If I Could Turn Back Time (5 page)

He looked at my mom and she bit her lower lip and raised her brows.
What should we do with her?
She might as well have said it; that would have been no more obvious than her body language.

Dad put his hand to my forehead and frowned. “I can never tell if there’s a fever,” he muttered to my mom. “Human bodies are warm all the time.”

“I didn’t think there was.”

“Did you check to see if she has some sort of head injury?” He wasn’t really even bothering to keep quiet. Like if I’d had a head injury I’d be too stupid to understand the words he was saying.

“How?” she asked him.

“Feel her head!” He came at me and started palpating my head in a way that would have hurt like crazy if I
had
had an injury.

“I’m right here,” I interjected, but they ignored me. And rightfully so, I guess, because I’d proven myself to be a completely unreliable witness of my own mental state.

Dad looked back at Mom. “I can’t really tell anything.”

“My head doesn’t hurt.” I paused, then added, I don’t know why, “But I do think I hit it when I dove off the boat.” And actually it
did
hurt. But for some reason, it didn’t hurt at his touch. It was like a cluster migraine on one side of my head, though the feeling was coming and going really fast, and when it was there it was really there, yet when it was gone it was truly gone.

It didn’t make sense.

“The
boat
,” my mom rasped, a stage aside to my father and to the audience of hundreds who were not watching but needed to hear in the back rows. “Do you see what I’m saying? She’s delusional. I say we call Dr. Scruggs.”

“Are you sure she’s not…” Dad paused. “Are you sure it’s not D-R-U-G-S?”

“Oh, for god’s sake, I can
spell
,” I said, but I had to laugh. This was
exactly
how they would have been when I was in high school. “No, I’m not on D-R-U-G-S!”

Mom glanced at me, then said to him, “She said she’d smoked a lot of pot…”

Dad’s eyes turned to flint. He did not approve.

“… in college.”

“In college,” he repeated, the nonsense of the words, to them, becoming clear.

She nodded meaningfully.

“She’s been hanging out with college boys?” he asked, his voice hard.

My mother touched her hand to her lips. “Oh. I didn’t think of that. Maybe that’s what she meant.”

I gave a tight laugh. “I haven’t been hanging out with college boys. Believe me, that would be creepy.”

“I’ll say it would.” Dad’s expression didn’t lighten. “Tell me the truth, Ramie, have you taken something? Anything at all, even an aspirin? Or did you leave a drink unattended, then return to it, when you were in public?”

I’d forgotten that particular Dad Lesson. Once upon a time, a very long time ago, he’d worked as a bouncer in a bar and his number one lesson about men, bars, and life was to never put your drink down and leave it—not even for a second—because someone could, and likely would, easily slip something into it.

Resulting, of course, in rape, pregnancy, and a permanently ruined life.

No one else took over the dream conversation, so I said, “No, Dad, I didn’t do anything like that. I’m telling you, I was on a boat off the coast of Miami and I dove off the board, but my foot slipped at the last second and threw me off. I hit something. I don’t know what. But something hit my head and I can feel it now. Here.” I pointed to the left side of my skull.

He reached out and touched me, but it didn’t hurt. The pain was still inside, not external.

“There’s no lump at all,” he observed, then met my eyes. There was a smile in his that I didn’t quite understand. Then he said over his shoulder to my mother, “I don’t think there’s an injury to worry about.”

“And no boat,” my mother added, “and no water. Come on, Robert, we need to get her to the doctor. Maybe to the ER.” There was an urgency to her voice. “If she’s taken something, we have to hurry so they can pump her stomach.”

How far was this dream going to go? I still felt a weird sense of floaty lack of concern, because I’d been lying in bed the whole time, observing my memories from a fairly comfortable distance (of a few surreal feet and a couple of very real decades). Yet, at the same time, everything so far had been so ridiculously sharp and real that if I didn’t wake up soon I was going to experience some nightmarishly vivid version of stomach-pumping, and I didn’t want that. The subconscious mind always amplifies our fears ten times.

This dream was weird enough; I didn’t want a full-fledged nightmare to plague me for the rest of the day.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, I was kidding,” I said, my voice the stiff plastic version of a sincere tone. I swallowed and tried to soften my words, even while I knew it was dumb to have to work so hard to manipulate the trajectory of my own dream. “I’m just not myself today.” That wasn’t true, of course. I was exactly myself. Just the
wrong
self. “I had some weird dreams last night and I don’t feel good. Could be that flu that’s going around.” A flu was always going around, wasn’t it? “Maybe I could just go back to sleep?”

My mother looked doubtful. “I don’t know—”

“That seems like a good idea,” my father said, putting a reassuring hand on her arm. “You know Ramie’s always had vivid dreams. Remember when she was three and she was convinced she could fly down the stairwell instead of taking the steps?”

Man, I remembered that dream still. Soaring down the stairway like a feather, drifting. And I well remember the certainty I had when I woke up that it
hadn’t
been a dream, that it was entirely possible, and a good idea, to boot.

I remember sitting at the top of the stairs, daring myself to do it when I was still mostly sure I could. I thought I did it all the time. But something in me must have known it was a dream, so that thing stopped me from taking the leap.

Kind of made me wonder what would have happened if I’d confidently taken the chance.

Did we miss out on a lot of opportunities because we were afraid they weren’t real?

“Oh, goodness, what a memory you have,” Mom said to Dad, and she looked rattled at the very thought I was having.
What if I’d tried?
“That was fifteen years ago!”

Thirty-five, actually.

“Ah.” He shrugged. “What is time? Just yesterday she was a baby. Fifteen years is the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. Could have been last week to me.”

Well,
that
was the thing, wasn’t it? It was so weirdly spot-on that I half thought he was believing me. But that was madness, or at least it would seem so to him.

“She looks like she’s fading,” Mom said, but she didn’t sound worried anymore. “Let’s just let her go on back to sleep.”

“Daddy?” I forced my voice through the fog of sleep. “Dad? Can you stay for a minute?”

My mother shot him a look, but he fastened his eyes on me. “Sure. I don’t have to be at work for a bit. One of the privileges of being my own boss.”

“Lucky you.” Mom shook her head. “Sometimes it feels like you’re
my
own boss too. I don’t like it as much as you do.”

He chuckled. “I’m a very benevolent boss.”

She made a sound of derision, shot me a commiserative look that quickly turned back to mild suspicion, and left, clopping down the squeaky stairs to what I knew was probably a bunch of ingredients set out on the counter to make something for dinner. She was very June Cleaver that way once; less so now. I think she’d genuinely liked having a husband and family to take care of, and things just weren’t like that now.

“What’s going on with you, princess?” he asked, sitting down on the bed. It didn’t squeak the way it used to with my every move (something that had generally kept boyfriends out of my room when my parents were home, though there had been exceptions). My dream self was making repairs, I guess. Even though it was throwing me into a confusing situation.

Whatever was going on, I knew I could trust my father to help me. “I feel really weird, Dad. I’m … confused. I mean, I don’t think I’m confused, but I must be.”

“
I
am. Please elaborate.”

I smiled. I could try and explain my story again, but it was going to sound as crazy as it had the first time, and where would that get me? “I’m scared of losing you. I’m dreading it.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I’m not going anywhere!”

“But … but
someday…”
—
October 15 when you’re forty-seven years old
—“someday you
will
be gone.” I felt weird saying even that much to him, because it would have freaked me out if someone else were to say it to me. Yet, at the same time, how could I not? How could I just hedge and play along when I had a chance, albeit a distant one, to somehow connect to my father through this weird nether-region of sleep?

He took my hands and learned toward me, looking intently into my eyes. “I will
never
be gone. I will always be around, looking after you. Just like Mims and Pop are with us now.” Mims and Pop were his parents, long gone. I didn’t remember either one of them. In fact, I didn’t really even remember talking much about them with Dad, though I was ashamed now, realizing how much they must have been on
his
mind, just as he was, so often, on mine.

“But don’t you miss them?”

He sighed and considered his answer. “I did,” he said. “Very much at first. Of course. But we always fear the unknown. Death seems like such a scary, dark place. I can remember being afraid to go to sleep for fear of not waking up. Or maybe for fear of everything I knew and loved disappearing, like it was all a dream.” He lowered his chin and regarded me. “Are you feeling something like that now?”

I suddenly felt choked up. He’d hit the nail right on the head. “I’m confused about everything. I feel like I’ve wasted so much of my life, and I’m practically the age when you … Nothing is certain. Even now, I feel like I should ask you something incredibly profound so I can get an answer I will remember and be comforted by forever, but I don’t know what!” I was getting really upset, my voice sliding up into near-hysteria, my eyes burning with unshed tears.

“Shhh.” He patted my head, awkwardly like he always did, and I could smell the cheap but comforting Aqua Velva mingled with nicotine on his fingertips. Those damn cigarettes. “There is nothing to be afraid of. You are safe, always. Love goes on forever, and just because you don’t know something doesn’t mean it’s bad. In fact”—he smiled and looked out my open window— “I can’t think of anything scary in the great unknown. And believe you me, I have given it a lot of thought.”

I wanted to grab that, to believe it forever, to never worry about it—or him—again, but it was almost too perfect. It was just the kind of Hallmark sentiment that my brain would come up with to comfort me.

I wasn’t really all that creative.

So I couldn’t answer him. All I could do was bite my lip and try not to cry.

“Get a bit more rest,” he said. “Things will make more sense when you’re rested.”

That seemed like as good advice as any—and it was certainly what I wanted to do—so I nodded. “Thanks, Dad. Will you be here when I wake up?”

“No, no.”

“No?” I squeaked. My heart lurched. He knew. He understood. This was a rare moment and this was good-bye.

He looked surprised at what must have registered as surprise on my own face. “I’ll be at work, princess. Unless you plan on sleeping until dinner. Hmm?”

“Oh. Right. But you promise you’ll be back?”

“I promise. I’ll always come back.” Before I could take that as a piece of greatly profound insight from
beyond
, he added, “God knows what your mom would do with all that meat loaf if I didn’t.”

“God knows,” I said. It had been years since I’d had it, but I was
still
sick of the stuff.

Exhaustion started to take over, mercifully, and I watched him leave my room, his scent going with him like a ghost. Then I rolled over and stared at the wallpaper, studying the detail of the roses that I remembered so well, until I finally drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up, everything would be back to normal.

Or so I thought.

CHAPTER FIVE

I woke up to that stupid beeping again.

Bad sign. The dream wasn’t over.

I opened my eyes, and this time I was not completely surprised to see my teenage bedroom bloom again before me. The clock, which had stopped beeping as suddenly as it had started, said it was 4:17 and the bright sun outside made clear that it was afternoon. It took me a moment to comprehend this. Then I remembered: in my dream, I’d gone back to sleep. So now I was … awake. Ish. Awake without actually waking up.

I’d just slept late in my dream.

That was a new one for me.

But what could I do, except go with it? Play along and hope that whatever meaning was supposed to come out of this would come, sooner rather than later.

I stretched and sat up. I’d gotten used to having a dull ache in my lower back—I was afraid to see a chiropractor, even though my old friend Tanya swore she knew just the one to put me back in alignment—but in this incarnation, I had no back pain at all. I felt strong and light. I wished I could take that back into reality with me.

I glanced around. The room looked the same as before I’d last closed my eyes. Same old room. Same old life. No reality whatsoever creeping in. What was I supposed to do now?

What was one supposed to do when trapped in a dream that wouldn’t end? I would have Googled it, but I didn’t have my phone.

Or the Internet.

So I was absolutely lost as to what to do. I mean, everyone
thinks
they know what they’d do if they time-traveled, if such an impossible thing were even possible, but it’s one thing if you climb into some machine and suddenly find yourself in Ford’s Theatre next to Abraham Lincoln; it’s quite another to find yourself a bored teenager in the middle of nothing-in-particular.

So what was this, if not a dream or nightmare? Not time travel. There’s no such thing. I had long since rejected the metaphysical theory that time was a circle, or a bunch of parallel lines, or off-ramps you could take or leave, or
whatever
. In college I’d had a boyfriend who was a philosophy major (Hans! what sweet eyes he had!) and we’d spent many alcohol-fueled nights having hot sex and cold arguments about “reality” and his theories on quantum metaphysics.