Collide

  “You feeling better? Sure you don’t want to stay home?”

  “No.” I shook my head and took my seat at the table. The toast smelled good, and suddenly I was ravenous. “I’m okay. Really.”

  I forced a bright smile for him as I shoved toast in my mouth and washed it down with tea. The crumbs scattered on the table. I wiped them with my fingertips.

  Johnny leaned across the table, surprising me with a kiss. “Love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I managed to keep up a conversation with him as he drove me to work, and if he noticed I was quieter than normal, he didn’t remark on it. At work I sat at my desk, a zombie, filling in forms and answering the phone without really paying much attention.

  The worst part of all this was not actually that I thought I might be insane. That part seemed almost…expected, giving my history of brain damage. The worst part wasn’t trying to get my brain to wrap around the concept I hadn’t just dreamed about 1978. I’d gone there. This time I wasn’t Alice, slipping through the looking glass. I was the White Queen, believing impossible things.

  The worst part was the fact that after spending a lifetime guarding against unwanted pregnancy, about being careful, making sure I was responsible for my body, after all that, I’d still ended up pregnant by accident.

  I buried my face in my hands at my desk and let out a low, almost-silent moan. Pregnant. A baby. How could I have a baby?

  I’d long ago given up the idea of having children. After all, how could I expect to make it through nine months with another life growing inside me when I couldn’t always be counted on to know where I was or what I was doing? How could I be a mother, be responsible for another life, when at any moment I could slip sideways into darkness?

  Or backward, I thought. I had a sour taste on my tongue. Rotten orange. But I didn’t smell it. Just taste it.

  When I opened my eyes, I expected to find summer heat, a swimming pool. A young Johnny looking at me with that gleam in his eyes. Instead, I saw my computer, my face reflected in it like a ghost.

  I put my hands on my belly, rounder always than I’d like. What small life swam inside me? Daughter? Son? Would he have his father’s eyes, would she have my smile?

  I clicked on my web browser and looked up time travel. I didn’t learn a lot. I found a lot of sites with a lot of fancy words and descriptions of tachyons and particles and physics, which I’d never understood. I found many book and movie reviews, some even from books or movies I’d read. I read a lot and learned very little beyond what I already knew.

  Time travel didn’t happen.

  It most certainly didn’t happen from falling off a jungle gym. It didn’t make sense, and yet it was the only answer I had. I went dark; I went back. I’d been having fugues for years, but none had been like the ones that started after seeing Johnny that first time in the Mocha.

  Again, I rested my head in my hands. None of this made sense, yet it made perfect sense. All I had to do was suspend my disbelief.

  At lunch I went out to the pharmacy and bought a quadruple pack of pregnancy tests. I didn’t wait until the morning, the way the instructions advised. I went into the bathroom at work and peed on the stick and waited for the lines to show up. One, or two.

  Two.

  I did it again.

  Two.

  I went back to my desk and drank a bottle of water even though I really wanted a Diet Dr Pepper. I forced myself to eat a salad instead of the bacon double cheeseburger I was suddenly craving, though I allowed myself the cookie for dessert. I might be eating for two now, and I wanted to make healthy choices.

  I broke into tears at three o’clock, sitting at my desk with my face muffled in most of a box of tissues. The tears became laughter, semihysterical, but genuine. I laughed. Cried. I went to the bathroom, certain I was going to barf up my lunch, but I didn’t.

  At three forty-five, Johnny pulled into the parking lot. I could see him from my window. I was leaving early today so I could go to the gallery show tonight. I pressed my face against the cool glass and for the first time in a very, very long while I prayed.

  It seemed about as useless as wishing on a star, but if I could believe I’d somehow managed to travel back and forth in time I could also believe some higher consciousness was listening and might be moved to help me.

  I had never wanted a child. I’d never thought I’d be a mother. I’d never held a friend’s baby and yearned for my own. I wasn’t cut out for it. Liked kids from a distance, enough to coo at a baby in a stroller but always happy to give them back to their beaming parents. Babies smelled, they cried, they were tiny, expensive, consistent pains in the ass.

  Looking down at Johnny’s car idling in the lot, I slipped my hands once more over my belly. It was too soon to feel a difference, but I imagined how it would be in just a few months from now, my belly out in front of me like a basketball, if I were lucky. A watermelon, if I weren’t.

  It would grow inside me like a parasite, sucking out every nutrient I consumed and making me crave stuff like paste or pasta or Jolly Ranchers candy. My feet would swell. I’d get stretch marks. I’d puke for months, then gain so much weight my body would never be the same, and at the end of it I’d spend hours in agony pushing a human being the size of a bowling ball out an orifice much smaller. I’d bleed. I’d be unable to have sex for weeks. And then I’d have milk squirting out of my nipples at inopportune times.

  After that would come the diapers, the screaming, the child-proofing. Car seats, cribs, bibs, spit-up. I couldn’t have a pet because I couldn’t deal with poop, how was I going to deal with a baby?

  This was pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood. This was what I had to look forward to, the rest of my life spent putting someone else first, making sure this life I had been so foolish as to create was safe and happy and loved.

  “Please,” I murmured, my forehead still pressed to the glass. I watched Johnny get out of the car and pace a little. I knew he craved a cigarette, though he’d given them up. I knew he was wondering why I was late.

  “Please,” I said again.

  Please. Please. Whoever is listening, whatever can hear me, please, oh, please, oh, please.

  My hands pressed lightly on my belly, and my fingers linked.

  “Please,” I said. “Please let this be real.”

  Chapter 31

  The gallery had been transformed. It was always beautiful, of course, no matter what was hanging on the walls, but Johnny’s staff had hung even more strands of fairy lights from the roof’s old beams and soft mosquito netting from the pillars with lights nestled inside. The uneven wood floors were waxed and polished, and I clung to Johnny’s arm, certain that in my high heels I’d slip and fall. Make a fool of myself.

  Or worse, hurt myself.

  I’d taken the other two pregnancy tests an hour or so apart, at home, hiding them carefully under a wad of paper towels in my bathroom garbage can even though I had no reason to suspect Johnny had or ever would bother to dig through it. Both had come up without a doubt, two blue lines that said I was pregnant. While a false negative could be likely, there wasn’t much of a chance for a false positive.

  I kept my secret drawn close to me like a cloak. A shield. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It made me distracted and clumsier than I could blame on the slick, polished floor. Johnny caught me before I could wipe out the refreshment table.

  “Careful, Emm.”

  “Sorry.”

  He shook his head, his arm around my waist, fingers resting lightly on my hip. “Nah. Don’t worry about it. You want a drink?”

  “Just water, thanks.”

  He looked at me carefully. “You don’t want a glass of wine? A beer? I made sure we got that dark stuff you like.”

  “Maybe later. Oh, cheese!” I was starving, my intermittent nausea in hiding for the moment.

  “I gotta go check on some things. You go getcha cheese, I’ll be back.” Johnny’s accent was a little deeper tonight,
and I snagged his hand before he could walk away.

  “Hey.”

  He didn’t try to pull away. He let me pull him closer. There in front of everyone, he smoothed a curl of my hair behind my ear, and he kissed me.

  “Hey,” Johnny said softly. “What.”

  “I love you,” I whispered. “Don’t forget it.”

  “Never have.” Johnny brushed his lips over mine, then kissed my forehead. He looked into my eyes. “You need something, Emm?”

  I shook my head. “You go. I’m going to get something to eat. See if I can find Jen. She’s probably nervous.”

  “She’ll be great. She’s showing her best work. People will like it.”

  “Doesn’t mean she won’t be nervous,” I told him.

  “I know that.” Johnny kissed me again, patted my ass and headed off to do whatever it was he needed to do.

  I met up with Kimmy at the buffet table. She looked nice, dressed in a sleek black dress, her hair piled on top of her head. I could see a lot of her mother in her, but I could see her dad, too. She nodded at me with a glass of wine held in her hand.

  “Hi, Kimberly,” I said sweet enough to rot her teeth. “I’m so glad to see you here.”

  “My dad invited me,” she said. “He serves good wine.”

  “He does.” I piled my plate high with cheese and crackers and a dollop of some kind of mustard dip.

  “You’re not drinking any, I notice.”

  She caught me with my mouth full, so I just shrugged. Kimmy looked me over. She sipped her wine.

  “I like your shoes,” she said at last, which was as close to being friendly as I ever expected her to be, especially when she found out I was going to be giving her another brother or sister.

  I spotted Jen from across the room, Jared at her side. He had one hand on the small of her back, steadying her. She was grinning, but it looked a little strained.

  “Hey, girl, hey!” I said. “Hi, Jared.”

  He nodded. “Hey, Emm.”

  “Girl,” Jen breathed. “Would you look at this? All these people? Omigod, I think I might barf.”

  “Please don’t,” I said automatically. “If you do, I will, too.”

  Jared laughed and pulled her close to kiss her mouth. “You’re fine. How many times do I have to tell you?”

  Jen didn’t look mollified, though she did allow herself to relax into his embrace. “Easy for you to say.”

  “Well, yeah, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”

  We talked about the show. Jen’s pieces were in the back room, which was why she was out here. She didn’t want to watch anyone studying them.

  “You want me to go look in?” I asked.

  “No!” she cried. “Okay, yes!”

  “I told her I’d go,” Jared said, “but she wouldn’t let me.”

  “You stay with me,” Jen told him. “Emm, would you just check it out? I don’t want to know if anyone’s saying mean stuff.”

  “I would never tell if anyone was,” I promised.

  I looked for Johnny as I wove through the crowd toward the back room, but didn’t see him. I tossed my trash and grabbed a bottle of ginger ale from the bar, not because I was feeling sick but just in case. I sipped it as I went through the doorway into the back room.

  I saw Jen’s artwork at once, displayed on the white walls and lit by tiny spotlights. She’d picked her favorite pieces after agonizing for weeks, and I agreed with her choices—even though I knew my opinion meant very little beyond that of a friend. I studied them, admiring the way she’d taken photographs of local landmarks and used photo editing and hand-painting to enhance or even change them. To my surprise, I saw myself in one of her pieces.

  She must’ve kept it a secret from me, as a surprise, because though I remembered her taking the picture—with her cell phone, no less—I’d had no idea she’d used it. It was of my face, eyes to the side, mouth pursed. I’d been trying to catch a surreptitious glance of Johnny. She’d trimmed out the background and placed my face in the window of a tall brownstone, one of the unrenovated ones from my block. Next to it she’d added a shot of my house with me and Johnny standing on the front step.

  “Nice piece,” said a husky feminine voice from beside me. “Shocked Johnny let it in the show, though. That is him, isn’t it? Jesus, you’d think I’d be able to tell.”

  I turned to face the woman who’d come up beside me. She wore a black dress, too tight, and red shoes that would’ve been nicer without the scuff marks on the toes. Her bleached blond hair was pulled into a high ponytail, stretching her skin back from her face—either that, or she’d had some very bad work done. She turned to me at the same time.

  “Oh, shit,” she said.

  I blinked rapidly and took a step back. It was Sandy. Older, of course. Worn, definitely. But I knew her right away, and she seemed to know me, too.

  “Oh, shit,” she said again, almost conversationally, and faced the framed pictures. She had a cigarette in one hand and she put it to her mouth like she was smoking, though it was unlit.

  “You must be Kim’s mom.” My voice shook, so I cleared my throat. “Sandy, right?”

  “And you’re Johnny’s teenage girlfriend.”

  “I’m way out of my teens,” I said, hoping this wasn’t going to turn into a fight…but on the other hand, part of me was ready to tear it up with her.

  “Not by much,” Sandy said derisively, and waved the cigarette at me.

  “Why does it matter to you? You haven’t been together for years.”

  Her smile was hard, but not without humor. “True. But that doesn’t mean…”

  She stopped, eyes narrowing. She looked me up and down, focusing on my face. She moved toward me.

  “Have we met?” Sandy asked.

  “No.” It tasted like a lie, but all I had was a crazy through-the-looking-glass theory, nothing real.

  Sandy studied me again. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “You look familiar.”

  I forced a laugh, thinking of blurry-eyed Sandy in Johnny-then’s upstairs hallway. Of her walking in on us fucking. Of her demands for money, her lack of consideration for privacy. That had been a long, long time ago for her.

  “So do you,” I said.

  This seemed to satisfy her. She smoothed her hair, then her dress. She held the cigarette between two fingers while cradling her elbow with the other hand.

  “Just one of those faces, I guess,” she said. “You, I mean. Obviously, you’ve seen me in photos. Johnny’s pictures.”

  She didn’t say pitchahs the way she had in the fugues. Sandy had either made a conscious effort to change her manner of speaking or I was just crazy and never really had met her. She looked a little smug now, and that wasn’t different.

  “Oh, you were in pictures with him?” I asked with an innocent blink.

  Of course I knew she was. There were several famous ones of the two of them frolicking naked in a field of flowers, both with long flowing hair and holding daisies. I was just being a bitch.

  Sandy’s smile told me she knew it, too. Maybe even respected it. “But that was a long, long time ago.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was.”

  Without another word, she turned on her heel and left me there. I didn’t mind. The less I ever had to see of Sandy, the better.

  I looked at the rest of Jen’s pieces, then the others. I didn’t have to appreciate art to prefer hers. The others were good, but Jen’s had something special about them that stood out. I admired them all while trying to be subtle in my eavesdropping about what people were saying. It was all good, and I knew she’d be glad.

  I was just about to head back into the main room to tell her when something caught the corner of my eye. Along the back wall, set apart from the rest of the art, was a display I’d never seen yet I instantly knew. The crowd parted, moving away, and I moved forward.

  Blank Spaces.

  The work that had first given Johnny reco
gnition, real respect as an artist. Not a single piece but a series of sketches and paintings, all with the same subject in slightly different poses. The most famous of them, the biggest, the one in the center of the display, I’d seen dozens of times in .jpgs of varying quality on the internet.

  A woman, head turned so her hair fell over her face and shoulders, in a yellow sundress. She stood in green, green grass. One hand outstretched. There was a hint of water in the background I’d always thought was a river or a lake, maybe an ocean, but in this version, at least eighteen by twenty inches, I could see it was a swimming pool.

  The other pieces were smaller, some of them no more than pencil sketches, though the frames made them more impressive. I could see the progression of some of them from first pencil strokes to the final piece. Fascinated, I studied them all, for the first time able to have a glimmer of understanding about what made the difference between a picture and a piece of art.

  The woman wasn’t the same in every pose. In some she was facing away altogether. In others, her hands were at her side. Sometimes it was as though a wind had tossed her hair and hem of her dress.

  I didn’t smell oranges. The world didn’t waver. I didn’t even blink. One minute I was standing in front of Johnny’s most famous painting and in the next I was in a dark kitchen smelling booze and pot, staring at an empty chair and an ashtray full of crushed cigarettes.

  “No,” I whispered.

  The calendar said August 1978. I could still smell sweat and booze. Ed’s notebook was still on the table, but he was gone. From outside, the sounds of the party got a little louder, more frantic.

  I left the kitchen, went into the backyard. People spoke to me, and I ignored them. I knew the date on the calendar. I knew this place, and what was going to happen.

  I found him on the far side of the swimming pool, on the grass, in a pocket of shadow.

  “There you are,” Johnny said. “Been lookin’ for you.”

  “Johnny.”

  “Yeah?” He pulled me closer, and I let him kiss me.

  So much to say, no words to say it. I knew so much, but nothing. I took his hand and put it on my belly. I kissed his mouth. I looked into his eyes.