hurt your leg. Believe it or not, I actually felt the pain. Sometimes, I used to wake in the middle of the night screaming. I had to tell Doc I was having nightmares. I know you waited, like I asked, even though there were times you really doubted that it all ever happened. That’s pretty darned romantic, if you ask me. I know a lot of things, Travis. I know your father sat around for months waiting for fate to send him the perfect job. I know he’s got that gross toenail trimming habit. I know your mother really, really needs to quit smoking. I know that you’ve loved me from the first time you saw me, even before the artifact had any influence on you, and you, you creep, never said a word, which you should have, because, well, it sort of important.” She stopped suddenly there, at the side of the road, as cars passed us. She faced me fully, and asked, “What now, Travis?”

  “We go on, I supposed,” I said.

  “You mean this time without the craziness?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that even possible? I mean, I’ve been thinking about it, and even without the craziness, it seems pretty scary.”

  “That’s normal,” I said. “That’s life.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then we’re all right?”

  “Totally.”

  “And the artifact never contacted you?”

  “No,” I said. “I was online for hours every week for months, and I never heard a word from it.”

  “So nothing weird is going to come up again-- nothing will ever keep us apart again.”

  She sighed in relief, as though she needed to hear it from someone else that from now on everything would be all right. She grabbed my hand and we resumed walking. The sun was starting to slip down into the west, there was a chill in the air, and I had no idea where we were headed. She suddenly jerked free of me, all excited, and started walking backward out in front of me.

  “Hey,” she said. “You remember that night-- that night before we tried to fix everything and accidentally messed up the world?” she asked, as though I could ever forget. “We were trying to figure out something to do, something wild, and all we did was go home, eat pizza and watch movies. Why don’t we do something right now, something totally crazy?”

  “Like drive off a cliff?” I asked.

  She frowned. “I don’t think we could do anything that crazy. The artifact isn’t around to heal us if we get hurt. I mean something else. It’s perfect, really. We just met, right? That’s what everyone thinks. So let’s do something absolutely scandalous. How much money you have on you?”

  “About eight bucks,”

  “Great,” she said, really on a roll now. “We’ll get a cheap hotel room--”

  “For eight bucks?”

  “-- and we’ll make out all night.”

  “For eight bucks?”

  “Oh, all right,” she said. “Not enough money, right. Well, there’s a big park up the road. We’ll strip naked and run through the park--”

  “We will?”

  “-- I have a good tan all over, if you get my meaning. We’ll run naked through the dark.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because, that’s why?”

  “You ever hear of poison oak?” I asked.

  “There’s no poison oak here,” she said. “Or is there? Okay, something else then. How about… how about…”

  She kept on rattling off ideas, each more harebrained than the last. All I saw in our immediate future was a pizza and a movie. Yet I kept following her, listening, until it finally occurred to me that maybe I believed in fate, after all. If you just go with the flow, no matter what weird things happen along the way, you always end up exactly where you belong.