Dominoes in Time

by Matthew Warner

  Still trembling. Joe unbuckled and stood up, ignoring the fasten-seatbelt sign. A moment later, he stood in the plane’s bathroom, his six-foot-one, two-hundred-forty-pound bulk filling the tiny mirror. He splashed his face and watched water drip from his nose.

  He was cracking up—that was the rational explanation—his family history of psychiatric problems finally ripening within him due to stress. This was the second time in as many months that he’d made this trip east: the first was to bury his father, and now he would bring his mother back to L.A. to commit her to a retirement home. Well, maybe commit was a strong way of putting it, but that’s the way it felt. Ruthie Merrill had once been a proud woman—a church Sunday school teacher, community activist (everything from voter drives to blood drives), and a newspaper columnist—only to have her dignity and intelligence eroded by Alzheimer’s disease. She’d seemed well enough on the last trip—although forgetful as hell, she could still carry on a conversation, pay her bills and bathe, dress, and feed herself—but lately it was as if Dad’s death had thrown a self-destruct switch in her brain. She rarely answered the phone anymore, and the police one night had found her walking down a highway shoulder with no memory of how she got there. Thank god for her church friends (and perhaps literally, thank God) and for their daily, unannounced visits, or she might have burnt the house down by now.

  Yep, that was the rational explanation.

  It was more comforting than the irrational explanation, which his instinct and, God help him, even his rational mind clung to, which was that he’d actually experienced a midair collision. How exactly he was here when he should be dead—well, that was irrationality for you.

  “You’re cracking up,” he whispered to his reflection. “Don’t.”

  Then he frowned at the sweat stains spreading from his armpits. Hopefully they’d dry by the time Sharon awoke from her nap. It was bad enough to be reduced to a blubbering coward before his wife; he didn’t have to smell like one, too.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Landing was worse than takeoff.

  Opaque nighttime fog blanketed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, which left nothing but Joe’s faith in the pilot’s faith in some faceless engineer’s faith in instrument-landing systems for comfort. The plane dropped in erratic bumps as it traversed stratums of air, and again he was reminded of a liver-spotted old person, now making palsied gropes for a bed. He’d read that, for security reasons, the FAA required planes to fly a narrow approach vector over the Potomac River—which only conjured images of Secret Service men-in-blacks on the White House roof watching the plane through the aiming scopes of surface-to-air missiles. By the time the wheels finally touched down, Joe sorely missed that bottle of Jack Daniels.

  “Come on, you big baby,” Sharon said as she pulled their jackets out of the overhead compartment.

  “I’m not a baby,” he said and stood up. He wasn’t in the mood for teasing tonight. “You have stuff you’re afraid of, too.”

  “The only thing I’m afraid of is—” She glanced at him. “Never mind.” She handed him his jacket and led the way out.

  Joe glowered as he followed her, not even acknowledging the flight crew’s farewell as he passed them. He was tired—exhausted, in fact, worn down by weeks of worry, grief, and tension—and he knew he was irritable and shouldn’t allow himself to fume like this, that he shouldn’t be imagining what Sharon had intended to say before she caught herself. And yet, to do so was almost a relief—a return to normalcy—after that vicious attack of aerophobia.

  The only thing I’m afraid of is…

  What, that this was the beginning of the end for them? Of course it was. This trip to bring Mom back to live in an overpriced and understaffed retirement home was only the beginning of an endless, downward-spiraling nightmare of stress in which Joe would spend his days arguing with doctors and wiping apple sauce off her chin; that his mother, whose body had another twenty years left even if her mind didn’t, would disintegrate into an elderly version of the child they couldn’t have. Of course Sharon was afraid of that—so was he—but they’d chewed this over a hundred times in the past month and concluded there was precisely jack shit to be done about it.

  Or maybe she’d wanted to say that she was afraid now of not being able to retire, that socking away a tenth of her university librarian’s wage and his pittance high school teacher’s salary wasn’t enough when faced with indefinite elderly care—Medicaid or no Medicaid—-and when were they going to buy that country cottage they’d always fantasized about?

  Then for good measure, maybe she’d toss in her fear about dying childless. They’d had that conversation a hundred times, too, especially after she crested the downhill side of forty and began sending him internet articles about the effective span of the female reproductive years. Shit, he didn’t know why his sperm moved like they were travelers drunk on Jack Daniels, but that’s the way things were; and since they’d decided against adoption, what did it matter if sometimes he couldn’t raise the ol’ crane after a long day of telling the inner city’s teenagers that threats wouldn’t earn them a passing grade?

  All were arguments they’d had before.

  All passed between them constantly like lightning in the clouds. Even that clasp of hands, right before the airplane crash that rationality claimed had never happened, had contained an undercurrent of her disappointment in him: Not only are you a failure, but you’re a wimp, too.

  And all of these emotions were unwelcome—especially now when he needed so much to talk to her about what he’d just experienced without fearing it would later be used as a verbal weapon: Stop being afraid of life, Joe, and live with me.

  He waited as she used a bathroom in the terminal. Another FAA rule, no doubt nicknamed “the bladder buster,” was that passengers aboard planes landing in Washington were required to remain seated for the final thirty minutes of flight. As if a terrorist would say, “Oh, I’m sorry—I’m not allowed to stand up? Gosh darn, I’d meant to hijack this plane. Oh well.” Terrorism was another thing he feared—not so much a concern back in L.A., where he feared gang members, students with guns, and worst of all, student gang members with guns—but he was in the nation’s capital now, where anthrax spilled from mailboxes. He’d feel more comfortable once they reached his mother’s house in the suburbs.

  This is why the sudden appearance of the men in FBI windbreakers unnerved him.

  Not FAA. FBI.

  Four of them jogged down the tube to the plane Joe had just departed. The people they’d come for—apparently the two pilots—must have already been walking out because the six of them emerged a moment later and hurried away. The agents didn’t pull the pilots along like prisoners, but the way they surrounded them made it clear who was in control.

  “What’s going on?” Sharon said as she came out of the bathroom.

  “I don’t know.”

  But the irrational part of him that clung to that evening’s vision of death insisted, Oh, yes you do. Yes you do.…

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  It was going on ten p.m. by the time they arrived at Mom’s house in the Burke suburb. Joe had driven, finding the act to be a soothing reassertion of control. It didn’t matter that car travel was statistically more dangerous than air travel. It just felt better. There also was an ulterior motive for taking the wheel: if anyone was going to kill him in a car, it would be his wife. Sharon was the quintessential aggressive driver: a lead-footed, self-appointed owner of the road.

  As he parked their rental car in Mom’s driveway, Joe’s heart sunk at the sight of the overgrown grass and the cellophane-wrapped newspapers piled at the front door.

  “Dammit, I knew we should’ve stayed,” he muttered as he pulled out their suitcases.

  Sharon patted his shoulder. “There was no way you could’ve known she’d get this bad.”

  Joe nodded, comforted that his wife was only a brass-plated bitch some of the time.

  She nudged one of the newspapers. “I thoug
ht your mom’s church friends were here every day.”

  “So did I.”

  They exchanged a look that said hope we’re not too late before Joe knocked. The house was dark and quiet, not unusual since Mom typically hit the sack by nine, but the pile of newspapers and the darkened outside lights (she’d turned those on from sunset to sunrise for his entire life) combined to flood his J.D.-starved throat with bile.

  He set down his suitcase to hunt for his spare key, but Sharon tried the knob. Unlocked. They exchanged another look that said shit we are too late and went inside.

  “Mom? Mom, are you home?”

  They fanned in opposite directions, switching on lights as they went. They didn’t head upstairs to the bedrooms first because Mom had slept in the downstairs guest room ever since her knee-replacement surgery.

  Joe heard the click click click sound from her room the moment before he entered. His first thought was that a burglar was torturing her with a car battery and jumper cables.

  click click click

  An electrical surge of adrenaline shocked him when he saw an apparition by her bed. His father’s ghost?

  His mother looked up from ineffectually snapping the switch of her lamp back and forth. The collar of her nightgown hung low, exposing a wattled neck.

  “Berl?” she said. Berl was his father’s name.

  “No, Mom, it’s me.”

  “Joey! Oh, my Joey.”

  Her face lit up, even if her lamp wouldn’t, as she hugged him. She felt like a tree of bones and smelled like she hadn’t bathed since the funeral.

  Confusion crept into her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

  “Don’t you remember? I told you we were flying in today. Sharon’s in the other room, and—”

  His wife entered at that moment, shaking her head and thumping her chest in relief. “Boy, I was starting to think from the way the kitchen looks that—” She cut herself off again; she was getting good at that. “Well hello, Ruthie. How are you?”

  As the women hugged, Joe examined the lamp and found that it didn’t have a bulb. “What did you just say about the kitchen?”

  “Well, the fridge was hanging open, and… just go look for yourself.”

  “What’s your name, honey?” Mom asked.

  “I’m Sharon, Joe’s wife.”

  “He’s a good boy, my Joey.”

  The kitchen wasn’t as startling as Sharon had led him to expect—no chicken giblets hanging from the refrigerator magnets or anything—but two twist-tied bags of reeking garbage sat by the overloaded trash can, and sour milk pooled on the table. He knew it was sour from the way it smelled and from the week-old expiration date on the warm carton standing nearby.

  The women came in. “I was just fixing me some breakfast,” Mom said. “You want some?”

  “No, thank you,” Joe said. He began cleaning the mess.

  “It’s dark this morning. Must be a storm.”

  “It’s ten o’clock at night, Mom.”

  “Oh, go on.”

  He and Sharon exchanged a silent communication—funny how you could do that after being married long enough—before Sharon put her arm around his mother’s shoulders. “It’s okay, Ruthie. He’s just jet-lagged. Now let’s go back to your bedroom while he cleans up in here.”

  “Oh… fine. Treating me like a child.”

  They shuffled away. Joe collapsed into a chair and tried not to weep. How could it have come to this?

  When Sharon came back a while later, she sat down across from him. “You okay?”

  He nodded, then leaned forward to blow dust off the fake-fruit centerpiece.

  “It’s just too much at once, isn’t it?” she said.

  That’s the understatement of the night, Joe thought, but he appreciated the sentiment. “Remember the first time you came here?”

  “Sure. That was when Ruthie told me I was the perfect girl for you.”

  Joe smiled at the memory. “I still can’t believe she said that to you.” They had only been dating for a month at that point after meeting at a mutual friend’s party. Sharon had been living in L.A. while he was in D.C. Mom had initially frowned at the long-distance relationship, which was what made her comment so surprising.

  Sharon smiled back. She reached across the table to hold his hand, and this time it didn’t bother him—no undercurrent of tension, no implied judgments, just simple, warm comfort. “A lot of memories here.”

  “Yep. And they all gotta be packed up or thrown out by next Monday.”

  “You’ll still have them, honey. But most important, you’ll still have your mom.”

  Joe peered down the hallway and listened to Mom groan in her sleep. He sighed. “I suppose I will.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Joe had always told his students—particularly the ones training for the cross-country track team—that the way to eat an elephant was one bite at a time. It had been one of his father’s favorite expressions and one he’d always repeated when faced with long, arduous tasks. But it gave him scant comfort this morning.

  He sipped a mug of instant coffee and wandered from room to room, taking in a lifetime’s worth of family photos, books, doily-covered furniture, and sports trophies, knowing that this particular long, arduous task would have the bonus of being emotionally wrenching. He guessed that when he removed his high school graduation picture from the wall that the white paint beneath would be the same bright color as on the day his father hung it. When the Salvation Army hauled away the old couch next Monday, they’d probably find a kitty toy from ol’ Mr. Fuzziwinks, his childhood friend. And God knew what was in the attic.

  “One bite at a time,” he said, and fetched a lightbulb for his mother’s lamp. He’d install it after she woke up.

  As if she knew he was thinking about her, he heard Mom’s blankets move. “No… no, Berl,” she groaned in her sleep. “You’ll drown.” Upstairs, Sharon’s footsteps entered the bathroom.

  He sighed and returned to the kitchen, dropping the bulb into the pocket of Dad’s old bathrobe, which he wore. He located the box of instant oatmeal; no milk for cereal this morning. As he reached, he saw mustard-colored splatters of some indefinable substance crisscrossing the stove top. He found this as disturbing as last night’s bag of trash. As recently as Dad’s funeral, Mom had been as fastidious about her kitchen as she was about her food.

  Something thumped against the front door.

  He went outside and found the morning paper lying among the pile of previous deliveries, which he’d forgotten to throw out with the trash. Down the block, a bike-riding delivery boy withdrew a paper from the pocket of his orange safety vest and bullseyed another door. The boy swerved to avoid a police cruiser turning onto the street. Joe took his paper inside.

  Sharon waited in the hallway. She wore a long nightshirt that clung to her body, betraying her small pot belly and how much her breasts had sagged in recent years. It reminded him of seeing Mom’s wattled neck the previous night. He wasn’t much to look at either, but Christ, how old were they getting? And when did those internet articles say was the end of her reproductive years?

  Sharon held out a prescription bottle like it was drugs seized from a student locker. “Found this in the medicine cabinet.”

  He examined it. It was a five-year-old bottle of alprazolam that Mom’s shrink had prescribed during a nasty bout with panic disorder. It contained two unused pills. “So?”

  “It’s expired, honey. And so were the twenty other bottles I found upstairs—and the twenty I found downstairs. It’s a wonder she hasn’t poisoned herself.”

  Joe handed it back to her. He returned to the kitchen, yanking off the newspaper’s cellophane as he went. “So, that’s just old people for you. We’ll throw it out with everything else this week.”

  “Don’t get mad, honey, please. I’m just concerned for your mom’s well being.”

  “She’s not a child.”

  “I didn’t say she was.”

  Sharon let
the subject drop as they sat down to breakfast, but Joe felt guilty anyway. It wasn’t her fault his mother really was a child now. “I’m sorry,” he said as they dug into their oatmeal.

  She cleared her throat and seemed about to say something—then stopped. She shrugged. “Does your mom want breakfast?”

  “I figured let her sleep as long as possible. She might be a handful once she’s up.”

  His mother’s sleep babble answered from the down the hall. Well, it could be worse, Joe thought, shaking open the paper. We could be having this conversation aboard an airplane.

  Then he saw the article on the front page and nearly coughed up his breakfast.

  He recognized the flight number mentioned in the lead, didn’t believe it, and reread the paragraph that named the takeoff and landing points. There was no mistake.

  “What’s the matter?” Sharon said.

  “This says our plane nearly…”

  He gulped, hesitated, then handed her the paper. He went to go stand by the kitchen sink, thinking he really would be sick.

  He closed his eyes as Sharon read aloud: “‘Investigators say the near-miss of the two airliners happened soon after AA flight 26 took off from LAX.’ Blah blah blah… ‘suspicion of sabotage of the air-collision sensors…’ Wow. This must’ve been why those FBI agents were at the gate.”

  “Yep.”

  “But…” Fear and worry played tug-of-war with her face. “I didn’t see another plane when we were in the air. Did you?”

  He wanted to burst with his tale. “No.”

  “Oh. Well I suppose we wouldn’t have.” She returned to reading the article. “Those sons of bitches. Fine way for us to find out about this. Just a fine way.”

  Joe tried to sip from his mug, but his hand was shaking and he spilled it down his chin. “Um, you know, instead of flying back and using the moving company, we could get a U-Haul and—”

  His mother’s scream interrupted him.