“Frannie, how come you never told me about Gee-Gee?” Magda looked beautiful that morning although she is not a beautiful woman. And so did Pauline. They were two great-looking women and I was lucky to be living in the same house with them. The house which at that very moment might have been surrounded by space invaders, according to Bacon Face across the table from me.
I looked at her and tried to think up a believable lie. “Because his parents are jerks and I wanted nothing to do with them. I never even really knew about him till recently. Hey, Gee-Gee, remember those visitors you talked about before?”
He didn’t even look up from his plate. “Yeah?”
“Are they coming over here or not?”
“Dunno. Could I have some more syrup please?”
Magda prodded. “What visitors? Should we be making some more pancakes?”
Gee-Gee waved his fork around. “Some guys I know from out of town.”
“Out of town?” I sputtered.
“Are they friends of yours?” Pauline’s voice was jumping out of her throat—more Gee-Gees were coming to our house this morning? Yeah, baby!
“They’re more just guys than friends, know what I mean?” Magda looked at Pauline and simultaneously the two grew exactly the same smile—Boys Ahoy!
I was so frustrated by whatever stall tactic he was up to that I couldn’t sit still any longer. For want of anything better to do I stood up and walked to the kitchen sink. Looking out the window there I was glad to see only the old rusty swing set and not ET. No flying saucers had landed in our backyard. Turning on the tap I watched silvery water rush into the sink and down the drain. When it had run a long time Magda asked what I was doing.
“Counting molecules.” I didn’t look up. I felt like I was going to pop.
“Frannie—”
“Nothing’s wrong, Mag. Don’t worry about me.”
Gee-Gee said, “Look out the window, Uncle Frannie.”
“I just did.”
“Look harder. Look really carefully at the backyard.”
I ignored him and kept looking at the water. I turned it off. Then on. Then off again.
Pauline piped up, “Are your friends here, Gee-Gee? Are they in the backyard?”
“Naah. There’s just something out there I want Uncle Fran to see.”
A chair scraped the floor. A moment later Pauline stood next to me. Putting a hand on my shoulder, she rested her chin on it. This girl was not a big displayer of affection. I assumed her cuddle was for Gee-Gee’s benefit. I didn’t care—it was nice having her there. I tipped my head till it leaned on hers. “You smell good.”
“I do?”
“Yup. You smell like cloves and burning leaves.”
“Wow, that’s a cool description, Uncle Frannie. Cloves and burning leaves. I like that a lot.”
I turned toward Gee-Gee. Surprisingly he was watching me with real admiration.
“I swear to God—I never heard anyone described like that.”
“Well, kid, when you’re older I’m sure you’ll think up clever things like that to say too.”
He grinned while a small continent of yellow and spotted blue pancake dropped off his fork.
Pauline pinched my side. “That was mean. He was only paying you a compliment.”
“You’re right. Put your head back on my shoulder—it feels good.”
After she did I turned back to the window to see if there was anything in the yard that I’d missed.
“The swings are gone.”
“What swings?” Pauline said dreamily.
“Keep watchin’, Unc.”
As I said, our house once belonged to the family of my boyhood friend Samuel Bayer. In the corner of their yard a kid’s swing set sat dying all through our childhood. The people I bought the house from had had the swings removed. But because the world outside this morning was the 1960s, the backyard view had included the rusted, brown, sad-looking flying machine that had sent any number of kids into almost-orbit for a few happy years. The view had included those swings. I knew because when I looked at the yard minutes before, I saw them and instantly remembered. Now they were gone.
“Gee-Gee, what’s up?”
“Keep looking. Keep watching.”
“Holy shit!”
“What’s the matter, Frannie?” Magda asked.
“Could I have some more pancakes, Aunt Magda?”
“Of course, honey. You all right, Frannie?”
“Yeah.”
Out in the yard the swings were not the only things that were gone. As I watched, the entire landscape changed. It wasn’t fast like a time-lapse film. But if you watched one spot for a few seconds you’d see it and everything around it change to one degree or another. Behind where the swings had stood was a wooden fence. A few months earlier, Johnny Petangles and I spent a Sunday afternoon painting it brick red. In the 1960s when the Bayer family lived in the house the fence was white. And it had been that white a few minutes ago when the swings stood in front of it. Now there were no swings and the fence was green. Then it gradually became navy blue, white again, a different shade of green, then brick red. When I bought the house the fence was white. I had painted it that second shade of green and only recently covered it with the red.
While the colors of the fence changed, so did objects on or near it. The first thing I noticed was a large orange flowerpot hung from the top of the fence on a piece of what looked like black coat hanger. Orange pot on white fence. The pot disappeared and so did the white behind it. A silver BMX bicycle leaning against the fence appeared and disappeared. Just like that. A brown basketball here and gone. A yellow Big Wheels tricycle. Blip blip blip—they all showed for a few seconds and then were gone.
Barely able to tear my eyes from this fast-forward show, I asked Pauline if she could see it too.
“See what?”
“All the things changing out there.” I pointed. “Do you see the silver bicycle? Look! Now it’s gone.”
Pauline gave me a push. “What bicycle? What are you talking about?”
I looked at Gee-Gee. Shaking his head, he mouthed the words, “She can’t see.”
Frustrated, I went back to the view. “Holy shit!”
“Why do you keep saying that, Frannie?”
Because for maybe five seconds I saw my old pal Sam Bayer, age maybe fifteen, standing completely naked in front of the fence and pissing on the lawn. I think I laughed and gasped but had no time to think about it because it was gone too fast. Up popped one of those cheapo, above-the-ground swimming pools. Two kids frolicked in it until they frolicked right back into invisibility.
“This is stupid,” Pauline said and stomped out.
A little later the telephone rang. Magda went to get it. I heard her leave the room. Gee-Gee came up behind me. “They’re bringing the world out there back to now. But they got to do it slow, like a diver coming up after he’s been too deep in the water. That’s why I said before we had to get back here. They needed to fix everything that Astopel fucked up.”
“Nothing can happen to us while we’re in here?”
He shook his head.
“But if we were out there—”
“We’d probably get zapped. That’s what happened to Pauline’s tattoo, I guess.”
The history of my backyard in a few minutes. The thirty-year history of Crane’s View in a few minutes. What was going on all over town while we looked out the window? I would have given anything to be standing in the middle of Main Street at that moment.
“So they’re bringing the world out there back up to date? To today?”
“Right.”
“They meaning aliens?”
“Right.”
“Then how come you’re still here?”
“Because I guess you need me, Uncle Frannie.”
“Like I need a brain tumor.”