The Five Times I Met Myself (13 page)

“I was never good at science.”

“Go talk to him, Brock. This is one of those moments that you can’t ever get back.”

“I have no idea what I’d say.”

“You don’t have to. He asked you. So you listen to what he says, then trust that God will bring you the right words.”

“And if the meeting is a disaster?”

“Then you go down in flames knowing you at least tried.”

Forty-nine percent of him said stay behind the wall. Fifty-one percent said take a sledgehammer to the bricks and see what remained when the dust cleared.

“All right. I’ll do it. I’ll mail a note in the morning.”

“Can I tell you something else?”

“Sure.”

“I think you need to come home early.”

“I’ll only be down here another five days.”

“I think you need to come home tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“I just do.”

“Five days. I promise I’ll talk to my dad the moment I get home.”

“Okay.”

After they hung up, Brock turned and walked back inside.
I’ll talk to my dad.
It felt good to say the words. Now he was committed. And hope surfaced, unbidden and strong. Yes, he’d kept his dad at arm’s length, and yes, he’d tried at times to reach out, but why did his dad always give up so easily? Brock would go home and have the conversation, but he needed time to get ready for it. Prepare mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And Costa Rica was the best place in the world to do that.

Brock spun through his meetings the next morning and afternoon in a daze. He was glad for his habit of taking detailed notes,
because he couldn’t recall even a tenth of the conversations as he lay in bed that evening. His dad’s note and his conversation with Karissa kept pushing out all other thoughts. It was time. Within six days, he’d have the conversation he longed for and dreaded at the same time.

The next day was the same, and the next. God might be in it, but the process was exhausting. By nine that night he was ready for bed. It was early for sleep, but he was ready to slip into a world that didn’t involve visions of coffee on his father’s luxurious deck overlooking Puget Sound. He tried to compose his part of a talk that might finally close the gulf between them, but the words didn’t form in his mind.

When sleep came that night it came hard. He slipped into a dream where he stood on the stern of a boat as it crested a massive wave and then descended like an out-of-control roller coaster into the trough of the next wave. As he glanced at the star-strewn night sky the clanging of the ship’s bell grew louder. A warning? Of what? Should he go below deck? The bell increased in volume. Then it wasn’t the bell but the phone in his room shattering the dream and pulling him back into the conscious world.

Brock fumbled for it on his nightstand and knocked it away. He leaned over and fished the phone off the hardwood floor. His sheets were covered with sweat, as if his body knew something his mind didn’t. He squinted at his watch. Three forty-five a.m.

“Hello?” Brock turned and let his head fall back onto his pillow.

“It’s me. Sorry to wake you.”

“It’s okay.”

Brock listened to Karissa’s labored breathing for a few seconds and heard the catch in her voice. The temperature in the room instantly rose ten degrees. “What is it?”

“Your dad.”

Brock asked the question he didn’t want to ask. “What happened?”

“I’m so sorry, Brock.”

Karissa’s sobs came through his phone in waves as Brock closed his eyes and covered his face with his damp palm. His dad couldn’t be gone. Not now. They were going to start to build a real relationship. Heal the past. He couldn’t be gone. It wasn’t possible. Brock needed to wake up. This was part of his dream; his nightmare.

Brock felt four years old again. He was sitting on his dad’s lap in the days before the breakdown. Good days before the pieces of Brock’s heart had been shattered all over the floor.

“He’s not gone, Karissa. He can’t be. We . . . there are things we have to say.”

“I know, Brock. I know.”

After he hung up, Brock went out on the balcony and let the numbness of the moment soak into him. He watched the sky turn gray, then red with the early morning light. Why would God do this to him? Why couldn’t he let his dad live another week? That’s all it would have taken. Even just three days.

Chapter 18

N
OVEMBER
18, 1989

B
rock and Ron buried their father two weeks later on Saturday morning at Lake View Cemetery. The pastor and a few others must have said profound and heart-wrenching things about his dad, because when the funeral ended, friends and extended family told Brock how moving the service was and how beautiful the eulogies were. But his mind had been too numb to take any of it in. He couldn’t remember anything but snatches of his own tribute.

His mind was too buried in the guilt of not having that conversation with his dad years earlier—the one that would have fixed everything. He allowed himself a sad smile. It probably wouldn’t have solved everything, but it would have been a start.

After the service ended, as he studied the people who moved away over the grass, Karissa slid her arm inside his, pulled closer, and held his arm tight. “Should we go?”

He didn’t answer, but Karissa didn’t ask again. Part of him
wanted to leave, and part of him wanted to stay right here until his dad somehow spoke to him from heaven and said everything was okay; that someday, when Brock took the same journey his dad just had, there would be restoration between them. But the only sound came from a finch high in the weeping willow tree to his right. Finally Brock squeezed her hand and said, “Go? I suppose we should, but . . .”

He watched the last of the mourners shuffle away. Their muted conversations swirled around his ears but he couldn’t make out any of their words. In a few minutes, Karissa and he would be completely alone at the grave.

“I have an idea.” She slipped her arm free and faced him, her bright eyes searching his face for a connection point. “Why don’t I go on ahead and give you some time here alone? I can get a ride with Ron and Shelly.”

“He’s already gone.”

“No, I asked him to stay in the parking lot for a bit—just in case. I thought you might want a few minutes of solitude.”

He loved her for knowing him so well. It’s exactly what Brock wanted, but given how torn up his emotions were, even he hadn’t known that till the moment she said it.

“Yeah, if you don’t mind.” He took her hands and stared at them.

“Take all the time you need.” Karissa kissed him on the cheek and whispered in his ear. “He loved you, even though you have a tough time believing it.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t know that at all, but someday I believe you will.”

Brock watched her stroll away over the grass, the late-afternoon
sunshine lighting up her hair like burnished gold. Life would be a devastating journey without her.

Brock closed his eyes and focused on the sun warming his face. His dad was gone and he’d blown it, but this, too, would pass, wouldn’t it? Maybe. At some point he’d face his dad’s death and the fact neither had been able to breach the rift between them.

His dad would say Brock had only gone through the motions, that there had been many times where he could have made more of an effort. Probably true. No, it was true. No point in trying to justify his actions now that his dad was gone. He would need all his energy going forward to deal with the guilt of not being the son his father wanted.

Chapter 19

J
UNE
1987

N
ot long after he fell asleep the night after his meeting with Dr. Shagull, Brock found himself standing on lush green turf with the dew of morning still lingering on its blades. The smell of early summer combined with gasoline floated past him. The scene started to swirl and shift to the side of a mountain, but Brock brought the dream back to the lawn. Something was familiar about this place, and he waited for more of the surroundings to come into focus. A few seconds later, the sound of a small-engine plane firing up filled the air. Of course. He knew where he was. Harvey Airfield in south Snohomish. He’d spent two years here after college while working on his post-grad marketing degree, working on planes and studying for his pilot’s license, which he never ended up getting.

He walked toward the shed and willed his younger self to come out into the midmorning sunshine. Seconds later, Young Brock appeared carrying a cup of coffee. Midmorning break,
perfect timing. Which of course it would be, since he was the director of this mini play.

The younger version of himself looked up when Brock was twenty feet away. He stopped, shook his head, then came on as if resigned to the fact he wouldn’t be left alone.

“Future Man.” His younger self lifted his cup when he reached Brock. “Good to see you again. How are the hover cars working out for everyone? Did the Cubs ever win another World Series?”

“You again remember our earlier talks.”

“Of course. Since it was you that created them, and you created me, we’d both have to remember it, right?” Young Brock winked.

Strange to be playing mind games with himself with such conviction.

“Good to see you too.” Brock shoved his hands in his pockets. “Can I join you?”

“Sure.” Young Brock motioned to a picnic table a few yards away, and they both sat.

“Do you really think you’re a time traveler?” Young Brock grinned. “’Cause I’ve always wanted to do that.”

“Only in my dreams.”

“So you’re only crazy in your head then?”

“Probably.”

He glanced around at the field and the three white Cessna six-seaters lined up to their right, and then gestured to the coffee in his younger self’s hand. “It has to be later than the spring of ’87.”

“Why do you say that?”

“That’s when I started drinking coffee.”

“How’d you know?” Brock frowned, then waved his hand. “Right, I keep forgetting you’re me.”

“I can’t remember what made me finally give in.”

“Give in?”

Brock sighed. “I promised myself I’d never drink coffee because it was my dad’s business, then I ended up working there.”

“I end up working for my dad?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“It does, and Ron is going to drive the thing into the ground.”

“So you’re telling me not to go to work there.”

“That’s not what I want to talk to you about.”

“What do you want to say?”

His younger self drained the last of his coffee and crushed the Styrofoam cup in his hand. Brock glanced at the cup and smiled.

“Not many people use those anymore.”

“Cups? What happens in the future? Do you drink out of your hands? Mainline the coffee right into your veins? Take a pill instead?”

“We don’t use much Styrofoam. Protecting the environment is a big deal in the future. Everyone is going green.”

Young Brock stared at him with an I-don’t-care expression.

Brock chuckled. “If you want to make some money, get on the green thing before anyone else does.”

“Got it. Will do.”

Young Brock waggled his thumb behind him at the area reserved for packing parachutes and training new jumpers in the art of leaping from a perfectly good airplane.

“Do I ever do that?”

“Fly like an eagle?” Brock smiled as he looked at the training area.

“No, drop like a rock until the chute opens.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Even though I’m scared of heights.”

“You never get rid of the fear, but you learn to control it. Good life lesson.”

“Listen, I gotta go, break time’s over.” His younger self pushed off the picnic bench and grinned. “Any new words of wisdom from the future? Was there something you wanted to talk about?”

“You need to talk to your dad about your relationship, Brock.”

“My dad and I—”

“Do you want a relationship with him?”

“We have one, it’s just not that close.”

“Not that close? Miles apart is ‘not that close’?”

“We have our issues.”

“Do you want a better relationship?”

“Look, I went fishing with him like you asked. During the trip things were okay, but I . . .” Brock’s younger self flicked his coffee cup with his forefinger. “It’s not going to happen, Future Me. My dad and I . . . well, let’s just say someday that might be a place I’ll go, but not yet.”

“You have to.”

“No. I don’t.”

Brock stared at him for a few seconds before turning away and staring out across the airfield. So much for having complete control of this dream.

“Relax, Future Brock. Most fathers and sons have issues. Probably ninety-five percent. I’m not unusual. But we’re okay. He changed when he became a Christian. He figured things out. And we get along these days. My past with him isn’t that big of a deal.”

“It is a big deal.” Regret surged inside Brock. “You have to talk to him soon.”

“No!” Young Brock laughed as he smacked his fist onto the table. “Like I said, maybe someday, but not now.”

“There is no tomorrow.”

“Apollo Creed,
Rocky III
.”

“Yes, and it’s true.”

“Lookit, Future Me.” His younger self smiled wide. “I kinda like you. More than kind of. You’re entertaining—I mean, come on, the idea of yourself coming back from the future and hanging out . . . it’s cool. But since you won’t tell me who you really are, or the true reason you’re interested in me, I’m probably not going to be swallowing many of your golden nuggets of advice. Cool?”

“You don’t believe me.”

“Not exactly.” His twenty-five-year-old self raised his eyebrows. “Feel like finally telling me your real name?”

Brock zeroed in on his younger self’s face. “Brock Lee Matthews.”

His younger self’s face went white. “How do you know my middle name?”

“Mom and Dad certainly had a sense of humor, didn’t they?”

“No one knows my middle name.” Young Brock staggered backward.

“Except you.” Brock pointed at his head. “You know it.”

“How’d you find out? Who put you up to this? Was it Ron? It
was
Morgan, wasn’t it?”