Time of My Life (26 page)

Chapter Twenty-nine

T
he train to Westchester is nearly empty. It’s too early for the reverse-commute crowd, and no one else needs to head to the suburbs before 7:00
A.M.
I listen to the clanking of the wheels and the hum of the engine, and try to catch some sleep, but none will come.

At the station, I hail a cab, and we wind through the hushed streets, with their looming arbor trees and their shingled houses and their garages stuffed with SUVs and minivans. I remember touring our own home for the first time. Our real estate agent was lukewarm on the place, but as soon as I saw the pink nursery and the granite kitchen, I swooned. My high heels clicked on the hardwood floors as Henry tagged after me, and I turned back to him and said, “This is it, this is the one.” He was less certain but he wanted to do right by me, so we put in an offer and moved just a month later.
It had been both of our doing,
I realize now, staring out the window at the houses whizzing by.
No one person was guilty, no one person can be blamed. Henry just wanted to please me, and I him. And we rotted ourselves in trying.

The taxi deposits me at Ainsley’s front door, which she answers with confusion, still in her pajamas and sipping a steaming mug of coffee. She shivers from the air that blows in.

“It’s 8:15 in the morning, Jill! What are you doing here?” She surveys me, disheveled and unshowered from the day before.

“I need your help.” I push my way past her and into the kitchen, where in six years, Katie would say her first word, “Mama.”

She pauses before following me in. Then I hear her slippers shuffling behind me.

“Coffee?” She raises the carafe.

“Sit down, I’ll help myself,” I say, moving toward the cabinets, grabbing a mug, then opening another drawer for the sugar, and finally, yet another for a spoon. I do all of this without effort, without thought, gliding around the kitchen as if it’s my own.

“How do you . . . ?” Ainsley starts, then shuts her mouth abruptly. I can see that I’ve given something away—I’ve only visited Ainsley’s twice before, at least in this new life—but now, it’s irrelevant. The guise doesn’t matter.

“Look, I need some information,” I say, sitting down opposite her. “Don’t ask me why. It’s too hard to explain.”

“Is Jack cheating on you?” Her eyes grow wide. “I don’t know anything about it!”

“What? No! Wait,
what
?” I scowl. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, nothing. I just . . . you look like you do . . . so I assumed you had a fight . . . and now you’re here.” She waves her hands in the air. “I figured you were trying to track down some dirt on him or something.”

“No,” I mutter. “No, nothing like that.” Though part of me is disturbed at the idea of Jack’s unfaithfulness. Even though I’m desperately running back to Henry, part of me still hangs like clinging lint to Jack. I try to shake it loose but it loiters.
Maybe that’s just how it will be,
I consider.
Maybe part of me will always be tied to him, no matter and irrespective of how much I love Henry.

“No, look, I need to know how to find your masseuse—Garland,” I say. I’d already called information from the train, but the spa at which he works in the future has not yet opened.

Ainsley’s eyebrows skew downward in confusion. “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even have a masseuse.”

“Of course you do!” I cry and my voice nearly cracks. “Garland. Black hair, huge arms. All of you guys love him!”

“Jilly, I think maybe you should lie down.” Ainsley places her hand over my arm. “You don’t look well.”

“I’m fine! I’m fine! I just need to find him.” My pitch snakes into hysterics, and I can feel a tear squeeze its way out of my left eye.
Garland is my chance to set this right.
It hadn’t occurred to me that he might not be around to do that.

“Okay, okay, let’s look in the phone book,” Ainsley says soothingly in a tone she’d later reserve for her son’s renowned meltdowns. She rises and pulls out the Yellow Pages from underneath a cabinet, and the pots and pans next to it clang in response. “If you just need a massage, how about someone else? I’ve heard great things about the one down at the club.”

“No.” I shake my head and begin to purge real, unstoppable tears. “It has to be him.”

She thumps the phone book onto the table, then flips it open toward the middle.

“Machine . . . mass waste . . . massage. Here we go.” She runs her finger down the entries. “I don’t see anyone named ‘Garland,’ though there is a ‘G. Stone.’ Could that be him?” She looks up at me hopefully.

“Maybe, I don’t know. I’ll try.” I tear out the entire page, then grab Ainsley’s car keys and kiss her forehead, her mouth still hanging agape. “I’ll be back before you even know that I’ve gone.”

And then I hurry out the door, like a flash of lightning—one minute there, the next leaving only electricity in its wake.

T
HE ADDRESS FOR
G. Stone is off the main street in town, past the kitschy coffee shop where I’d grab my nonfat lattes between Katie’s playdates and just north of Mrs. Kwon’s dry cleaner. I kill the engine and stare at the slightly dilapidated, black-shingled home with fading gray paint curling on the corners of the wood-beamed facade. I’d never noticed it in the two years I’d lived here in my former life. The shades are pulled shut, and the house appears totally motionless, resting, not yet ready to be woken. But still, I am here, so I push open the door to Ainsley’s SUV—and this time, I do hear the dings as it waits for me to slam it closed—and when I finally do, yes, then, just as before, six months back and seven years in the future, I hear the quiet.

The bricks that line the walkway are cracking—snow is nestled into the crevices, and frozen leaves crunch below my heels as I make my way toward the door. I ring the bell, and it echoes throughout the house, much like I imagine it would in a horror movie, right before the heroine meets the reaper. I hear footsteps, and when the door swings open, it is him, Garland, a reaper of a different sort, and my voice lurches forward to speak but my mouth is too dry to do so.

“Can I help you?” he says finally. I suspect that I’ve woken him. His normally lush, wavy hair is matted on one side of his head, and a well-worn burgundy bathrobe has been cavalierly tied around his waist.

“Yes,” I exhale finally. “I, I . . . don’t know how to explain this . . . but . . . I think you did something to me . . .” I pause to see if he has any recollection.
Don’t you know me? Don’t you know what you did to me?
I search his face like a lost mountaineer a map, but he is a blank canvas. Because, of course, he doesn’t know. Of course, I admonish myself,
it was seven years in the fucking future! How could he
?

“I, well, I need your help,” I continue. “That’s the easiest way to put it.”

He tilts his head and reminds me of a cocker spaniel awaiting a treat, but he also seems to take pity on me, so waves me in. A teapot whistle sounds in the background.

“Tea?” he asks.

“No.” I shake my head. He motions to sit in his living room, then wanders off and returns cupping a warm mug that smells like farmed grass.

“So what seems to be the problem, Jillian?”

“You know my name! How do you know my name?” I press myself forward to the edge of the chair. A hot-wire surge flies through me.

“I have no idea,” he answers, and his face contorts into confusion. “I, er, really, I have no idea.” He seems to be searching for a memory that is just on the edge of his brain, yet still unattainable. “Have we met before?”

“Sort of,” I exhale. “Though I don’t really know how to explain it.”

But because I have no other hope, I try. I tell him about my “what-ifs,” and about Jack and Henry and my mother and Katie, and how turned around I got, wishing for things that I didn’t have, lamenting the things I had, not realizing how much of it fell within my hands, within my scope, and how nearly all of it circled back to me and my doing and my strong, capable self, even when I didn’t believe it to be so.

Garland nods his head while I lay out the story, and when I’m done, he says, “But I’m still not sure what you’re doing here. What part I play in all of this.” His brow furrows. “And why I seem to know you and your name, when I’m certain that we’ve never met.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” I say slowly. “You were the one who sent me back.”

Garland looks at me for three beats, like I’ve just told him that the world is flatter than paper and the tooth fairy dances among us and that Santa Claus flies freely come Christmas Eve. And then he lets out a deep, disbelieving chuckle.

“Come on,” he says. “There’s no way that I was the one who did that. I mean . . . how on earth . . .” He shakes his head, then laughs again.

“I don’t know,” I say, trying to contain both the panic and my rising anger. “But you did. You unblocked my chi and you set something off and the next thing I know, I’m seven years in my past in my old apartment with my old boyfriend in my old life.”

He stops laughing and stares at me pointedly, seriously. “I unblocked your chi?”

“Yes.” I nod. “That’s what you told me.”

He stands and starts to pace, mumbling to himself under his breath. Then he halts abruptly and turns toward me.

“I’ve been doing some reading, but . . .” He pauses, then continues. “Well, I’ve been doing some reading on the mind-body-spirit connection, and chis and auras, and all of that . . .” He waves his arms in a circle, as if that’s an explanation for
all of that,
but I look at him perplexedly, so he keeps talking. “I’ve always long believed that the mind influenced our bodies and souls in powerful ways, ways that humans never quiet grasped, so, I started researching it . . .”

“And? How does this help me?” I stand to bring him back to focus.

“I’ve started tinkering around with clients’ pressure points, you know, to help free their toxins and their minds, and well, I guess their chis . . .”

I run my hands over my face. “I’m sorry, Garland, I still don’t see what this has to do with me. I just . . . I just want to get back to normal, back to my old life. I need you to get me there.”

He sits on the couch opposite me. “Oh, Jillian. It doesn’t work like that. You can’t just go back to
there
unchanged. All of this is connected. All of this is a full circle.” He waves his arms again.

“Just send me back there!” I shriek hysterically, as tears tug themselves down my cheeks. “Just help me get back!”

Garland’s head jerks back abruptly, as if the force of my cries made a literal impact. He exhales. “I can’t promise anything,” he says, rising to pull out the massage table that is tucked to the side, against a glass china cabinet that is instead stocked with purple-and moss- and gold-colored candles. Two of its shelves are entirely empty. “It’s up to you. It’s all ultimately up to you, what you’re thinking about, what matters most, where you want to end up when everything is loosened and freed.”

I nod and wipe my damp cheeks, then I climb on top of the table and mash my face into the donut cushion, just as I had so far ahead and so long ago. Garland brushes aside my hair from the nape of my neck, and I hear him push his breath out, so I try to do the same. His fingers flit over my scalp and twist themselves through my mane, and though every cell in me wants to relax, they only seem to rebel and puff up with more tension and anxiety, like a cheese soufflé that might at any minute explode.

I think of Katie and my body heaves, but I won’t let go of her face in my mind, of her butterfly kisses and her sweet breath as she falls into slumber when night tumbles in. I think of Henry and how we both got it wrong, how we twisted ourselves into versions of each other’s expectations without ever giving voice to what we were asking and how much we could each bend. I think of my mother who must have believed she had bent too far, and of my father who later agreed that he maybe could have placed an arm under her back when he saw it arching, and then I feel Garland’s hands dig into me, kneading out my pain, kneading out the past.

He leans in closer, his breath on my neck, and whispers, just as he did a lifetime ago, “Your chi is blocked. I’m going to work to unblock it, but you’ll feel some pressure.”

He pushes into my shoulder blades, and an explosion of fireworks moves through me. Red circles flash beneath my eyelids, and my breath grows measured and heavy. I move beyond the pain, and I bite down on my lip and think of Katie and Henry. What if I hadn’t married Henry? What if Katie had never been born? Looking back on it now, with Garland’s fingers pressing me free, I can see it from an entirely different view: not one of lost opportunity with Jack and my whole other life, but one of lost opportunity with this one.
This life. The one I should have chosen all along.

What if I hadn’t married Henry?
I ask myself again, the answer now as clear as cut glass.
What if I hadn’t married Henry?
And then, the world goes black.

Chapter Thirty

T
he sheets beneath me feel unfamiliar, like crisp, new linens that need to be washed before they soften, and my pillow is damp with sweat. Crusty saliva crowds the corners of my mouth, and my throat is sandy and dry. My temples throb, and my pulse thumps so strongly that the beats ring in my ears.

I roll to my side and sit up gingerly, swatting my knotted hair from my eyes. The room looks strange, different, yet also welcoming and a small reminder of home. Gone are the poufy silk window treatments, replaced by simpler, dark wood blinds, and gone too are the elaborate modern-print rugs that I opted for because I’d once read about them in
Metropolitan Home,
swapped for simple, cushy wall-to-wall cream carpeting. A pile of laundry is mashed in the corner, tucked away just enough that it’s not an eyesore, but still there, calling out to be washed, dried, and folded.

Katie!

I throw my sleep shade onto the rumpled covers and tear out of the room, down the hall into the nursery. But it’s a nursery no longer: Instead, I find a mess of an office, with a desk topped in floating papers and memos, and a treadmill that appears to serve more as a clothing receptacle than an exercise contraption. My hands filter through the clutter—letterhead with my name and Josie’s maiden name on top, business cards with the same, letters of introduction to clients whose companies I’ve never heard of, a photo of Meg and a child I’ve never before seen—and I shake my head furiously because
none of this makes sense. Where is Katie? WHERE IS SHE?
I race toward the kitchen and shriek with fright when I fly through the doorway.

“Jesus Christ!” I scream. “You almost gave me a heart attack!” I clap my hand to my chest.

Henry is sipping from the orange juice container and makes a quick motion to return it to the fridge when he sees me, like a boy whose mom has caught him flipping through porn. He slams the refrigerator door closed.

“And a good morning to you, too.” He surveys me. “Um, maybe you should put some clothes on? Not that I mind, but you know, the neighbors.” He gestures out the window, and I look down and notice, just as I did six months and seven years ago, that I’m naked.

I ignore him. “Katie! Where is Katie?” Panic is filtering through me, and I can do little to stop its flood. I can literally feel it racing through my bloodstream and pour into, over, and on top of my heart.

“She’s with your mother. Jesus, Jill, what’s wrong with you?”

“What do you mean, she’s with my mother? Why the hell would she be with my mother?” I spin around and look for clues to Katie’s whereabouts, like that will somehow intersect all of the missing pieces. I rush into the living room—a newer, less showy living room, I notice, without the gilded lamps or the custom-made couches, but a comfortable living room all the same—and grab a stray pink sock that Katie must have tugged off at one point and that no one noticed until now.

“She’s with your mother because it’s Monday,” Henry says slowly. “Like she’s with her every Monday.”

I hear him, and yet it doesn’t register. “This? What is this?” I wiggle the sock at Henry in a frenzy, my voice reaching a new, unexplored key.

“Er, it’s Katie’s sock,” he says, bewildered.

“Yes! It’s her sock!” I shriek, then begin to sob.

Henry’s eyes grow to the size of globes, and he moves closer, wrapping himself around me, and I inhale his minty shampoo and his menthol shaving cream, a scent that was once so familiar, I stopped noticing it entirely.

“Jilly, sit down. You’re obviously not well.” He eases me back toward the sofa, where we sit, me, naked, him, in a pressed suit, ready for work.

I gasp for air, and Henry rubs my back until my lungs seem to reopen.

“So she’s fine? Katie? She’s fine?” I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and look up at him. It’s only then that I notice my solid gold wedding band back on my finger. I roll my thumb over it, back and forth and back again, as confirmation of its existence.

“Of course she’s fine. Why wouldn’t she be? You were just sleeping late and didn’t feel well last night, so I didn’t wake you when your mom got here early to pick her up.”

I nod, though none of this adds up. Going back in time was fluid: I already anticipated the events to come, at least initially. Returning is more jarring because I’ve missed so much; there are too many holes empty and unfilled.

“Okay,” Henry says. “I’m going to call Josie and tell her that you can’t get her at the airport today. We’ll send a car.”

“Wait,
what
? Why would I be picking Josie up from the airport today?”

Henry stares at me, starts to speak, then stops and stares again.

“For your presentation. You’ve been working on it for months.” He exhales. “Jilly, I think we should call the doctor.” He rises to grab the phone.

“No, stop.” I pull him back down. “I just . . . I’m just a little foggy. Give me a minute.” I chew the inside of my mouth and feign an attempt to look calmer. Then I force a smile. “See, I’m feeling better already.”

Henry gazes at me, unconvinced, then we both jump when the doorbell rings.

“Shit,” he says. “My ride.”

“Your ride? To where?” It comes out shriller than I hoped, given that I’m aiming for an illusion of serenity. Though I’m certain that I’m ready to bare more of myself to Henry, I’m equally certain that starting off with “I just came back from seven years ago” is not the best place to begin.

“My ride . . . to work. Um, like every morning when Tyler picks me up and we take the train.” Henry’s face has shifted from confusion to alarm. “But I’m not going in. Hold on, let me tell him.”

“No, no, go.” I wave my hand in a flurry. “I’m fine. Just . . . groggy. I’m fine.”

He cocks his head. “You’re not.”

I inhale and try to absorb it all. Katie, Tyler, Henry. I’m back and yet something isn’t quite the same, something clearly has shifted. Something that feels welcoming, safe, and a lot like the place I call home.

“No, really,” I say, standing to meet Henry’s gaze. “I just need some time alone to clear my head.”

The doorbell rings again, more urgently this time, and I see him hesitate.

“Go,” I say firmly. “Go without a second thought.” And because he can hear the honesty in my voice, he does, kissing me before he leaves and promising to call to check in when he catches a break in his day.

“I’ll try to be home to tuck her in,” he says before he’s out the door, though I already know that he might not be, and I also know that it won’t be a slight against me if he isn’t.

I run my tongue over my lips, tasting Henry’s acrid coffee residue, and I watch him as he ambles down the sidewalk toward Tyler’s car, a minivan, the type you buy only when required due to multiplying offspring, and I see Henry turn back toward the window just before he ducks inside. I flash my shaking hand up in a form of a wave, and he smiles and does the same. Then I tug the blinds shut, and I wander back into the depths of the house,
my
house, and I begin to redraw the lines of my broken life.

I find Katie’s room tucked into what was once a den, back behind the kitchen, and it smells of banana bread. I sink into the rocking chair, the one in which I would sit to nurse and lull her to sleep. Slowly, now, my eyelids droop, too, as security washes over me like the warmth of a blanket fresh from the dryer.

I close my eyes and I rock and I rock, tumbling into a peaceful slumber, one with kind memories of the days gone by, but mostly with hopeful anticipation of those yet to come. Because I trust that Henry will go into the city and he will work as he always has, but this time, when he returns to me, I, the whole version of me, will be here waiting. Here and now. Then and before. Always.