Expiration Date (13 page)

Next Meghan took me through my alleged physical interactions in the past. So I could open doors and walk downstairs, but I had trouble picking up newspapers and comic books? Why? Light hurt my body, but only direct light—is that correct? What about ambient light? When your fingers fell off, did they disappear right away, or after a few seconds?

“Okay, and you say no one can see you?”

“Almost nobody. That kid I mentioned.”

“Whose name you don’t know.”

“Right. He can see me. And the little girl, Patty. I think she could see me.”

“Hmmmm.”

We went around and around this for a good half-hour until she finally circled back to Patty Glenhart. Meghan wouldn’t let go of it.

“Your only proof was this profile on a blog.”

“A true-crime website.”

“Whatever. And when you searched for the profile, just now, it was gone, right?”

“Right.”

“What if the site administrator just took it down?”

“You mean coincidentally, just a few hours after I first read it?”

“It’s a possibility. Or, you could have hallucinated the entry.”

I thought about this.

“Wait. There was that piece in the
Bulletin
, with the ‘Girl Missing’ headline.”

“Do you have a copy?”

“No. I can’t bring anything back, remember?”

“But this newspaper has to exist.”

She turned away from me, as if making a mental note to herself.

“You say you went back and got her out of that basement, but you didn’t prevent her abduction.”

“Right!”

“I’ll check the
Bulletin
morgue tomorrow. If you saw the headline, then it’ll be there.”

“You know about the
Bulletin
morgue?”

The morgue was part of Temple University’s Urban Archives center, and was basically the clips files of the long-defunct newspaper. Before the Internet, if you wanted to look up a piece of Philadelphia history, you had to go to the morgue and look through dozens of tiny manila envelopes, each stuffed with little yellowed clippings, which had been cut by hand and dated by some long-forgotten staffer. It was basically a steampunk version of Google, and it had been my secret reporting weapon for years.

But it was old news to Meghan.

“We went there freshman year. Our English professor took us on a field trip. Doesn’t every college send their freshmen down there?”

Finally, Meghan turned her attention back to my numb arm and fingers, asking if I could wiggle them, or feel anything when she poked my forearm with a fork. Which she did. Repeatedly. Up and down my skin. But nothing.

“Okay, this is kind of scary. Let me take you to the hospital.”

“No. I hate those places. Plus, I’m pretty sure I don’t have health insurance.”

“Even if I do believe your crazy ass story about the pills—and the jury’s still out, by the way—why wouldn’t you want to have your arm checked? You could have pinched a nerve. You could lose feeling in it forever.”

“I just need to sleep. And what do you mean the jury’s still out? Have you found a single hole in my story?”

“Not yet. But I haven’t found any proof either.”

I thought about it for a moment. Then it hit me.

“Okay then. I’ll give you proof.”

Meghan held the steak knife with both hands, fingers on the handle and the dull edge of the blade. She looked up at me, pointed down at the pill. “Good enough?”

“No. Cut it again. I don’t want to be out long.”

“So an eighth, then? And let me repeat that this is a stupendously bad idea.”

“Just cut the pill.”

“For all we know, these pills are causing the numbness. And the hallucinations.”

“They’re not hallucinations.”

Meghan handed me the tiny sliver of the pill anyway.

“You’re an idiot.”

“Right up there.”

I pointed to the chipped wooden molding around the bathroom door. The molding was the same in 1972 as it was today. It hadn’t even been painted, as far as I could tell.

“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.

I ate a plate of apples and had a few spoonfuls of peanut butter for dessert. I finished off four cans of Golden Anniversary and didn’t feel a thing.

My mom had called three times today. The first two messages were the same litany—
how’s the job hunt, did you visit your grandfather, we’d really like you to come to dinner soon.
The third however, was different.

Mickey, your grandfather’s awake.

Grandpop was staring at me.

His eyes would focus for a moment, then turn away, as if he was too tired to maintain eye contact. Then they’d roll, and he’d move his tongue around his dry mouth like he was preparing to speak. But no words came out. He couldn’t move his arms or legs. The only movements were in his eyes and lungs—gently inflating and pushing up against his ribs, and then deflating a moment later.

“Hi, Grandpop.”

The old man focused on me for a brief moment, and then his eyes rolled elsewhere.

My mom was in the room with us. She’d left work early that afternoon when she received the call from the hospital, and waited here until I showed up. Now it was my turn, she said.

Turn for what, exactly?

There was little love lost between my mother and her father-in-law. She felt obligated to invite him to family events—and my grandpop almost always accepted, perhaps out of the same, misguided sense of obligation. But they rarely spoke, except to say “Merry Christmas” or “Yeah, Happy Easter” or my grandpop to ask where my mom was keeping the beer, or my mom to ask Grandpop if he wanted more potato salad. Sometimes I thought she kept up the charade for my benefit, that I shouldn’t be deprived of my Wadcheck heritage.