Forty Leap (5 page)

That was consistent with their behavior.
“What do you think?”

“I think I believe you. I talked about it
with Jack.”

Jack, my oldest nephew, lived in and out of
the house with his family depending on his job or school situation.
He was rapidly approaching twenty years old and had never yet been
able to stick with one thing for more than a couple of months.
Toward me he was either abrasive or silent. I suspected there was
drug use. Martie did not speak of him often, but when she did there
was this gleam in her eye. He was her first born and he could do no
wrong.

“He doesn’t like you,” Livvie told me.

“I know,” I said without knowing why I said
it.

“Oh. Well I never knew. But I think he’s a
lot like you.”

That came as a surprise, but I was too tired
to show it.

“Anyway,” she continued. “The reason I’m
calling is because I think Mom has Dad on the ropes, you know?”

“I don’t.”

“Well, she’s almost got Dad convinced that
you’re nuts. She’s talking about forcing you to get ‘help’.”

That last bit made me angry, very angry. Even
though she had very little chance of being able to accomplish
something like that, I was overwhelmed by just how much animosity
she had toward me. What I wouldn’t tell Livvie was that Martie had
absolutely no concern for my well being. She simply hated me and
wanted to make me pay for saddling them with the responsibility of
my mother. Livvie probably knew it anyway.

What I said was, “Don’t worry, Livvie. It
takes a lot to have someone committed.”

“Oh,” she answered, a bit bewildered, as if
the comment was a non-sequitor. “Well, I just felt you should know
where they stand.”

The conversation hung silent for a few
moments.

“I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, Uncle
Mathew,” she said at last.

“Thank you,” I choked.

“Okay then. Well… bye.”

“Bye, Livvie,” I whispered, and waited for
the click to sound before I hung up the phone.

“You okay, Mathew?” Morty asked after a few
seconds.

“Yeah,” I said, but it was a lie. In me there
was anger and sadness and a little bit of joy at a reconciliation
with my niece. The conflicting emotions were dragging on me, making
it impossible for me to think about anything else.

I stood.

“Mathew? Where are you going?”

“What?” Going? I hadn’t thought about going
anywhere. “The bathroom, I guess.”

And to the bathroom I went.

My office shared a bathroom with three other
offices on that floor. In order to get there, I had to make my way
out of the cubicle area into the outer reception area. Estelle
glared at me as I emerged. She always did that lately, as if she
expected me to disappear before her very eyes. I suppose that could
have happened, but it didn’t and that was the very last time I saw
Estelle anyway, so what does it all matter? There was a short
corridor that housed a corner office to my left and the other
office to my right. The bathroom was at the far end of the hall,
just opposite the staircase. I went in to find it deserted, which
was a pleasant surprise.

I wasn’t inside long. I let myself into a
stall only to realize that going there was just an excuse for not
working. What I really needed was some time and some air. I had
about an hour until the end of the work week and most of everything
was pretty wrapped up. Maybe I could get Morty to go out again.
Even though I didn’t even unzip my trousers, I washed my hands and
stepped out into the corridor. A police officer just entering the
staircase turned at the sound of my exit and looked startled upon
seeing me.

“What are you still doing up here?” he cried
out.

“What?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Is there anyone else in there?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

He didn’t take my word for it, opening the
door and yelling into the room. He then turned back to me. “Didn’t
you hear the alarm? Dammit I checked that bathroom!”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”

“There’s a bomb in the building,” he
explained. “We’ve been clearing it for the past half hour.”

“But I was only in there for a minute,” I
told him. “Just…” I checked my watch in terror, but it read Friday,
November 23
^rd
, 3:58pm. It was quite obviously wrong.

He led me out of the building, not interested
in any explanations. Why should he be? As we moved down the stairs,
he radioed his superiors. Based on what I could decipher from the
garbled radio talk, I was suddenly being considered a suspect. Two
other police officers rendezvoused with us in the staircase. I said
nothing to them, realizing the futility of trying to explain my
condition. My medical records would back up my story, although I
didn’t know how many days I had missed this time and how truly thin
the concept of “blackouts” had become.

The street outside was empty of pedestrian
traffic. There were police cars and bomb squad vans. I was rushed
away from the building, but the police were keeping a close eye on
me. Then I caught sight of my boss at the corner and I called out
to her. I couldn’t believe the look on her face once she recognized
me, which she didn’t do immediately. She spoke to a policeman by
the barricade and he let her through.

“Please,” I said, suddenly a little bit
frantic. “Tell them I work here.”

“Worked here,” she corrected.

“It’s happened again,” I explained to her.
“Look at my watch.”

She could plainly see the time and date, but
did not lose her cold demeanor.

“I just went to the bathroom. Morty will tell
you.”

Here expression went blank. Even the police
officers saw it. It’s amazing how the change in one person can
butterfly out to affect all of the surrounding people. Just the
mention of Morty’s name had triggered something in her to which her
psyche was not prepared to react.

“What?” I asked, even though I already knew.
“What is it?”

So she told me and that made it true. Morty
was dead.

Upon hearing that news, the oddest thing
happened. I blacked out. The news of Morty’s death shocked me
something awful. Less than ten minutes before, I had answered his
concerns with absentmindedness. But he had experienced some unknown
amount of time in those ten minutes and died as a result of it.
What’s more, I was suddenly beginning to understand that the
effects of these time jumps, which were still increasing in length,
were broadening at an exponential rate. In the time I was gone, the
life of someone I knew had ended. A shock from which others had
recovered was now new to me. The pain was intense, like a great
squeezing of the fabric of my own consciousness. I must have fallen
because I came to as I hit the curb.

“Are you okay?” one of the policemen was
asking me.

“No,” I replied, still woozy. I looked up to
see my boss’ icy gaze and found, much to my surprise, that I was
angry. My anger was clearly directed at her, but I couldn’t say
why. As I stood from the curb, though, there was a hard edge to my
tone that I had never heard before. “When? How?”

There was no sympathy to be found. “He was
hit by a bus more than two weeks ago. You’re supposed to be his
friend.”

It was an indictment and I didn’t like it one
bit. “
How would I know about it?!
” I spat back at her. And I
mean spat. Globs of spittle and mucus flew from my rabid mouth and
washed over her. This, finally, drew a reaction. Whatever meekness
I had displayed throughout the course of my life fled in the face
of this tragedy and this insolent bitch that dared to make light of
its impact. I did not back down nor did I apologize for spitting on
her. I met her gaze full on and dared her to challenge me.

And she did not.

But it was a limp victory at best. Morty was
dead. I couldn’t believe it. Literally, I couldn’t believe it. The
police had no evidence on which they could base a charge so I was
released without ever being formally arrested. I did not bother to
stand around and see the drama through to its conclusion. My job
was someone else’s and my friend was gone. There was no longer any
need for me to be there. Marching through the crowd, I met the
gazes of my former co-workers and found, much to my surprise, that
they looked away in embarrassment. I did not understand this, nor
do I ever expect to find an answer. It’s actually one of those
great matters of irrelevance that sparks curiosity and then quickly
degrades into fleeting memory.

Finally, I moved past the lot of them, out of
the throng of onlookers, and into the open streets. I had to walk
several blocks before I could find a train station that was open
and running, but the walk did me good. It helped me to believe that
I was leaving my troubles behind as I left that place and those
people behind.

I could not have been more wrong.

I had left reality on November
23
^rd
. It was now January 3
^rd
, a Thursday. I
had missed the New Year, not that that meant much to me. I’m not
the party type. I usually spent New Years with the family or at
home. So I had lost almost six weeks.

And a good friend.

And my mother.

In the intervening weeks she had also passed,
the news given to me by an irate message left by Jeremy on the
first of December. My brothers, who had had to deal with all of the
arrangements and the estate by themselves, were extremely sore with
me.

Even Wyatt would not take my calls. As the
afternoon turned into evening, I felt myself entirely alone. My
life had spun completely out of control. I was at the whim of these
lost bits of time. While I had been in limbo, two lives had ended.
It got me to thinking about the changing world. What else had I
missed?

Well I had missed more lives. Apparently, the
bomb threat called into my former office building was not an
isolated event. And many of them were more than threats. Just
before Christmas, the man who was uniting the Middle East,
Abdelaziz, had been assassinated. No one claimed responsibility.
Everyone blamed the United States. Though Abdelaziz’s successors
openly condemned terrorist activity and denied any suspicion of the
United States, every two-bit Jyhaddist in the world was out for
blood. It was a sorry state of affairs and it dominated the news
channels, of course. People were frightened and angry. There were
new laws in place and new strength to the Patriot Act. There was
talk of martial law. I hadn’t just stepped from November into
January. I had stepped into a totally different world, one that I
did not like. Imagine the effects of culture shock and jet lag
rolled into one catastrophic ball and dropped on your head. Add to
that the fact that everything looked the same and felt the same. It
all just wasn’t the same.

I had to call my landlord and thank him for
not locking me out. He explained that he was on the verge of doing
so and it was a good thing I called. When was he getting paid? I
immediately wrote out two rent checks for December 1
^st
and January 1
^st
. I would send them in the morning. A
couple of paychecks had gone into my account during my “absence”,
but it was pretty clear where they had stopped. If I minimized my
spending, I would be okay for a couple of months, but I had to get
a job. I did not live an extravagant lifestyle, so money tended to
accumulate for me. But it would not be enough.

On the 4
^th
of January, I got up
early, dressed against the cold, and took the train and the bus out
to the cemetery where Jeremy and Wyatt had buried my mother. I
didn’t quite know how to feel, the whole of it being still so
unreal to me. There was a bitter wind and flurries in the air as I
approached the grave with the apprehension of the unknown.

The stone was new, having only been placed
the week before. Below the engraving of her name and dates of life,
my brothers had requested an epitaph.
A good woman who gave
better than her best.
It wasn’t a terrible way to sum up her
life. As I stood before it, though, I marveled that I did not feel
any guilt for not having been there. Truthfully, I could take no
blame for my absence. Given the choice, I would certainly have held
her hand through those final moments, giving her my love and
encouragement (how do you encourage the dying?). What I felt was
cheated. Denied those final moments, I had been robbed of any
reconciliation with the past and the opportunity to say the very
important things that needed to be said. It was ridiculous, really.
People die suddenly all the time and their loved ones are robbed of
those same opportunities. It is a fact of life that death is the
perfect sniper. In truth, what was stolen was, in fact, priceless,
but it was not stolen from me. Imagine my mother on her death bed,
her two eldest sons and grandchildren standing around her. The air
is heavy with the moisture of tears. Wyatt is whispering to my
mother that it will all be ok, but she knows that she is dying. She
may have hours or she may have minutes. It doesn’t matter. All that
she can ask is, “Where is Mathew? Where is my son?”

I can’t say whether or not my brothers had
bothered to try and explain my situation to her. I don’t know what
they said or how they said it. The truth would have sounded a
hollow excuse. Had I taken the time to talk to her beforehand, she
may have understood. She may have decided the timing too convenient
and died with hate for me in her heart. But she would have had that
choice. The way it was, all she could have had was bewilderment, a
bewilderment that I forced upon her. In recent years, our
conversations had fallen to the trivial and I had not even thought
to try and explain my situation to her. This woman who had
comforted me as a child, held my hand while I lay sick out of fear
or illness throughout my adolescent years, I had deemed incapable
of processing the circumstances. And, as a result, she had been
robbed of a basic comfort at the time of her death. And it was I
who had robbed it from her.