If You Were Here Read online

  Some invisible barrier between us dissolved then and she fell back on the bed, laying next to me again and looking into my eyes. I put my arm over her and pulled her to me.

  “You want me to find you in 2016? In thirty years?” She looked at me with amusement. “When I’m forty-eight and you’re still eighteen? Because you’ll be eighteen then, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I will be.” I hadn’t considered that she’d age and I’d stay the same. In the moment, it hardly seemed like it would matter. I decided right there, in an instant, that it wouldn’t. “But I don’t care. I want to see you. I want to have you then, no matter what.”

  Her amused look turned into a laugh. “Okay, Daniel. One step at a time. Let me process this first, and then we’ll talk about the rest of it.”

  I moved closer and kissed her again. The rain hit the roof like bullets. I’d have given her anything she wanted in that moment.

  For the rest of that afternoon, Jenny and I were the only two people on the planet. No matter where I went or whether I woke up in my own bed to find that the whole thing had been one crazy, magical, inexplicable dream, in my heart I knew that there would never be a better or more important date than March 13, 1986, and that there’d never be a better or more important woman in my life than Jenny.

  26

  December 25, 2016

  I’ll Be Home For Christmas

  Lisa sat next to Daniel’s hospital bed with an untouched plate of food balanced on her knees. Nurse Janice was on duty again and she’d made sure to bring Lisa a paper plate loaded with turkey and mashed potatoes from the nurse’s lounge.

  “To keep your energy up, hon,” she said with pity in her voice. Daniel’s brief moment of alertness the day before had filled them all with hope. And then just as quickly as he’d come to the surface, he’d been pulled under again, falling back into the otherworld he’d been floating in all along.

  Lisa had taken the food with a weak smile and pushed the canned cranberry sauce around with one side of her buttered dinner roll. Seeing her son in a coma again was almost more than she could handle. All the excitement and joy she’d felt the day before had given way to a sadness that was equal in its scope.

  “Is he doing okay?” A doctor stepped into the room. His face looked tired as he scanned the notes on Daniel. No one wanted to work on Christmas Day, and the hospital was running a slightly smaller staff than usual because of callins and people who’d scheduled vacations. This doctor wasn’t someone Lisa knew well.

  “He woke up yesterday for a few minutes, but nothing since,” she said, setting the paper plate on the table next to Daniel’s bed.

  The doctor left his notes on the counter and walked over to Daniel. He stared down at him with curious eyes. “So he’s been out for how long?”

  “Since the 16th,” Lisa said robotically, remembering the day she’d gotten the call saying her son had been shot at school. “Nine days.”

  “Okay.” The doctor nodded, taking the stethoscope from around his neck and putting it into both ears. He pressed it to Daniel’s chest and leaned forward, listening.

  Lisa watched him, wondering what good that was doing. Obviously Daniel had a heartbeat, there were a million monitors in the room logging his every bodily movement. Was it just an antiquated habit doctors had? Listening to a patient’s heart because they didn’t have anything better to do? Was it something they did when they had no answers?

  The doctor took the stethoscope out of his ears and stood up straight again. He was a tall man with weary, red-rimmed eyes. “Nine days after a head injury,” he said, as if he was talking to himself. “But waking up once is a good sign. I’d take that as promising, if I were you.”

  If I were you…Lisa thought. But you’re not me. She nodded, pressing her lips together as she watched Daniel sleeping peacefully.

  The doctor looked as though he might walk out of the room without another word, but instead, he picked up his files from the counter and turned to Lisa. “Where is everybody else? Do you have family here with you on Christmas? Keeping you and Daniel company?”

  She shook her head. “No, not this year,” she said, trying to smile. Her boyfriend had gone AWOL, just as she’d expected him to do all along, and of course her cousin Sheryl had gone back to Buffalo already to be with her own family. Which really left just Daniel and her own father, who she’d opted to leave in the nursing home for the day. It might not have been the right choice, given the circumstances, but the disappointment of having Daniel wake up and then promptly fall back to sleep had left Lisa feeling bereft and void of the energy it would have taken to get her dad back to the hospital for another visit.

  “This is a tough situation to be in,” the doctor said, lowering his chin and eyeing Lisa over the top of his glasses. “I hope you’re taking care of yourself.”

  She shrugged. “I’m trying. But this isn’t the first time I’ve been in this position.” Lisa’s eyes shifted to her son’s face as she remembered the other times she’d waited to learn the fate of someone she loved in this same hospital.

  “On Christmas?” the doctor asked, his hand on the door.

  “No, not on Christmas.” She smiled wanly. Her mother had died in a hospital bed much like this one. “But when someone you love is sick or dying, it doesn’t really matter what time of year it is, does it?”

  “No, you’re right,” the doctor agreed. “The day of the week, month, or year is totally beside the point. Still, it’s Christmas, and that can leave a person feeling extra fragile.”

  She nodded. There was a bottle of pills in her purse calling her name. She’d tried to avoid taking any of them in case Daniel woke up again and needed her, but it was starting to look like it wouldn’t much matter whether she ended Christmas with her chin on her own chest, drooling down the front of her sweater, or if she spent it alert and hopeful at her son’s bedside.

  “Thank you, doctor,” she said, watching his back as he disappeared into the hallway.

  Her mother had passed away in September, at the start of Daniel’s eighth grade year. The years of drinking and trying to drown the pain of extreme loss had done their damage by then, and much as she hadn’t wanted to, Lisa partially blamed her brother Andy for the way the family had crumbled.

  “Andy,” she whispered in the quiet room. Saying his name gave her chills. She hadn’t said it out loud to herself like that in years, though it had been a habit of hers after he’d passed. She’d been so young—only eleven—when Andy, her beloved, much-adored older brother had been killed. It had left her on the sidelines, watching as grief took down her family like a tsunami after an earthquake. They’d simply been washed away, and with them, her hopes of living the kind of life that had been hers for the taking while Andy was alive.

  “Andy,” she said again, louder this time. And if not here, then where? Where else could she invoke the name of the brother who she simultaneously loved and hated? Of the boy who’d kept her family alive and afloat, leaving them to shatter in his absence? They’d brought him here, to this very hospital, that night. She remembered. Her mother had been the color of Daniel’s bedsheet, her father ashen and gray. It all came back to her as she looked around the room, picturing her strong, tall father in his London Fog raincoat belted over a pair of pajamas and his running shoes. They’d gotten him out of bed in the middle of the night, the policemen who’d rung their bell, and her mother hadn’t been far behind, changing from her nightgown into a pair of jeans and a cardigan with a t-shirt. Lisa saw them in her mind’s eye now, leaning on one another as she’d sat on a plastic chair and watched the scene unfold before her.

  “Andy,” she whispered one more time as she slipped her fingers into the limp palm of her son’s hand. She put her forehead against the cool sheets next to Daniel and closed her eyes.

  27

  April 12, 1986

  If You Leave

  It rained on prom night. The girls had hoped for better weather so we could gather in front of Heathe
r’s house (Roger had struck out with Kari from French class and had reluctantly agreed to escort his cousin to the prom in a last-ditch attempt to salvage the big night), but instead of taking the traditional dance photos under a tree, we stood inside my house in front of the fireplace with our dates as my grandma snapped photos with her Polaroid camera.

  “Here,” she said, thrusting an undeveloped shot at Andy.

  He smirked as he took it from her, waving it around in the air as our images came to life on the square of film. “Can we get Daniel looking a little more pensive?” he joked, frowning at the shot as it came into focus. “Maybe if he’d just hold up his date’s hand and gaze at her corsage.”

  “Shut up,” I said, looking for something to throw at Andy. Jenny snorted.

  “Andrew,” my grandma said with a warning in her voice. “If you aren’t going to help, then move out of the way.”

  “I am going to help,” Andy said with a hurt look on his face that I knew he was faking. “I’m driving these lovebirds around tonight so they can drink Boone’s Farm and make out in the backseat.”

  “Just want to point out here that my date is actually my cousin,” Roger said, holding up a finger to make that fact crystal clear. “There will be no making out.”

  My grandma pulled the camera away from her face and glared at Andy, something I rarely saw her do. “Go warm up the car so these girls don’t freeze. It’s chilly tonight.”

  “It’s April, Ma,” Andy said, slipping his arms into a jean jacket and picking his keys up off the coffee table. She shot him another warning look. “I’m going, I’m going.” Andy held both hands in the air as he backed out the front door.

  “You kids are going to have such a wonderful time,” my grandma gushed. “Prom is a magical night. I remember mine…” Her eyes took on a faraway look as she held the Polaroid camera in her hands, clearly floating back in time to Prom Night 1959.

  “And I’d love to hear all about it,” I said, taking my arm from around Jenny’s shoulders and using my hands to steer her away from the fireplace and towards the front door. “But we should probably get going.”

  Heather put her hand into her curly blonde hair and pushed at the teased pile of Aquanet and bangs, snapping her gum as she watched my grandma daydream about beehive hairdos and Elvis Presley. Next to her, Roger stood with his hands in his pockets, still looking slightly sheepish about heading to the prom with his first cousin on his arm.

  “Oh, you all have a wonderful time.” My grandma stood next to the door and pointed the camera at us again as Roger and I helped the girls wrap their coats around their bare shoulders. At the top of the stairs, I could see my mom sitting on a step—elbows on knees, chin on fists, hair in two pigtails—as she watched us with mild curiosity.

  “We will. Don’t wait up!” I closed the door behind us as the sound of another Polaroid image spitting out of the camera buzzed in the entryway. I was sure I’d come home later that night to find them all stuck to the fridge with fruit-shaped magnets.

  Andy zipped through the streets, wipers moving across the windshield. The girls were chattering in the backseat about what music they’d play at the dance and whether anyone would fight, break up, or cry, and Roger was beating out the rhythm to a song on his knees as he sat wedged between Heather and Jenny. But the scene suddenly felt surreal to me: I was sitting up front next to my dead uncle. There were three people on the seat behind me who were adults in my actual lifetime—people who dealt with jobs and kids and mortgages while I was still in high school—and somehow we were sharing this bizarre moment in time and it all defied explana—

  My dead uncle. My uncle Andy. Who was dead. Who had died the weekend after Halley’s Comet had come closest to Earth in 1986. I suddenly remembered my mom talking about it over the years, lamenting through a Vodka-infused haze that the comet came in and took her brother away with it. And yet somehow, in the excitement over prom and the plans we’d been furiously making for dinner and for the parties afterwards, all the talk about Halley’s Comet in my science class had gone completely over my head.

  I turned slightly in my seat and looked at Andy. He was there, still alive right next to me, living and breathing and driving us to the dance in his car. After about thirty seconds of my brazen staring, he took his eyes off the road and cut them in my direction.

  “What, dude?” He laughed. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “I was just thinking.”

  “You were just thinking what—that you’d rather take me to the prom than that cute girl in the back?” He tipped his chin so that the back of his head moved in Jenny’s direction. She and Heather were both leaning forward in the backseat, talking around Roger as he ran a hand through his red hair and eyed himself in the rearview mirror.

  “Yeah, that’s tempting,” I shot back. “No, I was just thinking about…tonight.”

  Andy nodded and reached out a hand to twist the knob on the radio. The dial slid from the station it was on and landed on a classic rock song. Andy cranked it up a notch. “Well, I’m glad you can gaze at me longingly and think deep thoughts on prom night.”

  “So what are you going to do while we’re at the dance?” I wanted to get him to tell me where he might be going. Now that I’d realized the importance of this particular weekend, the hairs on the back of my neck were standing at full attention. I’d been there since January 1st, and now I’d finally arrived at the point in time where I could actually (possibly, maybe) affect some sort of change. If I could figure out where Andy was all weekend and keep an eye on him, then it was possible I could stop the accident from even happening. I could completely change the outcome of this one weekend, which would, in turn, completely change the outcome of all our lives.

  At least that’s what I was hoping.

  Andy leaned into the curve in the road and another pair of headlights slid across our faces as we passed a sports car on the winding road.

  “I’m going to go in and find out whether the prom queen has turned eighteen yet,” he said, reaching over and slapping me on the thigh. Hard. “And then see if she’s ready to ditch her date and head out into the night with a real man.”

  “The prom queen is already engaged,” I said drily. “To some dude who shipped off for the Marines over winter break.”

  “Hey, then maybe she’s lonely,” Andy said, swinging the car into the parking lot of the hotel where the prom was being held. He pulled into a spot between two Hondas and killed the engine. “Should I walk you in and take a bunch of Polaroids as you check your coats and get punch, or do you think Mom got enough?”

  “I think we got enough.”

  Jenny, Roger, and Heather slid out of the backseat. Their noisy excitement spilled into the parking lot and mingled with the voices of other prom-goers as they all trickled up to the front door of the hotel.

  “Hey,” Andy said. He reached out and grabbed me by the elbow. “Listen.”

  “Yeah?”

  Andy shifted in his seat. “I want you to have fun tonight, man. Prom night is big.” He stopped talking and stared at me for a long, hard second. “You’re a good kid. I mean that.” A smile creased Andy’s serious face and he reached over and ran a hand through my combed hair. I ducked to avoid letting him mess it up and he laughed.

  “But really,” I said, opening the door and putting one foot on the wet pavement so that I was more than an arm’s length away from him. “Where will you be? Should we just wait for you to come back?”

  Andy looked straight ahead at the street that ran in front of the hotel. Cars whizzed past. Their tires kicked up rain as they sped through the night. “Why don’t you call Mom when you’re done here? I’ll check in with her and see when you want me to come back.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to complain about how much easier this would all be if we just had cell phones, but I stopped myself and nodded instead. “Fine, that works. I’ll call home.”

  “Alright,” Andy said, twisting the key in the
ignition. “Get in there and have fun.” He put the car in reverse. “And remember, if someone offers you something to drink, take it.” He winked at me and started to back up as I shut his door.

  I watched Andy pull out of the lot and onto the street before I followed a couple I knew from my math class up to the hotel. As I trailed them, hands in the pockets of my pants, the boy leaned down and put a kiss on the girl’s lips, never breaking stride. They smiled at each other.

  It was funny, but I’d never even seriously entertained the thought of going to my own prom in the twenty-first century. Granted, the last thing I remembered of that life was a patch of time right before Christmas, which meant the prom was still months away, but to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t even on my radar. The girls I knew weren’t soft or inviting, and their interests were filed down to sharp points like the acrylic nails they all seemed to wear.

  Take Carly: she’d been the only girl I’d ever thought about “in that way” in 2016, but thinking about her now, all I could remember was the fact that she liked rap music and watching make-up videos on YouTube. Her eyes were always kind of vacant, clouded over with the haze of the marijuana I knew she smoked during lunch break and on the weekends. She was nothing compared to Jenny—no substance, no refinement. No sense of humor, no hook to reel me in. I hadn’t given Carly a single thought during my time in 1986.

  “Daniel!” Roger called from across the lobby as I walked through the revolving doors. The sound of A-ha’s “Take on Me” blasted through the entrance of the ballroom just off the lobby, and I glanced down at the busy pattern on the carpet under my feet. A group of girls in pastel lace and elaborate hairdos brushed past me as I made my way over to Roger and the girls. They were all huddled by the doors, waiting for me before making their grand entrance.

  “You guys could have gone in.” I made a crook with my elbow so Jenny could slip her arm through it. “I was just figuring out how we’d get in touch with Andy again when we were ready to leave.”