Einstein's Secret (13 page)

“That’s okay,” I said. “I hear that Weldon isn’t the easiest guy to work for.”

Richie looked up at me. “It wasn’t fair. That’s all.”

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t his fault that he heard them all talking about a treasure.”

“That’s why he was fired?”

Richie nodded.

“What kind of treasure?” Eddie said.

Richie suddenly took a defensive stance, squinting his eyes and tightening his jaw. He must’ve thought Eddie doubted him.

“My mom didn’t believe my dad, either,” he said, anger in his voice. “She said it was another one of his crazy stories. But she’s wrong, you know. My dad isn’t crazy.”

With contrition on his face, Eddie glanced at me. This time he’d screwed up.

“Your dad is right, Richie,” I said. “I know that for a fact.”

Richie’s jaw slackened. The possibility of finding an ally had turned his anger into hope.

“Do you know what the treasure is?” he said. “‘Cause I don’t.”

It was the portal. “No, but I know that it really exists.”

Richie stared at me for a long time, as if he were deciding whether he could trust me or not.

Finally, he blurted out, “And you won’t believe this part.”

“Try me.”

“My dad saw Albert Einstein at Mr. Weldon’s house.”

“I believe you. That’s why we’re here.”

A smile took over his face. “So it’s true? My dad was right?”

I nodded.

“Wow!” Richie was now giddy with excitement. “I told Mark and Danny and they didn’t believe me. They’re like my mom. They never believe anything my dad says.”

My heart went out to him. The young boy had his own battles to fight. I knew that my grandfather, his dad, probably suffered from mental illness. I remembered my mom telling me that.

Eddie looked at me, as if to say, where are you going with this?

“Einstein’s here because of the treasure,” Richie said. “Right? That’s what my dad says.”

In this case, mental illness or not, Richie’s dad was right. One hundred percent on the money.

“That’s what we came to find out,” I said.

“You want some help?”

Yes
, I thought, but kept my mouth shut. Wasn’t recruiting my father into this the most insane risk of all?

“Yes,” Eddie said. “We want your help.”

Richie looked at me, instead of Eddie. “Will you promise to write the truth in the paper if I help?”

The kid wanted a quid pro quo, and I imagined him waiting for our article to come out, then rushing to get copies of the paper when it did. He’d show the article to his mom and his friends, proving once and for all that his dad wasn’t crazy.

But there’d be no article.

“It’s a deal,” Eddie said.

Just then the crowd clapped and all three of us looked up to see the credits rolling on the animated short.

“I love this job,” Richie said. The screen’s flickering light reflected in his blue eyes, and I recognized the joy there. It was the same joy that I’d seen in that movie theater, when he was the grown-up and I was the kid, and we’d both laughed and laughed and laughed.

I now understood the reason for my dad’s love of films. He’d found solace and stability at the movies. His family had moved around a lot, but the movies must’ve always been there for him. He’d taken me to the movies so I could experience that same comfort and joy.

“I gotta get some things done before the movie starts,” he said. “I’ll meet you in fifteen minutes at the storage shed next to the concession stand.”

He took off, and Eddie and I headed toward the drive-in entrance.

“You just recruited my dad.”

“What?” Eddie stopped and, for the first time—including both versions of Eddie—his face went pale. “It can’t be. You just think it’s your dad because of some freaky residual effect of time travel.”

“It’s him.”

“How is it possible that you didn’t know your dad lived in Cumberland? It doesn’t add up.”

I’d been thinking about that, and it did add up. “My dad’s family lived in Pennsylvania for a while, and Cumberland is less than ten miles from the Maryland/Pennsylvania border. I don’t know exactly where he lives, but I’m positive that it’s nearby, just across that border.”

Running into my dad couldn’t have been just a coincidence. It had something to do with time travel, and I thought about explaining all the other coincidences to Eddie, but realized that was unnecessary. This one was big enough to make the point. But what exactly
was
the point? I hadn’t figured that out, and that worried me greatly.

“I’m not so sure involving my dad is the best plan,” I said.

“Right now it’s the only plan. Let’s see what he has to say.”

“We’re sinking deeper into the swamp.”

“Then let’s at least enjoy tonight’s feature presentation before we go completely under.”

*

As we walked alongside the line of cars waiting to get in to the drive-in, I couldn’t help but think about my dad, not as the kid I’d just seen, but as the adult that I had never known.

Right after he’d died, I thought he wasn’t really dead. I thought he’d come back. And not as a zombie, but exactly the way he was. At four, I didn’t know what a zombie was, and I didn’t know what death was. I expected my dad to walk back into our house any day.

Around five or six, I started to understand that he wasn’t coming back. I felt this overwhelming sense of loss. Like a piece of me was missing and that piece contained happiness. Then I realized: if I didn’t think about him, that sense of loss disappeared. So I started building a fortress around myself to keep any thoughts of him away. That fortress was completed in fourth grade.

After that, I stayed inside my fortress and didn’t dig into my father’s story. Sure, my mom talked about him, but it made
her
sad, too, so she didn’t talk about him too often. She’s the one who’d told me about his home life as a kid, and though she never said it directly, it was clear that his dad, my grandfather, wasn’t a well man.

She told me that his dad had fought in World War II, but hadn’t been one of those GIs who’d returned home and adjusted to civilian life. He hadn’t fulfilled his destiny as a member of the Greatest Generation. His story was more like the stories we hear about nowadays. He was a war vet who had a hard time jumping back into civilian life. He couldn’t hold down a job, and probably suffered from undiagnosed PTSD.

But now, somehow, his troubled life was strangely connected to Einstein’s secret. One of the jobs that he couldn’t hold down was painting Weldon’s mansion. So it wasn’t enough that history now recorded that my dad worked at a drive-in in Cumberland, Maryland. History now also recorded that
his
dad had crossed paths with Einstein himself.

Synchronicity was out in full force, and that thought triggered a theory. What if synchronicity was a real “force”? What if it wasn’t just strong coincidences? Was if synchronicity was a powerful energy, an energy that changed facts? What if it had changed facts about my family?

Maybe that’s what synchronicity was. History changing itself and making connections where none existed before.

But why would it do that?

I pictured a powerful vortex sucking me deeper into the world of Einstein’s secret, and rearranging facts as it spun its own new history.

*

We approached the drive-in’s entrance, where we had to walk much closer to the waiting cars. I feared we were pressing our luck. Surely someone would notice we were out of place and point an accusing finger out the window, shouting, “Get them!”

But I ended up staring at the carloads of teens and families far more than they stared at us. As Eddie had mentioned, we were protected by the innocence of this era. Outsiders weren’t embraced during this decade, but neither were they feared. Everyone was far more interested in getting inside the drive-in, finding a parking space, and loading up on concessions.

We were three cars away from the ticket window when I realized that instead of running through abstract, complicated theories of history, I should’ve been thinking about simple reality.

“They’re not going to accept our money,” I said.

“Not all of it, but we lucked out on the price of admission. The face of the quarter hasn’t changed much, and I’ve got two of them.” Eddie waited for the car in front of us to pay. “But don’t plan on any popcorn.”

We stepped up to the ticket window. Eddie handed his two quarters over to the cashier and received two walk-up tickets in return.

Inside, we didn’t see the storage shed, but easily spotted the bustling concession stand. We headed that way, passing an endless stream of happy kids carrying burgers, hot dogs, popcorn, and ice cream. They paid no attention to us. When we got closer to the concession stand, I noticed a large patch of open ground where people sat in folding chairs.

“That’s the walk-up section,” Eddie said. “Fifties nostalgia always leaves that part out. Not everyone drove cars to the drive-in.”

“We’re not staying for the movie. We talk to my dad, then leave.” We were getting way too involved with the past without knowing what we were doing or how the portal worked.

“There’s the storage shed,” Eddie responded, rather than fight me about staying.

The storage shed was over to the side of the concession stand, at the back, away from the hustle and bustle. Just as we got there, the movie screen went dark and the din of excited voices hushed. A few seconds later, the film started.

I wanted to talk to Eddie about the conversation we were going to have with my dad, to establish some parameters so we weren’t interfering with my dad’s history, but Eddie was already glued to the screen.

Cal Meacham, a famous pilot and scientist, the main character in
This Island Earth
, was flying his jet across the country. Right before landing, his plane suddenly lost power. Then a mysterious force, which made the plane glow an eerie green, took over the controls and safely landed the jet.

Just as Cal was deboarding his plane, Richie showed up and jumped right into a quid pro quo. “I’ll help you get into the house and you tell everyone that there’s a treasure in there.”

“We might not be able to find it,” I said.

“Then tell everyone that Einstein was there. Put it in the paper.”

“That, we can do,” Eddie said.

“Then you’ve got a deal.” Richie was gung ho to prove to the world that his dad wasn’t crazy.

I shot Eddie an annoyed glance. I wasn’t so keen on making any promises.

“I know how to get into the house,” Richie said. “Mr. Weldon has these glass doors along the back.”

“The French doors?” Eddie said.

“Don’t know what you call them—they’re the doors along the patio. The lock is broken on one of them. The one all the way to the right.”

“The right from the inside or outside?” Eddie asked.

“Outside. So you’ll tell everyone that Einstein was in Cumberland, right?”

This time Eddie hesitated before answering, but he answered all the same. “Of course.”

Richie grinned, then looked at the film. He watched until the scene ended, then said, “I’ve got to work the concession stand now.” Apparently he told time by where he was in the film.

But before he took off, I wanted a better farewell. This would now become my last memory of my dad. And instead of the joyous memory I had, looking up to him in the movie theater, this one had ended on a broken promise.

“Richie, it doesn’t matter whether other people believe you or not,” I blurted out.

He looked at me with a frown, as if he was confused. I had lobbed a complete non sequitur at him.

“A fact is a fact,” I added. “That never changes just because someone doesn’t believe it.”

This time, he nodded as if he was considering my statement. And the weird thing was that I was considering it, too. Weren’t facts now subject to change? Except I was referring to a fact that wasn’t going to change. There’d be no newspaper article confirming that Richie’s dad was telling the truth.

“But when it’s in writing, everyone knows it’s true,” Richie concluded, as if he’d figured it out.

I didn’t argue with him. He was right.
When it’s in writing, everyone knows it’s true.
History has to be recorded. Whether it’s recorded correctly or incorrectly, it’s the only way history has a chance to exist. And when an event disappears from the written record, it’s no longer part of history.

He adjusted his shiny, plastic nametag,
Richie Morgan
, then started toward the concession stand. “Good luck, you guys,” he said over his shoulder.

Eddie turned back to the screen. “Now that we have a way in, my vote is to go back tonight. Weldon and crew will be tucked away, sleeping.”

I knew exactly where he was going with this. “Meanwhile, we stay and watch the film.”

“Why not? We have to wait till the middle of the night, anyway.”

I didn’t argue. But it wasn’t because I was convinced by Eddie’s reasoning. It was because I wanted to talk to my dad one more time. It still felt like I was leaving him with a lie. Because I was.

From the shadows of the shed, Eddie and I watched the rest of film. In the end, Exeter, the alien, sacrificed himself to save Cal and Ruth, the humans. As I watched that, I had to wonder if alien mythology was as misleading as time-travel mythology. Whoever said that truth is stranger than fiction was right. Time travel was far messier than the way it was portrayed in fiction, and I guessed that this would hold true of real alien life.

As the credits rolled, I spoke up. “You’d think that time travel would be some kind of grand discovery, but it doesn’t feel that way.”

“We don’t know enough about it yet.”

“We don’t know
anything
about it.” But I hoped in the next few hours, after checking out that study, we’d know a lot more.

Eddie wanted to stay for the second feature,
All That Heaven Allows
, but I convinced him to head out. He conceded that so far we’d managed to fly under the radar, but if we stayed and contended with the mass exodus at the end of the night our cover might be blown.

I never did try to speak to my dad again, which I regretted as soon as I’d left the drive-in and trekked into the woods. But what I didn’t know then was that this encounter with my dad had ended far better than our next encounter would.