If I Could Turn Back Time (22 page)

“Hey, you didn’t. Forget it.” He put a hand on her shoulder in a pointedly platonic way. He leaned in and gave her a kiss on the cheek, then stood up before she could get her clutches on him again, which I thought I could see she was gearing up to do. “I’ve got to go find Ramie.”

“Go.” She pushed a wobbly arm against the air, I guess to dismiss him. “Ramie Ramie Ramie. What
ever
.”

I saw a smile tug at his mouth. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Ramie Ramie Ramie.”

And at that moment, I realized I’d learned something huge by going back and seeing the scene through, rather than just following my angry impulse to take what I thought I’d seen and run.

I’d learned that maybe no one was exactly who I’d decided they were. Including me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

As soon as I’d seen Brendan in retreat mode, I’d retraced my steps to get out of the house so he could find me outside. Unfortunately I hadn’t managed to find water or bread for Tanya, who was looking a bit worse for the wear when I got back out to her, so we all decided to leave, with me driving Tanya in her car. Brendan was going to go home and wait for my call to meet me later.

She was hammered. “I can’t believe he didn’t show up,” she kept saying, over and over.

“Maybe it’s for the best,” I suggested, knowing full well that it was. “I mean, no offense, girlfriend, but you are not exactly at your best right now. Would you really want your first encounter with him to be something you literally couldn’t remember tomorrow?”

“I’m going to remember
everything
tomorrow!”

“Oh, please. I could tell you I’m a Russian spy right now, and insist you call me
Natasha
all the way home, and tomorrow you would have no recollection of it whatsoever.”

“Wait, what? You’re a Russian spy? As if. You don’t even speak … Russian.
Nyet
.”

“I rest my case,” I said, more to myself than to her. I was having my own little monologue here; she was just a heckler sitting nearby. Might as well use her as a sounding board for what was really on my mind. “So I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t break up with Brendan this time around.” I glanced at his headlights in the rearview mirror. It was comforting knowing he was back there.

“Yeah, no way.” Tanya was really slurring now, and her head lolled like a water balloon with a slow leak.

“For him, this is just another night. He doesn’t even know how close we came to the end.”

Tanya made a noise, but I don’t think it meant anything in response to what I was saying. She was just drifting off.

I went on, to myself. “So that’s one major change I’ve made. One hugely life-impacting change.”

She made another sort of grunt of agreement. I was losing her to sleep fast. Just as well.

“I’d like to save my dad too,” I ventured. “Because”—I glanced at her and she was sound asleep, her head tilted at an angle that was going to make her neck hurt tomorrow—“he’s going to die in a couple of years.” I hated to say the words out loud. I had avoided them. Not just the words but the very thought. Even while it was with me all the time.

Tanya’s breath was loud and even.

In less than two years she would be right there for me, during the funeral, after the funeral, long after the funeral. She wasn’t one of those people who thought it was enough to be there for the first shocking week, not that I didn’t appreciate everyone who showed up, but she understood that the grief hadn’t even begun until long after the funeral.

Though I’d always worried about my dad’s smoking, he seemed, to others, like he was in good shape. He played tennis, racquetball; when it eventually happened, it was just a week or so after he’d cleaned out the garage.

So right now, at this time in my life, I had been blissfully unaware of what was to come, confident that I would have a sitcom life with a sitcom dad who would come over to my overly elaborate single-girl apartment and fix the stove, or replace the doorknob, or whatever else a sitcom single gal would have needed from her dad.

Now here I was, in the twilight of his life and the homestretch of my innocence, and there was nothing I could do except look at him in wonder and wish that I could think of something profound to say or heroic to do. But it was too late. Even when I’d told him to stop, he’d acknowledged it was too late.

I drove in silence for a while, breathing in the familiar scent of Tanya’s car, with its Bath & Body Works air freshener—linen, always linen—and viewing a world I hadn’t seen for two decades through its windshield.

As I got close to my house, I found I didn’t want to stop. Since I was always conscious of the fact that I didn’t know when this oddity was going to end, part of me wanted to soak up every bit of nostalgia that I could. I definitely wasn’t tired now, and Tanya was down for the count, and way too drunk to take to her house yet, so instead of turning onto my street, I drove straight down to the local strip mall.

There was the Giant grocery store I’d been going to since I was a toddler shopping with my mom for Cap’n Crunch. Actually, I rarely got Cap’n Crunch; the closest she’d come to junk food was Life cereal, and that was because there was an illustration of an egg and two slices of bacon with an equals sign pointing at a bowl of Life. How a bowl of cereal equaled an egg and two slices of bacon I still don’t know, but I did love the stuff. Even though I’d been to that grocery store a million times over the years, I still thought of shopping with my mom when I saw it.

Then there was the Szechuan restaurant with the gas torches out front. They were there! I hadn’t seen them for so long. It was a great restaurant; I don’t know why it failed. But if it had been open that night as I drove past, I would have gone right in and ordered fried dumplings and five-flavor shrimp.

Next to that was the long, narrow two-screen movie theater that would shortly be replaced by a bank and a series of unsuccessful delis. I saw
Tootsie
there. And a rerelease of
Jaws
long after it seemed realistically scary. But at this time in history, Daniel Hanover was working there as an usher and sometimes he’d let me in for free. Later—twenty years later—many of us would wonder what ever happened to Daniel. He seemed to have dropped out of everyone’s spheres, and there were rumors that he’d died, but no one seemed to have any details to back that up.

He’d been a nice kid, with white-blond hair and vivid blue eyes. Always smiling. The idea that something might have happened to him bothered me, and I’d done a pretty thorough job of trying to stalk him online to see if he’d just moved far away and was living a happy life in Idaho or something, but there was no sign of him.

If I stopped this car in the parking lot right now and slept for sixteen hours, though, I’d probably see him walking in to work.

It was eerie. Sad. I felt like I was looking at a very dark watercolor painting.

Next door, however, was the stationery shop filled with colorful, cheerful things. The window displays were lit up all night, and I could see
Garfield
stuffed animals, and
Cathy
coffee mugs, and a huge display of
Far Side
cards.

Driving on, I passed the Peoples Drug store, which was going to be changed to a CVS soon. It’s funny, I grew up with Peoples Drug and, deeper in Potomac, Drug Fair, and I’d never thought of those names as being weird, but with today’s mentality they might as well have been called Meth “R” Us or something.

I exited the parking lot, past the Roy Rogers where I’d worked for two miserable weeks, and headed back toward my neighborhood, meandering through the back roads rather than taking the main strip. I wanted to see the houses of people I’d known, houses those people were currently in, sleeping, most likely, their familiar cars parked out front. It was all just so strange. Even if this was a dream, I had to be tapping into some tremendously deep memory storage, because the details I was seeing were greater than anything anyone could possibly just
remember
over the years. While the three cars in the Brummers’ driveway were familiar when I saw them, they sure weren’t worthy of memory, so I wouldn’t have committed them there.

I drove past our old elementary school and turned right onto Tanya’s street, careful to park a little ways down in front of her house, so that the car wouldn’t wake her parents up. Somehow I had to get her drunk butt up to bed without anyone being the wiser.

“Tanya.” I poked her.

She slapped back at me. “Tired,” she mumbled.

“I know, but you’re home.”

“He ate the quarter.”

“What?”

“Over there. Behind the cactus.”

“
What?
”

“Wha…?”

She was totally out of it. This was going to be a huge pain in the ass. “Okay,” I said, and got out to get some air. I wanted to meet Brendan so badly, but I couldn’t just leave Tanya here, passed out in her car, to wake up alone and confused at some point and … well, do god knows what. Clearly I wasn’t going to be able to meet with Brendan tonight and that was disappointing. But I couldn’t leave Tanya like this. I had to be responsible for my friend, or else this night could change from one life-altering mistake to another.

So I went to the passenger door and opened it. She almost spilled right out onto the street.

“Ow.
Shit!
” She stumbled into a standing position and looked at me accusingly. “What was that?”

“That was your drunk ass falling out of the car.”

“Ugh.” She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. “I feel horrible.”

“No doubt.” I was smug, even though the first time around I was probably just as drunk as she was.

And I’d gotten mad at Brendan that night, so I probably wouldn’t have allowed him the chance to help me home. I probably hadn’t let him get one word in edgewise. I’d probably just slurred some obscenities at him and stomped drunkenly away.

That was why I didn’t remember that night, or the significance of going to the party or anything. Originally I’d probably been matching Tanya beer for beer and getting just as shitfaced as she was. Who knows how far that scene with Anna and Brendan had gone the first time? Had I interrupted the moment I saw them, never even giving him a chance to do the right thing or me the chance to see it?

I guess I’d never know. All I knew was that I’d done things differently this time, and I was glad.

Especially looking at Tanya. I was
really
glad I didn’t feel the way she did right now, or the way she was bound to feel when she woke up in the morning.

“Come on,” I said, hooking my arm across her back, supporting what felt like most of her weight. “Let’s see if we can sober you up enough to go in without waking up your parents.”

“I jus’ wanna go to bed.”

“I know. Me too, believe me. But I can’t carry your ass up the stairs by myself and I’m pretty sure the sound of you tumbling down them would wake your parents, and you don’t want that.”

“No.…”

“So let’s go for a little walk.” I half dragged her several yards down the quiet street, the only sound the wind whispering through the leaves on the Bradford pear trees that lined the lane. Tanya’s motor skills came back, slowly, as we went.

“What’s the name of the people in this house?” I asked, trying to remember. They never seemed to leave the place, but the rumor was the husband had a prosthetic leg, thanks to the Vietnam War, and they had a pool out back that he could swim in for exercise. No one else in the neighborhood would have had a pool, so that prospect seemed very exotic back in the day.

“Jalenskis.”

I wasn’t sure if she was right, but I needed her thinking. “And next door?”

“Dooleys.”

“Good. Take a deep breath.”

She did. She wasn’t normally so acquiescent.

Gradually her steps became a little more solid and her answers became a bit more coherent. She wasn’t going to miraculously sober up, but I figured I could at least get her upstairs without problems.

I was wrong.

The moment we walked in the front door, we were met by the glares of her parents.

“It’s two
A.M.
,” her mother said. “We have been worried sick.”

“Sorry,” I said, adjusting my hold on Tanya so that I was just subtly holding her elbow. “The time got away.”

Even though I knew they wanted and expected more of an answer than that, I tried to maneuver us toward the stairs so we could get in trouble for being rude and late tomorrow and not for being drunk tonight.

Unfortunately, Tanya said, “Oh, hey, Mom! Dad! How’re you guys doing this fine night?”

I could have strangled her.

From the looks of it, so could her dad. And her mom.

Poor Tanya. She had no idea.

“Have you been
drinking
?” her father demanded.

“Or smoking those weed cigarettes?” her mother added, casting a knowing look at her husband.

“No!” I said. “Of course not! It’s just been a long night and Tanya’s just, you know,
really
tired.”

“Sooooo trrrd,” she slurred.

Shut up!
I thought.

But that was it, the jig was up. They knew she was hosed. They’d have had to be blind to miss it.

“We thought you girls had better sense than this,” her dad said. “Did you
drive
drunk?”

“I drove,” I said. “I haven’t had anything to drink at all. Honest, you can test me.” They couldn’t, of course. Home Breathalyzers were still a few years away, but at least I had been sincere.

“He wasn’t there,” Tanya said. “I was supposed to finally hook up with him and we were going to start dating and get married and my whole life depended on it, and he
wasn’t even there
!”

I met her mom’s eyes. “So she had a few beers because she was upset.”

Understanding lightened her expression so slightly it was almost imperceptible. But Tanya and her mom were close—they still were to this day—so she probably knew exactly what I was talking about.

“You’re okay to drive?” she asked me. “You really didn’t drink? Or do anything else?”