Portable Childhoods Read online

  “Won’t they come looking for you?” I ask Sara. I feel very surreal. Part of me has always wanted to know why this all happened, and part of me feels like I’m just prompting the part I know comes next.

  “Not if they think there’s no reason to look,” Jimmy says. “We’ll take my car back to Hazel’s and pick up hers. Devil’s Slide is only a few miles up the road. It’s—”

  “It’s a rainy night,” I finish. “Treacherous stretch of highway. Accidents happen there all the time. They’ll find Sara’s car in the morning, but no body. Washed out to sea. Everyone will think it’s tragic that she died so young,” I say softly. My throat is tight and I’m fighting back tears. “At least I always have.”

  They both stare at me. Sara gets up and stands behind me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “So that is how it happens?” she asks, hugging me tight. “All along you’ve assumed I’d be dead in the morning?”

  I nod. I don’t trust my voice enough to say anything.

  To my great surprise, she laughs. “Well, I’m not going to be. One of the first lessons you should have learned as a scientist is never assume,” she says, kissing the top of my head. “But what a terrible secret for you to have been carting about. Thank you for not telling me. It would have ruined a perfectly lovely weekend. Now let’s all have some supper. We’ve a lot to do tonight.”

  Monday, February 20, 1956. 12:05 a.m.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Sara asks, coming into the kitchen and talking around the toothbrush in her mouth. “It’s our last night—at least for a while. I was rather hoping you’d be waiting in bed when I came out of the bathroom.”

  “I will. Two more minutes.” I’m sitting at the kitchen table, rolling a blank sheet of paper into her typewriter. I haven’t let myself think about going back in the morning, about leaving Sara, and I’m delaying our inevitable conversation about it for as long as I can. “While we were driving back from wrecking your car, I had an idea about how to nail Chambers.”

  She takes the toothbrush out of her mouth. “It’s a lovely thought, but you know you can’t change anything that happens.”

  “I can’t change the past,” I agree. “But I can set a bomb with a very long fuse. Like fifty years.”

  “What? You look like the cat that’s eaten the canary.” She sits down next to me.

  “I’ve retyped the title page to Chambers’s dissertation—with your name on it. First thing in the morning, I’m going to rent a large safe deposit box at the Wells Fargo Bank downtown, and pay the rent in advance. Sometime in 2006, there’ll be a miraculous discovery of a complete Sara Baxter Clarke manuscript. The bomb is that, after her tragic death, the esteemed Dr. Chambers appears to have published it under his own name—and won the Nobel Prize for it.”

  “No, you can’t. It’s not my work either, it’s Gil’s and—” she stops in mid-sentence, staring at me. “And he really is dead. I don’t suppose I dare give a fig about academic credit anymore, should I?”

  “I hope not. Besides, Chambers can’t prove it’s not yours. What’s he going to say—Carol McCullough went back to the past and set me up? He’ll look like a total idiot. Without your formula, all he’s got is a time machine that won’t work. Remember, you never present your paper. Where I come from it may be okay to be queer, but time travel is still just science fiction.”

  She laughs. “Well, given a choice, I suppose that’s preferable, isn’t it?”

  I nod and pull the sheet of paper out of the typewriter.

  “You’re quite a resourceful girl, aren’t you?” Sara says, smiling. “I could use an assistant like you.” Then her smile fades and she puts her hand over mine. “I don’t suppose you’d consider staying on for a few months and helping me set up the lab? I know we’ve only known each other for two days. But this—I—us—Oh, dammit, what I’m trying to say is I’m going to miss you.”

  I squeeze her hand in return, and we sit silent for a few minutes. I don’t know what to say. Or to do. I don’t want to go back to my own time. There’s nothing for me in that life. My dissertation that I now know isn’t true. An office with a black-and-white photo of the only person I’ve ever really loved—who’s sitting next to me, holding my hand. I could sit like this forever. But could I stand to live the rest of my life in the closet, hiding who I am and who I love? I’m used to the 21st century—I’ve never done research without the Internet, or cooked much without a microwave. I’m afraid if I don’t go back tomorrow, I’ll be trapped in this reactionary past forever.

  “Sara,” I ask finally. “Are you sure your experiments will work?”

  She looks at me, her eyes warm and gentle. “If you’re asking if I can promise you an escape back to your own time someday, the answer is no. I can’t promise you anything, love. But if you’re asking if I believe in my work, then yes. I do. Are you thinking of staying, then?”

  I nod. “I want to. I just don’t know if I can.”

  “Because of last night?” she asks softly.

  “That’s part of it. I was raised in a world that’s so different. I don’t feel right here. I don’t belong.”

  She kisses my cheek. “I know. But gypsies never belong to the places they travel. They only belong to other gypsies.”

  My eyes are misty as she takes my hand and leads me to the bedroom.

  Monday, February 20, 1956. 11:30 a.m.

  I put the battered leather briefcase on the floor of the supply closet in LeConte Hall and close the door behind me. At 11:37 exactly, I hear the humming start, and when it stops, my shoulders sag with relief. What’s done is done, and all the dies are cast. In Palo Alto an audience of restless physicists is waiting to hear a paper that will never be read. And in Berkeley, far in the future, an equally restless physicist is waiting for a messenger to finally deliver that paper.

  But the messenger isn’t coming back. And that may be the least of Chambers’s worries.

  This morning I taped the key to the safe deposit box—and a little note about the dissertation inside—into the 1945 bound volume of The Astrophysical Journal. My officemate Ted was outraged that no one had checked it out of the Physics library since 1955. I’m hoping he’ll be even more outraged when he discovers the secret that’s hidden inside it.

  I walk out of LeConte and across campus to the coffee shop where Sara is waiting for me. I don’t like the political climate here, but at least I know that it will change, slowly but surely. Besides, we don’t have to stay in the ’50s all the time—in a few months, Sara and I plan to do a lot of traveling. Maybe one day some graduate student will want to study the mysterious disappearance of Dr. Carol McCullough. Stranger things have happened.

  My only regret is not being able to see Chambers’s face when he opens that briefcase and there’s no manuscript. Sara and I decided that even sending back an incomplete version of her paper was dangerous. It would give Chambers enough proof that his tempokinetic experiment worked for him to get more funding and try again. So the only thing in the case is an anonymous, undated postcard of the St. Francis Hotel that says:

  “Having a wonderful time. Thanks for the ride.”

  Be Prepared

  CRAIG CLAIBORNE HAD NOT BEEN the first choice for Galaxy Lines’ third (and final) “Cooking in Space” cruise. But a week before take-off it was discovered that none of the launch suits could be modified to fit Paul Prudhomme.

  Claiborne was in the process of explaining to a tedious woman from Davenport, Iowa, during the second morning’s cooking class, that it was just not feasible to attempt a soufflé in zero-gravity, when a band of pirates breached the airlock and took control of the ship.

  They captured a dozen or so of the largest, plumpest passengers, Claiborne included, and herded them onto a black ship that hovered a few meters off the stern of the now-doomed De Gustibus.

  Reluctantly, but encouraged with the use of a sort of electrified spatula, the men and women were taken to a white, tiled chamber, at the end of which was an apparatus
that seemed to Claiborne to consist of a series of graduated stewpots—Calphalon, if he wasn’t mistaken.

  The pirates, who were a sort of dull fennel color with calamari-like appendages, lined their prisoners up single-file. Claiborne was near the end.

  He watched as one of the pirates picked up a hose with a turkey baster-ish nozzle at one end and, with a sound not unlike that of coring a ripe Casaba melon, thrust it into the top of the skull of the unpleasant woman from Iowa. She slumped to the floor, the stewpots clattered, and the contents of a measuring tube at the end of the array rose a fraction of an inch.

  Sloppy technique, thought Claiborne. Drain and pick over the brains to remove the outer membranes, blood, and other extraneous matter. New York Times Cookbook, page 207, second edition.

  The line moved forward. The ship’s clerk was next. A whistling sound came from one of the stewpots, and a pirate rushed over and adjusted a dial.

  Hmmph, Claiborne thought derisively. Add fresh lemon juice and stir to break up the brains. Ideally, the brains should be mashed at intervals while they are cooking.

  A few minutes later, a pirate turned a small valve below the measuring device, and a bit of pinkish gray liquid trickled into a clear receptacle. He tasted it and pursed what might have been his lips.

  Not at all palatable, I’d think. Claiborne grimaced. Combine olive oil, lemon juice, dill, parsley, oregano, and capers in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Pour over the brains and serve lukewarm. He furrowed his brow. Perhaps accompanied with a dry Pinot Grigio, or one of the French—

  The nozzle was cold.

  There would be no dessert.

  Travel Agency

  MY OLDER SISTER AND HER DAUGHTER, my favorite niece, have come to stay with me in my house outside Boston for a few nights. Marjorie is a frequent flyer; she works for the airlines, in management. She wears stretch jeans and a white sweatshirt with glittery appliquéd gingham teddy bears. This is Emily’s first visit. She’s almost ten. She gives me an awkward hug, and a shy smile when her mother is not looking.

  My guest room is a room that is usually the den. I have cleaned up the day-to-day clutter of papers and books, and put clean sheets on the sofabed. Marjorie frowns when she sees it. It is a little small for two to sleep comfortably.

  I tell Emily that she’ll be sleeping in the attic, if that’s okay. The child’s eyes light up as if she’d just been offered a bunk on a pirate ship. They live in a suburb, in a split-level ranch house with white carpeting. But I know from her letters that many of her favorite books seem to involve old houses with great, sometimes magic, attics. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s house has an attic, and the Four-Story Mistake. I think there’s one in Half Magic, too.

  Magic rarely happens in a living room, or in a basement, unless it’s scary magic, which isn’t the kind you want to have surround you at night.

  For most of my guests, my attic is a utilitarian place. It’s just a room at the top of the house, the place where the luggage lives when it’s not traveling, and where the boxes of Christmas ornaments and books without bookshelf space are stored. Winter clothes in the cedar closet in July; bathing suits in plastic boxes in December.

  But the child is beside herself, hopping excitedly from one foot to the other, waiting to see my attic. I am a librarian. I am neither blasé about the importance of my offer, nor alarmed at the hopping. I am actually rather delighted. Marjorie puts a hand on Emily’s arm and tells her to behave. The child stops hopping and pulls her ears a fraction closer to her shoulders.

  The attic door opens off the upstairs hallway, between the guest room and the bathroom. It isn’t one of those attics that is reached by pull-down stairs set in the ceiling. It is a proper attic, with a proper doorway and small, twisting, steep stairs. Emily turns to me and smiles when I open the door, her eyes so bright I’m amazed that the narrow stairwell isn’t illuminated by them.

  At the top of the stairs, we step out into one big slope-ceilinged room. It’s finished in the sense that there are paneled walls and not just exposed beams and studs and lath. But it is not wallpapered or carpeted or decorated. Two-thirds of it is full of the usual attic-y jumble of boxes and trunks, lamps that don’t match my new couch, and occasional tables whose occasion has come and gone. It is a place for things that no longer belong.

  The far end is an open, rectangular space with a small iron cot of the same shape and vintage as the ones in the cabins of my childhood summer camp. A thin mattress lies atop springs that I know will squeak when the child sits down, or when she turns over. I have made it up with some faded green sheets and an equally faded summer-weight quilt.

  The cot sits in the middle of an old, threadbare Oriental rug that holds the encroaching boxes at bay. An upturned footlocker stands at the side of the bed, topped with a green glass-shaded lamp. Next to the lamp is an offering of nine-year-old-type books that I have pulled from the dozens of bookcases that line the rest of my house: The Lilac Fairy Book, The Wind in the Willows, an Enid Blyton schoolgirl book about the fourth form at St. Clare’s, and The Phantom Tollbooth.

  A few feet above the cot, there’s a small, round window, filled with the leaves of the neighbor’s tall maple. The wall faces west, and the late afternoon light streams golden onto the tiny bed.

  Emily stops in her tracks when she sees all of this, stops moving altogether. I’m not even sure if she’s breathing.

  She looks from her mother to me and then asks, “Do I really get to sleep here?” The wonder in her voice makes one of us smile.

  “For two whole nights? Just me? By myself?”

  I nod. The child has her own room at home. It’s not like she lies shackled to her straw pallet next to the kitchen hearth, deprived of both comfort and privacy. But this is a place that she’ll remember. Years from now, she’ll be able to close her eyes and recall every detail. She may no longer be able to remember where she’d been, or why, exactly, but she’ll remember there was a bed in an attic, and a doting aunt who gave her the chance for a bit of a storybook childhood.

  “We’re going to go down and start dinner,” I say, giving her a wink. “Do you want to stay up here, or come down and have a root beer while we cook?”

  It is not a hard choice.

  “Here, I think. Maybe I’ll kind of unpack.” She is already eyeing the books on the bedside table.

  So Marjorie and I go downstairs and open a bottle of Chardonnay, and I begin chopping vegetables while she goes on about United, and Donald, and how they plan to landscape the yard next spring. An hour later, I excuse myself and tiptoe back up the narrow stairs.

  Dust motes swirl in the last rays of twilight. As I had hoped, the cot is empty, only a small girl-shaped indentation left in the quilt. Enid Blyton is lying face down, pages open. I smile as I close it and tuck it under my arm.

  I thought it was what she’d choose. It’s a lovely place for a holiday, and the girls in the fourth form are such a lively bunch this year.

  A Taste of Summer

  MATTIE ROGERS SAT on the tiny sleeping porch of the summer cottage on Indian Lake, halfway reading a Nancy Drew book, and mostly watching her dad and two of her three older brothers try to fix the outboard motor on the dinghy. She was hoping they’d let her help, or at least get it back together soon, so her dad could take her exploring in the other parts of the lake.

  She folded over the page of the book and got up out of the chair. Her legs made a slurping sound when she pulled up off the painted wood, because she was sticky hot. The boat lay upside down on the grass near the dock. Her dad was kneeling over the blades. AJ and Mike were doing something to the motor part with a screwdriver. They all had their shirts off and were shiny with sweat and streaks of black grease. She stopped a few feet away.

  “Can I help, Daddy?”

  He started a little, dropped the wrench, said one of the bad words, not quite in a whisper, then turned around and looked at her over his shoulder.

  “No, sweetie. This is guy stuff.”

  “Are
you fixing it?”

  “Nope, not yet.” His voice wasn’t mad, but it sounded like it could change into mad pretty quick. He turned back to the propeller.

  Mattie waited a minute, shifting her weight from one foot to the other on the grass. “Daddy? How long do you think it’s going to be? Will you take me out for a ride when you’re done?”

  Her father turned around. “Matts?” He looked surprised that she was still standing there. “Why don’t you be a big girl and go play someplace else for a while? We’ll be lucky to finish this before dark as it is.” He sighed and rubbed his face, leaving a grease mark on his chin.

  “There’s nobody to play with.”

  “Where’s Danny?”

  “Fishing. He says I can’t come along because girls scare fish.”

  “Well then, how about the twins?”

  Mattie made a face. She was almost nine and Cindy and Shelley were eleven. They’d always played pirates before, exploring the lake-shore for treasure, but this summer all they wanted to do was read about the Beatles and roll their hair. “They don’t want to do anything fun anymore. Can I go swimming?”

  Her dad looked over at the weathered gray dock and shook his head. “Nobody’s got time to watch you right now. Maybe when your mom gets back from Lake City.”

  Her mom had gone to get her hair done. Most Saturdays Mattie had to go along, but her birthday was in two days, and her mother had secret shopping to do. Mattie wasn’t sure there was anything in Lake City she really wanted, and she hoped it wasn’t going to be clothes. She was wearing her favorites—a pair of her brother Mike’s hand-me-down cut-offs and a faded green Celtics tank top that came down past her knees and said HaVliceK in letters that were just barely visible. Her red high-top sneakers were busting out at the toes and her brown hair was ragged over her ears where she’d tried to cut off the annoying parts with her mother’s nail scissors earlier that morning.