“People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
— Albert Einstein, Letter to Besso’s Family (March 1955)
“The middle of life has these cul-de-sac days. In your twenties you think, Surely I am going somewhere, and later — as in now — you think, Nope.”
— Leslie Daniels, Cleaning Nabokov's House
Chapter 1: I fucking hate airports.
Monday
Mom has cancer.
The thought irritates me, nags at my brain the same way a mosquito that gets trapped in your room at night and circles and buzzes and dives and bites and basically won’t leave you the fuck alone.
Mom has cancer mom has cancer mom has cancer mom has cancer mom has —
Shut. Up.
It’s bone cancer, by the way. Osteosarcoma. In her left hip bone. I looked it up a couple of weeks ago, right after my dad called me, voice trembling, to deliver the news. I’m not saying I believe every single word on the Internet, because, hey, it’s the fucking Internet, the same miracle that gave us fake news and videos of people getting their dogs high and September 11th conspiracy theories, but the medical sites seem reliable enough. Which sucks, actually, because they all agree that osteosarcoma, at Stage IIB, which is what Mom has, isn’t good. It’s not a death sentence, not yet, but it’s definitely not fucking good, either.
I know it’s a strange thing to wonder, but you know what I keep thinking? Why her hips? Why those things? My momma’s always been thick and strong, and she squeezed four babies out of those hips. They’re the things she propped us on when we were little, holding us in place with one hand while she flipped bacon with the other, the things that double as door-openers and drawer-closers and the thing she’d pop to the side and put a hand on when someone got in trouble with her.
The only thing bigger than my mother’s hips is her mouth, and as I slouch down grouchily in the blue plastic airport seat with my bad, British attempt at coffee, I have this image of her mouth getting even bigger to compensate for the chunk of hip they’re going to chop off in her surgery next week. I imagine her mouth expanding, stretching on her face, full lips all warping out of fucking control, getting so big her chin and neck practically disappear, and then she says something, and her voice has gotten louder, stronger than ever, and what she says to me is,
“Anika! Get over here! Right fucking now!”
Well, okay, so she wouldn’t say “fucking.” She always complains that I say it too much. Which is probably true. But Anika-get-over-here-right-now, that’s her favorite thing to say. I thought “Get Over Here Right Now” was my middle name when I was a kid. And getting cancer, it’s like the ultimate way to say it, right? It’s like her way of sending me a NastyGram all the way from Ohio to tell me, Girl, get over here. Come home. Right this instant.
I sigh, take a sip of my coffee.
Ohio.
The place is a fucking rubber band. No matter how far I manage to pull away, it always snaps me back into place eventually.
I take another sip of coffee.
Fucking Costa. The British don’t understand anything about coffee. I could get better coffee for half a Euro out of a vending machine in Switzerland than I can in all of fucking England. But I drink it anyway. It’s caffeine, and I need the caffeine, because I don’t even have to guess about what kind of day it’s going to be. It’s going to be a long, shitty fucking day. The rain drizzling down on the Manchester Airport tarmac says it, the monitor above me flashing DELAYED says it, the coffee says it.
And the cancer says it. Well, not the bone cancer so much as the words “chemotherapy” and “followed by surgery” and “possibly metastasized” that come with it.
I’m sitting there, thinking all this, in what is basically the airport waiting room — a bunch of uncomfortable blue vinyl seats facing a bank of departure monitors like we’re all at the fucking DMV waiting for our numbers to be called — when a girl walks by, meets my eye, gives me a small smile.
I try to smile back, but I’m sure it comes across more like a grimace. I recognize the girl from my flight over here from Basel; she sat a few rows ahead of me on the plane. She’d smiled when I walked past her boarding the plane, too, like she knew me. But I didn’t smile back that time; I was busy maneuvering my gym bag ahead of me, stooping to avoid whacking my head, trying not to let my big, awkward fucking body embarrass me more than it already naturally does. When she’d smiled at me on the plane, honestly my first thought was, “Is she laughing at me?” But then I’d realized no, just because a pretty woman smiles at you doesn’t mean she’s laughing at you.
Now I watch her go as she weaves through the crowd towards the escalator. She looks like she’s about my age, maybe — late thirties? Early forties? — but it’s hard to tell because she’s got this fancy business suit on, the kind that’s designed to make older women look younger and younger women look older, and plus she’s short and her hair’s cut to where it’s short in the back, a little longer in the front. My first thought when I see the haircut is “Jane Lane,” who, if you have no idea who the fuck that is, was a character on this late-90s MTV cartoon called Daria. (My sister Dutch discovered Daria reruns on late-night cable and we used to watch it in high school sometimes. Google it.)
Anyway, that’s what I think when I see the woman from the Basel-Manchester flight again — Jane Lane from Daria. Jane Lane, but Tinkerbell-sized and smiley and probably a hell of a lot less surly.
I lose Jane Lane in the crowd when she disappears up the escalator and into the food court above. There’s some kind of bar on the upper level, and the faint scent of a meat-and-potatoes-and-tomatoes English breakfast wafts down to me. On the tables closest to the escalator, I see half-empty pints of beer.
Brits. It’s not even ten in the fucking morning, and they’re already on their second pint.
This guy wanders over to me — young, doofy, wearing an ’80s-style, orangish vest over a button-down shirt, hands shoved into the pockets of his tight-rolled jeans.
His name is Marty McFly, and by the way, he’s a figment of my fucking imagination.
Remember him? Back to the Future? Actor Michael J. Fox as Guitar Hero Marty, the high school loser who gets dragged along by his elderly mad scientist bestie through space and time in a silver DeLorean with batwing car doors? Marty saving his parents through time traveling back to 1955? Biff the bully? Dorky George McFly? Pretty girl Lorraine? Please tell me you know who I’m talking about. Not knowing Daria… that I can understand. But surely anyone under the age of seventy-five who didn’t grow up on a fucking television-free hippie commune knows Back to the Future. If you don’t, you need to stop what you’re doing and go watch all the Back to the Future movies with a quickness. Right now.
I’ll wait.
Anyway, back in the Manchester airport, (imaginary) Marty McFly sits down next to me, slumps into his seat, hands still in his pockets. I glance over at him, look him up and down, remember how short the shrimp actually is. Sitting next to me like this, we could almost pass him off as my ten-year-old son.
If he was real, that is. And if I were as white as he is, or he was as Blasian as I am.
He nods in the direction of the escalator. “Smell remind you of anything?”
“I don’t want to talk about my childhood, McFly,” I say (but I don’t say it out-loud because he’s only in my imagination and I’m weird but not fucking delusional).
He inhales deeply. Keeps talking like I never said anything. “Smells almost like home, doesn’t it? Like Mom’s kitchen?”
“I told you. I don’t want to talk about it.”
I don’t tell him why I don’t want to talk about it, but he already knows why. I don’t want to start crying like a big fat baby right here in the airport waiting room.
He points up at the monitor in front of us. “Flight’s still delayed.”
“I can see that.”
He jerks a thumb towards the escalator. “May as well get some ‘brekkie.’ And you know… the English usually do ale better than coffee.”
“It’s not even noon. You’re suggesting I drink before my flight?”
“It’ll make the day go faster.”
I groan. “Nothing will make this day go any fucking faster.”
He makes a face like he’s offended. “Who’s the expert in time travel?”
I eye him. “And if I go upstairs for breakfast… You’re going to take me back in time again, aren’t you? Whether I like it or not?”
Marty McFly stands up, gives me a shit-eating grin. “Maybe. What’s wrong with a few childhood memories? What’s wrong with going back to your mother’s kitchen for a few minutes?” He extends a hand.
I sigh, but then I grasp the hand he offers anyway, almost tugging him into me as I haul myself to my feet. I shake my half empty coffee cup, drop it in the trashcan — excuse me, rubbish bin — next to the escalator.
“Lead on, McFly.”