Time Travail (31 page)

Keep out of it now as I hadn’t then, that day
in the newly painted room. It was much worse (or better?) than the
previous time-trips. Better, much better. For as long as it lasted.
How long did it last? I’d lain down on the bed of the one room at
two in the afternoon and had remained in the other room I could
have sworn no more than ten minutes when I heard her (Beth) say
hey, what’s the matter? and saw her back from work standing in the
doorway with daffodils, almost spectral, flowers and woman, a
visitation from a less essential temporal plane.

After the immense pain of rupture and then a
return to sense I realized a whole precious afternoon of my
diminishing stock of afternoons had passed elsewhere, nowhere
finally.

Badly frightened I reached out for the
antidote, the reality of her (Beth) then and there. She protested,
then submitted, again with her face averted, eyes open. I resorted
to the same inspiration as the first time. At the end she wept
again although I’d told her never to do that.

I said over and over again that I loved her.
What we should do was go away together. If not Florida as I’d
suggested that night (but she’d thought it was a game) at least for
the weekend. Long Island was all beach. She couldn’t do that, she
said. I said I wouldn’t stay here. I’d go to the beach by myself. I
might not come back, ever.

Immediately she agreed to come with me. I
felt much better. It was as though the poison was already working
its way out of my system.

Beth was the antidote. Sometimes I had the
lucidity to wonder what I really wanted. Was it the antidote or the
poison? The poison was treacherously sweet like something way back
in the past. It started up again, the time-tangent, as I remembered
the taste of a certain dangerous lead-compound we’d used in
experiments: sweet and fatal. I got lost again in shack memories.
Which lead-compound? Lead carbonate? Minium? Maybe an hour went by
searching. The thing had to be pursued till the victory of
recuperation. Finally victory came. Of course: lead acetate, and
almost frighteningly total victory as the formula came intact out
of the wreckage of years: Pb (C
₂
H
₃
O
₂
)
₂
. Why had
I started thinking of lead? Then I was back to the fatal disease of
saturnism and that gave me Saturn again and the Greek for it. But
wasn’t it lead, in thick plates, that was supposed to protect us
from the rays of the time machine?

We were to leave for the seaside as soon as
she got back from work. I kept out of the room that day but felt
the disorder still intact, lurking beneath the frantic surface of
household activities and imagined some radical cure from the time
sickness just from jogging barefoot in sunshine on flat shining
sands, swapping old stale breath for deep lungfuls of antiseptic
ocean air. I’d chosen a place way out in Long Island where I’d
never been and supposed that no one I’d known had ever been. The
beaches were practically empty at that gusty time of year, I knew,
except for maybe the odd kite-flyer or surf-caster.

The radio spoke of possible rain for the
weekend, so after we’d registered at a motel and had a
disappointing seafood dinner we started in the direction of the sea
and finally broke free of the labyrinth of sand-strewn streets with
empty summer houses and reached the beach. By then it was night
with the moon trying to survive among fast inky clouds.

For about three minutes we could see the
breakers crashing white, the light of a ship at sea, our shadowed
footsteps in the wet sand behind us, washed-up crates, tires,
bottles, rusty drums, a bloated dog, originally a fox-terrier
maybe.

Then the moon went. It started to drizzle. We
couldn’t see anything, just hear the crashing of the breakers and
the lap and hiss of the surf at our feet. I was afraid of stepping
on the dog. We went back to the motel soaked. Just before she got
in bed she said she was sick. At first I didn’t understand.

We spent the next morning in the motel room
looking out of the window. I talked about summer beaches somewhere
else as the cold steady rain came down past billboards. I tried to
convince her to spend two weeks with me at the seaside in June. She
said she usually spent her vacation at her sister’s in Phoenix.
Martha wasn’t well. Finally I got tired of the billboards and
trying to convince her. I lay down on the bed. The ceiling was a
blank screen, not like the ceiling in the honored-guest room.

She remained at the window looking out. She
started stealing glances at me.

“Are you all right, Jerry?”

“Fine.”

“Not mad at me?”

“Why should I be mad at you?”

The billboards grew brighter and brighter.
Suddenly the sun came out.

“Let’s go back,” she said.

“Yes, it wasn’t a good idea. It’s too early
in the year. You pack up and I’ll check out.”

“I didn’t mean that. I’d never have said that
and spoiled your fun. I meant go back to the beach now that the
sun’s out. I’d love to walk along the beach in the sun. I could
maybe try to jog with you even.” Her change of mood sounded
forced.

“Jog with all that stuff washed up on the
sand? Didn’t you see that dog?”

“Dogs don’t scare me. I like dogs. Maybe we
could find a nice piece of driftwood and you could make a lamp. I’d
love to have a real driftwood lamp. What do you say? I’ll do the
varnish-job. It’d be nice to have projects together.”

I didn’t move from the bed. I kept staring up
at the blank ceiling. Maybe it was the distance from the overlapped
room. Or the presence all night long of Beth. Or maybe something
definitive. The cure had worked after all, just walking in the dark
alongside the sea had done it. The antiseptic sea air had driven it
out of my mind for good.

The pang at that thought told me it was still
with me. Fear and relief now.

Beth turned away from the window and sat down
on the bed. She looked down at me.

“You talked about nothing else for days and
now that you’re here and the sun’s out you just lie there moping on
the bed.”

I said I wasn’t moping. Not feeling all that
great, was all. The dinner last night hadn’t agreed with me. I
hadn’t slept a wink, I said.

She felt my forehead, said maybe so, a
little, and prepared two glasses of Alka-Seltzer. I asked her if
she felt sick herself. She felt fine. Her glass was just to keep me
company. She said she’d have thought the sea air would have done me
good. But if I didn’t want to I didn’t want to. Where did I want to
go then? How about another beach if I didn’t like this one?

I said I felt like going back to Forest Hill.
She put up a short struggle. If you really want to, she finally
said. If you’re not feeling well maybe we’d better. She started
packing the bag. Misbehavior behind her now, she couldn’t help
humming. Often, when there were no cars abreast, she leaned her
head against my shoulder.

Late that evening I found myself in exactly
the same position, on my back staring up at the ceiling in the
honored guestroom. Beth was unpacking in her bedroom. This ceiling
gave the same results as the motel ceiling. The sea air had been
powerfully antiseptic. After a while she came in and lay alongside
me. I told her I wanted to stay the whole night here. She said we’d
spent the whole night together in the motel. I hadn’t meant
together here in this room with her but couldn’t say that. I didn’t
like the idea of sleeping in the other house, I said. She agreed
reluctantly, reminded me that she was sick and came in to join me a
quarter of an hour after I’d gone to bed. I couldn’t tell her not
to share the room with me.

She was the antidote, all right, not the sea
air, I realized in the darkness.

In the middle of the night she sat up in bed
abruptly.

Somebody was trying to get in, she whispered.
I turned over on the other side. The cot was relieved of her
weight. I heard her voice from the other end of the room, a
panicked whisper. It was Rick with a friend, I should get up, get
dressed, not make any noise. She shook me hard and told me to lock
the door here. She’d fix them up on the sofa and the cot
downstairs. When they fell asleep I could leave. I knew I knew I
knew you shouldn’t have stayed, she kept on saying in a frightened
whisper.

I didn’t answer. She shook me harder. She
ended by yanking the sheet and blanket off me and practically
pushed me out of bed.

She slipped into a blue kimono with big white
butterflies and went downstairs. She stayed there for a long time.
As I dressed I could hear their voices, mainly hers, pleading. At
last she came back and said they’d be asleep pretty soon and then
I’d be able to go. We waited, each seated on a side of the bed back
to back.

Finally we left the room. She scouted the
living room. She gave a conspiratorial “psst!” and I sneaked down
the stairs as in vaudeville with a shoe in each hand. When I
reached the front door she let me put them back on. She’d switched
off the outside lights and all I could see of her was the white
oval of her face and the white wings of the kimono butterflies

Half-asleep, I started stumbling toward her
gate. She pulled me behind a forsythia bush. Her breath was coming
fast.

“
Jerry, what if he asks for the key and he
sees everything? What’ll I
say
?
What’ll I
do
, Jerry? I can
tell him I had the room fixed up for him, sure, but how about that
stereo outfit of yours? What’ll I say when he sees that? Listen, I
know what. They’ll be fast asleep till noon. An earthquake couldn’t
wake them. I know how they operate. Are you listening, Jerry? What
I want you to do first thing tomorrow is take your hi-fi back. I’ll
give you a hand. Say seven or eight. Promise? Do you
promise?”

I promised and started down the path.

“My God, the books!” she whispered hoarsely.
She pulled me behind the forsythia again. “Suppose he gets up in
the middle of the night and sees the books?” She was almost crying.
“Wait!” She tiptoed back to the house.

I must have fallen asleep on my feet. I woke
to the nearing crunch of gravel and her painful panting. She was
hidden to the nostrils by the swaying pile of books in her arms.
She unloaded them on me. “I just took the worst ones, the ones in
foreign languages. You’ll have to get rid of all the others
tomorrow morning. He’d know I wouldn’t read books like that.”

The books started spilling over onto the
gravel as I tried to negotiate the path for the third time. “Stop
making so much
noise
,” she
groaned, picking them up and reloading me. I reached her
gate.

She caught up with me and pulled me behind
the sheet-iron Disney deer.

“Oh Jerry, everything’s going to be fine, you
shouldn’t worry. Promise you’ll come over for drinks tomorrow
evening. I’ll introduce you as the next-door neighbor. Talk to him
about his poems. Only be careful not to say anything about the
so-called bad ones, the ones you think are bad. Try to encourage
him to go back to poetry. You’ll get along marvelously, I’m sure,
he’s very sensitive and intelligent and gentle, don’t worry. So
promise. And for God’s sake don’t forget about the hi-fi tomorrow
morning, seven sharp.”

I promised and stumbled past her unannounced
visitors’ beat-up unwashed cars. One of them was parked halfway on
the sidewalk.

I struggled with Harvey’s paranoiac padlock,
then went past the dark bulk of the memory-tree. At that moment
Harvey’s machine erupted into deafening groans. It was almost three
in the morning. Hanna’s window lit up instantly. You could see her
progress down to the cellar as window after window lit up. She was
yelling his name. Now windows in the neighboring houses lit up. I
let myself into the dead room. I sniffed. It couldn’t be what I was
sure it was. I turned the light on.

The sofa was empty. The time-sensors were
working away. I put the pile of books on the carpet.

In the corridor leading to the cellar-door I
blundered into Hanna. She was barefoot and had her old overcoat on
over nothing. It was buttoned wrongly with great loopholes of
intimacies. Her hair was wild and she glared at me. Where the hell
had I been? She grappled with the door. It was locked from the
inside. O God, he was dead.

If so those were farewell notes tacked on the
door. They were encircled in red like my room.

Not to be disturbed under any
pretext.
If I
don’t come up by April 14 at 4:00 pm come down and get
me
.

All of the other sheets said the same thing
except one that said:

Where the hell is
Jerry
?

She assaulted the door with both fists and cried out
his name. Why didn’t he answer? She started whimpering that he was
dead to punish her.

Before I could ask her what had happened she
bolted out of the corridor. I followed her to the back of the
house. Almost hidden by a dead splintered branch of the elm-tree
was a cellar-ventilator with slits. She squatted in front of it and
squeezed an eye against one of the slits. What’s he got on his
head? Oh Jesus, his eyes, he’s dead. Oh Jesus, those eyes. She
howled unbearably.

Shh, the neighbors, I said stupidly. The
neighbors couldn’t help being wide-awake by now. She stood up and
ran back to the house.

I kneeled down and looked through the slit.
He was the way she described him. Those eyes.

What had killed him?

I remained there on my knees for a while. A
thud and an agonized grunt came from inside. I came back just in
time to see Hanna taking a running start and ramming the
cellar-door with her shoulder. There was a splintering wrenching
sound. The door burst open, hanging lopsided on a hinge. She
overshot the landing and cartwheeled down the stairs in a chaos of
thumps and limbs. She lay still at the bottom for a few
seconds.