John Wray - The Lost Time Accidents

Orson said nothing for the time it took his dizziness to pass. She waited patiently for him to speak.

“There’s no escaping this family,” he murmured at last. “I thought that there was — I was sure that there was — the first time I left.” He looked at her. “I’ve learned my lesson now.”

“It’s about time, Mr. Tolliver.” She smiled. “Our due date is November seventeenth.”

“ Good” or “bad” entrances , Kubler writes, are more than matters of position in a sequence. Every birth can be imagined as set into play on two distinct wheels of fortune: one governing the allotment of its temperament, the other ruling its entrance into the sequence. When a specific temperament interlocks with a favorable position, the fortunate individual can extract from the situation a wealth of previously unimagined consequences.

This achievement may be denied to other persons, as well as to the same person at a different time.

Though by no means the religious type, Ursula accepted her pregnancy (after due deliberation) as the will of the powers that be. My father’s take was somewhat more complex. For a long list of reasons, Orson had decided not to have children, not ever, and he was certain — as certain as he could be, without recalling a specific conversation — that Ursula had tacitly agreed. Among his reasons were: Ursula’s unfinished doctorate, global overpopulation, the small but persistent possibility of a thermonuclear strike by the Soviet Union, loss of sleep, crib death, his own questionable suitability for fatherhood, shit-sodden diapers, the educational crisis, the Vietnam War and childbirth-related changes to the morphology of the uterine wall. Ursula’s mother had once told her that time accelerated wildly for a mother once her baby was born; this idea had made her shiver, she’d once confessed to her husband, with a kind of voluptuous horror. Parenthood struck them both, Orson had always assumed, as an investment with a dubious return. What sane person could disagree with that?

* * *

I always find myself skipping the chapters of biographies that deal with the subject’s childhood — the dog bites, the rickets, the portentous aversion to breast milk — so I think I’ll spare posterity the bother. I came as a surprise to my parents, maybe even a shock, but they adjusted to my presence gracefully. I was considered “promising” in the standard sort of way, though I can’t recall why; I was loved, in the standard sort of way, at least by my doting, long-suffering mother. I liked to drink the vinegar in the pickle jar, I remember. I threw a ball like a girl. I made a landscape out of boogers on the wall beside my bed.

Orson loved me too, I believe, by his Orson-ish lights — but there wasn’t anything standard about it. Either he saw me, Mrs. Haven, or he didn’t. This seemed mostly to depend on how his writing was going, but it also had to do with something else: something grand and adult and hard to visualize, like the stock market or virgin birth or barometric pressure. On days when I was visible to him, he’d make up a story in which I was the conquering hero, or try to get me to throw a ball properly (which I hated), or drive me to the movies in his mustard-yellow Buick. On days when he didn’t, he’d walk past me— through me, if I wasn’t careful — as if I were a trick of the light.

Memory is a politician, Mrs. Haven, as every historian knows: a manipulative, pandering appeaser. Firsthand witness though I am, inaccuracies are creeping into this account. It’s likely, for example, that my father took me to the movies a handful of times at the most — I can’t remember more than one such trip, in fact, no matter how I try. But that solitary memory, from my last year of grade school, is vivid and well-lit and sharply in focus, as traumatic recollections tend to be.

The movie in question was Event Horizon , the third installment of the blockbuster Timestrider franchise. Orson had a knee-jerk aversion to Hollywood sci-fi, and a particular loathing for time-travel films; but my mother and I had joined forces this time, and we broke his resistance together. The “Kraut”—as Orson had taken to calling her — did it because my father had been in a nasty mood all week, and his bitching was driving her crazy; I did it because I needed a ride. It’s hard to say why Orson gave in, Mrs. Haven, but I do have a guess. He sensed an opportunity to rant.

Ranting was Orson’s preferred form of recreation for the whole of the eighties, and the Buick was his venue of choice. The satisfaction he took in watching his victim writhe in slack-jawed desperation, unable to escape without bodily harm, was the most compelling evidence I’d found (at that admittedly tender age) for the existence of natural evil. “Current events” set him off most dependably, but he could work up a respectable head of steam on virtually any topic: I once heard him hold forth, to one of the Kraut’s acquaintances from the Cheektowaga PTA, on the perils of middle-aged motherhood.

“The kids just don’t come out right,” he’d confided to Judy O’Shea. “If you don’t believe it, Judy, take a look at me.”

“Well, Mr. Tolliver, I must say — I mean, I don’t necessarily think—”

“The ideal time for conception, biologically speaking, is between twelve and fourteen years of age. That’s when the womb is at its most resilient. And please don’t even ask about the sperm.”

On this particular ride, as I might have expected, Orson had his crosshairs trained on Hollywood, and he dug in before we’d even cleared the driveway. “What’s pathetic to me, Waldy, is the wish-fulfillment quality of it all. Never mind the fact that navigating the timestream, hither and thither, is as easy in these flicks as passing gas; the medium has its conventions, I appreciate that. But ninety-nine percent of time-travel movies take it for granted that you can change whatever you want about the present — never mind the future — just by diddling a little with the past. It’s obvious that physics means zilch to these jerk-offs, and logic seems to count for even less. The past is the past, son. It’s done with. You keep that in mind.”

“I don’t know, Orson. I saw Timestrider Two last year, and I thought the whole Uncertainty Drive thing was pretty boss.”

“They’ve gotten to you, haven’t they,” Orson said, scrutinizing me closely. “They’ve injected their parasitic spores into your brain.”

“Keep your eyes on the road, Orson.”

“ROWWWGGGHHHHRRR,” said my father, rolling his eyes back and baring his teeth. By the time we pulled up at the Mohawk 6 Multiplex we were debating the pros and cons of an NCAA team spending its off-season on planets with stronger gravitational fields, like Saturn or Venus. A good rant never failed to cheer him up.

* * *

The first third of Timestrider III: Event Horizon passed without incident. Though Orson was sporting the fluorescent orange hunter’s cap he put on whenever he was trying to keep a low profile — his “helm of invisibility,” he called it — I occasionally managed to forget he was there. An anxious, goosenecked loner from the suburbs, three weeks shy of thirteen, I was in the demographic sweet spot for the franchise, and I loved every pulsing, booming, logic-flouting minute. The rows in front of us had been commandeered by the Timestrider faithful: sixteen-year-old fanboys in frosted jeans and Iron Maiden T-shirts, already on their seventh or eighth viewing, mouthing along with the dialogue like grandmas in church. With the notable exception of a pustule-necked orangutan who could barely squeeze himself into his seat, they looked as spindly and insecure as I was. Whenever the Timestrider pulled out his cryophoton blade — which was every fifteen seconds or so — they gave one another sweaty-palmed highfives. I was beholding my personal future, Mrs. Haven, and I’m not ashamed to say I liked the look of it.