The Memory Tree Page 4

  The ring was almost identical to Jenny’s. We didn’t get them until after we were married for three years and my income allowed us to really splurge. “It’s half a carat,” I said. The ring really was beautiful, a wide band of fourteen-karat gold centered by the large perfect diamond.

  Jenny’s was the same, just a bit smaller. “Diamonds are forever,” I said when we both slipped them on our fingers.

  He looked up. “We really don’t get that kind of thing here.” He took his glasses off and fitted the loupe, turned on a desk lamp.

  After studying it, he handed the ring back. “I’m sorry, Mister, but I can’t offer you anything close to what it’s worth. You’d be better to head down to Great Falls.”

  I started to panic, knowing this was my only source of cash. “No, no, you don’t understand. I really need the money. I’ll be back to pick it up as soon as I can, and I’ll pay a premium to buy it back. Just give me what you can.” I knew I was running off at the mouth, but I needed him to give me money.

  He looked at it again. “Can only give you two hunnert dollars.” His accent came back stronger when he mentioned the money, and I thought he was as nervous as I was feeling.

  I relaxed, not even realizing I had been holding my breath waiting. “That’s fine.”

  “And I can only promise to hold it for three months.”

  “Fine. Fine.”

  He wrote up the claim ticket and I put it in my wallet.

  My finger felt a bit odd without the ring. But, truth be told, the ring actually meant a lot more to Jenny than it ever had to me.

  How should I describe Mrs. Williamson? She’s a little old woman, and I mean really little and really old. I doubt she’d top four and a half feet. Funny I don’t remember that at all from my childhood. She was just the mean old neighbor lady who was already ancient. I almost never saw her except when she stared out her front window.

  When I was growing up, Mrs. Williamson already had pure white hair and hunched over as if she were crippled. Now, though, she seemed to stand up straight, so maybe my memory wasn’t quite bang on. I knew once upon a time, there had been a Mr. Williamson, but he was long buried before I came along.

  She walked with a cane and wore a constant frown and a mean-spirited approach to life. At least it seemed that way to me. I remember wondering if that was just the attitude she took around kids, but now I’ve met her as a grown-up, it seems to me she was just like that all the time. When she let me rent the room from her, it was clear she really didn’t want me. “I was hoping for a woman,” she said with an angry tone.

  “Sorry.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. “I don’t think I’ll be staying long. Maybe your next tenant will be a woman.” I smiled, trying to instill confidence.

  She thought about that for a few seconds, moving her mouth silently, as if trying to get her dentures to fit properly. “Yes, well, I guess it’ll be okay for a short time.”

  She demanded fourteen dollars for the first week’s rent. Even with the cost of everything being so much less than I was used to, that seemed ridiculously low. I jumped at it, peeling off a ten and four singles from my brand new stack of twentieth century bills.

  “Room belonged to my daughter,” she said quietly. “Keep it clean and we’ll both be happy.”

  I nodded and took the keys from her. The basement room had it’s own outside entrance, almost like a separate suite, and I vaguely recalled knowing that her daughter used to live there, just as Little Sam had said. Again, before my time. I had no idea if she moved away or died, but I had a nagging feeling that whatever the reason, it wasn’t happy. Maybe that’s why Mrs. Williamson was such a miserable old cow.

  The apartment was bigger than I expected, with a good sized bedroom and a kind of living area plenty big for what I needed. There was even a small television. Black and white, and it only received two local stations, but a television nonetheless. Two light-framed chairs sat nearby.

  There wasn’t a lot of other furniture: a small table to prepare meals sat near an even smaller refrigerator; a stove; a writing desk. The room had its own bathroom, small like everything else, with a shower, but no tub.

  Was this going to be my home for a long time? I wondered. I lay down on the bed, which squeaked, and suddenly tears started to trickle from my eyes.

  I thought of Jenny, and my heart ached to be with her. The events of the day were so unbelievable, I hadn’t had a chance to wonder what she was doing. Was I dead in my own time? Did I just disappear when my body evaporated into thin air? She must be worried sick.

  I missed her. She was my best friend, the only real love in my life, and somehow, she kept giving me her support, even in the darkest times. Even back when I didn’t treat her very well.

  My whole body was weary. I found myself slowly drifting off to sleep, wondering what the morning would bring.

  Chapter 9

  I snapped awake, as if rousing from a dream. Was it just a dream? A nightmare? Was I . . . back?

  My eyes adjusted slowly to the light, and I could see this wasn’t my own bedroom. It belonged to the lost daughter of Mrs. Williamson. The electric blue wallpaper started to come into focus, with the pink teddy bears floating around near the ceiling. I wondered how old the daughter was when she left. Surely she wasn’t that young, was she?

  I pressed the button to illuminate my Timex Indiglo, wondering what any of my fellow citizens of Nelson would think of a watch glowing in the dark. It was ten minutes after one in the morning. One in the fucking morning, and here I was still stuck in 1968. My frustration and fear had turned into a bitter anger while I slept. With my teeth gritted, I mumbled, “What in God’s name is going on?”

  I was too wired to sleep any more, so I climbed out of bed, still fully dressed from the night before, and carefully found my way out to the back yard, to get some fresh air. I didn’t want to turn on any lights. The last thing I wanted was the miserable old bitch upstairs coming out to see me.

  I stood alone in the black night, and felt an amazing sense of calmness cover me like a warm blanket. The night was darker than any I could remember, and I realized there were almost no artificial lights around. The city was asleep, and it showed. Above me shone a sliver of a moon, a crescent barely there at all. Spread out across the sky was a path of silver diamonds, stars sweeping a magic carpet across the heavens. I stared, and I’m sure my mouth hung open at the sight. I had never seen stars like this, simply because you can’t see this many any more. At least not in Seattle. On a good night in Seattle, you could see the dippers, Orion, maybe a few other constellations. Everything else was drowned out by city lights.

  Here, now, the constellations were lost among thousands of glittering gems, each one twinkling down at me, like a cat’s eye shining in the darkness. I was literally breathless and stared for a long time.

  Eventually, I realized I could see the Milky Way. I had never seen it before. I knew from my old astronomy class there were millions of stars in that cloudy wave above me, but seeing it for real wasn’t anything I had been prepared for.

  “Jenny, you’ve got to see this,” I said, wondering if I’d ever have the chance to tell her in person.

  As I continued to stare, sounds swirled around me. I was used to night sounds, of course, but they were a different kind. The noises of Seattle’s nighttime consisted of cars driving by, transformers humming in the distance, factory noises ranging from bangs to buzzes to odd sounds too strange to classify, even the occasional sirens as cops chased the bad guys.

  None of that existed in Nelson in 1968. What did I hear? The loudest noises were the crickets and the singing I recognized from my youth as cicadas. I was sure I could actually hear the cool breeze pressing gently on my face as it rustled through the leaves of the large oak trees at the back of the property.

  I could hear silence.

  I realized I loved this.

  That thought hit me with such surprising force. Somehow, over the years, I had lost the idea that nature exi
sted. Stars, trees, insects -- a little “hoo” came from an owl somewhere down the street -- this was so different from my city’s noise, the constant grime, 24-hour-a-day construction sounds, new buildings rising that dwarfed the old ones that were knocked down to make room for them.

  Just then, my idyllic vision was broken.

  I heard yelling from next door. I looked over at my childhood home for the first time. I couldn’t make out much in the darkness, but I sure recognized the voice. My father. Yelling. Screaming. Almost certainly at my mother.

  I knew the topic of the argument didn’t matter. Dad would yell and scream and sometimes hit her, for no apparent reason. At least I never knew any of the reasons. I did know that the childhood me would be in my room, with a blanket pulled over my head, hoping that this time, I would be left out of the fight, and at the same time, hoping Mom would be okay.

  I remember sometimes feeling so guilty, knowing as long as Dad was yelling at Mom, that meant he wasn’t yelling at me. It was an odd balance of loyalty losing to fear.

  I leaned over the fence, trying to hear what was going on, but to no avail. I knew he’d be totally drunk and so would she. It was the only way she could survive around him.

  Something clicked in my mind. What’s the date? I asked myself quietly. June 27 was the date on the newspaper this morning. I tugged at loose memories.

  Was Uncle Bob here yet? I couldn’t recall, and my stomach turned itself inside out as I realized for the first time that this was the year he came to change our lives. 1968. The worst summer of my life.

  Is that why I was brought back here? To prevent it? To protect myself? What would happen if I interfered? Did I have the power to change what history had already carved in stone?

  I had only questions, no answers.

  Next door, my father stumbled out onto his back porch. Even in the darkness, I could tell he was wobbling and could barely stand up. My knees went weak at the sight of him. He was dead, a long-rotted corpse. I knew that, but there he was. I felt sick, my stomach turning into knots. Adrenaline was knocked away by fear.

  Dad was pacing on the porch, carefully holding onto the unpainted wooden railing. It was a small porch, a ratty old thing that always seemed to be ready to collapse, but somehow, it always seemed to keep on lasting.

  He would have been fifty. Just two years younger than me, but so much older in all the ways that counted. He already looked like death. The dim moonlight brightened the many deep wrinkles crowded into his face. He was a short, skinny man, not the huge monster inhabiting my dreams.

  Then he stopped pacing and looked directly at me. His eyes were cold and angry -- accusing eyes. He leaned over the porch and yelled, “Who the fuck are you?”

  It was like he sucker-punched me in the gut. I couldn’t speak or even breathe, and I felt myself lowering to the ground. Even now, I was scared of my father, and he had beaten me with just five words. In a moment, I was unconscious.

  I awoke in a hospital. Beeping sounds, bright fluorescent lights, clinical-green walls, a tube in my nose and an IV in my arm. It took a moment for me to realize I was back in my own time.

  Jenny was asleep in the chair beside me.

  “Jenny,” I tried to say, but it came out as a whispered “Enn,” and she didn’t wake.

  I was back.

  Back in my life, back in Seattle, back with Jenny. It must have been a dream after all.

  Except . . . except.

  Except, I still clearly remembered that encounter in the park, when the stranger came up to me and told me he had read 2001 years earlier. And I remembered hearing the same stranger had rented the room from Mrs. Williamson next door.

  I touched the fourth finger on my left hand and felt the slight depression where my diamond ring should have been.

  Part 3

  The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.

  William Faulkner

  Chapter 10

  I was at St. Michael’s hospital for three days, then released to go home. Even though it was a private hospital, they were still all too happy to see me leave, as I was using a bed that was needed for other patients. One of the symptoms of our modern times was hospital

  over-crowding. Even for the well-off.

  Doctor Kyzer was the heart specialist who dropped by once a day when I was at St. Michael’s. I still have no idea why a heart specialist was looking after me. Apparently when I was unconscious, a team of doctors looked me over and could see no reason whatsoever why I had collapsed and sunk into a coma. They hooked me up to an EEG to monitor my brain waves, but nothing unusual showed up. All the blood tests and x-rays they took also showed absolutely nothing. The CT scan was normal. As far as I could tell, Dr. Kyzer took over my case, feeling it had to be a heart problem by default. He looked bored every time he came to my room. He was about sixty years old, with lonely thin eyes and sunken cheeks. I hoped he was a better doctor than his appearance would suggest.

  “You got to get going on the exercise,” he said on his last visit. “Just keep to basics, like we talked about. No pushing yourself to do anything too stressful.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know. I’ll take it easy.”

  “For at least three months. We don’t know what the long-term effects might be.” Hell, I knew they didn’t have a fucking clue.

  I nodded. I still felt so weak and scared, I’d definitely be taking it easy for a long time. There’s no way I wanted a repeat occurrence.

  Even though I was distracted by my trip to Nelson, I knew I was lucky to be alive. Kyzer had a rating scale he used for his patients. I thought it was silly, since all his other patients were heart attack victims. Even though we all knew that wasn’t my problem, he still wanted to use his numbers. On a scale of one to ten, I had been hit by a seven point five. If it had been a ten, maybe even a nine, I wouldn’t have been around to hear about the scale, so that left a pretty small range above me.

  Death had been close. I could feel that, even without his numbers.

  Sometimes it seemed that death followed me my whole life. First my brother, Marty. Then, not a year later, I lost my little tomboy friend, Mel. Two big losses before I even passed the halfway mark of my teens. Later came the more expected deaths. Both my parents, and then Jenny’s mom.

  Each death resounded so differently within me. Marty was unbelievable, so unexpected. I was in shock, and lay awake many nights, wishing him to come back.

  Melanie broke my heart. Cold-blooded murder. It never made sense to me and still doesn’t. I think her death changed me forever in ways I still don’t fully understand.

  I was more jaded when my father died. Part of me was sad, but mostly I was secretly cheering. I never admitted that even to Jenny. But the fact was I was glad the bastard was now worm food. That was the only time death was on my side.

  I missed my mom a bit, but we had been estranged for so long, it was almost a hypothetical death, not real in the same way the others were.

  Mrs. Clawson was the only parent-figure I really missed. She died a lingering painful death from liver cancer. Jenny was stronger than I was, and she was with her mother until the end. She kept her spirits up until after her mother’s last breath, when the dam broke and a million tears burst out.

  Kyzer broke my thoughts. “Someone coming to get you?”

  “Yes. My wife will be here soon.”

  “Good.” He scribbled a note on my chart and then took one last check. Pulse. Stethoscope to check the sounds. Slight pounding in my chest. Looking into my eyes. I’m not sure what he was looking for. Blood? Pupil dilation? It didn’t matter. I didn’t really care what he did as long as he said I’d live to see another day.

  “Don’t forget to cut out the coffee and donuts. Lose that spare tire!”

  I nodded again. As he turned to go, I said, “Doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever heard of -- ” I wasn’t quite sure how to continue. “ -- have any of your patients experienced unusual . . . ”

>   “Unusual what?”

  “Memories?” Is that what I mean? I asked myself.

  “Mister Ellis, I’m really not sure what you’re talking about. What kind of memories? Have you been keeping something from me?” He made it clear from the sharpened tone of his voice that he really disapproved of anything less than full disclosure. Like investors reading the prospectus for an Initial Public Offering, he didn’t want the Red Herring version, only the full, complete, final, unabridged version of events, and he was really unhappy to hear that maybe I hadn’t disclosed everything I had to tell.

  I hesitated. “It’s nothing to do with the attack itself,” I said. “I told you everything I remember about that.”

  When I woke from the coma, I had told Kyzer about dissolving bit by bit. He stared at me like I was completely nuts. Maybe I was. I knew if he didn’t believe that, it would be silly to tell him I had traveled back in time to my childhood. I just said the next thing I remembered was waking up in the hospital.

  He rubbed his chin, back to being bored. “I don’t have all day, Mister Ellis.”

  Just for a moment, I thought of blurting out that I had gone back to the town of my childhood, met my younger self, rented a room next door to where I grew up, and got yelled at by my dead father.

  Then I thought of the psych ward just two floors below the cardiac ward.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Don’t sound like nothing.”

  “Just silly memories, since I’ve had time to think, being trapped in this room, getting bored. I’m not used to being bed-ridden. Wasn’t it the Rolling Stones who sang, ‘Time is on Your Side’? I’ve just done a lot of thinking.”