Time as an Opened Letter You Didn\u2019t Want to Read<\/p>\n
\u201cI can turn back time,\u201d my father says, or he will say. He will tell me that he will save my mother who died when I was just a child. He will say this, or he has already said this, or he is saying it right now.<\/p>\n
This morning, I was a simple man with a simple life and a simple job as an accountant. My life was scheduled hourly, and there was never any question of where I was supposed to be when. But now time is fractured and I have seeped through all the cracks. I find myself in a business meeting with J about my father\u2019s new invention at the same time I\u2019m deep-sea fishing the Gulf with my father, who, as usual, is barely aware I\u2019m there. I am a child again, meeting yet another fly-by-night stepmother-to-be at the same time I\u2019m in Dallas watching JFK\u2019s parade, an event that happened before I was born. I know what the real when is, because I know the blending of time happened today, but those terms are rapidly losing their meaning as time scrambles itself like an egg.<\/p>\n
Even right now in the nowest of nows, in the midst of talking with J about patents and business plans, I am also in the Intensive Care Unit standing beside my father, wires sprawling on the floor like spilled spaghetti and everything smelling of antiseptic null. My nose is scoured of scent. J finishes a joke and his face wrinkles in the beginning of a laugh, but even as I hear his voice rise, it is mixed with the sound of nurses washing their hands, torrents of dirty water swirling through an aluminum basin.<\/p>\n
The heart machine\u2019s tubes stick into my father\u2019s chest with the awkward beauty of an octopus\u2019 arms. The tubes pulse slightly with every pump.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I say automatically, without regret, the same way my father apologized to me for years without ever looking me in the eyes.<\/p>\n
The pumped blood turns from red to a brighter red, then dulls.<\/p>\n
J\u2019s face darkens slightly, then smooths into a white sail.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s okay,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t expect everyone to get the joke.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are a hundred other moments I\u2019m living, but these two stick into me like hooks in a fish\u2019s mouth. J, waiting for me to pronounce on my father\u2019s intellectual property. And my father, waiting for a priest to pronounce last rites.<\/p>\n
My dad is swaddled in bandages. His eyes are covered with jelly to keep the staring eyeballs moist. I shut my eyes and focus on J\u2019s office, but I can still hear the subtle beep of the heart monitor, the suck of the pump, the intercom crackling in some other room.<\/p>\n
My father is an inventor of the old school, of the purest sort. He is more a philosopher than a scientist, seeing technology as the means towards plumbing the depths of the human heart rather than a method for making money or for improving society. An idealist.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd what do you want to do with your father\u2019s blueprints?\u201d J says. The ends of his mouth turn up, predatory. He\u2019s been our family\u2019s financial advisor for as long as I can remember, a friend of my father\u2019s from when they were in school, latching onto genius, and hoping that it would pay off. I am a child in his office, and he hands me a lollipop. \u201cI wish I had a son just like you,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
As J\u2019s excitement grows, his ears turn scarlet. Normally a handsome man, now he looks like a troll. He knows my father had a breakthrough, and he\u2019s waiting to hear what it is. He\u2019s waiting to tally up his profits. He\u2019s waiting to put a payment towards that yacht. He\u2019ll still be waiting years from now.<\/p>\n
This morning, as my father called to tell me the good news, I listened to him in my office at the same time I was in the alley behind my condo burning all of my father\u2019s notes and designs and blueprints in a garbage can half-filled with garbage. The smell of burning paper and rot made my mouth water. I didn\u2019t know why I was burning his things, but I could feel in my gut that it was the right thing to do. The necessary thing.<\/p>\n
At my long silence, J\u2019s smile cracks to reveal uneasiness.<\/p>\n
\u201cSend the blueprints to the patent lawyer, of course,\u201d I say, standing. \u201cI\u2019ll send copies once I get the originals from my father.\u201d I pat J on the back. We\u2019re co-conspirators in the world of business, and though he nods in agreement now, he\u2019s also snarling at me from behind the bars. Except I\u2019m the one behind bars.<\/p>\n
It was exactly a minute before my father called me that I found myself in two places at once. His voice was ecstatic \u2013 a minute before, he\u2019d completed his invention \u2013 full of a life and a confidence I hadn\u2019t seen from him for years. He hadn\u2019t been so happy since the birth of my sister.<\/p>\n
Except I don\u2019t have a sister.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh God,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m a god.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says the same thing in the delivery room, my sister in hand, my mother beaten into a stupor by labor, nurses cleaning up their prostrate bodies, and the doctor the only one noticing business-suited me in the corner of the room, my mouth agape in wonder. Before he can blink, I am gone.<\/p>\n
I barely knew my mother. She died when I was three, sideswiped from the sidewalk by a bus with a blown tire on her way home from the grocery store. But I recognize that woman in the hospital bed from the family albums, even if she\u2019s older than the pictures, older than the girl of twenty-seven who died out of my life so long ago.<\/p>\n
Now I\u2019m a man of forty, responsible for my own affairs and my father\u2019s. I pay my bills on time and float a responsible amount of debt. I\u2019m not religious. I believe in what I can see and hold. I believe in history, and the fact that our past is what molds us, continually, into who we are.<\/p>\n
Now I am walking up the front walk of my father\u2019s house. Instinctively, I step over the concrete raised up by the roots of the oak tree that I had removed five years past as a hazard. There\u2019s a scar on my chin from when I tripped on that concrete for the first and last time when I was ten.<\/p>\n
Now I am in the shower washing the blood from my body. It comes off easily.<\/p>\n
Now I am in the Intensive Care Unit, but I am also still in the shower. I am naked and wet before my father\u2019s dying body, also naked and wet. Water pools on the floor beneath me. A nurse screams, and her screams echo in the shower.<\/p>\n
I am in all of these places at once, and none of them for certain. I can sense the distance I am from the hospital bed while I step up to my father\u2019s door. It is growing harder and harder to focus on exactly who I am and when I want to be, but I am learning small tricks. If I bite the inside of my cheek, the pain brings me back to the now I need to be in, back to the me that is pressing the doorbell on my father\u2019s house a little too forcefully. Even so, I can sense all the other places I am. If I look away, I know I\u2019ll be standing before the chair that is waiting for me to be strapped in it.<\/p>\n
A car honks, and I turn to see M, a childhood friend, wave as he drives by. But when I turn back I am in my father\u2019s laboratory. He is removing his new invention from its protective case. I need to explain to him what he has done. But then my mouth drops open.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou invented a gun?\u201d I\u2019m amazed. My father doesn\u2019t believe in violence. When I asked him what he felt when mom died, he\u2019d told me he simply felt sorry for the bus driver and all the passengers, having to witness such horror.<\/p>\n
But it just appears to be a death ray or freeze beam, because my father isn\u2019t crazy. He\u2019s just a little misguided.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith this,\u201d he says, \u201cI can turn back time. Well, if time could be turned, which it can\u2019t because time isn\u2019t a sphere or a circle or even a line. It\u2019s a point. And with this I\u2019ll be able to see all points at once.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd how is this supposed to make us money?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is more important than money,\u201d he says. \u201cWith this I\u2019ll be able to save your mother. Don\u2019t you want to meet your mother?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDad, you can\u2019t change history,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t argue. All of his excitement falls away to reveal desperation and disgust.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou never cared about me,\u201d he says. \u201cAll you cared about was what I could give you. But I\u2019ll bring your mother back! And then everything will be as it should have been.\u201d<\/p>\n
He turns the invention on himself, but I leap forward and grab the tip and pull it away. He pulls the trigger and the end of his invention glows with an unearthly light, the tip emitting a beam which slams into me with all the force of a feather.<\/p>\n
My father\u2019s eyes are wide with alarm, but I\u2019m fine. Nothing\u2019s changed.<\/p>\n
But everything has changed. The moment my father finished the invention, this event was destined to happen, and when it did I was shaken from the fixed timeline of my life like water from a dog\u2019s back. As soon as it would happen, it did happen. But only now do I fully understand.<\/p>\n
I can see the future where everyone is lost in time, everywhen at once. History is a water-soaked tissue, transparent and fragile, and if you pick it up, it falls apart. And for one final moment, I am at my 41st birthday party and my mother and my sister and, yes, even my father, are watching me blow out the candles with joy and pride and \u2013<\/p>\n
\u2013 and I am there in my father\u2019s laboratory and I am burning his notes and I am dismantling his invention and I am at his death bed and I am facing the electric chair and all because time cannot be changed. It will not be changed. I won\u2019t let it be changed.<\/p>\n
I ring the doorbell to my father\u2019s house. When my father opens the door he grins so fiercely I\u2019m afraid he might pull a muscle. It is the happiest he\u2019s been to see me in a long, long time. He doesn\u2019t suspect the knife until its already deep, deep inside him.<\/p>\n
He looks into my eyes, but he isn\u2019t shocked. It\u2019s as though he is seeing me \u2013 the real me \u2013 for the first time.<\/p>\n
But we both know that\u2019s a lie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Time as an Opened Letter You Didn\u2019t Want to Read \u201cI can turn back time,\u201d my father says, or he will say. He will tell me that he will save my mother who died when I was just a child. He will say this, or he has already said this, or he is saying it …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1347],"tags":[1348],"class_list":["post-29058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-tcl-16-summer-2015","tag-the-colored-lens-16-summer-2015","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2391"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139564,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29058\/revisions\/139564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}