John Wray - The Lost Time Accidents

* * *

If my father had known the details of his sisters’ lives at the time, Mrs. Haven, he might not have taken things so personally, though he’d probably have been a great deal more concerned. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, the publication of The Excuse ushered in the third and closing act of Enzie and Genny’s opera for two voices, the act that established its genre — which until then had been anybody’s guess — as tabloid tragedy.

The final Wednesday dinner was held on May 10, 1970, six months before I was born. Eighty-eight guests attended, including Julius Erving, Susan Sarandon, Klaus Nomi and Marianne Moore. It had become tradition for a lecture to be given between the dessert and the digestif, and on this occasion — which none among the revelers guessed would be their last — it was delivered by a young dermatologist, Jonathan P. Zizmor, on the use of fruit acids in cleansing the skin. The dishes included, but were not limited to: smoked bluepoint oysters, chicken liver pâté, french fries, sauerkraut, Waldorf salad, blackened red snapper, pickled hen-of-the-woods mushrooms, stuffed grape leaves, lasagna, garlic bread, tapioca pudding, mint Girl Scout cookies and chocolate mousse. When questioned about the meal — which was a bit on the showy side, even by their standards — Genny admitted, blushingly, that it was in honor of Enzie’s birthday, a claim Enzie neither confirmed nor denied.

Enzie’s health was duly toasted, then Genny’s own, since they’d been born within an hour of each other. The meal lasted until 03:00 or 03:30 EST, depending on accounts, at which point Enzie announced that she and her sister needed to retire. After the eighty-eighth guest — a Dominican client liaison for the Monsanto Fruit Corporation — had been shown to the door, my aunts pushed it shut together (with a quiet flourish, I like to imagine) and turned to regard the sea of dirty china. Genny heaved a theatrical sigh.

“All right?” Enzie asked.

Genny nodded. “It’s all right, Enzie. It’s enough.”

“I’m happy to hear it.” She smiled. “It’s almost time for us to go to Znojmo.”

“Goodness!” said Genny. “Is it May already?”

“It is, Schätzchen. We have an appointment to keep.”

Incredibly, my aunts did travel to Znojmo the following month, for what they described to Ursula — in a characteristically oblique postcard — as a “sentimental spree.” They spent less than two days in Moravia, according to their itinerary, followed by a single afternoon in the city of their birth. Then they boarded Pan Am 225 from Vienna to New York, returned to their apartment in the General Lee, and pushed all seven deadbolts closed behind them. Orson would eventually be drawn back into their orbit, but no one else — with one exception — would cross their threshold for the whole of the next decade. And that exception, Mrs. Haven, was me.

* * *

On May 10, 1970—the same day, as chance and fate and Providence would have it, as the Tolliver Sisters’ last supper — the bell rang just as Ursula was pulling a tray of Topfenstrudel out of the oven. Orson was in the kitchen as well, staring at the back of his wife’s head with his mouth hanging open. He’d just received some unexpected news.

The bell rang again.

“Ursula—”

“The bell, Orson.”

He passed a hand over his face. “Probably somebody’s at the door.”

“That seems likely.”

He crossed the parlor weavingly, his cerebellum buzzing, and yanked the front door open without looking who it was. A man and a woman and a teenager stood on the stoop: all three were wearing Western-style pearl-button shirts and immaculate blue jeans and sneakers. They’d have made a nice family, of a certain sort, if the teenager hadn’t been chewing on an unlit meerschaum pipe. The same pipe that I smoke , Orson thought, feeling his scalp start to prickle.

“Can I help you?”

“You already have ,” said the woman. “So much more than you know.”

“Mr. Orson Card Tolliver?” said the teenager gravely.

“Of course it’s him,” the man mumbled.

“Mr. Orson Card Tolliver?”

Orson nodded. “What is this?”

“ This ,” the teenager said, “is a momentous occasion. Could we, uh, impinge on you briefly?”

If Orson hadn’t been reeling from what his wife had just told him, he might have been slightly quicker on his feet. His callers were past him by the time he’d recovered, inside the house already, waiting respectfully at the entrance to the parlor. He could think of no response, at that point, but to ask them if they’d like a cup of coffee. The adults hesitated, looking curiously startled; the teenager said he’d like one very much. He seemed in a position of authority over the others, who spoke — when they dared speak at all — in timid, obseqious chirps.

Ursula, unflappable as always, brought out coffee and strudel, which everyone agreed was very tasty. The woman said something too quietly to hear — to Ursula, apparently — and Ursula asked her to repeat it.

“This coffee,” said the woman.

“Do you like it? It’s Venezuelan.”

“I’ve had this coffee before.” Her eyes fluttered closed. “This coffee exactly.”

“Yes, you have,” said the teenager. “And you’ll have it again .” He gave Orson a wink. “Am I right, Mr. Tolliver?”

“She’ll have it again right now,” Ursula said, refilling her cup.

Orson shot his wife a look of mute appeal, which she ignored.

* * *

We now reach the point in this history, Mrs. Haven, when I begin to feel us rushing toward each other. We’re still far apart, you and I — very nearly a decade, and five hundred miles — but our trajectories are starting to converge. The inevitability of it makes my mouth go dry.

* * *

The teenager was called Haven, the man’s name was Johnson, and the woman was referred to as “Miss M.” No first names were mentioned. They obviously belonged to a cult of some kind, though they passed out no literature; there was an odd air of leisure about them, or at least about Haven, as though they’d come to town to see the sights. My father decided they were trying to convert him, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses who rang the doorbell once a year, and he felt more at ease right away. It always relaxed him to talk to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. What they wanted was so easy to refuse.

“You’ve been expecting us for some time, I imagine,” Haven said.

“I’ll admit something to you,” said Orson. “I haven’t.”

“Ah!” said Haven, smiling good-naturedly, as if to show that he could take a joke. “So you deny that you have access to the future?”

“More strudel, Mr. Haven?” said Ursula, taking his plate.

“Thank you kindly, Mrs. Tolliver.” Haven dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “Perhaps the time has come to state our business.”

Orson raised his eyebrows. Ursula focused her attention on the strudel. Haven radiated courtesy and calm.

“The Codex, Miss M., if you please.”

“The Codex,” the young woman echoed. A book was produced from a briefcase and set on the table.

“Ach, du Scheisse,” said Ursula under her breath.

“Since well before the three of us met,” Haven said, “my two, uh, colleagues and I have been fellow travelers. Like a great many other Americans, Mr. Tolliver, we’ve read your book and been affected by it.” He nodded to himself. “I say ‘affected,’ but a better descriptor might be ‘altered,’ or even ‘transformed.’”

“Reconfigured,” Johnson suggested. The woman mouthed a word that looked like reborn to Orson. His scalp started prickling again.