The Bellbottom Incident (10 page)

And there it was. It was a simple statement that spoke to a far larger story, again a familiar one. Abigail supported herself with a research assistantship from Dr. Baumgartner. Since there just aren’t enough postdoc and junior professor spots to support all graduating PhDs, most leave for teaching or research jobs at other schools or institutions after graduation or, more likely, enter the corporate workforce. It’s a problem every grad student faces as his or her graduation date nears—what to do next?—and more than one student dealing with this conundrum had been known to drop by my office for a sympathetic ear, a cookie, and a list of alumni for networking. In general, the students tended to want to stay in academia, since that was all they had ever known. But it wasn’t realistic, not for all of them. I wanted Abigail to be one of the ones who could stay, if that was what she really wanted to do.
 

“Has Dr. B said anything about a postdoc for you?” I asked.

“Not yet.”

“But you do want to continue on?”
 

“Well, wouldn’t you? I’ve been lucky enough to get to use STEWie for my research. The prospect of working anywhere else, where I might not be able to time-travel, seems so—I don’t know—boring? Even if the salary is larger and the health benefits better. But now that I’m responsible for supporting Sabina, maybe I do need those things. A steady job with a good salary and benefits, I mean. I didn’t used to worry about such material goals, but now…Plus I don’t want her to have to move or change high schools.”

So it wasn’t just the money that worried her. A career in academia entailed relocation from position to position as funding necessitated, at least until the holy grail of tenure was achieved. Thornberg had a five-year high school, grades eight through twelve, giving Sabina plenty of time to get acclimated before having to move on. Or that had been the plan, at least.

I sat up on the couch. “You know you can always count on me, don’t you? Nate feels the same way—we’re Sabina’s honorary aunt and uncle. And Helen and Xavier might as well be her grandparents, they dote on her so much. Kamal, too; he’s like an older brother.”

Kamal Ahmad was Dr. Mooney’s senior grad student and one of Sabina’s biggest fans.

“Thanks, Julia. It’s going to be all right, you know. I have a feeling we’ll get her back safe and sound. We can figure everything else out later.” Nestling back into her coat, she asked, “So who did you see? Or is it
whom
? During dinner, I mean.”

“It’s whom. And I saw my mother.”
 

“Wow, your mom. I mean, I never knew my parents, so I have nothing to compare to, but I can imagine that it had to have been weird and strange.”

“It was. Do you hear that?”

Muffled voices were audible outside, the sound drifting under the closed restroom door. We rose to check, but it turned out to be nothing more than already-inebriated Halloween partiers crossing the plaza. We heard the faint chime of the midnight hour on the campus tower not long after.
 

“So it was strange to see your mother,” Abigail prompted me once we were back on the couches, like two patients undergoing simultaneous psychotherapy.

“I got an odd vibe, like History was clearing its throat, reminding me that I can’t stay here much longer. Just wanted to mention it in case I suddenly have to run out.” Dr. Little had told me that if History decided to send me home, I’d feel a sudden tightening in my chest, as if the air was getting thin in all directions but the one leading to STEWie’s basket. It had felt like that for just the briefest of moments, then it stopped.

“It could just be a reaction to seeing your mother when she was young,” Abigail suggested half jokingly.
 

“Not only young, but younger than I am now.”
 

“So…?”

“Hmm, what?” I was lying on my back again, looking up at the creamy white ceiling.
 

“There’s something else that’s bothering you about your mother, right?”

“Well, there’s…a personal matter I was hoping to look into. My brown eyes and hair, if you must know.”

At this, Abigail pushed herself back up on one elbow and looked over at me. “Why, what’s wrong with your hair and eyes?”

“Nothing, other than the fact that my parents are both blond and blue-eyed, as befitting their Norwegian roots.”

She raised an eyebrow in my direction. “You know you can change your hair color, right? I do it every other week practically. As to eye color—I’m far from an expert, but I don’t think two blue-eyed parents always equals a blue-eyed child, just usually.”

“I like the brown. I just don’t like the potential implications.”

“Is that why you volunteered for Dr. Little’s study?”

“How do you know about that?”

“I saw the form you filled out. It was in the recycling bin. So are you wondering if you’re adopted? Did you ever ask your parents about it?”

I took a moment before replying. My
parents had driven up to see me after our return from Pompeii, obviously thrilled to hear that I was alive and well. After a somewhat harried morning spent ensuring I had enough instant coffee in the cupboard and clean guest sheets, I’d heard them open the garage door, for which they still had the code. I went outside to greet them and gave them both hugs. They were looking a little older—I had not seen them in eight months by the calendar—but they looked tan and healthy enough.

“We never did think you were dead, Jules,” my mother said at once. “Kept expecting you to come back every day…and you finally did.”

“It sounds as if you had quite an adventure. Where is the Roman girl?” This from Dad as they followed me inside. “I want to ask her about gladiator fights—what they were like and if there was betting and stuff. You didn’t get to see one, did you? Maybe get video of it?” He gave me another hearty hug around the shoulders.

I explained that Sabina was not there to greet them, as Abigail had taken her to the mall to buy her clothing and other necessities—Sabina had arrived in the twenty-first century with only her dog and the clothes on her back, so she needed everything: tops, pants, dresses, shoes, undergarments, pajamas. It was a long list. I expected that they would be gone the whole afternoon.

Mom elbowed Dad—“You can ask her about gladiator fights later”—and pushed a potted plant into my hands. Had I been gone so long they’d forgotten about my tendency to kill all flora in my care?
 

“It’s not for you,” my mother reassured me. “We thought Sabina might like a present from Florida. It’s a lemon tree that she can grow in her room. We also got her a pair of sunglasses and a beach towel for when you visit. I would have gotten a bathing suit, but I didn’t know her size, so I left it for—”

I held up a hand. “Slow down, Mom, there’s plenty of time to buy her presents for birthdays and such.” I set the tiny lemon tree on the kitchen table and offered them pop from the fridge. “Sabina and Abigail should be back for dinner, and you’ll both get to meet them then.”

Dad’s eyes lit up. “Dinner? Should we go to Ingrid’s for lingonberry pancakes?”

They didn’t have lingonberry pancakes in Fort Myers.

Mom elbowed him again. “It could be that Julia is cooking for us. Are you, darling?” she asked a little apprehensively.
 

“The possibility never crossed my mind. Ingrid’s it is.”

My Pompeii adventure had left me pensive, perhaps even obsessed with the big mysteries of life—time, history, death—and personal ones as well. The question had been burning on my tongue for their whole visit, but how was I supposed to broach the subject of genetics, hair color, and paternity over lingonberry pancakes?

I answered Abigail truthfully. “I did try to work it into the conversation once, but they didn’t seem to notice. And asking outright felt too much like I didn’t trust them. When I was younger, I researched it a bit and found an answer I liked—that eye and hair color follow complex patterns of inheritance, and hidden traits can sometimes skip a generation or two. So you’re right: blond parents can have a brunette, brown-eyed child…but it’s very rare. I decided I was that rare case and that there had to be a dark-eyed, dark-haired ancestor deep in the family tree. Then I got the opportunity to time-travel.”

“I’ve heard about this phenomenon from other people, how it’s easier to broach a subject with just about anyone on the planet than with your own parents. To me it seems like it would be easier just to ask, but what do I know? I’ve never had that particular relationship. Did she have a pregnancy belly?”
 

“What, my mother, you mean? In the cafeteria?”

“It’s what you need to know, right? It would settle the question of whether or not you were adopted. Or was it too early in the pregnancy?”

“I couldn’t tell either way. She had a coat on. And, well, she was a bit chubbier than she is in the present.”

“If we get a chance, we can spy a bit on your parents after we find Sabina. Your birthday is on April 1, so let’s see…” She counted nine months back on her fingers. “July of this year would be the time to look and see what they were up to. That was what you were hoping to do when you volunteered for Dr. Little’s study, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know what I was hoping to do,” I answered honestly. “Have you—forgive me for asking this—have you ever wanted to use STEWie to find out who your own parents are?”

“Of course. Who wouldn’t? All I was told is that something in their life circumstances prohibited them from raising me. Growing up and moving from foster family to foster family, I always pictured them—and I know this is silly—as secret agents. Their line of work involved too much danger and international travel for them to take care of a kid…As I said, I know it’s silly, but I still imagine them keeping an eye on me from afar. As to using STEWie to find out—even if it were allowed, I’m pretty sure reality would not live up to my imagined scenario.”
 

It was a strange conversation to be having in the pitch-dark of the restroom. (We had turned the light off after deciding that Sabina might be spooked by it rather than enticed.) I thought again of my own parents, who called every weekend to see how I was doing, and all my personal problems suddenly felt so very small. I had just gotten
a postcard (my parents were the only people I knew who still sent them) telling me they were on a Key West cruise with some of their charges and were planning on driving up for a visit before winter set in.
 

Abigail cleared her throat. “I suppose everybody must have
something
personal they’d wish to check on or bear witness to or whatever.”

“Except for Dr. Little.” We chuckled again at that, but in the back of my mind I wondered if the young professor was as uninterested as he seemed. You never know with people.

Apparently Abigail had had the same thought. “Did you notice the strange thing about his study?”

“What strange thing?”

“He wants to zero in on his personal cutoff date in History, compare the results with volunteers with similar birth dates, and look for a pattern.”

“Right. So what’s strange about it? It sounds like a legitimate research topic.”

“His methodology for himself differs from what he’s doing with his volunteers. For his own runs, he started in September 1976 and intends to use STEWie to edge closer to his birth date in April.”

“And…?”

“It’s not the most efficient and cost-effective method.”
 

I sat up on the couch again, though I couldn’t see her in the dark. “Hold on. What would be more efficient?”

“The approach he’s using for the seven volunteers he enlisted for his study. Start with a person’s birth date—a STEWie run guaranteed to fail, thus saving energy and resources—then shift the arrival date back day by day until History allows the person to jump. Or he could run a binary algorithm between his birth date and his date of conception. You know, start at the halfway point and see if the run takes, then halve the next time period, and so on.”

“That is strange, I suppose, that he’s using a different algorithm for himself than for his volunteers…Perhaps there’s a technical reason for it. But wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out that he was curious about something, too, for all his protestations?” I slid back down into the couch. “His family’s all the way in California, though, so it probably has nothing to do with them. He did seem very familiar with the layout of the physics building—perhaps he’s researching some finer point of STEWie’s development and it’s legit after all.”
 

“That’s what I was thinking—that he’s got a side research topic that he doesn’t want to tell people about for fear of his idea being stolen.”

“Well, he wouldn’t be the first.”

“Speaking of ideas, I still can’t get over that blackboard in the physics grad student office. Young Dr. Mooney and Dr. Rojas are certainly nothing like I would have imagined. I pictured them as being very serious and focused. Also,
mustaches
?”
 

We shared another chuckle over this. Then, in somewhat of a change of topic, Abigail added, “Too bad Nate couldn’t come with us. He would have enjoyed seeing them. But then he’s already here.”

And so he was. I did the math. “He’s five years old and living up in Duluth with his grandparents while his parents finish up college. His mom had him while she was still in high school, did you know that? It was a bit of a scandal apparently.”
 

“Huh. I thought I was the only one with a weird childhood.”

“Everyone’s childhood is weird…Even if it felt idyllic at the time, when you look back and think about things you realize it wasn’t always as idyllic as it seemed. That doesn’t stop the nostalgia, though.” Then I remembered that it was Abigail I was talking to. I wished I had a box of cookies to offer her. “Of course, most childhoods aren’t as weird as yours, I suppose.”

“Don’t worry, I get what you’re saying. Besides, I think Sabina has us all beat when it comes to weird childhoods.”

“She does, doesn’t she?”

As we drifted into silence, I rubbed my eyes and didn’t manage to suppress a yawn—the time-travel lag had kicked in with a wallop. Still, I fought to stay awake, my senses attuned to the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Meanwhile, Abigail’s breathing had turned to a soft snore. There were plenty of other sounds, too: Halloween-related joviality drifted in from outside, the large fridge in the food-prep part of the cafeteria crackled occasionally, and the water pipes made mysterious noises, as water pipes tend to do. I started making a mental list of what we should do if Sabina didn’t appear by morning. We’d broaden our search beyond campus to all of Thornberg, tape up posters telling her to come back to the Open Book, enlist the help of campus security…