“I’m going to go back and carve your initials into that molding.”
“You’re such a romantic.”
Her initials were MC. Not long after I’d met Meghan and learned her last name was “Charles”—names didn’t get more Main Line than that—I started calling her MC Meghan, which not only failed to make literal sense, but also annoyed her to no end.
Meghan eyed the molding skeptically, even reaching up to brush it with her fingertips, as if I’d already carved her initials there, then covered it up with a generous helping of dust.
“Again for the record…”
“This is stupid, I know.”
I popped the pill in my mouth then laid down on the couch.
“See you in a little while. Watch that doorway.”
Dizziness. Head throbs. Weak limbs. Then my eyelids felt like they were a thousand pounds each.
I woke up in the office back in 1972. And yes, my right arm was gone, all the way up to the shoulder. I shouldn’t have been surprised by this, but I was. And more than a little horrified. The missing limb really threw my balance off. I swear to God, I felt myself tilting to one side.
Plus, I’d have to do my initial-carving one-handed.
There was nothing sharper than a butter knife in the kitchenette drawer. Not the most ideal cutting tool. Carving those two letters might take me the entire trip back to the past, but so be it. I would love to be there, in the present, to watch Meghan’s face when her initials start to carve themselves into the paint-chipped wood. Would they slowly appear, one stroke at a time? Or would she blink and then see all at once, the new reality conforming around her?
I wondered if Grandpop Henry, sometime down the road, would notice the initials and take a moment to ponder them.
The idea that I was about to change reality hit me hard. I’d read enough sci-fi novels growing up to know about the so-called butterfly effect—change one thing in the past, and the ripple effects could be potentially disastrous. Would something as simple as initials on a door frame make a difference? Sure, maybe if I carved a message like STAY OUT OF NYC ON 9-11-01 or BUY MICROSOFT. Initials were innocuous, though…right?
Then again, I had prevented a little girl’s death a few hours ago. And now there was one more person in the world who previously hadn’t been with us. Had someone died in her place? Had she grown up to do something awful? What havoc had I already wreaked?
I’d just pressed the tip of the knife to the molding when there was a loud scream outside my door.
The cry of a boy.
I knew I shouldn’t go to the door. I should just proceed with my original plan and start carving Meghan Charles’s initials into the wooden molding around my grandpop’s bathroom door.
But you’re only blessed with this kind of insight after the fact. After everything’s been taken away from you, and it’s too late to change a thing.
Instead, I walked across the room and pressed my ear to the pebbled glass.
I heard heavy footsteps.
There was the sound of slapping, and then another cry, and footsteps running down the hall. And then the gunshot slam of the door down on the ground floor. After a few minutes I managed to open the front door.
Bright sunshine. It was morning. The intensity of the light made me blink. My vision turned white. I dropped the butter knife. I slammed the door shut and crouched down and turned my back to the door and leaned against it and concentrated on breathing slowly.
I heard Erna’s shrill voice filling the hallway:
“Listen to me! You have to be quiet! Do you want us to get kicked out of here? Thrown out on the street to live like animals?”
And then:
“Shut up shut up SHUT UP. Not another sound!”
And then finally:
“BILLY ALLEN DERACE YOU STOP CRYING OR I’LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT.”
VIII
No More Mickey
I barely had time to process the name before that familiar dizzy feeling washed over me. No, no, not now. Not now! I slammed my fists into the wall, as if slamming my fists would help me stay there just a few seconds longer so I could think…
Billy Allen Derace? That twelve-year-old redheaded kid downstairs was going to grow up and stab my father to death?
Of course he was.
I wasn’t even conscious for two seconds before Meghan was leaning over me, whispering in my ear. Her breath was sweet and warm. I could feel sweat beading on my skin, my cheeks and forehead burning and the veins in my head throbbing.
“Hey genius, it didn’t work.”
The levels of exhaustion in my bones and muscles and head were unreal. Maybe I’d been overdoing the pills. Maybe the loss of sensation in my arm and fingers was just the beginning—a herald of things to come. Maybe Grandpop Henry had taken too many pills and ended up in his coma.
“Yeah.”
I tried to roll over. After a moment or two, I gave up. Much better to stay here on the floor. Let the sweat dry on my skin. Give the throbbing a chance to die down. Take a little more time to recover.
Meghan touched my forehead. I didn’t want her to. My forehead was sweaty, gross, hot.
“Are you saying you didn’t go back this time?”
“No, no…I did.”
“Then what happened?”
I didn’t want to answer any more questions. I didn’t want to think about butterfly effects or proof or my numb arm or Patty Glenhart or Billy Allen Derace or any of it. I just wanted the throbbing and the sweating to stop. I just wanted sleep.
“Mickey Wade, will you please answer me?”
“No. I won’t. You should go.”
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Just please go away. I need to rest.”
Hurt flashed in her eyes, only to be quickly erased and replaced with anger.
“Fine,” she said, and then a few seconds later I heard my apartment door slam. And a little while after that, the Frankford El thundered by, rolling into the station. Somehow I crawled up to the houndstooth couch using only one arm. I curled up best I could, trying not to think about the cushion that was still damp with Vitamin Water, trying not to think about anything.
Except the one thing I couldn’t help thinking about.
Billy Allen Derace.
I slept so long that it was evening again before I woke up. And I was still stupid with exhaustion. At least the throbbing in my head was almost gone, and the sweat had cooled and dried on my skin. On the downside, my right arm was still useless. Numb. Dead.
I fished an old scarf out of a plastic bag in Grandpop’s closet, then used it to make a lame sling for my right arm, just so it wouldn’t be hanging next to my body, flopping around as I moved. I thought about using some of my remaining cash on a proper sling. But beer was a cheaper fix. Maybe tomorrow.
The El rumbled past my windows, came to a grinding stop at the station, bringing commuters home from work. But very few of them would be climbing off the train and walking to their homes in Frankford. They would be walking down the stairs and hoping to catch the 59 or the K at the mini-terminal up Arrott Street, where they’d be transported to safer parts of near Northeast Philly. Or they’d be riding the El down to the end of the line, Bridge and Pratt, just ten blocks away, where they’d take buses to the upper Northeast or suburbs. They wouldn’t linger in Frankford any longer than they had to. Their parents may have stopped to browse some of the shops along the avenue, but those days were gone now.